"But strangest of all was the so-called Carnival of the Blood-Kissed Duke. Painted mummers, fire-breathers, and madmen, they were a chanting cavalcade of lunatics dressed all in a motley of green and gold. Their faces were caked in chalk-dust, the upper half white, the lower painted all in red. Varo had never seen this particular group before, but from the crude image of the golden stag carved into their chests, he knew exactly what they were. Grail pilgrims: crazed zealots who worshipped the greatest warrior knights of the Lady with zealous fervour and obsessive devotion."
- —The Grail Pilgrims of Sir Leodegar.[1]
The Carnival of the Blood-Kissed Duke were a horde of Grail Pilgrims who followed the mighty Grail Knight, Sir Leodegar of the Golden Hart.
Overview[]
The Carnival was formed after Leodegar drove the infamous Vampire Lord known as the Red Duke into hiding within the Forest of Châlons. Over the course of the next three centuries, generations of zealous pilgrims followed the Grail Knight on his journeys throughout Bretonnia.[1]
Roatta[]
The veteran Battle Pilgrim of the Carnival was called Roatta. He was a giant of a man, dressed in naught but rags hung with icons of the Lady and scrimshawed bones. Stag horns were bound to the sides of his skull by straps and nails, and his skin was criss-crossed with self-inflicted scars, pierced throughout with a weave of thorned briars. He bore a headsman's axe as easily as a normal man might carry a hatchet, and a ragged banner depicting a crude version of Aquitaine's winged-claw emblem was bound to his body with nail-studded straps.[1]
Sources[]
- 1: Lords of the Lance (Novel) by Graham McNeill