Mauvais Sang, the Blood Knight

hollow I was, hollow I remain

900 years ago in Brittany, there lived a man whom the locals called ‘the Blood Knight’ in hushed tones. He was said to challenge all who came near his demesne to a duel, and unlike his chivalric kin, those who lost his challenge became his prisoners, to do as he willed. It was not an uncommon practice for noble sons to be ransomed in this manner, but he took no offer for his genteel prizes, and they were never seen again. Still, his domain was in a remote area, off of the common trade routes, and so he was ignored, and presumably forgotten by those whose own interest lay many days to the east.

So it came as a surprise when he came to tourney one season, astride his purportedly flesh-fed stallion, armor pitted and battered, adorned with spikes and the gore of ancient battles. He carried no shield, as if unconcerned with his own mortality, and crows traveled in the wake of his grim mercenaries. No maiden saw fit to offer him her favor, and the young favorite who garnered the favor of the most highly-placed lady present ended the weeks tournament with only one opponent left between himself and victory, the forbidding Blood Knight, who had not yet taken his helmet off during the course of the events, retiring to his black tents when not called to competition.

The handsome man fell like every other opponent he had faced, and the Blood Knight dropped from his steed and backhanded the fallen noble with his spiked gauntlet, not even bothering to draw his sword for this fight. He stripped the lady’s favor from the young knight and walked away with it crushed in his iron-clad fist, not even stopping to claim his golden prize, as tourney victor.

And so there was no question of her captor when she was found missing the next morning. Her father raised a company of allies, all outraged with their own losses during the tourney, and what they consider the gross breaches of etiquette and honor that had taken place. They marched to the Blood Knights bleak stone palisade, only to see the sight of smoke on the horizon. Questioning pale-faced servants, some wearing broken shackles and showing signs of hard labor and harder conditions, they heard a dreadful tale, of how their master had returned from the tourney with a bride that he had dressed in the finest crimson velvet, and married by a hooded man that none thought anything like a priest. None knows what happened on their wedding night, but the next morning, she was found hanging from the tower that contained the Blood Knights personal chambers, having leapt to her death in the night, still clad in the tattered remains of her wedding gown, suspended from the chains that were meant to hold her in that room for the rest of her wedded life.

The Blood Knight flew into a deadly rage when he awoke to find his bride dead, and slew the servant who woke him. He proceeded to stalk through his keep, killing any servant or soldier who stood before him, and it wasn’t until he advanced upon his own guard in the courtyard that his trusted captain of the guard fired a crossbow into his gut. A dozen soldiers joined in, and the Blood Knight fell into the central well, where the huddled servants claimed that a great pillar of fire arose, as if Hell itself had opened up to welcome home this favored son. The servants and remaining soldiers let the castle burn. Whispered reports claimed that some things remained in the donjons below the smoldering keep, things that may once have been noble youth and adventurous knights, but now only begged for death when they could form intelligible words at all.

The area was torn down and the stones scattered, all present agreeing that it was best to forget this entire bloody business, and the cursed place fell into legend.

Many centuries later, a scholar of the Circle of Thorns found the armor of the Blood Knight within the walls of Oranbega, and performed dark rituals to try to call back the spirit of the man who had inspired these legends, if indeed man he was.

The sorcerer failed to realize that the Blood Knight had sired a son, and that the legends were incomplete. This son had spent his life attempting to atone for the sins of his father, and succeeded only in seeing his fathers legacy, and his own deeds of redemption, deliberately ignored and undone, by a nobility that wanted no remembrance of fell times. It was not the Blood Knights armor that the sorcerer had found, and it was not the Blood Knights spirit that he contacted to infuse this armor, it was that of his virtuous son, who broke free of the Circle and now swings his fathers blade in the name of justice, working no longer to atone for his fathers deeds, but instead serving the cause of good out of a simple desire to be recognized finally as a man nothing like the dark legend that spawned him. Nine centuries after his death, the son of the Blood Knight is finally free to create his own legacy, no longer hounded by his fathers black deeds.

The empty armor of the Blood Knight walks the streets of Paragon City, hollow and echoing, filled only by the avenging spirit of his son, seeking the glory and honor he was denied in life.