Blood Knights

Overview

The story of Blood Knights follows vampire hunter Jeremy and his quest to recover the Blood Seal from an army of vampires. Doing so would end the total destruction of the Moon and save the medieval world itself. Reluctantly working with Jeremy is the female vampire Alysa, who was ritualistically bound to him as a failed desperate measure to prevent the seizure of the Seal. Due to that binding between the two, neither can hurt or leave the other without risk of their own lives.

Plot

*spoiler warning*

"Blood Knights" takes place in a fictional medieval world where humans and vampires are at war with each other. The story begins with two forces, the vampiric Red Brigade and a human army sent by the Roman Catholic Church, fighting each other en route to acquiring a powerful artifact called the Blood Seal. Most of the human soldiers did not survive the fighting against the vampires. So as a last desperate measure, the army priest Bartholomew used a ritual to bind the captured vampiress Alysa with Jeremy, the leader of the human army. This binding spell prevents either partner from hurting or leaving the other; so it forces Alysa to cooperate with the humans and guide them through the Holy Land ruins holding the Blood Seal.

The humans' gambit initially pays off. Despite their reduced numbers they and Alysa manage to infiltrate the ruins and defeat any Red Brigade soldiers standing in their way. Jeremy, however, falls in a battle against the vampiress Noor and allows the vampires to take the Blood Seal. Without the Seal in its proper place, the Moon breaks apart and causes the tides to become violent and unpredictable. Bartholomew and Castello (the army's second-in-command) also discover that Noor turned their leader into a vampire, so they kick both Jeremy and Alysa down an abyss and leave them there to die. Those two survive the fall and find their way out of the ruins, beginning their pursuit of Bartholomew with the hope that he can undo the binding between them.

Jeremy and Alysa track the priest down to Romania, where he and Castello's forces are hunting down the Red Brigade and the Blood Seal. They make their way to Godskeep, the only major human settlement in the area and the likeliest place to find their target. Vampires require human permission to enter the town, so they rescue Sheriff Andrej in a nearby forest and help him capture the dangerous vampiress Blood Fox. Jeremy then finds Bartholomew alone at the town tavern, only to be rebuffed given his vampire transformation. So to regain the priest's trust and aid, Jeremy and Alysa travel to the nearby Stormtop Chapel and retrieve for him the Relic of Light, a powerful weapon against vampires.

After winning Bartholomew over, Jeremy and Alysa receive even more encouraging news. The Lords of Pikehold, a nearby group of knights responsible for defending Godskeep, just defeated the Red Battalion and secured the Blood Seal. Asking the knights for the Seal is a straightforward task, but doing it is a different matter. The two needed help from vampire alchemist Roya to pull down a large drawbridge. In exchange, they help her with her field work of collecting blood samples from two powerful Red Battalion vampires. Jeremy and Alysa also run into Castello and his army, resulting in a climactic battle where the humans die near the doorstep of Pikehold Castle. Finally, and most surprisingly, the two vampires take on the Lords of Pikehold themselves. They discover that Medea, a supposedly harmless succubus captured from the Red Battalion, managed to seduce all the knights and take control of them. And after interrogating and slaying Medea, Jeremy and Alysa also learn that the Blood Seal is now in the hands of vampire mages further up the mountains.

The two vampires make their way up to the Ark, the tallest mountain in the region, where they rendezvous with Bartholomew. He warns them that they are too late; the vampires have used the Blood Seal to summon Ra'osh, a powerful demon that will destroy all of mankind. The situation is so dire that the priest sent for the First Army of Rome, even though he admits that the demon is only vulnerable to vampires. So before the army arrives, the two vampires scale up the mountain and confront Ra'osh. The demon proclaims that it must act before humans can outbreed and overwhelmingly outnumber vampires, but dies in battle against Jeremy and Alysa. Slaying Ra'osh allows Bartholomew to secure the Blood Seal, only for the First Army and its commanding Paladin to arrive and callously ask for it. Now distrusting the motives of the Church and its soldiers, Bartholomew gives his vampire allies the Seal and provides them a diversion by fighting the First Army. Now Jeremy and Alysa must return to the Holy Land, place the Blood Seal in its original place, and save the world.

Back in the ruins of Khalez Arak, the two vampires discover that the Roman forces arrived at the site before they did. They fought their way to the Blood Seal's chamber, with the mighty Paladin the last line of defense between them and the Seal's resting place. They learn that Rome wants to deliberately allow the violent tides to do as much damage as possible. Such a catastrophic loss of life is meant to be a catalyst for the surviving humans to flock back to the Church, an institution whose influence has been waning for quite some time. Disgusted by such a cynical ploy, Jeremy and Alysa fight the Paladin, his men, and a revived Castello. The Paladin remains impervious to the vampires' attacks, but Bartholomew sneaks up from behind and kills the knight by slitting his throat.

Despite the destruction of the Blood Seal in the heat of the battle, Bartholomew reassures his vampire friends that the moon will heal itself and that the tides will return to normal. That said, the priest cannot undo the bond between the two because one of them became a vampire. The story ends with Jeremy and Alysa leaving the ruins and beginning their new quest to find the rare few people who could turn the former back into a human again.

System Requirements