london ♔ when the gusts came around to blow me down

[wynn]

  iron sky - paolo nutini

WHO || Everyone and their dog.
WHAT || In the aftermath of the attack, the Knights attempt to recover
WHERE || Knights HQ, etc.
WHEN || Dec. 1st-8th, 2015
HOW || Actionspam

As darkness falls all around the castle, the remaining Knights straggle out of their broken castle to survey the damage and count the dead – of which there are three: Rose Hathaway, Kali, and Killian Jones.

What began like any other day for most quickly descended into a nightmare, after Wynn and most of the Section Heads were lured out to downtown London to face a threat of dual dragons, who turned out to be only clockwork creations of deposed Andres dictator Dimitris Sarandis, robotic menaces that were nothing but a distraction from the real threat. Having rallied support from some of the Knights' other enemies, Dimitris sent an army of chipped creatures, Shadowkind, robots, and a giant tank to destroy the Knighthood's headquarters, dropping part of the roof down onto the training room and med center in the initial explosive blast. Sarandis' alliance with a mysterious hacker named One (who turned out to have been the man who invented technomagic in the first place along with Zero) not only downed the Knights' communications, but also their defensive and surveillance systems (with some help from a mentally dominated Eleven). Whatever preparations Zero had made for an attack by One were undermined by the sudden but inevitable betrayal of the humanized robot GlaDOS, who introduced a learning virus into the system before taking off, likely having made some kind of deal with One to restore her robotic form.

The Knights rallied under the remaining sect leaders – Lis'sa and Koraith – to make a plan to fight back and try to take down Dimitris, who sent a taunting message out across the Drakenet, announcing his intentions to leave the castle as a smoking crater littered with corpses. Fearing that the attack might also be meant to target Myri and Vi's children, a group moved them to the Round Table Room, perhaps the most secure location in the building. The attack was a smokescreen of sorts, something Vi realized, taking Elena, Des, and Faith O'Keefe with her to the library in hopes of saving the elven mage, Lazarus, whose blood the villains required to unleash the nightmare god Malaak'a upon the world. The library, however, was already in shambles, thanks to a fire-slinging red half-dragon who had confronted some Knights there (and led Kate Beckett to discover something strange about herself...). Des remained in the hallway to confront a demon, in the same place where Skye had nearly died to an ifrit pyrokineticist named Serafina, one of Dimitris' chipped experiments. Sawyer Kelly and Alex Karamazov butted heads when it came down to sparing the enslaved ifrit, but in the end, Alex made the decision by putting a bullet in her head when Mars wouldn't act – much to Sawyer's horror. Things went to hell pretty quickly when the villainous Mind Master drove into the library on a motorcycle and proceeded to almost slaughter Vi, Elena, Faith, and Gar, making vicious comments to the former about going to see her deceased husband again. When Elena grabbed the Mind Master, she abruptly vanished, and Elena's whereabouts remain unknown. The Mind Master proceeded to make her way into Lazarus' secret chambers beneath the library, slitting his throat and collecting the magic that coursed through his veins in lieu of blood, the lasting effect of his having survived the ritual that sealed Malaak'a away in the first place.

Meanwhile, downtown, while Carol Danvers and Clark Kent played superhero around the city, Sam and Buffy ran into the archangels Raphael and Zerachiel, who were assisting the wounded of London, and Buffy cut a deal with Raphael after he cautioned her that some sort of big demon was also involved in the attack. In exchange for allowing Hell's forces further freedom of movement (the necessary cost to maintain the balance of the universe), Raphael transported Buffy right into the middle of the fray. The demon already gone, the angel advised her to go and protect the children – which turned out to be necessary indeed, as Sarandis had sent chipped, invisible raptors after the babies. Will Graham nearly died in the attack, but no children – or dogs – fell prey to the beasts.

Outside, a number of Knights armed to the teeth with grenades, rocket launchers, and flame throwers took on a towering seventy-foot tall Colossus that was ripping the castle apart. However, when Steve Rogers cut its head off with an expertly thrown shield toss, the monstrosity fell into the front of the castle with all of its three hundred tons, (and on fire, courtesy of Baal) and many barely escaped with their lives. Wolverine was the only person trapped in the ensuing rubble, but Nathan Young and Amy Pond dug him free as his body healed up the massive wounds suffered.

A strike team was sent out to take on Dimitris in his tank, and Spike and Dean drove Archer's car straight into the oversized military vehicle as a distraction, while Cora Hale, Rose, and Kali disabled the tank and its weapons and broke their way inside. What they found, however, was merely a projection of Dimitris taunting them, as Cora's werewolf senses alerted her immediately to the fact that no one was actually inside but them. Too late, the girls tried to escape – as the tank exploded in a volley of shrapnel and gout of flame, that also caught Christos La Krail and Grant Ward off guard, who had just arrived at the gate so that Ward might meet with Wynn for his official Knighthood interview. As everyone scrabbled to save the injured, a bag of grenades that Kali had dropped caused a secondary explosion, that took Rose and Kali's lives. Dean and Spike proceeded to look insane when the archangel Michael showed up to collect the souls of the dead, and they were the only two who could see him, but Cap stood his ground anyway with them. Dean angrily refused to give up on Rose's life, despite the fact that the death of her bondmate Lissa less than twenty four hours prior had left her connection to life weakened already. Michael cautioned him against doing 'something stupid', as Dean stalked off with her body.

Meanwhile, after realizing Zero's role in all this and helping return him to his senses so that he and Skye could restore communications and defenses, Lila Zacharov-Gray took off with Alex to the upper floor to find Amara. They discovered the homo magi using her powerful magic to keep the ceiling from collapsing into the entire castle, and while she entreated them to evacuate, Lila refused to leave her, prompting Amara to use her most powerful spell to repair the structural damage that was threatening to capsize the castle, at the cost of alerting her father to her exact location.

Just when it seemed like all might be well, Emma Swan, cursed by Poseidon to turn into a flesh-eating kelpie if she wasn't in water by sundown, came across the body of Lazarus and found her monstrous hunger awakened. Dissatisfied with the bloodless corpse, she decided to make a meal of Killian Jones, magically teleporting him into the pond behind the Knighthood, where in spite of Faye and Alex's best efforts, Killian was drowned. Luckily, however, they prevented Emma from eating her true love.

The other Knights fought bravely against basilisks, clockwork mages, and giant scorpions, while trying to assist the wounded, rescue the trapped, and do everything they could to protect the Knights' assets from falling into Dimitris' hands. With the smoke cleared, their home – thanks to Amara – remains standing, but the damage to it is substantial and won't be repaired overnight, even with magic at their disposal. More lasting will be the emotional scars of watching the only home some of them even remember ever having broken around them, their illusion of safety shattered, and their peace violated – not to mention the looming possibility of the Nightmare God being freed.

[ You are now free to make top posts for your characters in the wake of the attack. These top posts may include multiple sections (with different instructions for whether you want them to be open to multiple threads for that scene or closed to a single thread with multiple participants), that deal with anything directly after the events of the event post, and in the week following. I recommend using letters or numbers to indicate each section, so that those responding can put what they are doing in the subject line, to help others quickly know where to go to jump into any single threads.

There will be a thread about Wynn's return and a subsequent Drakenet post addressing IC-ly where people will live. Those with rooms in the Dragon's Tongue, Dragon's Hide, Dragon's Hoard, and Dragon's Fire wing will find their rooms almost entirely undamaged and still livable, but there is a percentage chance that anyone in the Dragon's Light or squire rooms will have their room destroyed. Please ask me for each of your characters this applies to and I will let you know the extent of the damage. Your characters are free to try searching the rubble for their personal effects – just include it in their top post with a search check please, and I'll let you know how much of their stuff is recoverable. Rebuilding efforts will commence within the week, so if your character has any way of contributing to putting the castle back together, that's also top post fodder. There is limited space in the Knights' downtown London office for some Knights to stay, while others may have their own apartments, etc. Other options may open up eventually. If your character is no longer living in the castle, please use your top post to establish this! I will put up top posts for each potential resurrection attempt, as rezzes take multiple days IC-ly to even be attempted.

Destroyed/heavily damaged sections of the castle: front hall/lobby (the Colossus is still there)/stairs, but there are currently ladders to access the second floor; the Dragon's Light wing/office/small library/bathrooms; the chapel; the med center; the training room; the armory; the bowling alley; the piano room; billiards room; parlor; the Dragon's claws bedrooms; parts of the dining hall; the library is intact but heavily damaged, many of the books destroyed by fire. After the first couple days, additional doors have been added to the castle at the far west end of the horizontal squire bedrooms hall, and beside the Dragon's hoard wing to enter the building, and a door has been installed at the southwest corner of the dining hall to allow people to cut through it to circumvent the Colossus still taking up the lobby and blocking access to the main hall. ]

Comments

alex | ota mostly

[ambitionist]

a - multi-thread
[after seeing the bodies in front of the castle and talking with wynn about what happened to hook, he goes to the ballroom, lingering near kali's body and eventually curling up in a corner to take a nap. eventually he'll ask a cleric for help. eventually. maybe.]

b - multi-thread
[ in the days that follow, alex divides his time between checking on kali/eventually checking on her rez progress, skulking around the bar, and skulking around outside to smoke. basically it's a lot of skulking. usually there's an air of arrogance and sass around him, but right now he just seems tired. he doesn't know what to do. this is the sort of thing that would make him angry, everything is — he's always so angry, he's basically bruce banner — but being angry requires energy and effort he doesn't have right now.]


c
[also, at some point, it occurs to him to text piffy.]

you weren't in town for the dragonpocalypse, were you?

[bittersweeter]

[ part of her is upset she can't clone herself and make her clones do her bidding like looking after amara so she can check on alex, but she can't so it's not for a couple days that she actually finds him. unfortunately that puts them both in the middle of rez central so she waits until he breaks away from his little blonde sister's rez and abigail moves over to cora to follow him out for a smoke, lighting her cigarette almost before she leaves the ballroom. almost. ]

Hey. [ she's quiet as she looks out on to the grass. ] How's she looking?

[ambitionist]

[almost as blunt as will graham (but not quite) while he lights his own cigarette] Still dead. 'S gonna be awhile before we know either way.

[bittersweeter]

[ wellllllll she likes will graham so w/e, she nods before going back to smoking quietly. she's probably shitty company and he probably doesn't need her around, but she sticks around anyway. ]

[ambitionist]

[he smokes quietly, too, only breaking the silence to ask] You okay?

[reallywicked]

[Party in the ballroom... jk worst party ever. Faye notices that Alex is hanging around a lot and eventually puts it together that he knows the blonde. Kali. Faye only knows about her through Skyes brief summation, but that doesn't really matter to Faye. Apparently Alex cared about Kali too. She waits until he moves away, probably to curl up in a corner to try to sleep because she just has that sort of luck lately.]

Hey... Can we talk?

[ambitionist]

[he glances up at her from the corner where he sat down to take a nap ... and slides to the side a little as if to make space for her.]

Yeah, sure.

[reallywicked]

[She moves quietly, taking the spot that he's made for her, pulling her legs up to tuck her knees up to her chest.]

You didn't have to come after me. I was just trying to make sure Lila knew where I was so she didn't...

[She sighs because she's just bad at this shit.]

Thank you.

[ambitionist]

I was already split up from Lila. With everything that was going on, I got a one-word text and assumed the worst, you know? [his shoulders roll in a shrug.]

I know we're not best friends or anything, and that's fine. But I do care about you. As a person. And I'll always have your back.

b }

[allmydreams]

[She joins him in the ballroom at some point, bottle in hand along with two glasses and she pours one off to hand to him, before pouring one for herself.]

I found out where these came from, by the way.

[She'll ease him to talking about whatever's got him sulky in a second, if he'll let her, but for right now, she's just bringing him booze.]

[ambitionist]

Oh yeah?

[he takes the glass, sniffs at it, and then drinks.]

[allmydreams]

Apparently Finnick and Archer had hidden booze depositories for special occasions.

[She pauses to pour herself a drink of her own before placing the bottle down on the ground between them.]

Vi's been keeping them stocked, just in case.

c)

[panaceum]

nope, back in the motherland. i was following it on the news tho. the hell was up w/your phone?

[ambitionist]

[cries bc she tried to call him. alex prob doesn't cry tho. bc he's a butthead.]

our entire system got hacked. it was part of dimitris sarandis's brilliant plan to take down the knights. there were robots and mind-controlled science experiments and like 25% of the castle is rubble now so. yknow. it's been a week.

1/2

[panaceum]

he attacked wynns castle????

[panaceum]

i mean 10/10 for evil doucheyness but another 10 for ball size

b-ish }

[bredinthebone]

[Malina swings by after Felicity leaves and pretty much just sits down without warning, not really expecting anything beyond needing to get off her feet for a bit. Instead she finds the remains of the bottle that they didn't quite finish!]

Well hello. Don't mind if I do.

[And she's just going to take a swig right out of the bottle.]

[ambitionist]

[with lazy annoyance (which is basically how he always sounds lbr)] Hey, that's mine. It was a present.

[bredinthebone]

[She smirks as she swallows.]

I'll get you another one. A full one.

[theminotaur]

Hi Alex. [ abigail slows as she approaches him where he's smoking, but she striding toward him with a purpose that suggests she'd come outside specifically to find him. ]

[ambitionist]

Hey, Abigail. [he nods towards her before taking another drag from his cigarette. he did't even call her kid. amazing.]

[theminotaur]

Will you take me shopping? [ cutting right to the chase tbh. ] There's... nothing left of my room and Cora doesn't have enough clothes to share with me indefinitely.

b)

[postergirl]

[ since i dropped their last thread like eighty years ago ... ] Glad to see you're still holding up the wall. [ she glances up at the castle with a shrug, as she pulls out a smoke of her own. ] Well. What's left of it.

[ambitionist]

[he snorts in what's probably appreciation of the dry humor — it's hard to tell because his default expression looks annoyed — and takes another drag of his cigarette.]

Maybe I didn't behead the colossus with a frisbee, but I did more than my fuckin' share.

[postergirl]

And what might that have involved? Raptors, or robots?