Casting Shadows

This seed is for Pendragon, now handled by Nocturnal, and should provide the skeleton for a few sessions of play during a period of tension and slow build toward large-scale conflict.

The seed
A Knight Vassal of small renown, only perhaps known to the player knights but possessed of unflagging courage and good disposition has been absent from his manor for several weeks. The call to war has been made and all must assemble, but no one knows where he has gone – or if he is even still alive. The player knights have their panoply of reasons for ensuring they are the ones to seek him out.

Planting the seed
Although the knights could simply be requested to seek the missing man, tying things tightly to the characters of the knights is the core of the experience. Exploring the motivations of each knight as their virtues pull on them differently makes this simple idea take on special significance. Before planting the seed, the GM should investigate to see how to set up the initial conditions so that the disappearance of the Knight Vassal can create conflicts within the player knights. Will they seek him out from good Christian charity, or will they do it for reasons of self-enrichment? If or when they find him, what will they choose to do?

The details
The details are simple, really. Without a word to anyone, the knight took his horse and rode off. Alarm set in when he did not return and as days passed and no one on his lands or neighboring lands could report seeing him or speaking with him, alarm turned to fear for his safety.

The information that they have gathered has them confident that he continued down the road to the West for several miles and that he appears to have stopped to rest by the calm shores of his favorite lake for a time, before heading off the road and along the lake side until his trail was lost on stony ground leading into wooded elevations greatly feared by the locals for the beasts they contain. What happened to him after that is anyone’s guess.

What’s going on
After a harrowing winter recovering from wounds and really seeing for the first time the hardships of the people under his care, the Knight had a small crisis of faith. Feeling the need to clear his head he rode off into the wilderness to be alone and try to hear the still, small voice of reassurance he was coming to feel was the real presence of God.

He is utterly convinced that he was spared death in battle last summer in order to do something God had planned for him… but he does not know what that is. Moreover, he cannot bear the thought of getting caught up again in the mundane and chaotic press of his life before this revelation. To ease his anguish, he chose to sequester himself for a time to pray for guidance and order his thoughts.

When he is found, he will be kneeling in prayer in glade, his armour and weapons arrayed around him neatly, beard and nails growing out wildly, thin with hunger and lack of water. if roused, he will seek to give away all of his worldly possessions – including all his lands.

This is when the real challenge for the player knights should begin, and to make it so is the real challenge for the GM.

Enjoy~