O’Fortuna

In this session of our Pendragon campaign, we have met the Brown Knight and are now heading north along the Road of Chivalry which we need to follow to get to the Fisher King, according to the Brown Knight. The Road will test our dedication to the principles of Chivalry.

It road leads into a narrow gorge, which is very tiring, and I want to go to sleep. My companions drag me out though.

Then we enter a valley, where there are attractive young maidens. They offer us gifts. No, really. They have presents marked for us. We manage to ignore them. Fortunately they weren’t offering ‘gifts’ of a different sort, otherwise I probably would have been tempted given that I can be quite lustful.

The valley ends at a cliff, with two narrow paths. One leads to dark caves, the other leads towards a shining castle. On the way, we come to a crevasse where we meet a Saxon knight who is begging for forgiveness for fighting against Arthur the true king. We forgive him, and he shows us the way across the crevasse.

Then we come to a cave, where there is a hag. There is armour laying on the ground around her. Sir Madog offers her some mead, and she is both surprised and pleased. We’re not sure what sort of test this was meant to be, but we pass it. She points us to a trail that goes around the back of her cave, which avoids a giant pit.

Instead, we emerge into the scorched fields. The sun is setting in a blood red sky. There is a gleaming white castle in the middle of the plain. Next to the castle there is an encamped army. The besieging army seems to be badly organised however, and we could probably make it through the siege lines and to the castle without being stopped. There is a large black tent, marked with the arms of the devil.

As we look closer at the army, we see that it seems to be made up of demons. Sir Madog wants to attack their baggage train, and start killing them. Sir Lupinos wants to go to the castle and find out what is happening first. We decide to find out what is going on first.

We make our way around to the back of the castle, which isn’t being besieged. We knock on the door, and we are let inside were there are peasants each with a farm animal. Everything looks very clean, as if these were faeries pretending to be peasants. We are greeted by everyone in the name of the King.

We are taken to Dame Brissien who is in charge of looking after the keep. She is tending to the wounded with the help of white robed women. She invites us to come to meet the Fisher King.

We are shown into the Great Hall, where there is laying King Pellum on a couch. He apologises for not standing, since he is pained in his old age. He asks how we got here, and Sir Madog explains how badly the siege is organised. We are shown to the high table to eat with the king.

There is a chime, and a door opens and in comes a procession. 

• There is a boy with a white lance which is bleeding blood
• There is a beautiful woman who carries a chalice on a pillow.

The procession passes through the hall, past the table, and out the other door. The table now seems to be filled with our favourite foods. If the castle has endless food, then it makes besieging the castle a bit difficult. Asking around, it seems that the siege is only working because the besiegers have great evil.

Apparently the King was struck down by Sir Ballon, the knight with two swords. He has no heir, because he was previously considered to be invulnerable and not need one. But now he is ill.

I ask what the King what he wants, and apparently that is enough to heal the Grail King. He knows what to do, claiming that he wants to serve the grail, and calls for his armour and his aids. The boy puts the blood from the lance on the king, and he seems to heal and gain in energy.

We all mount our horses, Carmina Burana is playing in the background (from somewhere), and we ride out of the castle to engage the enemy. We head out to grab the war banner of the enemy, since that seems to be something that we’ve had success with before.

I ride at the champion guarding the standard bearer, stabbing at him with a sword. Sir Madog strikes him from behind, slaying him. His body seems to collapse in upon itself.

Sir Lupinus strikes at the banner bearer, and slays him. As Sir Lupinus grabs the warbanner, the besieging army begins to flee.

The King is very happy that the siege has been lifted. He provides us with letters to take to his lords, who should have supported the King if he’d been able to get word to him. This being a faerie realm however, there were story reasons why this hadn’t been done previously.

Now that the Fisher King can call on them, they will serve King Arthur in his war against the Saxons.

We are given hospitality for the night, and in the morning are shown the way back to the road and to King Arthur.

King Arthur’s army continues its way northwards, marching across the Wall to Gorre, where we track down the Saxons and the Picts.