Wednesday, September 20, 2023

What You Missed - Founding of the Cerulean Company

by Tucker "Temorse" Noyes


I had traveled to Bluetown in Chimeron to enjoy the festivities planned around the founding of the Cerulean Company, a fighting force within the Azure Guard.  Having seen the promise of many of the individuals comprising this new fighting force, I was interested in seeing them exhibit their battle prowess on the field.  Having been assured that this would purely be an exhibition, I left my armor at home.  This proved to be an error.  No sooner had we arrived, but we were beset upon by the infamous blade Blue, who was in this case accompanied by a plethora of other animated weapons that were dubbed “swordlets.”  After driving Blue off the exhibition field and back into the town, we were informed by Squire Ryu that Blue had animated a host of weapons in the Cerulean Company’s armory, including several powerful magical artifacts, and they were running amok in the streets.

Ryu, on behalf of the Cerulean Company at large, requested that we aid them by dealing with six of the powerful artifacts that had been animated, while the Cerulean Company drove Blue from the lands.  The heroes gathered agreed, and we were given some, highly redacted, research notes, to help us summon the weapons to us and defeat them.  While unredacted notes would have likely made our task much easier, these were serviceable, although I imagine that Sir Saka, Warlord of Chimeron, may have some more severe opinions on this matter.

We set to task, pouring over the research notes and learning what we could about the weapons.  The first we managed to summon and defeat was a poleaxe called Chimera, which seemed to benefit from all the parts that it was composed of, a spear, a hammer, and an axe, with devastating effect.  Once it and its retinue of was defeated, the weapon was returned, and we moved on to the next weapon, a massive spiked club called Exclusion Zone.  In order to summon this weapon we had to create a series of concentric circles, that once the weapon was summoned, was able to exert control over.  Again, the weapon was defeated and returned, and we moved on to the Mirrormage Axe, a strange looking weapon that appeared to have several reflective surfaces.  When attacking it, it was able to reflect some of the damage back to us, a trait it passed on to its accompanying swordlets as well.  The Anti-Dagger came next, which was anything but a dagger, but a large pike that only took damage from daggers wielded in honorable combat.  Many of our skilled spellcasters lended their dagger skills to defeat this weapon.  Next came the Hammer of Storms, a massive hammer that was summoned with a lightning rod, and electrified its surrounding swordlets.  By defeating the swordlets, we were able to absorb some of their electrified power, and with it bring down the animated hammer.  Finally we faced the Cleaver of Land and Sky, a Teng Huanese styled blade that was summoned by arranging some strange totems that had aspects of both land and sky in them.  The blade was defeated by use of the same totems, although moving them was quite difficult.  Once the cleaver was unable to shatter something (which did not include many of my blades that I had brought with me), striking an object that was unbreakable, it was stunned, and it allowed us to drop these heavy totems on them, eventually defeating it.

With the final weapon defeated and returned, we gathered to do what we had actually come here to do initially, bear witness to the new company’s founding.  Alas, the events of the day had taken longer than anticipated, and my responsibilities in Ashenmark beckoned me back, and regretfully I had to depart, however I was made aware of the events of the brief court.  Sir Orion and the comprising members of the Cerulean Guard, Squire Ryu, Squire, Squire Aelias, Squire Griffin, Squire Bogen, and Squire Garen, swore allegiance to Chimeron under Cimone of the Azure Guard.  Sir Orion has claimed the title of Commander, and the title Ceruleant, held by Garen, denotes his status as deputy. The nature of the tokens we received for being in attendance of the event, which if collected in a certain amount, would allow the use of one of the magical artifacts we defeated during the day from the chest that contained them.