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

A

[slay]

[ Buffy paces the rubble like a lost puppy, trying to reconcile the fragments and rubble with the only home she'd ever known. It's unrecognizable, and having missed the worst of it, she's suffering some cognitive dissonance as she continues to process. It doesn't quite fit, won't click in her mind as being real quite yet, leaving her despondent and her mind fuzzy. ]

I don't know.

[ She admits weakly, her throat dry with disbelief and uncertainty. ]

Nothing like this has ever happened before. He hit us where we live. [ She crouches to sort through the rubble for her belongings (search 18). ] If there's any justice in this world, next is the part where we hunt him down and rip him apart. [ It's cold and unapologetically violent in a way Buffy can't usually bring herself to be, but this violation cuts deep, and even if Amara has already set about rebuilding some of the worse damage, she can't remove the taint of Sarandis' presence on the castle walls. ]

[romanticidal]

[ no matter how far raf has come in terms of personal growth lbr here: ] He deserves whatever he has coming to him.

[slay]

Every time he shows up, people die. [ She shakes her head, staring into the rubble of her room. The part that really kills her is that she knows striking out of vengeance is wrong, but her blood is hot with everything he's done to them—to Spike, to Myri, to Kat, to Thomas. To Rose, and all of them now. He's stolen their home, invaded it, left them all feeling violated and ill at ease. And every time he does something, she wonders a little more if they can beat this without becoming the monsters they're fighting. ] And every time, I can't do a damn thing to stop it.

[romanticidal]

You are not the only one responsible for protecting everyone, carina. [ it's said gently, but not without his own sense of frustration. he clearly isn't happy about not being able to do more either. ] More people would have died in London, had you not been there, and that was his fault as well.

[nothingsodivine]

You wanna talk about unnecessary blame?

[oh look, it's Des. Somehow magnetically drawn to wherever the Buffalo roam. He looks in significantly better shape than he looked when Buffy saw him in the library, given he was... covered in black demon blood and a lot of his own. He picks his way over to them, looking deeply Not Happy about anything right now. But that's pretty much everyone.]

That's the second time I got distracted and some overpoweed shitheel took a chunk outta everyone around before I got there to take a few chunks back.

[slay]

[ Something in Rafael's words starts to placate her, the commiseration of it, and she moves to reach for his hand, softening as if to apologize for being wrapped up in her own hero's guilt to consider his own impotent frustration. But Des distracts her, and she pulls her hand back. No PDA, not right now. ]

Distracted by something that could have killed a lot more people. [ She looks over at Des. ] Raphael brought me here to deal with the demon you killed. By yourself. That counts for something.

>ARDEN

[nothingsodivine]

[Des shrugs, shoving his hands in the pocket of his coat.] I think it was just a distraction- part of her game to get the girls alone. Sure, maybe it would've kicked up a fuss if I hadn't cornered it, 'cause that thing was a fucking bitch, but...

[he shakes his head.] No point in harping on the what-ifs, right? What's done is done, and somebody is overdue for an ass-kicking for this. [he jerks a hand at the destroyed castle.]

I'll feel honored that I was considered enough of a threat to need a distraction when I put my fist in his face.

[romanticidal]

Were these experiments of his not enough for him? Now he is summoning demons?

[slay]

I can't help but wonder if that was really Sarandis' doing. Not really. He mentioned tracking down our enemies. We've cut enough deals with the angels: maybe Hell took the opportunity to present itself and cash in.

>ARDEN

[nothingsodivine]

[Des raises an eyebrow skeptically] I sincerely doubt even Hell would work with a shitheel like Sarandis. Never mind that it would require the bastard to have the Sight or know someone who does, which I won't rule out, but it's not devils. No sense in getting your dander up about that one.

[romanticidal]

Then why do you think the demon was here?

[slay]

But that's not entirely true, is it? Angels can choose who they want to see them. [ Rafael's ability to see the angels at the bridge vs Raphael in New York vs Azrael in Rome. She's putting it together. ] What if they came to him once they realized what he was doing?

[nothingsodivine]

Because it would be a conflict of interest. [des's jaw sets stubbornly] The only devil you've ever met once tore through the Vatican to get to me, without any regard to the rules or what it might cost. I don't think she's in the business of running errands for people like that bastard. And why would they want the nightmare god to win?

He probably has a diabolist on his payroll.

[romanticidal]

Why would they not? I cannot imagine how many souls would be sent to the Nine Hells, should that god be unleashed.

[slay]

It wouldn't mean being a lackey, it'd be an opportunity. An opening. A foothold to get what they want. [ She nods to Rafael like yes you're on my level. ]

[nothingsodivine]

[des stares at them for a long time.]

Do you know what Iscariot could have done to Azrael if they caught her? They could have killed her. She risked her life for me. And maybe it was just because she thinks I'm her property but that doesn't change the risk. Why would she side against me on this, knowing that?

[romanticidal]

Even if that were true [ awkward ], she is not the only devil there is. There are nine, no? It could have been any of them.

[slay]

Also, keyword devil. Des, just because she saved you once doesn't change what her ultimate goal is. She's evil.

[nothingsodivine]

[there's something inside of des that seems to smolder and for a moment, he doesn't speak at all, as if trying to pick his words carefully.]

Yeah. [he swallows] Angels good. Devils bad. But before you blow the whistle on this one? I suggest getting some actual proof. That's just the detective in me. No sense preparing for a false lead.

[romanticidal]

[ raf just gives buffy a look like what even but ok then ] I just think it cannot be a coincidence, that demon being outside the library. That is all.

[slay]

[ yeah buffy is sharing that look like ok that sounds fake but whatever. ]

I'm more interested in some evidence as to why you're so quick to shut the theory down. [ no sense masking her suspicion. ] You haven't had any visitors lately, have you?

[nothingsodivine]

[des looks fucking affronted by the accusation.]

Because I know more about Hell than anyone here. I have to, so I don't played for a fool. That means I know how they work. And how they don't work.

I think everyone here forgets that I am older and more experienced than anyone alive on this earth, so maybe when I say I know what I'm talking about.

But don't take my word on it. Nobody ever does. [he gonna flounce....]

[romanticidal]

Des-- [ he says, as if to try and stop him, but he's not gonna... chase him down rn since he's not sure he wants that anyway ]

[slay]

No one's forgetting. I just remember that also makes you the most biased. [ She says it to his back as he leaves, obviously not for him to hear, and then she turns to Rafael. ] Well, that went well.

[romanticidal]

I suppose that would be one word for it.