Knocker King/Knockerairship
From Unofficial Handbook of the Virtue Universe
Arcadian Wind Circa 1910 (Estimated) during the Czar Vargo invasion.
Alright. To get a better frame on what you're dealing with here, you need to understand some back-story.
There's a -record- of this airship. There's not a lot of one, but there is a record. Most of it, surprisingly, comes out of the Paragon police files on Nemesis, of all the cockamany things. There's no written accounts left, and the ONLY picture of the Armada we have is from the collection of a senile old fart who managed to sign over ownership of the thing to the Archives before he completely vacated his head. He'd kept the thing in a SHOEBOX for almost eight decades, and hadn't shown it to anyone.
Apparently near the turn of the century, a guy took the world hostage. The entire world. Yeah. I know. Sounds insane. But he managed it. Quite literally waltzed an air-ship armada out of the ether and trained a whole lot of guns on a meeting of world-leaders happening in Paris. I'm talking kings, queens, god-heads of state. The whole shebang. One shebang would of left several generation old positions of power suddenly empty, and a lot of nations in complete and total civil-war in the ensuing vacuum.
This armada appears in the skies over Paris mid-conference, and tunes a broadcast to every metal object in the city. Czar Vargo is in control now. Any resistance results in a world-wide war the likes of which we don't see until World War 1 and 2 hit the scene. There are large automatic-flack cannons attached to these ships. There are reports of automated robotic cog-troops surrounding the building. Guys in fancy uniforms on the ground giving orders around.
Sounds a lot like Nemesis eh? Gear-level tech that works better than modern assault weaponry, massive airships that defy realistic approaches to aero-dynamics and robots that look like what we call steam punk nowdays.
And the fact that someone destroyed all records of this assault.
The verbal reports sound like something out of a penny dreadful. Kind of like Nemesis, The first try. A kind of first foray into world-domination.
You always have mistakes. Whoever this Czar Vargo was, he was -really- interested in world peace, world humanitarianism, and keeping people alive and out of warfare. The flaw in this plan was: People fought back. At first they sent the robots and automated tanks of the era out to fight, and were promptly vaporized. Then people started fighting. Then people started DYING.
And this Czar Vargo guy? According to all reports he -backed down- rather than chew people up in a meat-grinder of automatic gunfire. Doesn't sound a lot like Nemesis anymore, does it?
So, how does this relate back to the Arcadian Wind?
The Vargo fleet just disappears. Again, a lot like Nemesis did when he showed up under his name proper. The entire thing just sails off into the sunset and drops off the face of the planet. No one has a clue where it went, most of the eye-witnesses are dead and just voices on old voice-recordings, and someone's has made a pretty concentrated effort to make it look like this entire thing never happened.
The thing is: The Arcadian Wind didn't keep up with the fleet. From what we can tell from the Archive files, this thing was the ONE ship to sustain any kind of damage out of the fleet. Kind of the retarded little brother of the Vargo Invasion. Everyone that managed to but their voice to tape remembers one Airship limping after the fleet like a wounded puppy, belching smoke from the aft and looking like it was going to drop out of the sky at any moment.
That's the last sighting anyone has of the Wind in the 'normal' world.
It shows up in the Fae courts about a decade later. The 'King' is practically a child by the court scribe records in that age. About 16ish, scared as hell and looking for a place to go. Lands literally outside of Germany in the middle of a major Alls-Hallow Eve gathering blathering about the night sky trying to swallow him whole.
We've got a pretty good record of what he said. Apparently the Wind was -supposed- to go down with all hands. But King was a engine room grease-rat on the wind. Working for the Czar Vargo guy. Apparently had some talent with machines, which made him a rare commodity in early 1910 Europe. No surprise he was working with this outfit.
The real surprise is that his wake-up call, the shift from human to relizing he's an immortal-souled incarnation of the dreams of humanity, was that initial burst of belief that Czar Vargo had conquered the world. You've all seen the energy unleashed when a changeling hits the Chrysalis. It's a hell of a lightshow. Unicorns and boggarts running around in modern office buildings, harpies and green knights terrorizing Topeka Kansas. Hard to miss something like that really, and it usually gets ugly fast.
The likely thing that 'hit' the Arcadian wind wasn't a shell from groundside. It was likely 'King' waking up to his heritage as a Knocker. The ship bonded with his formation. It's -part- of him, if we're reading the records right. Anyone from the courts that tried to board at the time got shot at.
A lot.
And there you have it. King goes on and off the Fae Court Radar after that. He'll show up at some major fight, offer his services for gold and supplies, start combat-dropping robotic chimerical Knocker terrors into the area, and the Wind soaks up the terror like a giant battery. After nearly 40 years of this, dodgeing in and out of battle-fields during the World Wars and the chaos that erupted afterwards, the Wind became a giant Freehold.
A nexus of technological dreams and the terror inspired from them.
The Wind is a freehold. A big, powerful, crazy one, linked to it's master, King. He formed it. He keeps it repaired. He makes the 'crew' of robotic minions that maintains it. He's normally in charge.
And that might explain why he dropped out of the picture for the FAE as well after about 1960. When the Sidhe showed up, freeholds fell into the nobles hands like big elven kids taking candy from babies. A sidhe would show up, wave a hand, and he was dictating who could get the power out of the Freehold's bale fire.
Pissed a lot of people off, including King. Apprently he packed up Ship and hit the air-currents, keeping his 'baby' in the clouds and out of Sidhe hands for nearly 50 years. UFO sightings? Probably King hitting earth quick enough to get more supplies. Notice they start showing up in about the same era. The ship isn't chimerical. It's a freehold, but it's made of -real- steel and brass. People know when it's around. People can get -hurt- by this thing.
It's kind of a goldmine for Unseelie who think we should be in charge again. A massive Fae-powered real-world battle cruiser.
Anyway. We're still trying to figure out why the hell King hit Paragon. Might of been chasing a way to 're fuel' the Arcadian Wind. It was pretty common knowledge that the thing fed it's fuels off of technological inspiration, and it must of gotten a MASSIVE jolt of it after the moon landing.
But maybe those batteries are running low. Maybe King saw something in Paragon that would make a major upgrade to a ship that looks like it's from the 1800s and running on steam power.
We're still working on that.
Anyway. This should prove to be good money to sell to anyone looking for an edge on Knocker and his pet floating gunship. We're getting reports of a rogue Unseelie Sidhe knight that might have a bead on the Wind, goes by the name of Hardline.
Problem being he's also completely insane and his entire company of sidhe knights are just as crazy. He's a rogue noble looking to make a big name, and he probably won't turn the ship over to any Court if he finds it.
Might try to take it over. Christ, I wouldn't want to be this guy if King finds out a gentry has taken over his floating freehold.
Spread it around the Spiders
- Centerweb
