From captain@pobox.upenn.edu Wed Mar 22 16:31 EST 1995

Okayfine, in five minutes or less:


At the end of Camlann, you got two bodies and two swords cooling on the 
field.  It so happens that, in the literature, there are two knights who 
supposedly took Excalibur off to the Lady of the Lake, depending on which 
source you read, it was either Bedevere or Griflet -- who both also 
happened to have one arm, once again if you juggle the sources 
correctly.  From this little oddity I derived the whole campaign, thus:

Two bodies (Arthur, Mordred), two swords (Excalibur, Victorix), and two 
knights (Bedevere, Griflet).  Extend the dualism:  Bedevere, senile and 
mortally wounded, is told by Arthur two take Excalibur to the LoL.  He's 
confused, he's senile, he's wounded, he wanders off in a daze and becomes 
my own version of the Wandering Jew.  As a side note, he's grabbed the 
wrong sword, he's actually carrying Victorix, which, having been reforged 
by a usurper and used to kill the High King, is now, to put it mildly, 
cursed.  What about Griflet?  Well, he's a traitor -- some justification 
in the literature, he's jealous of being replaced by the younger knights 
like Gawaine and Lancelot) -- and so he's actually serving Mordred.  He 
grabs Excalibur.

By then, two other things have happened:  Arthur has been spirited away 
to Camlann (he's not really dead);  and, in true parallel fashion, 
Mordred has been spirited away by his henchmen, who take him to Ireland, 
eventually, where he has friends among the pagan rabble.  So Griflet 
begins a long, arduous journey (he's wounded too, so has to stop to heal 
for a while) to bring Excalibur to Mordred, who's lying in a coma in Eire.

Side notes:  Victorix has a lovely paradoxical curse.  The whole flame 
thing, uncontrollable, all-consuming, Wrath of God type stuff.  It has 
also become a Plague Sword ... whenever you draw it, everyone in the area 
gets immediately infected with the pneumonic form of bubonic plague ... 
EXCEPT:  those who get scorched by the flame of Victorix (including the 
wielder, who also gets burnt, though not as much) don't contract the 
disease, for the purpose of that event only.  You can use Victorix to 
cure people of the plague, though you tend to toast them in the process.  
God, I'm evil.

All proceeds from there.

The stuff in (Dover? wherever Gordon was) is totally separate.  The monks 
of that church have, hidden within their sect, an inner sect that is 
actually descended from an ancient Egyptian papyrus smuggled from the 
Holy Lands centuries previous -- complete with ancient rituals, 
Egyptian-motif magical stuff, and a High Priest, Thoth-Garon (or 
something like that, Thoth had a half-dozen or so incarnations).  The 
High Priest appears to be a man in an animal-head mask, like the lesser 
acoylytes, until you actually get right up to him, when you find out -- 
surprise! -- that he actually *is* an Avator of Thoth.

The Inquisition is in Dover/wherever because a reference to the Egyptian 
cult was discovered in a long-forgotten vault in the Vatican, and the 
Pope has sent his trusted men there to bring back it's secrets, under the 
guise of smoking out heresy.

Taliesin and the fairies are there to distract from the *real* danger.  
You see how well *that* worked.


Whew.  Now I go on Vacation.


tee hee

-mike

p.s. forward to the old gang as you see fit. >;)