So, my players spent the Intel and went after the Kingfisher Knight. I had no idea what kind of curse it would be. Decided that, since the KN has become a hermit, it must be something that makes them dangerous to others, and is difficult to cure. I decided they’d be tending a shrine that helps them manage the curse. So, maybe the KN was crusading in Dar, and picked up a little case of vampirism, but the shrine lets him live as a human. I initially thought of the shrine being a sacred tree, but that didn’t feel right for the location, so I decided it’s a natural spring that bursts out of a rock in the middle of a henge. Maybe the water is not only healing, but also supernaturally quenching. KN drinks the water every day, which slakes his thirst for human blood, but it also burns him terribly.
Squad, lead by an Officer, approaches KN, who’s just an old man tending a shrine. The players figure it out instantly, but the characters bumble about until they see that he’s got military camping gear. One rookie tastes the water, and discovers its potency. Another tries to spy on the KN as he drinks, and succeeds, but twists his ankle. They try to convince him to let them help him, but it takes days of pestering before he relents. The officer pulls out a volume of the Annals that deals with the breaking of similar curses (channels) and they set to work researching. Eventually they discover that if they bind the KN in iron, fill his mouth with salt, and drown him in the sacred spring, he’ll be cured. Drowned, for the holy water must permeate his whole body, but cured. KN is reluctant, preferring to die on his feet, using his supernatural strength fight the undead who are no doubt already approaching, but the squad convinces him that he will be drafted into the legions of the Broken unless he’s cured.
So they do it. They bind him in iron, fill his mouth with salt, and try to drown him in the sacred spring. It instantly starts boiling. Ten-clock to cure him, treating him as a threat 3 adversary. He breaks his chains and the tension was so great the parted links almost take off a rookie’s arm, but they hold him under. He screams imprecations, but the officer keeps them together, holding her sword to the base of his neck to demonstrate her willingness to kill him if this goes wrong. The KN goes limp, feigning being cured, but one of the rookies realizes the water is still boiling around him, and warns the officer to continue the exorcism. A blast of power throws them back momentarily and he rises up like he was drawn by strings, dripping ichor from his claws and teeth, and they tackle him back down. He disembowels Rookie Duke Killian, whose wounds grow eyes and teeth as he dies. Finally, the stone the spring flows from shatters, and the Kingfisher Knight lies there as a broken, drowned old man. But cured. Some rapid CPR (we figured Rig might cover ad-hoc medical attention absent a proper doctor) from a rookie who was a former alchemist apprentice, and the KN lives again. But the spring’s water is now just normal water. A mad scramble to load him, his armour that was stashed in a cave, and the corpse of Duke Killian onto a wagon, and be gone.
As they wind their way down the mountain path, they see the silhouette of Lugos, the clockwork assassin, who had been dispatched to end the legacy of the famous Kingfisher Knight, perched on top of the henge, only three ticks of a clock too late to catch them.
