555: Byzantium or Bust!!!

[Okay, first of all, I am embarassed. For a weekly game blog not to be updated for nine months...yeesh. So, a very quick and I'm sure incomplete recap of events. I invite the other players to chime in on their character's events as well...]

543 - Beehive back from the Continent: Amadis reunited with his family and ten bonus caballeros villenos.

544 - Candlebees save the day when Sir Tristan's stepmother poisons him just before his father's trial-by-combat. Amadis poisoned by another Cornishman; Adam's guy (Bledri?) steps in as the champion for the Tristan's father the king and kicks some serious ass. Leicester gets more statuary when Desdemona, wife of Amadis, dies in childbirth.

545 - Tournament circuit. King Mark swears fealty.

546 - More tournaments. At the tourney in Bedegraine the Candlebees win a contest of judicial might to regain the title to Lambor for Count Edar. Boots—that is, young Edar, grandson to the count—gets his lance and shield (was he knighted?). Lucia, the daughter of Amadis, marries Agwar, bastard son of Edar (with his put-aside wife, Lady Valerie of Trond).

547 - Count Edar announces his retirement. The Candlebees decide to take young Boots with them while the accompany Sir Gwalchmai the Burner and most-fearsome Dragonslayer on a quest of his. The party is attacked by abnormally large animals in Rheged: the party is ravaged and Boots is dragged off and eaten by giant foxes...but not before shaming himself by trying to hide under his shield, and not before Gwalchmai and Amadis chide him for his cowardice. D'oh! There goes the heir. Back at Leicester, Prince Aidan tells it like it was and is banished, only to be ambushed and murdered on his way to Ireland by a party secretly sent out by Cynfyn. Amadis goes insane; Edar goes extremely melancholic.

548 - Amadis still insane. I believe Cynfyn is left in charge of Leicester, which is draped in black cloth in mourning. Agwar and the remaining Leicestermen go on the tourney circuit full-time, as Cynfyn doesn't want "the bastard" hanging around.

549 - Reports of a naked madman armed only with a dagger occur with some frequence throughout the county.

550 - Still mad.

551 - Crazy Amadis meets a Byzantine knight in the woods, and recovers. Meet the Chevalier Mal Fete. Winter in Carduel.

552 - Quest to bring Edar back from seclusion requires a visit to his estranged wife. Awkward family scene between Agwar, his mother Lady Valerie, and his mother's boyfriend Sir Gwalchmai. Edar cajoled into returning home. The peasants of Lambor and Leicester are estactic ("Edar will save us from the Wastelands! Please, please, kiss my baby, lord!") ... until the Bastard goes into a frenzy and kills, oh, a LOT of peasants. Agwar gets a new nickname. Edar decides he's had enough, and sets off on the Grail Quest a year early. Amadis decides he's had enough, too, and goes with Edar as his squire.

553 - Amadis was sad to see what happened to Edar and his family, but was glad his daughter is now married to the heir of Leicester and Lambor. Not bad for the daughter of a bottle-kicking commoner from Medbourne knighted on the field of Badon! Theudic, son of Sir Amadis, knighted by Agwar Allington in Leicester. Spend the year getting the Demon of Leicester recognized as the legitimate heir and lord of Leicester and Lambor. King Arthur once again cheats the Allingtons of what is rightfully theirs and only bestows Leicester on Agwar; Lambor goes back to the de Ganis! Winter in Camelot.

Over winter Logres is swept by plague. Theudic's young squire and good friend Eustice succumbs, as do many men and women in Arthur's storied city. Word reaches the Leicestermen in Camelot that Lady Valerie died of the plague, as well as Lucia, Agwar's young wife, and his two young sons. Theudic's baby niece survives. Everyone goes into mourning.

554 - Still in mourning, even though Agwar was invited onto the Round Table. While palling around with Mordred, he shows us the Siege Perilous. We see all the empty Round Table knight chairs, some with names (still alive) and some blank (dead). We look for Count Edar's chair when Greg asks Zev to roll a d20...of course a 20 comes up, and the chair is blank. Edar is dead! Leicestermen all melancholic and really bummed out. When the Grail Quest is announced at Pentecost feast, Agwar decides he wants to go, so we follow.

555 - As we pass through Leicester on our way north to Mordred's ancestral lands—it's just as good a place to hunt for the Grail as any, right?—Agwar is made a Candlebee at the hands of Cynfyn, the only remaining Candlebee. As the requisite hive is set alight, a reading of the names on the Pillar of Resistence in Leicester town square takes place: Sir Rhun of the flowing blond locks, killed in 494 by the Black Annis; Sir Graid, also dissolved in 494 by the same; Sir Gwair of Lincoln, suavest man in all of Christendom and Pagandom; Sir Marten of Hertford, killed in battle with the upstart king in 505; scary Sir Padern of Lincoln, killed fighting against the upstart king in the battle of Bedegraine in 510; at Badon in 518, a terrible year, killed were Sirs Edward III of Leicerster, household knight of the count, Brandegoris Knight of the Hambone, and Seriol Allington, son of the count; Sir Bledri of Leicester, thorn in the side of tyrants everywhere, killed most treacherously in 532; Sir Perseus of Leicester, killed in 535 by the self-same agents of treachery; and now presumed dead, Sir Amadis of Leicester, Annis-killer, and our king, count, and lord Edar of Allington, master huntsman and beloved of peasants everywhere, 554. May God rest their souls.

Sir Agwar, count of Leicester, Sir Theudic of Leicester, and Sir Rambeau of Noholt decide that since the Grail can be anywhere it could just as easily be in Byzantium as in Lothian. They take their leave of Sir Mordred and head south to rendezvous with the Beehive, docked Humber-side. But then word reaches the small party that King Mark has not only attacked Camelot, but has gasp! kidnapped Queen Isolt. Agwar and his men race south to the lady's rescue...