The Court of Camelot- A British Foe for Delta Green

 The Court of Camelot

“On his Island of Avalon, slain Arthur lies dreaming”

Hail the Once and Future King! King Arthur is a mythical folk hero in British lore, who supposedly ruled Britain in the murky past before being slain at the Battle of Camlann and being laid to rest at the Isle of Avalon. British lore holds that Arthur will eventually return with righteous fury to take his place as sovereign over his people.

The Court of Camelot (named for the mythical castle of Arthur) is a group of ghouls in the United Kingdom who believe themselves to be the courtiers of lost Arthur. They eagerly await the return of their lost sovereign, carving idols in his image and following the esoteric visions they believe they receive from him in their dreams. They are regarded by the rest of the ghoul population of Britain as lunatics, kept at arms length and forbidden from their warrens. They emerge from their Dreamlands stronghold of Camelot into all corners of Britain, proselytising to those ghouls they can and even those unlucky mortals that wander alone into dark woods at night, following the guiding stars of their dreams.

The Court believes Arthur once walked the Earth as supreme and absolute ruler of all until he was slain by his foes in a great battle. His followers took him to the Isle of Avalon to recover, where he now waits, dreaming. Eventually, when the stars are right, he shall rise triumphantly from Avalon and retake his rightful position as the supreme master of all he surveys. The Court eagerly awaits his return, and do what they can to usher in that day. 

Activities of the Court

The Court of Camelot has no permanent residence in reality, but is instead based out of the Dreamlands. A great castle, as though from a fairy tale, emerges in the land of Dreams, and is attended to by its Court faithfully. Members of the Court often reemerge from the Dreamlands into all corners of mainland Britain, driven mostly by grail quests, but also in expressing their devotion to Arthur and enforcing the loyalty of his rebellious subjects.

The Court of Camelot are devoted to their lost sovereign utterly, though they wouldn’t call it worship. He is their liege lord who stands above them with absolute authority and shall one day reign over all, but they would not describe him as their god. He is the king of their court, not the god of their priesthood. Nonetheless, the way they express their fealty to their sovereign could look to an outsider akin to worship. They don filthy robes and rattle rusting blades, imagining themselves in garbs of the finest silk wielding blades of myth. They proclaim their fealty to the midnight sky and fill the night air with songs of praise and devotion. They carve idols in his image, with great reverence depicting his octopus-like head and his great wings. They show their loyalty too through a strict chivalric code, coming to the aid of those still loyal to Arthur, defending the helpless whenever they can and crushing the rebel with zealous ferocity. Of course, for those outside their delusion this looks remarkably different: yapping ghouls dragging screaming babes from weeping mother’s arms into the “safety” of the Dreamlands is par for the course of the Court’s chivalry.

Ghouls are creatures with strong ties to dreams. As they settle into eternity, a ghoul will eventually find itself in the Dreamlands, exploring that world beyond our own. A British ghoul that finds itself leaving behind reality to spend more and more time in the Dreamlands will eventually hear the call of Camelot echoing over the imagined landscape, inaudible to all but themselves. Drawn to the call, they will stumble upon Camelot and be greeted as a lost sibling by the Court that awaits them. Taking up residence in Camelot, they forget themselves, settling into the shared delusion of a royal court. When they reemerge in Britain, the delusion clings and they go about in ignorance of their newfound fall. Despite the natural recruitment process, the Court still ventures out to attempt to “persuade” their disloyal kin back to the light and to spread the good word of the King, Arthur, though they rarely get very far. They find much more luck amongst the humans of Britain, extolling the virtues of their sovereign to those humans that linger too long in the dark, leaving behind the idols of Arthur they carve. 

From time to time, members of the Court will receive a vision in their dreams. Avalon calls to them and the Once and Future King compels them to action and his courtiers obey. The visions they receive are cryptic and esoteric, and the courtier interprets it as best they can, following the vision as Perceval did hunt for the Grail, venturing out of the Dreamlands in great questing bands. The nature of the quest varies just as much as dreams can, and the questing band’s targets can vary from items or even people. Once they have attained their prize, they bring them to the Dreamlands to take pride of place in Camelot. 

A history of Camelot

Camelot’s history starts, according to its courtiers, with its establishment in a mythical, lost age by Arthur, who chose the castle as the site of his court and his knights of the round table. Every courtier, in their delusion, believes this whole heartedly and even claim to have been there since it was established. According to the saner ghouls of Britain however, the madness of Camelot first emerged some time in the mid 1500s. It seized most strongly upon English soldiers who returned home after the end of the Hundred Year war and who had succumbed to ghoulhood, with a great vanishing of ghouls into Camelot taking place near the dawn of the 16th century. The call of Camelot has ebbed and waned over the years. In the mid-1920s, the siren call of Camelot grew stronger and stronger, and at one point was deafening in Britain, with another great vanishing of the British ghoul population into Camelot. In modern times, the call of Camelot has started to grow louder once again, and more and more British ghouls are emigrating to avoid being dragged into Camelot.

Britain’s PISCES first encountered the Court of Camelot in 1975, when a band of courtiers attempted to infiltrate an auction house on a grail quest to retrieve a carving of Arthur dating back to the 16th century. They were discovered by a group of PISCES agents hoping to retrieve the same statue and the ensuing fight left several dead on both sides. Since then, PISCES has encountered more and more evidence of the Courtiers in Britain. On more than one occasion PISCES has crushed cults in rural Britain dedicated to the Once and Future King protected by one of his ghoul Courtiers. Other incident abound. In one case in 1985, a whole mining village in Central Wales vanished, the inhabitants dragged into Camelot by insane ghouls, the empty village condemned by the PISCES agents sent to investigate and turned into a reservoir. They were identified by the human operatives of PISCES as a subspecies of “anachronistic” ghouls, with the sporadic incidents involving the Court believed to be individual manifestations of ghoul delirium rather than linked by any shared ties. When PISCES underwent its de-Shanification, much institutional knowledge held by higher ups regarding anachronistic ghoul delirium was lost, preventing any more conclusions on the group being drawn. However, in 2013, a group of PISCES agents pursued a grail quest band of Courtiers back into Camelot, where they beheld the vastness of the Court, escaping back to reality to give the concerning knowledge back to their superiors. 

Camelot however has done much that even PISCES is unaware of. In the Upper Hebrides a seaside community has welcomed the ghoul Courtier of Camelot known as Moriaen once a decade since 1880, who presides over a festival of great offering to lost Avalon and to the Once and Future King. The ancient Escanor, patriarch of the community, emerges from below the waves to reaffirm his oaths of loyalty to Arthur whilst the children of the community follow him to seed a new generation on the land. Meanwhile in Wales, the ghoul warren of Cardiff has been engaged in an underground war with Camelot since the 1950s, as grail quest after grail quest inexplicably leads Courtiers to conquer the warrens of the city. Great collateral damage has been felt on the surface and the local ghouls are slowly losing. None can say what will happen once the standard of Camelot has been raised below Cardiff. Across Cornwall, cults devoted to the Once and Future King spring up with disturbing frequency in towns now devastated by the collapse of the tin mining industry. The call of Camelot is strong in Cornwall, and many cults find themselves with a craving for human flesh before eventually abandoning reality to join the Court in the Dreamlands, leaving behind idols of tin for others to find and worship. In London, the call of Camelot echoes in the dreams of those that have worshipped at altars of Arthur by other names. Those that heed the call and gaze upon its towers and parapets never return quite the same and never stop hearing the call of Camelot, even after leaving Britain.

Using the Court of Camelot

Courtiers of Camelot are mad. They dress themselves in dirty rags and scrap metal and believe themselves to be dressed in the finest robes and plate armour. They wield rusty knives and gnawed upon femurs and admire the fine craftsmanship of their swords and morning stars. They utter gutteral cries and hear a stern challenge to a foe or a rousing speech to their brethren. They kidnap children and brutalise their parents even as they see them rescuing a hapless babe from the arms of monsters and savages. They are utterly delusional, but they are not mindless beasts.

When depicting a Courtier of the Court, think about what motivates it. It's action should not be wholly random, but rather grounded in it's own internal and consistent logic. It acts on behalf of Arthur, and it's actions are good and virtuous. Any who aides it is a virtuous figure of chivalry whilst those who opposed it are traitorous barbarians. The Courier should not just attack the Agents on sight, but should be willing to work with them if the joint goal works into their internal logic.

It is advisable to give the Courtier(s) a simple motivation that drives it's actions in reality, draw from the three pillars of expressing devotion to Arthur, recruiting new people to Arthur's service, and follow the visions of a Grail Quest. Once these objectives are achieved (regardless of how long they take) they return to Camelot. Whilst operating in reality, they will often maintain a base camp underground where they will return to to recuperate, hide, and store the fine valuables they find in reality. They will often connect this warren to Camelot and use it to return home once they have accomplished their mission, though they are fully capable of tunneling through to the Dreamlands from any location, provided they do so on British soil. They will often act nocturnally, but will venture out in the day if they can avoid detection. Once they have their objectives in their sights they should reveal themselves and if need be prepared for battle, for it is unchivalrous to ambush a foe.

If you wish to stat out mechanically a Courtier of Camelot, I would advise you start with the stats for Ghouls provided in the Delta Green handler's guide. From there, I would give them an attack indicative of the weapon they wield as part of their chivalric duty. Any changes from there are you to individual taste. I would then give them a name drawn from the Wikipedia page for Arthurian Characters ideally, but you can make up any name as long as it's sufficiently chivalric sounding.

In all honesty, I have struggled to put my thoughts on this front into words. This section may be reworked in the future.

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