Emerald City Knights - Down Time

[SuperCracker]

Fred Broll
The Museum

The Emerald City museum. It was a good place for Fred to revisit the past and for Sir Guy to learn about the future. Fred walked the halls, dressed casually: a Gogol Bordello t-shirt (Gypsy Punk), a pair of dark green pants, some sneakers… oh, and his katana, Starsoul, strapped to his back openly. It was good to be an “official” super-hero. Not that he would use that term out loud. Starsoul seemed to like it too.

“Yep, boss,” the disembodied voice said, “This is the life. No more gym bag for me. No siree. Not to mention that we can beat people up… and it’s LEGAL.”

“Calm yourself. We’re at a museum. It’s a place for quiet contemplation.”

“What if there were robbers? Or the dinosaur skeleton came alive? It has happened before.”

“…That’s the exception, not the rule.”

Fred paused as they came upon a Viking exhibit. There were ancient swords and helmets on display. He watched it for a long moment before speaking to Guy and Tess.

“The earliest I can remember… is being around at the same time these guys were. I think I was fighting Frost Giants. I know I was around before that… long before that, but it’s too hazy for me to recall clearly.”

He stared off into space for a moment.

“Though my body may lie dead in the fields of Musashi, my soul lives on.” He turned to look at the two of them and he gave a small smile. “In my case… literally.”

He was a very different person here at the museum. Calm, smiling, personable. Apparently cameras and supervillains (and some superheroes) put him in a bad mood.

"Deep, boss."

[Hack Writer]

The Emerald City museum was stately, immense, sprawling out across a wide swathe of pretty green parkland in the heart of the city. Inside, honeyed mid-afternoon sunlight spilt through wide, spacious clerestory-style windows, pooling on the polished surface of the rich brown marble floor. A warm breeze flowed through the empty halls, carrying the distant sound of applause and the mass chanting of the two thousand-strong crowd packing the sidewalk outside.

Cloistered behind thick brick walls, the museum was quiet, reflective; a relative oasis of peace in the middle of a city gripped by super hero fever. Public and museum officials had done their best to make sure the city’s newest defenders weren’t disturbed during their visit. The museum had been closed for the day, and the Knights left to their own devices.

Sir Guy fidgeted a little and wriggled his toes as the three friends toured the exhibit rooms. The soft unfamiliar fabric of his new shoes chaffed his feet. Like Fred, Sir Guy was dressed informally, the clothes picked out by his friends earlier in the afternoon during a – literal- flying visit to the ‘Mall’. He didn’t know how best to describe the ensemble except to say that he liked it, even if his feet did hurt a touch.*1

Alternating ranks of glass display cases, podiums and plinths lined the hall and filled the walls. Guy meandered through their content, finding something reassuringly familiar in the dusty antiquity. He saw fragments of pottery, dredged from the volcanic mud of Grecian islands; dull beads and copper ingots; shattered flint arrowheads; curious feathered headdresses…- He stopped. A towering hand-carved wooden pole, festooned with grimacing heads of unidentifiable monsters and stern-faced gods, leered down at him. He read the inscription at the base of the plinth: Native American war totem, circa 1885. “Remarkable,” he muttered, before joining Fred at the display case.

“Aye, Sir Garrett would often say the same; half-remembered shadow lives, ghosts of memories etched on the corner of his mind. Occasionally, he would tell myself, Lord Richard and our merry little band some of his adventures, though the words were vague and made little sense. He spoke of lands that did not exist – or had not existed for many thousands of years; he told us of places thought fable, though he could trace every minuscule detail if we asked him. He mentioned names, too.” Guy tapped the glass of the display case with his index finger and searched his memory. “A prince of ancient Egypt, who battled the serpent men of Lemuria when they arose from their cities beneath the sand to claim the land for their own…A hunter from a tribe of nomads, who slew the supposedly immortal spawn of an ancient star god, and saved his people as a consequence. There were others, though the details escape me.” Guy sighed sympathetically and gave Fred a pat on the shoulder. “It must be a terrible burden to bear, carrying the deeds of other men in thy own soul.”

Yay, I do so love a bit of free form! Great start, SuperCracker; I hope I've managed to follow the trail you left. Feel free to discard anything Sir Guy mentioned that doesn't chime with what you see as being Fred's personality.

*1 What's he wearing? Sir Guy has no fashion sense at all! Maybe Tess could describe it?

It would be cool if we explored the museum a bit, too!

[ripleycat]

Hex Sign (The Museum)

When it came to buying clothes, Tess had insisted vehemently that Sir Guy be outfitted with a pair of black-and-white Converse Hi-Tops, as there were no finer shoes the modern world could produce, except perhaps the red versions (which she wore with pride). A pair of blue jeans and a button-down shirt completed his simple look. Tess personally wouldn't have selected the eye-searing shade of orange, but Guy somehow actually pulled it off. She had been sorely tempted to buy him a cowboy hat as well, but in the end had decided that he needed a crash course in the Wild West first.

For a change, she had come dressed in modern clothes as well. For certain values of modern, anyway. The tie-dyed Grateful Dead t-shirt and patched bellbottoms would have been incredibly retro, if their wearer didn't model the rest of her wardrobe on 17th and 18th Century fashions. She still had her broomstick and pointy hat as well, giving the impression that two extras had crashed into each other in a Hollywood backlot and run off wearing half of each other's costumes, and that somewhere there must be a witch with a beaded headband and hemp flip-flops..

Tess fidgets as they move through the museum, bouncing from artifact to artifact and rocking on her heels whenever they stop to take a closer look at something. Some might mistake this nervous energy for boredom, but she was totally absorbed, both in the exhibits and the conversation her teammates were having. "I'm jealous of both of you, for the record. I adore history. There's just something about it, something that makes me want to learn every little scrap of information I can find. You've both lived things I've only read about."

She glances up from a row of Egyptian cat mummies and quirks her head curiously at Fred as he talks about his past lives. "You said some of the early memories were too hazy to recall, but um, how do you experience those you can recall? Are they your memories? I mean, is it like a dream, or a flashback in a movie, or do you remember them as things you did, the same way I might remember the Silver Storm, or what I had for breakfast this morning? Are those old lives set apart somehow from the things Fred Broll does in this one?"

[SuperCracker]

Fred Broll
The Museum

Fred chuckled, nodding. “Sir Garret. Right, I remember being him. Scaling the Black Tower to rescue Lady Magdalena from Lord Ulric. He wore…” it took him a moment to think about it, “this black armor that shrugged off everything I hit him with. However, all armor has weak points.” He also vaguely remembered the ancient star god, but that could have been one of many instances of that kind of thing.

Guy gave his sympathies, but Fred shook his head. “It’s not so bad. When I first experienced it, and had the memories of my former lives restored, I was happy. I had a purpose. A destiny. I didn’t want to fight it. It was comforting – natural.”

“You were made for it, boss.”

Tess asked about what it was like. An understandable question. “It’s not like a flashback. When I remember things, I remember it from the perspective of the man. It’s me. I can remember the context of their lives, which helps me keep from becoming confused. Where it gets strange is when I remember being on my own death-bed. Yamamoto Keiji lived to be an old man after he fought the demon on the mountain. He had a family. I bet his descendents are still out there somewhere.” He probably wouldn’t go looking them up. It would be too strange.

“I’m me, though. I see myself as Frederick Broll, first. I went until college until I found out I was the Champion. It was long enough to develop my own identity independent of the other lifetimes. Maybe it’s by design. The Fair Folk, and me by extension, embody stories and archetypes. I’m the Champion. It’s my destiny to fight for those who can’t. Maybe it waits long enough for each incarnation to become his own man so the story can be repeated with ‘different’ heroes.”

Fred had thought about this often… he just never really talked about it.

[Hack Writer]

Just an FYI: SuperCracker, I assumed Sir Garrett would’ve been mentioned to Sir Guy off camera and that he’d know you shared the knight’s legacy, hence why Guy mentioned him in an off-hand manner before. To add a bit of context without needing to add it to the IC post: Sir Guy used to kick about with a medieval version of a team not unlike the Freedom League, just not as powerful or far-reaching. A character named Lord Richard was their leader (he’s actually the present day Freedom Leaguer The Bowman’s great great great – you get the idea – grandfather, and I’m assuming a dashing Robin Hood analogue (he’s mentioned in a teensy weensy paragraph in the Freedom City sourcebook, so I ran with it because it fits and I liked it)). I don’t know whether Sir Garrett was ever an official part of the team (they’d be less structured than a modern day super team, coming together only when the situation demanded) though the option’s there if you want to pursue it. Sir Guy would’ve gone into detail about them with Fred and Tess before this scene started, so embellish or ignore as either of you see fit!

“Thine soul is like a prism then, refracting the light of other men through it? For so long as you know whom you are right now, let those past lives enrich you and take from they what strength you can. There is much to be said for living in the moment.”

They continued to walk the halls of the museum and Sir Guy witnessed the grand tapestry of history slowly unfurl before him in the glass display cases and painstakingly preserved exhibits. Periods and places in the roll call of human history both intimately familiar and outlandishly far-flung revealed the intervening eight hundred years of mankind’s cultural progress – mostly a violent, tangled and belligerent one, the authors invariably electing to pen such tales in blood.

“I had hoped that the red passions that called Men to war would eventually be eclipsed by enlightenment,” Sir Guy said, running his gaze over a display of curious, vaguely axe-shaped weapons, each one progressively sleeker, more refined and efficient. The plaque beneath the display read: firearms through the ages. “Alas it seems not to be.”

The three friends made their way through the hall and Sir Guy turned his attention to Tess. “So tell me, milady, where from exactly do your own powers originate? I remember you told me that you were but one of a great line of similarly empowered mystics; do you know much about your own family’s history?”

They reached a T-junction in the hall; corridors stretched right and left, and hanging signs suspended from the ceiling displayed the nature of the exhibits that awaited them.

“Hmm, right or left?”

[ripleycat]

Hex Sign (The Museum)

"Enlightenment seems to wax and wane through history, but man's talent for finding new and exciting ways to kill other humans is a constant, I'm afraid." Hex pulls a coin from her pocket and flips it. "...Right."

She mulls over the knight's question as they walk. "I wouldn't say great, just long. There are many more humble hedgewitches and cunning folk in our family tree than there are mighty sorcerers." Tess responds. "And yes, we know a fair amount about our family history. We can trace it back to um, somewhere in the 1100's, I think, and that's to a John Mac an tSaoir, a village warlock, so it's safe to guess the magic goes back further than that. I don't know what brought it into our bloodline in the first place. Heard a few stories, though. My uncle Andy is something of an amateur historian. Loves digging through old books and letters for clues about us. Heard him claim a link to the Fair Folk, or some sort of pact with spirits, depending on the mood he's in. Even had him claim dragonblood once, but he'd been drinking and playing a lot of Skyrim, so I don't put much stock in that tale."

"For what's it's worth, I've also talked with the ghost of Morna McIntyre, the first person in our family to come to America, and she had no idea where our magical ability stemmed from. It might go back thousands of years further than we can trace. Whatever the source, it seems to present itself in different ways. I'm not the only weather witch in the family record, but I am the only one for quite a while. My mom's talents run more towards enchantments and shapeshifting. She's the one who can actually turn you into a toad. My dad's a pyromancer, and his family are a whole different line. Much easier to trace, though. Magic comes from an incident with an elemental and great-grandpa Walter, who never met someone he wouldn't take a pass at, even if they weren't actually human, back in the '20s. Bless his charred soul."

"Ooh, looky here!" Tess leaves off the tales of men consorting with living flame to point out the Lords and Lepers: Daily Life in Medieval Europe exhibition installed at the far end of the hall. "Maybe they've got something of yours on display, guys!" Sure, the odds of that were terrible, but how cool would it be?

[SuperCracker]

Fred Broll
Museum

Fred looked over the firearms that were troubling Sir Guy, and Tess apparently. “It’s not all bad. Some men use enlightenment to wage more destructive wars. Others use it for medicine, technology, even entertainment.”

Hex’s talk of her family was interesting. It was the inverse of his life. Fred himself is a magical being in a perfectly normal line of people (in his human family at any rate) while she has grown up with magic and the supernatural her entire life. Fred grins at the claim of dragonblood.

“Maybe sometime I could introduce you to the Fair Folk. Maybe know something about it. Not that it’s important, you have full control over your magic and you do the right thing with it.”

She points out the medieval section. Fred chuckled. “Well, Sir Guy… ready to take a trip down memory lane?”

As they approached the exhibit, there were all manner of things on display. Models dressed in full plate with elaborate regalia. Shields with family insignia. Ancient broadswords that had been polished. In the middle of the hallway there was even a replica of a catapult.

“What does your family think of the cape thing?” He asks Tess.


Bar study has been hell this week. 11.5 hours yesterday alone. I feel like I’m sub-human right now.

[Hack Writer]

Commiserations about that, SuperCracker! It'll all make sense in the long-run.

Sir Guy followed his friends into the exhibit, eager to see how this fairer modern age had decided to preserve the articles of his own life. He ran his gaze over a collection of polished triangular shields, noting that many of the devices once belonged to contemporaries of his own time, though some he recalled with only passing familiarity – and a few were clearly forgeries.

He saw a golden peregrine on a field of lush sky blue - the coat of arms of Sir Basil Hume, a knight he’d fought on the tourney field on more than one occasion (and sore loser to boot, as Sir Guy recalled); he saw the red stag of Godfrey de Bollaire; the trident-bearing mermaid of Afstan of the White Isle; the green lily Sir Aenod of Wales... Still, while the familiar heraldic devices inspired in the knight a certain restful reassurance, his eyes did not linger overly long on any of the objects on display in the room. Instead his gaze was drawn to a fine four-foot high oil painting mounted in an oval frame of water-gilded gold leaf, in the anteroom leading to the exhibit. Its grandeur immediately piqued Sir Guy’s interest.

The portrait was of a man - old, stately, smiling - dressed in a single-breasted jacket of tweed, riding breeches and polished boots. A dignified and expressive face, gone slightly round by the advance of years, served to frame a fine aquiline nose and bright energetic eyes, and he seemed to smile down at the three Emerald City heroes almost paternally from his perch on the wall. A small plaque accompanied the painting; Sir Guy took a moment to read the inscription:

Eugene Percival Prester-Hall (August 10, 1921 – July 6, 2009) was a philanthropist, antiquarian and founder of the Atlas Construction Company. The only son of the mining tycoon Eustace Prester-Hall and his wife, Miriam, E.P Prester-Hall was born and raised in Emerald City, earning a bachelors in civil engineering before joining the US Army Corps Engineers in 1943 and sailing to England to fight in World War 2. It was during his time spent in Europe that E.P Prester-Hall is thought to have developed his love for medieval history - a passion that would see him amass one of the largest private collections of pre-renaissance antiquities anywhere in the world.

Displayed for the benefit of Emeraldites and visitors alike, the following exhibit forms a small part of the Prester-Hall Bequest. His most famous piece – the statue of the Emerald City Sentinel – is on permanent display at Emerald City Park, donated generously by the E.P Prester-Hall estate upon the park’s formal dedication on April 18, 1965.

“So I have this man to thank for my revival,” Sir Guy said, turning his attention back to his friends. “Inadvertently, at least.”

He wandered the room while Fred and Tess chatted, stopping here and there to peruse a sword, a book, an item of jewellery or a scrap of moth-eaten cloth that seemed familiar.

[ripleycat]

Hex Sign (The Museum)

I am so, so sorry, guys! Hack's latest post didn't show up in my subscriptions. Catching up now. :smallredface:


“What does your family think of the cape thing?” He asks Tess.

"They're... mixed. I think they appreciate the good I'll be able to do, and my dad's pretty envious, but at the same time, we've had a lot of "it's dangerous and you don't know what you're doing!" talks. You know, the natural parent reaction. Doesn't help that they found about about it from the TV. What do your family think of your hunting supernatural nasties?" She flips the question back at Fred.

Hex looks askance at a diorama showing a folk healer at work as they wander the exhibits. "...Huh. That's Deadly Nightshade. They've got her mixing a poison, not a cure. Wonder if that's intentional."

"So what do you think, Guy? How badly have we butchered your time?" Tess asked as she joined the knight in admiring some of the large collection of arms and armor.

[SuperCracker]

Fred Broll
Museum

He looked up at the portrait. The man seemed kind. Perhaps it was fitting that his philanthropy brought another noble person to this city. Unintended consequences can sometimes be very good. He walked towards a placard describing an ancient battle. He actually remembered that one. It wasn’t as romantic as the text made it out to be. Few things in history ever were.

He grins as Tess asks about his family. “Well, my only family is my Aunt Judith. My parents died when I was a kid, and I was raised by her. She didn’t know about any of the crap I was up to until the day of the Silver Storm. Rather than let her find out from the news… or some blabbermouth like Titan… I told her myself. It took her a little while to get used to it, but a few weeks ago she brought home these firelogs and told me she wanted to ‘see what I got.’” He chuckled, then grew serious. “She worries. She has to. But I think she’s proud that I’m doing the right thing.”

A brief pause. He debated whether he should do this or not.

“Maybe our folks should have dinner sometime?”

Yeah, he knew he was opening a can of worms.