Tournament of High Summer
Janov Seldon meets Jean Claude Delong and thwarts an assassination conducted by infernal forces...
Scanning the sandy shoreline, Janov walked the edge of the chalkstone Dover cliffs. During his brief time as defender of the Brightmoon Biodome, he had examined reports left by Sir Fredrick Brasden regarding a transport tunnel buried near here under the narrow channel of the North Sea. According to Brasden's notes, the undersea tunnel had been used by the Precursors to convey locomotive engines carrying people and cargo between ancient Britannia and Capetia. Janov had decided to locate and use the forgotten tunnel to venture his way to the mainland of Europe.
He decided on this course of action partly out of curiousity, but only partly. All the way south from County York, Janov had travelled off of the main roads. After fighting the Phoenix Archon known as Delora Delarmi, he wondered if he was now known to the Phoenix Order. He wondered if his move to destroy the Biodome and prevent it from being taken by the Phoenix Order was an act for which the Phoenix would seek vengeance. Moreover, he wondered if even now he was being hunted by agents of the Phoenix Order.
Spies could be anywhere. It would be better to remain unseen. Just in case.
So he wended his way by an indirect route through the woods and wilds of East Anglia. Arriving at the channel coast of Dover, he decided it would be too risky to use commercial transport.
Surely the Phoenix monitor such things, the comings and goings across borders.
He determined that if he could discover the lost Eurostar Tunnel he would secretly use it to leave Britannia and thus evade the pursuit of the Phoenix Order.It was imperative that Janov leave Britannia unhindered, for he was on a quest in search of a hidden fortress said to be in the wilds of Timberley Forest in Provence. When he had engaged the Biodome self-destruct protocol, the evacuation instructions relayed through the Biodome servitor interface had directed Janov to travel to Timberley Castle and seek out a Machinist named Dr. Manfred Klinnsman. Janov had never heard of the man or the place and his initial inquiries about Timberley revealed that it was widely believed to be a legend and nothing more. As the chaos of the Phoenix Order continued to spread, however, Janov was becoming increasingly aware that he was in over his head and in need of guidance. If there were allies to be found in the forests of Provence, he would find them.
After the destruction of the Brightmoon Biodome, Janov Seldon became a wanderer. He heeded the warning of the holographic image of Lord Frederick Brasden, which had bade him to seek out a Machinist in the wilds of Southern Capetia. Perhaps the fortress of Chateau Timberley truly did exist. If so, Janov would find it and along with it some explanation for the chaos and violence that had consumed his life.
While passing through Calais, however, Janov found himself embroiled in further intrigues. A chance decision to enter a fighting tournament led Janov to discover an assassination ploy. This plot, orchestrated by a foreign knight aligned with evil forces, had the potential to instigate a full scale war between Britannia and Capetia, the last independent kingdoms of Europa. In order to stop this murder and the ensuing war that would surely follow, Janov pledged himself to an unusual fellowship, which included Britannian special agents and a celestial traveler. Together this unlikely alliance would oppose not only the Phoenix Order but the darkest powers of the Underworld itself.
Plot points/Scenes
Scene 1
Janov hurtling through the Eurostar Tunnel over the bones of the dead.
Location: Dover / Eurostar Chunnel
Scene 2Hoping to win some money and gain some info about Timberley Forest, Janov convinces the Marshall of the lists to let him fight in the Summer's End Tournament.
Location: Calais Tournament Grounds
Scene 3A kind Norman knight named Gervais Bellehache lets Janov borrow a suit of tilting amour.
Location: Calais Tournament Grounds
Scene 3Janov wins a few early jousts and learns the basics of tilting. He starts to get noticed by the more experienced competitors.
Location: Calais Tournament Grounds
Scene 4Nil'Rem of Goure, notices Janov's prowess and assumes he is the celestial rival sent to stop him. Nil'Rem issues Janov an invitation to joust "à plaisance" in a friendly contest. Janov accepts.
Location: Bout de Mile Public House
Scene 5Janov enters the lists against Nil'Rem, who defeats him in the tilt and proceeds to fight him on foot in the closed ground of a melee. Nil'Rem tries to kill Janov but is hindered by Janov's dirty tactics and the timely arrival of Jean Claude Delong.
Location: Calais Tournament Grounds
Scene 6Janov and Jean Claude are arrested for disorderly conduct. They talk to some of the other prisoners about Nil'Rem and learn that he has been looking to contract an assassin to murder one of the tourney competitors.
Location: Calais Prison
Scene 7Special Agent Julian Beech infiltrates the prison and tries to interview the prison informants but they are already dead: killed by an unseen shade assassin. Janov and Jean Claude provide info and offer to help, so Julian busts them out of prison
Location: Calais Prison
Scene 8Julian brings Janov and Jean Claude to the Britannian Special Service safe house in Calais . They meet the facility operator, an affable Britannian agent named Boris Borovich.
Location: Boucherie de Boris
Scene 9Janov and Jean Claude begin searching the town for Nil'Rem's whereabouts. Jean Claude meets Lisette in the city and recognizes her from his dreams. He realizes he was drawn to Calais by his connection to her and not Nil'Rem.
Location: Calais Marketplace
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Themes
The main theme of the adventure involves the conflict between the fulfillment of duty and the service of what is right. The crisis moment of the episode demands the protagonists to determine whether the obligations of filial obedience outweigh the moral imperatives of general decency and beneficence.
Structure
Exposition
The Fools' War between the alliance of Britannia-Normandy and their Capetian rivals may have been a manufactured crisis, but it came to a head when French troops clashed with a small force led by Lord Protector Salvor Dorrick at the Battle of Chrysler's Farm in June 997 PCE. Facing the prospect of a full-scale war between Britannia and Capetia fought upon his own territory, Duke Guy Lefevre of Normandy was willing to seek a diplomatic solution to the crisis and agreed to enter a tournament staged by the Capetian Regent, Viceroy Mazarin Villeneuve.
This tournament, mooted as a friendly pretext for a diplomatic parley, was really a ploy to draw Duke Guy into an assassination trap. Amid this intrigue, Janov Seldon, seeking safe passage to the hidden fortress of Timberley Forest, found himself swept into a Britannian counter plot to foil the assassination of Duke Guy.
As a backdrop to this action, two metahuman travelers, Jean Claude Delong and Nil'Rem, arch rivals from beyond this earthly plane, crossed paths in the tournament and confronted each other for the first time. They were both unwittingly drawn to Calais by the presence of a third traveler, the earthly incarnation of a celestial thought-form known as "Ariel." Banished from Eternity along with the rest of the Abrahamic heavenly host on the first day of the War in Heaven (an event known as the Dissolution of Heaven), Ariel and the other angelic thought-forms had walked the earth for centuries in a perpetual series of human incarnations awaiting the end of mortal time and the return of Eternal unity.
Seeking the power to eventually alter reality, Nil'Rem was searching for one of these angelic travelers, specifically one that could access the divine powers of All-Creation. Unbeknownst to Nil'Rem, Ariel happened to be the Eternal One's crucial instrument for propagating the celestial Music of the Spheres, the unifying force governing reality itself. When he eventually discovered Ariel's secret, Nil'Rem resolved to capture her incarnate form, Lisette de Cambernon, and use her link to the celestial powers of Eternal Order to manipulate the Hymn Divine and remake reality in his own image.
Nil'Rem came to Calais amid the conclusion of an eight-year expedition in the Byzanturk province of Syria. He and his followers had been tracking down the location of a lost infernal artifact with the power to unleash a terrifying power known as the Ancient of Days. On the verge of a breakthrough, Nil'Rem suddenly sensed the tonal resonance of Lisette's awakening celestial nature and ordered his followers to conclude the search while he answered the inexorable urge to head west for Calais. He believed he had sensed the emergence of his rival and sought to intercept and destroy Jean Claude before he could fully manifest his celestial powers and pose a true threat to his broader plans.
Jean Claude was similarly attractedby the presence of Lisette. Though initially unaware of Nil'Rem's machinations or Lisette's true importance, he nonetheless placed her under his protection. He was drawn to her by a divine love that transcends the ages of mortal time, for, though he knew it not, he was, like Lisette, but the latest incarnation of an Abrahamic thought-form, specifically the Seraph known as Archangel Michael. Whereas Ariel embodied the divine Music of the Spheres, the song expressing the intrinsic harmony of Newtonian physics and the mathematical perfection of cosmic order, Michael embodied the purifying flames of the Eternal's transcendent wisdom. Bonded to Ariel by their shared portion of the Eternal One and by a timeless love inexplicable, Michael pursued Ariel through generations of countless mortal incarnations. Inspired by a fervent belief that the End of History and the Restoration of Eternity depended upon the celestial union of sacred fire and song, Michael awakened in every age of humanity with but one intent: to pursue his celestial soulmate and await the Revelation of the Eternal One's Unknowable Purpose.
Conflict
The assassination of Duke Guy Lefevre of Normandy was planned to occur during the tournament. The attempt was motivated by the Phoenix Order's desire to provoke a war between Britannia and Capetia. According to the plan concocted by Viceroy Villeneuve, the assassination of the Duke would be blamed on Capetian treachery, which would inevitably provoke a war in which Britannia would be obligated to support their Norman allies. In exchange for fomenting conflict between these factions, Villeneuve had been promised the office of regional governor of the Capetian province within a newly expanded Golden Empire.
Jean Claude and Nil'Rem, ancient adversaries, were reincarnated by powerful extraplanar entities to continue a proxy war on earth between heaven and hell. Whereas Nil'Rem was sent to sow chaos and discord upon the earth, Jean Claude came simply to stop him and end his existence lest humanity be brought to the brink of a new and never-ending Cataclysm. Appraised of Villeneuve's plot through demonic consultation, Nil'Rem approached the Viceroy's agents and offered to carry out the assassination plan. For Nil'Rem, the scheme served a twofold purpose. It would sow chaos and misery, elements which Nil'Rem's inhuman masters craved, and it would serve to distract Nil'Rem's own foes and allow him a free hand to pursue his true agenda: the pursuit of the Song of Creation.
By the end of the adventure, Jean Claude must choose between the chance to apprehend Nil'Rem or the opportunity to prevent the assassination of the Duke and the ensuing outbreak of war.
Rising Action
Janov sneaks into Capetia by locating the long-lost Eurostar Tunnel. He does this by comparing a map of ancient landmarks to the landscape of present-day Dover. He finds an overgrown monument carved into the side of a large boulder. After using leverage to shift the boulder aside, he gains access to a hidden tunnel. Inside he finds a cavern full of human bones, the remains of a makeshift Precursor refuge used as a shelter during the Cataclysm. He tests his mechanical skills by activating an ancient electric train motor and briefly rides the Eurostar train partway through the tunnel until the timeworn motor finally quits. The image of Janov driving the train through the tunnel of human remains conjures a proverbial verse from the Infernal Bible:
Drive your cart and plow over the bones of the dead.
Janov observed that the buried station complex on the Capetian side of the channel had been renovated and occupied some time in the recent past. He found a power generator but was not able to activate it and thus failed to secure access to the timeworn technological marvels hidden in the complex.
Janov emerged on the Capetian side through an ancient sewer access tunnel. Filthy, and smelling of rancid waste water, Janov decided to enter a local military tournament, The Tourney of High Summer. Hoping to win some money and gain some info about Timberley Forest, Janov attempted to persuade the Marshall of the lists that he was a Britannian knight fallen on hard times and looking for a chance at fortune and glory.
Stammering about his stolen jousting harness, Janov's charm failed him. Seeing his difficulty in convincing the Marshall of his counterfeit gentilesse, a kind if gullible Norman knight named Gervais Bellehache allowed Janov to borrow a suit of tilting amour and a horse to ride in the lists. Janov indicated the mighty Lazarus and reassured Gervais that he had no need for a horse, only a saddle to ride in. Amused by Janov's forthright manner, Gervais vouched for him with the Marshall's registrar and invited the Britannian ranger to join his household revels at the Bellehache pavilion. Janov heartily agreed and spent the evening making merry and trying to learn something, anything potentially useful about jousting that could aid him in the contests to come.
The dawn brought the beginning of the tournament and Janov's first matches. Janov learned the basics of tilting but his horse Lazarus turned out to be a true secret weapon. The mount clearly understood how to maneuver in the lists and through a combination of power and clever movement, Lazarus enabled his novice rider to win a few early jousts. At one point Lazarus darted sideways away from the impact of a charge and clenched Janov's arm in his teeth to prevent him from being unhorsed, a maneuver that delighted the crowd and drew much attention to the unknown Britannian knight who could demonstrate such masterful chivalrie.
Janov was quickly becoming the talk of the town and drawing the attention of the field of competitors. Among those taking notice of Janov was an unknown knight claiming to hail from the eastern realms of Phrygia. This foreign knight, calling himself Nil'Rem of Goure, was clad in black armour and bore a heater shield embossed with a red dragon. Nil'Rem accidentally killed his first opponent with an errant lance blow that pierced his protective armoured gorget and tore open his throat. The action was deemed unintentional and Nil'Rem proceeded to distinguish himself among the competition with a series of impressive victories.
A fresh bath and clean clothes did wonders for Janov's charm. Mingling among the assembled competitors and tournament onlookers, Janov began to ask after rumours and legends concerning the location of Timberley Castle. Hearing word of a chevalier inconnu inquiring about the fabled fortress of Timberley, a prominent telluric node long-held by forces allied with Eternity's unknowable celestial Purpose, Nil'Rem presumed that Janov had to be the earthly incarnation of his rival, Jean Claude Delong, the celestial hunter tasked to track him from beyond the mortal plane. Responding to this perceived threat, Nil'Rem issued Janov an invitation to joust "à plaisance" in a friendly contest between the much-lauded étrangers of the tourney.
Janov accepted the challenge and entered the lists against Nil'Rem, who scored two lances and unhorsed him after three passes. After the tilt, Nil'Rem immediately offered Janov a rematch within the closed ground of a melee. Hoping for a better outcome on foot and hand-to-hand, Janov accepted the challenge. Having no way of knowing Nil'Rem's true intent, Janov could not perceive the danger he now faced in an apparently friendly match against a foe who was trying to actually kill him. Pairing long and
Nil'Rem Triumphant
short blades in a dual-wielding stance, the Britannian fought valiantly in a crowd-pleasing spectacle, but Nil'Rem invoked demonic hexes to seize the upper hand. As the demon knight prepared a killing blow, Janov realized that it was no longer a fitting time for observing the niceties of chivalrous combat and decided to fight dirty. Favouring survival over honour, he threw a handful of gritty sand into Nil'Rem's visor and scrambled to flee the field with his life.
Bemused by Janov's unexpected cunning, uncharacteristic behaviour for a supposed celestial traveler, Nil'Rem paused to remove his helm and clear his eyes. In this moment of distraction, the real Jean Claude Delong, watching from the commons gallery, caught an unobstructed glimpse of Nil'Rem's visage for the first time and instantly recognized the face of cruelty that mocked his dreams. Abandoning all restraint, Jean Claude dashed into the closed ground of the tourney and intervened to save Janov's life. Startled by the emergence of his true quarry, Nil'Rem panicked under Jean Claude's determined onslaught. Jean Claude pressed the attack forcing the demon knight to adopt a defensive posture and allow Janov the chance to recover his footing.
Before the celestial and infernal warriors could have it out in earnest, however, the Marshal of Lists ordered the field crew to part the incensed competitors. Nil'Rem proceeded to charm the authorities and evade questioning or capture. Moreover, he convinced the marshal that Jean Claude and Janov were nothing more than upstart commoners. The duo were subsequently apprehended for mischief and the violation of sumptuary law forbidding commoners from wearing noble vestments or arms. Nil'Rem excused his seemingly dishonourable use of excessive force by insisting he was merely defending the law in his attempt to end Janov's life.
While imprisoned in the local jail, Janov and Jean Claude spoke to some of the other prisoners about Nil'Rem and learned that he was a known entity among the local criminal element. According to the jailhouse informants, Nil'Rem arrived in town a few weeks earlier with a heavy purse of silver and looking to contract assassins to murder one of the tourney competitors. According to the informants, the Guilde de Chasseurs had paid off the local constable to apprehend all the competing bidders in order to secure the contract for themselves. When asked if they would have done the killing if they had the chance, the prisoners just laughed the question off.
Working a counter-espionage operation against Phoenix Order cutthroats operating in the area, Britannian special agent Julian Beech had begun to suspect an assassination plot was in the offing. Tipped off by rumours about the constable's graft, Julian infiltrated the prison by posing as a friar come to hear confessions from the prisoners. He was attempting to interview the prison informants but was too late. He arrived to find them stone cold dead in their cells. They were slain by a secrecy pact with Nil'Rem that manifested as a death curse. Having witnessed their terrible gasping demise, Janov and Jean Claude met Julian and told him what the informants had to say about Nil'Rem's murder plan. Julian recognized them as the men arrested in the tournament grounds earlier that day, and, realizing they shared a common foe, he asked them to help stop the assassination of Duke Guy of Normandy, whom he believed to be the target of Nil'Rem's plot.
The prisoners heartily agreed and Julian contrived to disguise them as the dead informants and swap the dead men into their cells to pose as sleeping decoys. Julian then loaded the "corpses" of Janov and Jean Claude into a cart and wheeled them out of the prison for burial at the local friary of Saint Francis. After passing through the cemetery gate, Janov and Jean Claude sneaked out of the cart, changed clothes, and followed Julian through a hedge on the other side of the burial ground. The newly assembled party proceeded to the Britannian Special Service safe house, a butcher's shop called Boucherie de Boris. There they met the facility operator, an affable Britannian agent named Boris Borovich.
The following day Janov concocted assumed identities and identifying documentation for Janov and Jean Claude. The agent directed his new allies to make inquiries about their quarry but to maintain discretion. To this end Julian dressed the pair up as travelling peddlers and fitted their mouths with crude prosthetics to garble their speech and hide their English accents.
After retrieving Janov's personal items from Sir Gervaise, Janov and Jean Claude began investigating the whereabouts of Nil'Rem, who appeared to keep a lodging separate from his arming pavilion at the tournament grounds. A brief search of the pavilion revealed a carelessly discarded billet doux, a love token apparently belonging to Nil'Rem's young assistant. The letter was perfumed and was signed by a woman named, "Julie." The pair of investigators decided to follow this lead and identify the writer of the letter.
While making inquiries at the town marketplace, Jean Claude overheard a woman singing with a most captivating voice. The beauty of that voice, so pure and expressive, overwhelmed Jean Claude's senses, and he felt a most uncanny sensation of deja vu, a feeling of nostalgia for a memory he couldn't quite recollect, an idea he couldn't quite imagine. Involuntarily, almost as if in a trance, Jean Claude felt a preternatural urge to pursue the musical sound, which he followed to the edge of a canal. Down from the embankment of the city streets, he caught sight of the source of the beauteous voice, a woman with dark hair and eyes, plainly dressed but possessed of a matchless beauty.
As Jean Claude looked upon her his indescribable feelings of recognition coalesced into thoughts and he felt a rush of suppressed memory release from his subconscious.These memories carried with them the subjective tint of multitudes, of identities lived through millennia of human lifetimes. Sifting through the unbidden torrent of remembrance, Jean Claude suddenly became aware that he was but the latest mortal iteration of an ancient reincarnated being and that this woman before him had walked by his side in past ages through hundreds of previous lifetimes. He felt the inexorable pull of destiny drawing him to her and suddenly became aware that the pull had been upon him all along, that every step he had taken until this point had brought him to this very moment.
Meeting his celestial soulmate again for the first time and knowing not what it all could possibly mean, Jean Claude introduced himself to the lovely singer and came to know her as Lisette Champarnon. Employed as a seamstress and recently widowed, Lisette was raising a young son on her own in the city. She acknowledged the unusual sense of familiarity that now passed between them and admitted the irrational feeling of trust she now inexplicably felt towards this strange man in peddler's clothes whom she had never met but seemed to know all the same. Noticing the delicate paper of the note held in Jean Claude's hand, Lisette indicated the lingering perfumed scent and told Jean Claude that it was a unique variety of perfume sold by a local chemist. Promising Lisette that he would return to commiserate with her later on, Jean Claude caught up to Janov and led the way to the marketplace apothecary.
An interview with the chemist revealed the full name of the note's signatory, "Julie Malbranche," a local noble dame with dilettantish habits. After staking out the Malbranche townhouse, Janov and Jean Claude caught sight of Nil'Rem's squire and followed him to an abandoned church on the outskirts of town. The pair resolved to sneak into the hideout and confront Nil'Rem directly.
Crisis
After bursting into the desecrated church, Janov and Jean Claude seized Nil'Rem's servant and discovered that his master had left the tournament to catch a boat bound for the Mediterranean. Furthermore, after questioning Nil'Rem's squire, the party confirmed that Nil'Rem contracted the Guilde des Chasseurs to carry out the assassination plot. The cowardly servant, utterly possessed with fear, revealed the full extent of Nil'Rem's plans. After realizing that Janov and Jean Claude had escaped from prison, Nil'Rem felt too exposed to carry the plot out himself and decided to regroup with his followers back in Syria. The assassination plan as laid out to the Chasseurs now lay in Janov and Jean Claude's hands. At this moment of crisis, Jean Claude had to choose: he could either pursue Nil'Rem to the dockyard and try to end his threat, thereby allowing the death of Duke Guy and the subsequent slaughter of innocents that would commence in the war to follow, or he could let Nil'Rem go and instead save the Duke, thus preventing the ensuing war from occurring.
Climax
Jean Claude and Janov decided to let Nil'Rem flee unhindered and returned to the tournament grounds in order to thwart Nil'Rem's hired assassins. While Janov and Julian dispatched the snipers positioned on roofs above the tournament grounds, Jean Claude entered the lists and replaced Duke Guy's appointed challenger. Just prior to the clash of lances, Jean Claude realized that the blunted tip of his jousting lance was enchanted to transmute into a deadly spear tip. At this moment the purifying fire of his inner celestial spark ignited causing the sharpened lance to explode into a cloud of harmless fragments. Simultaneously, Duke Guy thrust forward his own lance into the center of Jean Claude's shield, causing him to be hurled straight backward out of his saddle. The force of the impact and Jean Claude's subsequent fall caused his armor to be jarred loose. As he rolled tumbling through the dust, metal plates and rings scattered from his limbs. Coming to a stop, the disguise of his false persona stripped away, he rose with renewed self-awareness.
Falling Action
After using his ability to channel celestial energy and counter Nil'Rem's infernal trap, Jean Claude realizes that, like Lisette, he too possesses a fragment of Eternity. With this realization his consciousness awakens to his true celestial identity and he recognizes his true name: מיכאל, Michael, "the one who is like God."
The spectacle of the transfigured archangel briefly revealed the glory of Eternity to the assembled onlookers. As Jean Claude rose to his feet, the people witnessed a miraculous vision: they beheld Jean Claude as an eight-winged being of light wreathed in blazing white flames. The revealed glimpse of the divine rendered the crowd temporarily blind and permitted Jean Claude to flee the scene. He rendezvoused with Janov and Julian back at the safe house and from there the new comrades planned their next moves.
Resolution
After conferring with Lisette about his incredible self-discovery, Jean Claude decided he had to pursue Nil'Rem east and hunt him down. Julian, still stationed in Calais as an agent of the Britannian Crown, pledged to keep watch over Lisette and her son in Jean Claude's absence. Janov then continued his journey in search of Timberley Castle and resumed the pursuit of his own peculiar destiny.
Relations
Protagonists
Jean Claude Delong
Janov Seldon
Janov Seldon
Allies
Julian Beech
Boris Borovich
Gervaise Bellehache
Lisette Champarnon
Boris Borovich
Gervaise Bellehache
Lisette Champarnon
Neutrals/Bystanders
Duke Guy Lefevre
Adversaries
Viceroy Villeneuve
Nil'Rem of Goure
Nil'Rem of Goure
Date: June 24th, 997 PCE
Location
Calais, Capetia (France)
Calais, Capetia (France)
Plot type
Plot Summary
Parent Plot
Calais City Map, 997 PCE
Eurostar Chunnel Station Floorplan
Calais Floorplans I
Calais Floorplan II
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