DarkmasterN
patreon
Drawlloween 23
🕑 Added 2022-10-24 00:23:42 +0000 UTCToday's prompt is Red Knight......
The Kingdom of Camelot's Red Knights were powerful warriors that wore armor wreathed in furs and emblazoned with a helm of a mighty Lion. The Red Knights learned to rear and train beasts for war on the battlefield. They would capture wild beasts and through various means train them in the art of war. Using bears, tigers, bulls, elephants, rhinos, wolves, and hippos on occasion to fight as battle mounts or as allies alongside them rushing into battle against their foes. The most dangerous however were those who could command the loyalty of Dire animals, such as the the dire bear or dire wolf as their companions. The most popular and powerful of the companions however were the lion knights and the Dire lion knights. Running swiftly with their destructive battle axes, they would bound across the battlefield as the massive lions would sprint along with them, shrugging off a hail of arrows and tearing through swaths of enemies with a single swipe from their violent claws, cutting their enemies to ribbons.
Whenever the red knights would leave a battlefield, they would not only destroy their enemies, but leave with a meal for themselves and their beasts, often resorting to cannibalism in a ritualistic process of becoming one with the creatures of the wild whom they shared this partnership with. The Red knights were feared by many, and revered by more with their practices seen as barbaric and yet revered. Their lions would often be hunted and trained in the wild, with new members of the Red Knights being sent into the wilds after long quests to Kumari Kandam, to spend time among the witches and be imbued with an arcane pact, allowing them to face a lion in battle and wrestle it into submission. The Lions of Kumari Kandam were known for their ferocity and strength, cut off from the other lions of the African plains and evolved to compete with the tigers and other violent creatures of Lemuria. Some would find the ever rare dire lion, and though most red knight squires lost their lives attempting to tame these beasts, and more so trying to tame the might of the dire lion, were struck dead and left as a feast for their would be companion. Stories exist through Kumari Kandam of horrible acts of procreation between beast and man with blood rituals that would spawn hideous creatures known as Manticore, or of skin walking beasts known as Rakshasa who commanded secret kingdoms of beasts as far as Buyan, and of the deadly Gyno and Andro Sphinx that also resided within the hidden depths of the world, and how Red Knights would hunt these creatures, or learn from them and gain access to their inhuman knowledge.
Unlike with many other knight castes within the kingdom, men and women were equal among the red knights, often being distinguished by the titles of red lords and red ladies. Unlike with the growing religious movements across the world, the Red Knights worshipped many pagan deities, and practiced much witchcraft, with some of the female red knights being witches themselves accepted among their ranks and given the honorary title of knight. The Red witches that joined them, many migrating from Kumari Kandam, would find companionship and love amongst their ranks, and would raise their children to be knights as well among the ranks with much of the Red Knight society being secluded from the rest of the Knight caste. Though the average man knew and feared the red knights. Other knight sects such as the blue and white knights, looked down upon the red knights as savages and heretical pagan fornicators that should not be a part of the kingdom, and yet the red knights and their culture prevailed despite minor clashes beginning among their people...
Whenever the calamity struck and Camelot was cursed to a twisted, growing city, spreading like wildfire across the world, the Red Knights became feral. Howling and screaming at the moon, and tearing at their flesh to free the beasts from within. Some fed themselves to the beasts, and others still descended upon the beasts and tore their flesh, eating blood, bone, and hair and reveling in the primal brutality of their new madness. some became like the beasts, their faces changing and features altered, with some of these alterations seen still today in some children with cleft lips, or others born with tails or thumb like toes on their feet, and even some with razor sharp teeth and a deep affinity or understanding for many animals. In some cases beasts rose up on their hind legs and spoke in the warped voices of humans, learning to wield weapons and commanding feral humans to fight alongside them. And some yet became so close to their beasts that they became indistinguishable from one another. Their bodies and armor melding with the lions themselves, their minds becoming one as they become chimeric amalgamations of man and beast, fully dependent on one another. Some possess two heads, while others have their faces combined and their limbs melded together. Here we have an example of a Red Knight melded with his former lion companion, making a hunched and violent axe wielding berserker with the supernaturally combined strength of a man and beast.
Many of them fight as savage warriors with the tenacity of an animal, and others may possess secret skills and techniques, martial magic passed down through the other red knights as deadly skills of power, able to manipulate their own energies, and that of the world around them to utilize various Pōr Kalai (or Battle arts, or arts) to slay their foes, while others may actually possess some arcane powers from time spent consorting with the witches that returned with them to Camelot and were taught the arcane arts, or those even bestowed with knowledge by the great wizard merlin, or imbued with sorcerous arts by Morgan Le Fay....
Some Red Knights escaped to Urth long ago, and their remnants still exist among some of the factions within the Nemerian kingdoms, having been absorbed into the various cultures over the millennia and are thought to be involved in the origin of the Beastmasters of Karthoon that protect the western border of the Fuirriev continent....
