The Pope Cycle

The ship from Venice arrives at the port of Acre a month after the peace of the Covenant. Its contents: gold from the Vatican bank. Its destination: the mercenaries to be hired to hunt the Antipope. However the mercenaries and the Antipope have quite a different idea.

The gold is safely unloaded from its ship and is loaded into caravans that will take the gold to the border of the Kingdom of Jerusalem where it is to be delivered to Pavel Korovic. Of course to accept the gold and then renege on the contract is bad form for a mercenary so a plan is devised to steal the gold on route to the delivery point. With the detailed information obtained by Pope Peter and Joshua ben Isaac the route that the gold is to take is quickly determined and the trap is set.

The wagons are heavily guarded and are accompanied by a contingent of guards from the Vatican. Determining that a frontal assault would merely result in unnecessary causalities Pavel concocts a plan of devious tricky to acquire the gold. With the help of the Antipope Pavel is able to attire his elite force of mercenaries in the vestments of nuns from the order of the Hospital Sisters of the Mercy of Jesus. Dressed as such and with their weapons concealed the fighting force, along with Pavel and a similarly attired Pope Peter, await their prey.

Several miles outside the city of Jericho the caravan stops as it rounds a bend in the road to find the way blocked by a group of nuns. With a wave the guard captain orders his men to lower their weapons.

“Hail little sisters of mercy; what are you doing here so far from the protection of a city?” He shouts.

A nun, with rather more facial hair then a nun should have, approaches the captain’s horse and in high pitched voice says;

“Oh good knight, God has shown us great mercy with your arrival” As she speaks the pitch of her voice rapidly descends, apparently realising this she coughs before continuing, “Our wagon has fallen from the side of the road, if you kind knights could help us bring it back to the road then we may make back to the nunnery”

The guard captain purses his lips as he gazes over the group of nuns, most of who are examining their feet or keeping their faces concealed. His lieutenant leans forward and whispers in his ear;

“They are nuns sir, surely we can help them briefly?”

“So be it.” Replies the Captain “Get some men down there to right the wagon.”

At the direction of their captain half of the guards move away from the wagons and scrabble down the side of the road towards the overturned wagon below. The nuns, seemingly peering down at their rescuers, move between them and the gold. The guards begin to move around the fallen wagon and are about to turn it back upon its wheel s when one of the nuns trips and stubs her toe on a rock.

“Fuck that hurts!…Fucking Rock!” She bellows.

The guards spring up and a look of horror crosses the Captain’s face as the nuns pull off their habits and from somewhere produce an array of extremely deadly looking weaponry.

“They’re not nuns, they’re not nuns at all” Cries the captain, “Defend the caravan!”

“Jesus Christ!” Shouts another man; “I think that one’s the Antipope!”

The ensuing scuffle is short and with the guards divided they cannot put up much of a fight. They quickly surrender and are left tied by the side of the road. Pavel, Pope Peter and the mercenaries leave, with few casualties, the shipment of papal gold in tow.

Your spies in the Vatican get to work. It is dangerous for them as the Vatican is incredibly insular and more than once you are a forced to wait many weeks for a reply from your agents. However they skilled and diligent and you learn much from them.

From their mail interception activities you learn that the Holy See is purposefully staying aloof from the politics of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. The Pope wishes to see who will emerge as the victor in the battle of wills between Raymond of Tripoli and Philip of Jerusalem, although she has been sending messages of support to both sides. You also learn that the Vatican is showing considerable favouritism to the Order of Mary Magdalene, no doubt for their efforts in attempting to arrest you.

Recovering details of the Papal election is enormously difficult, since the conclave or Cardinals meets in absolute secrecy, sealed within the Vatican. However your agents do recover some interesting details surrounding end of Lucius III’s reign. It seems that as the old Pope weakened he simultaneously appointed many new Cardinals; often from unusually low within the church's hierarchy. Concurrent to this several prominent Cardinals, namely those who might have been in contention for the papacy, died. As far as your agents can determine none of these deaths were suspicious, but the concentration of them certainly seems to be odd. One name in particular stands out from the list of missing Cardinals; Giovanni Cheli. He does not seem to have died but has vanished from every record in the Vatican since the election of Urbane; your agents can find nothing more about him. It seems that with the death of many old Cardinals and the creation of many new ones Urbane was able to win the vote in the College of Cardinals’ almost unanimously.

The strange thing is that your agents have still not been able to trace the ecclesiastical career of Urbane herself and how she rose to be the elected as the new Pope. They do have more luck in tracing her recent reading materials however and although they cannot gain access to the Vatican’s Secret archives they do send you the name of one of the documents that they believe Pope acquired from Alexandria; “The Gospel of Judas”.