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”.

Your spies spend long hours tracing the elusive Giovanni Cheli who seems to have simply vanished from the face earth. Last seen just after the death of Lucius he entirely disappeared a few days before conclave of cardinals met to elect Urbane as the new Bishop of Rome.The trail seems dead until one of agents locates a vestment shop in Rome that came into possession of some Cardinal’s robes marked with Cheli’s name. It seems that a man visited the shop and swapped the robes for those of a monk and promptly left never to return.

Your spies carefully reconstruct the path of this mysterious monk through Italy using his stays at inns to trace his route from Rome. Finally after many months of work they locate the end of the trail at a monastery in the far north of Italy; St.Francesco's Holly. One of your agents is able to enter the monastery and catches sight of the monk and though he has a thick beard he is clearly Giovanni Cheli himself.

After the events within the temple mount you decide to risk the trip to Italy to talk to the Cardinal and discover why he has gone into hiding within the monastery. You come to him in the evening as the light begins to fail. His room is spacious and a warm fire burns in the hearth, as he turns to greet you his eyes widen;

“Jean Ricard!” he exclaims “but how did you discover me? How did you come to be here!?”

“Fear not Giovanni, Urbane does not know that I tracked you here” you reply.

“So…you know that I am hiding from that woman…that monster…that devil” he speaks, sounding almost relieved.

“Why are you hiding here? Why would you flee Rome?” you ask, the urgency evident in your voice.

“What matters it now if I share my secrets? With the antipope no less.” He smiles weakly and then takes your hand. “But perhaps it is for the best; perhaps you may save the church from her.”

You lean in to catch his words when the room plunges into darkness. As you struggle to regain your orientation you hear Cardinal Cheli whimper and you feel the temperature in the room plummet. As you turn in the bitter cold you see that the fire in the hearth is still alight but the flames are burning with a cold blue light. As you stare at them they begin to writhe and distort and two bright points of light appear deep within them, around these the fire shifts and from it a woman’s face resolves the points of light deep within her burning eyes. You think at first that it is the face of Cardinal de Tartarts but as you study the face you see that it is that of an older woman, one with a stern dignified beauty. Realisation dawns on you; it can only be Urbane herself.

The gleaming blue eyes move across the room as they rise from the hearth and a body, wearing the papal robes, is formed from the flames behind them. Within the room now stands the burning avatar of Urbane herself and she is terrible to behold. The mouth of the image opens and a voice sounds as if from far away;

“Cardinal Giovanni Cheli.” The voice is silken smooth and perfectly emotionless, the eyes move to look at you “I see your heresy knows no limits, consorting with the antipope no less.”

The burning form turns to you. “I must thank you for being here Cardinal Ricard. This is most serendipitous, you shall make this visit so much more…productive.”

The image of the Pope raises its hand and a roaring torrent of the blue fire leaps forth striking at Cheli. He screams as the flames engulfs him, racing across his clothing, tendrils of it snaking unnaturally across his flesh. He flails uselessly at the magical inferno that burns him with a searing cold and falls to the ground, his screams are terrible.

As you watch the horror the spectral pontiff raises her other hand and points it at you almost lazily. Once more the fire roars forth but as it does so the runes upon your papal mitre shimmer into life and as the deadly torrent nears you it is torn asunder by invisible currents of force, dissipating into nothingness. The image of Urbane narrows its eyes and redoubles its effort and more of the deadly sorcery strikes at you, but the magic of your pope-hat endures. Cheli is clearly in his death throws now and you can see where the fire has burned his flesh into powdery black ice but with his last breaths the ravaged skull turns to you and screams a name;

“Isabella of Barbara!”

And with that he dies, the blue fire boiling from his mouth and eye sockets. The image of the pope is now wavering and distorting as it hurls the fire it is composed of at you and then with a distant cry of frustration the figure is consumed and the room is once more plunged into shadows, only the flickering blue flames on the body of Cheli remaining.

You leave hurriedly thanking god for your spiffy new Papal mitre.

Cardinal de Tartars appears to have vanished off the face of the earth. No letters pass between her and Rome and your agents in the Vatican tell you that even the Pope seems unaware of her legate’s location. Obviously you are pleased that the horrible harridan won’t be pursuing you in the near future, but it is mysterious.

From the Vatican you agents are able to send you various titbits of news. The papal inquisition in Europe is growing in power and influence and they have been relentless in hunting down and destroying heretics. Many have been put to the flame and Urbane seems intent on crushing any deviation from the infallible dogma of the Church. You also hear some extra info about the attack on Urbane. It seems that this did indeed occur and that Urbane was injured in the attack though you have no details on how, however it seems she has sent for one of Rome’s master jewellers. Your agents also send you news from the city of Rome. Though it is being hushed up by the authorities it seems that children, no more than babes have been vanishing from all over the city, carried away by shadows in the night.

Though your agents find it almost impossible to get near the Pope they can confirm one thing. She spends much of her time praying in her private chapel…before a silver cross.

The name of Isabella of Barbara is a difficult one to research. Your agents in the Vatican and in the western kingdoms comb through many records in an attempt to trace who this individual may have been. Every time they get a promising lead they find the record missing or the monastery that contained it abandoned or mysteriously burnt to the ground several decades ago. However they are diligent and you shift through the information that they send to you. Eventually you come across a letter written by the bishop of Ancona, it old and looking at the date you see that it pre-dates the first crusade, well over a century ago:

“The Lady is fearsome in the intensity of her faith and devotion. She has risen through the ranks of the military orders quickly and she is now the Preceptor of the Order of Truth and Peace. I found it most difficult talking to her for she seemed detached and uncaring but I know that she is devoted to the capture of the Holy Land and she has won many victories against the enemies of Christ in the past. She and her order are to sail to the Holy Land within the month, the Pope himself has given them the task of conquering strategic points from the Arabs I am told.”

As you dig further you find a letter written by a member of the Order of Truth and Peace, it was apparently sent from Jerusalem in the year 1098 back to his brother in a French monastery:

“We engaged the enemy today in the desert near Jerusalem. They had come upon us in ambush and I feared that we were to be wiped out for we were a small band. I had not counted on Lady Isabella however, while men fell around her she held the line, her blade striking down the heathens as fast as they could come upon her. Even with her mighty sword I was sure we would lose since we were outnumbered ten to one, but as the Arabs closed in around us her Ladyship raised her fist to the heavens and a great storm sprang up above us. Within its heart lightning raged and it struck down amidst the Arabs burning and tearing them apart. When the maelstrom ceased the Arab host was dead…I was told later that Lady Isabella is considered the greatest practitioner of the hermetic arts within the Orders and I can certainly believe it….we are to march on the city Ma'arrat al-Numan within the month and her Ladyship will ride at our head.”

From this it clear that Isabella of Barbara led the doomed siege of the city of Ma'arrat al-Numan during the first crusade, the city that now lies in ruins filled with the laughing knights. However as you dig deeper you find that the trail does not end there. Though there are no mentions of the Order of Truth and Peace after the crusade during which they were apparently annihilated you find more records from seminaries and churches in Italy. As you follow the trail of names and descriptions the horror dawns on you. Somehow Isabella of Barbara returned from the siege of Ma'arrat when her men did not. Some forty years ago a woman of her description, but with a new name, joined the priesthood and began to rise through the ranks of the church. That priest became a bishop, who became an Archbishop and eventually a Cardinal. Here you mouth drops open. For that Cardinal was at the conclave in 1185, when Lucius died, and was elected as the new supreme pontiff of the Church.

Urbane III is none other than Isabella of Barbara, one-time preceptor of the doomed Order of Truth and Peace who became the Laughing knights, and she is at least one hundred and forty years old. You know now the origin of Urbane and you have no doubt it is her who has attempted to conceal her origins by destroying the trail of records. Your sense of danger is greater than ever now. The woman who occupies your Papal throne seems to have lived through many life spans and is probably one of the most powerful Hermetic mages that Christendom has ever known.

You reach up and clutch your mitre for support.