KNIGHTS OF METAL -
- HORSES OF STEEL
Theme | OOC
"A knight is a riding, honourable warrior that fight under the lord they swore a fealty to and who cultivates
knightly values. You must live like this, Wart, even if it's painfully obvious you're just a thug with a bike."
knightly values. You must live like this, Wart, even if it's painfully obvious you're just a thug with a bike."
It is the 5th century, but not the one historians of our time(line) would be familiar with. Motorcycles have replaced horses. Knights may fight with self-made hand-held automatic guns, or they may fight with bows and arrows boosted with magic. Tournaments and pitched battles are equaled only by football in television coverage - speaking of television, the signal's garbage even if you can somehow afford color - you needed cable for anything halfway decent.
King Uther was in power here in the lovely Kingdom of Britannia, but failing health eventually took the old bastard. The Sened knew this, and the moment he died, he took any parliamentary sentiment of holding the place together with him. It may have to do with Rome having been sacked for good by the Visigoths and Huns, and the Byzantines being too busy holding off the Saracens. "Huns in the Roman Palace, and the king dead!" they shouted. The endless Roman Empire, collapsed by a bunch of dirty invaders, and more invaders hacking away at the Eastern remnant. It must have seemed like the world was ending.
Well whatever the reasons, now the British Isle is fragmented into dozens of petty kingdoms, duchies, baronies, etc. Everyone who's relevant has a few knights or men-at-arms at their disposal, and everyone's making and breaking alliances and stabbing and shooting each other up for bits of land and power. Swords remain in use because sometimes swords can be magic (or even better, holy), and guns cannot. Also because guns are illegal to sell and must be hand-made by the knight who owns them - only knights and men-at-arms can own them. Arrows, too, remain in use because you can't really poison a bullet, and in some cases arrows are even faster than guns - it depends on who makes them. Knights have more important things to focus on than gunsmithing.
A few days after old Uther Pendragon's death, something funny happened outside the old Londinium Abbey. A sword appeared, embedded in an anvil which was on top of a rock, and so deep that the sword was in the stone too. Stitched into a gold ribbon tied around the hilt were the words:
And no matter what anyone tried, no knight, baron, duke or king could pull the sword out, from the freshly-knighted to the Emperor of Byzantium - we know because he sailed out here to try. Some rightly thought it had to do with the ribbon and tried to destroy it. No luck there either. The hottest magical fires couldn't so much as singe the stitching, and trying to move the stone proved equally impossible. Eventually it was all but forgotten. Every once in a while a knight would show up and try and pull it out during the New Year's Londinium Tournament, but it would remain there, as stuck in the stone as ever."Whoso pulleth out this sword of this stone and anvil is rightwise king born of all Britannia."
Nowadays, Vortigern is a pretty good contender for the running (so to speak) of King of the Britons. He's got a lot of territory under his control, and rumor has it he has spies all throughout Londinium watching that stone - waiting, to either recruit whoever pulls it as a puppet of Vortigern's, or to 'recruit' them as a puppet of Vortigern's. Bands of knights, both errant and subservient to someone or another, roam Britannia in squadrons of motorcycles, bringing anything from order to chaos as they go.
It certainly won't be Wart, the scrawny adoptive sister-slash-squire of Sir Kay, though. That would be completely loony.
Hello one and all peoples of the States of Nations, welcome to my latest Interest Thread, and thank you for expressing interest in this by reading this far (which wasn't all that far at all). The original idea for this was made by Agritum, and we slowly built up the ideas for this up to the point that you see here above and below, and lastly I made this OP/interest/worldbuilding thread myself. As for what inspired this bizarre take on Arthurian legend? Well, a mix of things. The Fate series, songs and album covers of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, British biker culture, a dash of Monty Python, political satire, and various other things.
Your characters will be knights who were involved in Artoria's life, some members of the Round Table, some just good allies, but all having an impact on this interpretation of the Arthurian Cycle. It will be divided into three (possibly four) Acts:
- The young Wart, her childhood leading up to her pulling Caliburn from the Stone and Anvil, and possibly a little afterward.
- Artoria as King, as she solidifies her rule against most of England, with her major opponents being the Rebel Kings and their knights to the north, and Vortigern to the west, along with most of the major exploits of Arthur's life - overthrowing Lucius, fending off Saxon hordes, that sort of thing.
- (Possibly) splitting the Second Act into Early and Middle periods
- Artoria's later reign, seeking the Grail and Mordred's rebellion. Only maybe this story won't end with King Arty getting a sword through the guts.
As this is an interest/worldbuilding thread and not a full OOC, it isn't finished yet. There is still some fleshing out that can (and should) be done of this heavy metal world, and for the most part I'm just testing the waters to see if this RP will attract any interest - hopefully it will of course. And I'd also like to hear the ideas of others besides myself, Agritum, and Nature-Spirits, the latter of whom has been declared Co-OP. Right now what we mostly need is more ideas for technology and culture of this weird world, and for a good idea of what the map of Europe right now looks like, or at the least the British Isles and Northern France - we don't need that much detail for anything northwest of, say, the Danube (barring Germany, Denmark, and southern Scandinavia - maybe Beowulf will show up.)
So again, welcome! Post your interest, post your ideas, post your dibs on characters - though know that OP and the Co-OPs have final say on that.
Preliminary Character List:
- Artoria/Wart: Reserved by OP
- Merlin: Reserved by Agritum
