Lingering questions from I23 (SPOILERS)

I've had some questions since Beta about certain events in I23, and now that it's in the larger public eye, maybe some of you out there can help me figure them out (or at least help speculate):

1) Where do the Black Knights come from? Bedwyr's arc makes it pretty clear that they are not from Night Ward, but he doesn't say where they came from. They are apparently searching for something or someone, but again, it isn't explicitly stated what. From other things going on in his arc and the general storyline, I gather that they are looking for either Black Swan, Excalibur, or both.

Are they from elsewhere in Praetoria? Perhaps Praetoria's British Isles would make sense. Pendragon mentions wanting to use Excalibur to bring Tyrant to justice, so they evidently are familiar with Praetoria, and one wouldn't think a group that existed solely within Night Ward would otherwise care about Tyrant. This all goes further into wondering what/where else in Praetoria is still free of the Hamidon's control, and what their political situation is.

2) Where exactly does Serene's plot fit into continuity? The whole Night Ward arc seems to follow almost immediately after First Ward's storyline, yet somehow Serene- though dead after FW- has already managed to infiltrate the Black Knights via the Black Queen, and institute a rather convoluted plot to free Lamashtu.

Her dialogue with Pendragon- where she refers to their affair d'amour- would seem to indicate that she had been involved with the Black Knights long before the events of First Ward. Indeed, the Lamashtu liberation would seem to be a complicated affair that must have taken some time to implement. Yet, oddly, it also seems to be predicated on Serene dying in order to implement it. (What's that saying about no self-respecting villain's evil plan should revolve around getting themselves captured or killed?)

I'm also not quite clear how/what this plot with Lamashtu fits in with her First Ward plans. Her ultimate plans with Lamashtu require Lamashtu to have a living vessel, so I am either led to believe that Serene planned for her own death in First Ward (making the whole Lamashtu plot a contingency plan to the plot she had going on involving Diabolique), or was she going to do both, but getting killed was just a minor setback?

There is no official in-canon or dev-speak origin of the Black Knights, any more than there is for the Drudges, nor any explanation for why First Ward is American but their spirit realm is British. It's just that way because they needed to fit Praetorian Hero-1 (Pendragon) into the story somehow, so they themed everything around The Matter of Britain, aka the Camelot legend.

Over the course of Bedwyr's arc, we find out that the Black Knights are the spirits/supers/whatever who, in the Praetorian timeline, banished the Banished Pantheon gods, and guard the Black Prison where they are locked up. Presumably Pendragon and Bedwyr joined them when they were carried off/when they died (respectively) back in the 4th century AD.

As for the rest of your questions, I think you're confusing Sorceress Serene and Black Swan in a couple of places. I haven't gotten around to replaying it since early in beta (I'm halfway through it on live, I got distracted by a busy weekend) but as best as I can recall it from beta, Black Swan is the one that disguised herself, joined the Black Knights, married King Lor, and had an affair with Pendragon, all as parts of a long and elaborate plan to unlock the Black Prison. Ironic, since the Black Nights were specifically in Night Ward to hunt her. But the whole thing was her playing Nemesis' favorite game: "Let's you and him fight!"

Where Serene comes in is when the Talons team up with Black Swan to help her unlock the Black Prison, so that they can get Serene and her coven back to join (or re-join) the Talons of Vengeance. There's basically two plots going on there, and they just discover that they have a convergence of interests right before the Black Prison break.

The queen explicitly reveals herself to be Sorceress Serene.

And wasn't the key plot points in First Ward the fact that the apparitions weren't the spirits of the dead? Didn't we talk to Blind Makwa and hold a ritual to speak with the spirits to confirm that the apparitions were the cast of bits of Seer psyches? Night Ward kind of comes in and tosses all that out in the first arc.

Is the Black Queen the Praetorian version of Lady Grey?

Okay, after some replay (still more to come with that), some feedback from this thread, and some good old fashioned reasoning, here's the timeline as I'm currently figuring it:

1) PCs come to First Ward where they discover that a crisis has erupted whereby the Apparitions- semi-sentient personality fragments of psychics created by Mother Mayhem during the Seer process- have taken control of the Seer Network and are wreaking havoc in the already quite chaotic First Ward. Sorceress Serene, last survivor of the Ravenwing Cabal, has summoned the Talons of Vengeance to Praetoria, ostensibly so that she can get revenge on Tyrant and the rest of the Praetors who ordered the slaughter of her cabal. She has chosen First Ward as her first target, presumably due to the weakening of the barriers between the worlds of the dead and the living there.

Also, she wants to get revenge on Diabolique, and plans to use the Apparitions to this end (somehow; I'm still a little vague on the means there.)

Unfortunately, Serene fails to take into account two things: The extent of Percy Winkler's feelings towards Diabolique and the (slim) shred of goodness left in him; and the PCs. Serene ends up dead as a doorknob.

2) Meanwhile, back at the ranch, things are going sour for Tyrant in the Primal/Praetorian War. He's literally down to the dregs of his supporter barrel, and has to rely on Chimera and Black Swan as his final line. Knowing this, Chimera drags out some plans he'd hidden away In Case of Emergency, involving finding the legendary sword Excalibur in Night Ward. He sends Black Swan to retrieve it, since she's the one with the ties to that world (evidently the Shadow World she was formerly said to access is or is connected to Night Ward?)

Black Swan's ancient foes, the Black Knights, track her down to Night Ward to finally incarcerate her (for I believe unspecified reasons; although her being evil probably counts). Doubtless the Black Knights were tipped off to her traveling to NW by Chimera or Swan, considering that they'll need Pendragon there to retrieve Excalibur.

3) Serene finds herself stuck in Night Ward along with the rest of First Ward's dead, due to some metaphysical clusterhump that I believe is connected with that big ol' swirly pool of light hanging over the city. In any event, the dead can't leave, and it's causing the Drudges quite a bit of trouble.

(Side note, I don't believe we ever fix that problem, as I recall. We kind of get sidetracked into helping the Midnighters, and then the whole Lamashtu thing. I guess the dead can wait. Eternally.)

While she wanders aimlessly in Limbo, frustrated by her plan's failure, Serene stumbles across the Black Knights. Now- due to her connections with the Talons of Vengeance, she is aware of the story of Lamashtu and her imprisonment in the Eternal Prison. So she sees a new opportunity to get her plans back on track, and maybe even kick them up a notch. BAM!

4) Serene possesses the Black Queen, and uses her to manipulate the Knights towards her desired goal- the freeing of Lamashtu. When her manipulations- if not identity- are discovered, she arranges for the death of the Black King, taking over the Knightly Order (although not without some splintering), and- just because she's a bit vindictive, this one- she taunts Pendragon with some memories she picked up from Queenie's brain about the ill-fated love affair of the two. Then she goes off to complete her plan.

(Note that I think- and I haven't gotten to the replay of this part yet, so I'm not sure- I think her taunting also plays into manipulating Pendragon and the rogue Knights into helping her free Lamashtu, since there are some elements of the key that can only be attained by the PC and the rogue Knights.)

5) PCs once more foil Serene's plans. Darn you, you meddling kids!

6) Elsewhere, Black Swan resurrects Shadow Hunter, they locate Excalibur, and poor Pendragon is manipulated by another woman, but the PCs are able to help restore him.

So I'm mostly in agreement with the notion that it was pure happenstance that the BKs showed up in force in NW just at the same time Serene's ghost did. I still think the Queen's role was probably originally supposed to be Swan's, but this seems to be a decent enough explanation, though it lacks some specifics.


I'm still curious about these things, though:

1) Apparitions and the apparent change in interpretation of their role
2) The connection between the creation of new Talons and Night Ward (which was cool, but I'm unclear how/where it fits with Serene's plan)
3) The spirits of the Ravenwing Cabal and their connection to the storyline (which is coming up, so I'll pay better attention this time)
4) The reason behind the metaphysical toilet jam that is keeping the dead of First Ward from exiting Night Ward to the Great Reward Beyond. And why we didn't fix that problem, like we told poor overworked Taskmaster Carlyle we would.

EDIT: Actually, I guess Serene is responsible for #4, and we sort of fix the problem by beating her. Slow it down, at least.