Cthulhutech: Refugees of the Dreamlands

One final post for today, also originally from the Cthulhutech forums.

---

For several months, now, there have been strange rumors from bug-occupied England. The reports, obviously unconfirmed, are that King Arthur has returned in the time of the greatest need of his country. Appearing from under Glastonbury Hill, he marched forth at the head of a host of a hundred knights wearing jade-green armor and carved a new Camelot - which and his knights call "New Selifaes" out of the wreckage. Both the bugs and the frogs have made several seperate attempts to smash or subjugate the new kingdom, but (so far) the magics of Merlin and the might and steel of the Round Table have kept the people safe.

In truth, the rumors are close to the mark and as far as possible from the truth. As the Dreamlands were being destroyed, King Kuranes of Celephais gathered as many of his people as would listen to his warnings, and led them on an exodus across the Tanarian Hills, through the Enchanted Woods, up the Seven Hundred Steps of Deeper Slumber and the Seventy Steps of Light Slumber, and out into the waking world. It was a terrible march, with nine out of every ten refugees lost to creatures out of nightmare or to the Unmaker of Dreams itself. At the final stand, King Kuranes had to be dragged alongside the priests Nasht and Kaman-Tha from the Cavern of Flame by his own Knights of Silver and Jade. Even now he can still hear the agonized screams of the rearguard echoing up the Seventy Steps as the Unmaker rends them from existance, and he weeps.

His kingdom gone, his beloved England doubly transformed beyond recognition by the passage of time and the occupation of the Migou, Kuranes has set himself to the creation of a new Celephais. His Knights wear armor forged of lunar silver and the green jade of Ckykranosh, traded from the cats of Ulthar, and they bear swords and lances blessed by the weak gods of Earth - they had no potency against the God that destroyed their world, but they serve well against the lesser horrors that ravage their adopted home (Game Mechanics: the armor offers hybrid protection and the the swords do hybrid damage; they are functionally indestructible).

New Celephais has not yet had contact with the outside world. As far as Kuranes and his knights know, they are the last bastion of humanity in a world overrun with monsters.