The following continues the summary of the Dorian Hawkmoon Saga (as provided in Mongoose Publishing’s Hawkmoon roleplaying game), covering the subsequent trilogy known as The Chronicles of Castle Brass.

Please note: Rather than rewriting Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan’s excellent overview it is presented here with only minor changes.

An Overview

For a fuller accounting of these deeds, the reader should consult the four books collectively known as The History of the Runestaff: The Jewel in the Skull, The Mad God’s Amulet, The Sword of the Dawn and The Runestaff, as well as The Chronicles of Castle Brass: Count Brass, The Champion of Garathorm and The Quest for Tanalorn. Optionally, the tale of The White Wolf ’s Son is partially set in an alternate version of Hawkmoon’s world, although much of that tale is taken up with the deeds of Elric of Melnibone during his thousand-year dream. It is also illuminating and entertaining – though by no means necessary – to read all the books making up the Eternal Champion Cycle. For most adventures in Hawkmoon’s world, only the History of the Runestaff is relevant, as the later books concern events cosmic and otherworldly.

The Chronicles of Castle Brass

The defeat of the Empire of Granbretan weighs heavily on Dorian Hawkmoon and his wife Yisselda. In this series of books, Hawkmoon attempts to rewrite the tragic events of the past, only to create further dilemmas and dangers. Friends and enemies return to help and hinder the heroes, but the question remains as whether one can avoid his ultimate fate?

Count Brass

Five years have passed since the Battle of Londra. Hawkmoon now rules the Kamarg with Yisselda and their two children, Manfred and Yarmila. The Empire of Granbretan is no longer dark;  Europe has begun to rebuild, and there is now more trade and commerce than ever before. All seems well, but then the people of the Kamarg begin to turn on Hawkmoon. They accuse him of being a traitor, of murdering Count Brass. Hawkmoon investigates, and discovers that several people have met the ghost of Count Brass out in the marshes.

One night, Hawkmoon goes into the swamps to find this ghost. He does indeed meet Count Brass there, but this is a much younger Count Brass. It is as though the Count has been plucked from an earlier time, and then ensorcelled to believe that Hawkmoon murdered him. Hawkmoon persuades the ghost to meet with him again the following night, although from the ghost’s perspective, Count Brass exists in a seemingly eternal twilight. The following night, Hawkmoon meets Count Brass’s ‘ghost’, along with the ghosts of Oladahn, Bowgentle and D’Averc. All speak of dying in various incidents, only to be revived by a strange oracle that appeared to them in the shape of a crystal pyramid. Hawkmoon remembers hearing of most of these incidents, but knows that his friends survived all those dangers. He begins to suspect  they were taken from the past by this oracle for some unknown purpose. They agree to question the oracle; when it appears, Hawkmoon hides and Brass claims that he has slain the Duke of Köln. The oracle congratulates the Count, and Hawkmoon recognises the voices coming from the crystal pyramid – it is Baron Kalan of Vitall, the twisted genius of the Dark Empire, who was said to have committed suicide rather than live in Flana’s reformation. They attack the pyramid, but it vanishes through the dimensions.

Hawkmoon, Count Brass, Bowgentle, Oladahn and D’Averc resolve to travel to the one group who might be able to help them – the Wraith-Folk of Soryandum. Kalan attacks them twice as they travel, trying to stop them from meddling, and his attacks remove both Oladahn and D’Averc from the timestream, sending them back to the time he took them from. At Soryandum, the Wraith-Folk build them a crystal sphere capable of pursuing the pyramid. Kalan attacks again, removing Bowgentle, but Hawkmoon and Count Brass escape in the sphere and follow Kalan through the dimensions. They appear in Londra, but not the Londra of the present. Somehow, Kalan has found an alternate Londra, made up of echoes of the true horror. Most of the guards and warriors in this alternate Empire are ‘ghosts’ like Count Brass, plucked from reality at the moment of their death and condemned to a timeless twilight existence, a single instant of their lifespan drawn out to months or years. In the throne room, they even discover all the heroes and monsters of the Empire – Huon, Meliadus, Trott, Flana and all the rest – all drawn from their pasts. Brass and Hawkmoon ambush Kalan and question him.

The scientist claims that his initial plan was just to change history using his crystal pyramid, to erase Hawkmoon’s triumph and restore the Dark Empire, but that every time he tried to destroy Hawkmoon, fate brought the Duke of Köln back again and again. Hawkmoon is, somehow, eternal. The only way to destroy Hawkmoon is for one of the other servants of the Runestaff to kill him, which is why Kalan brought back Count Brass and the rest. If they kill Kalan, he claims, it will disrupt the timestream still further and plunge the Multiverse into chaos. Their interrogation is interrupted by Kalan’s ally in this mad scheme – Taragorm of the Palace of Time, who escaped his death at the Battle of Londra by leaping through time. He and his guards take Hawkmoon and Count Brass prisoner. They prepare to launch a transdimensional assault on Flana’s empire – if Kalan and Taragorm cannot change the past, then they can at least try to control the future. They torture Hawkmoon and Brass; Hawkmoon agrees to kill himself if they will free Count Brass, but a maddened Brass interrupts and agrees to kill Hawkmoon if they will spare him more torture. This Count Brass was taken from twenty years ago, he has known Hawkmoon for only a few weeks and has no real loyalty to him. What is the German to Count Brass. Taragorm gleefully gives Brass a sword – – and the Count drives it into Taragorm’s clock-masked face. Chaos explodes in the alternate-Londra as the timewind howls. Killing Taragorm has upset all the delicate changes made to time; Hawkmoon finds himself back at the Battle of Londra, and he fights his way through the carnage to save the Count from the spearman who was supposed to have killed him. Brass survives the battle… and Hawkmoon finds himself back in the Kamarg, five years later, on the night he went out to seek the ghost of Count Brass.

History has changed. Count Brass now survived the Battle of Londra – but Yisselda died that day. The future was lost.

The Champion of Garathorm

Seven years have passed since the Battle of Londra. While Queen Flana remakes the former Dark Empire into something better and brighter, and an aging and melancholic Count Brass rules over the Kamarg, Hawkmoon is going mad. He spends his days studying a model of the Battle of Londra, fighting it over and over in his mind, searching for the right combination of tactics and fate that would have permitted Yisselda to live. He no longer remembers the names of his children; the years before time was altered now seem like a dream. While Count Brass travels to Londra to meet Queen Flana, a stranger comes to Castle Brass. She introduces herself as Katinka Van Bak, a swordswoman of renown. She encountered a strange army in Ukrania, an army of mismatched warriors, and she believes that she saw the philosopher-poet Bowgentle among them. Hawkmoon agrees to help her investigate, and they travel east. Hawkmoon is in poor shape at the start of their journey after years of neglecting his health, but he soon begins to recover his old strength.

In the Bulgar Mountains, they meet a curious man named Jhary-a-Conel, who reminds Hawkmoon of Oladahn. The stranger travels with him, and speaks quite merrily of Hawkmoon’s other lives, other incarnations. Eventually, they reach a tunnel in the mountains east of Pesht, where Katinka and Jhary both turn on Hawkmoon, knocking him unconscious and nearly killing him. Hawkmoon awakens in a woman’s body in another world – that of Ilian of Garathorm. Jhary explains that the tunnel is a portal between realities; Hawkmoon is the incarnation of the Eternal Champion in his world, and Ilian is the Champion of her world. They share a soul, so when Hawkmoon was brought to the point of death, his spirit leapt into Ilian’s body. This land has been conquered by an invader named Ymryl, who desired Ilian, once Princess of Garathorm. When he could not win her obedience, he destroyed her spirit with torture and sorcery. Ymryl’s army appeared out of nowhere, and is composed of many different races and groups.

Jhary’s flying cat spies on Ymryl’s camp. Not only does the brutish commander of the mismatched army possess a magical horn that summons aid from Hell, but he is also advised by Baron Kalan of Vitall. All the members of the invading force are from different worlds and time periods; Ymryl claims they were assembled by his demon patron, Arioch, and demands that Kalan aid him in summoning the demon into Garathorm. The invading army, having conquered much of peaceful Garathorm, are now beginning to turn on each other.

Ilian, Katinka and Jhary rally support from the survivors of Garathorm. They steal weapons and flame-lances from the Tragic Millennium forces in Ymryl’s army, giving them a fighting chance. In one raid, Ilian frees a prisoner from the enemy camp, a prisoner who arrived in Garathorm along with Baron Kalan. She is Yisselda of Castle Brass, kept alive by Kalan for his own nefarious purposes. While Ymryl is occupied battling his former minions, Ilian hunts down Baron Kalan. The scientist claims to be invulnerable, because he has bound his fate to that of Hawkmoon; only Hawkmoon can slay him. Ilian shares Hawkmoon’s soul, and is therefore able to penetrate Kalan’s defences and destroy him. However, Kalan’s death disrupts reality just as Taragorm’s did, allowing the demon Arioch to physically enter Garathorm – but the demon is under assault by other forces, and cannot manifest for long. The disruption to the Multiverse caused by Kalan and Taragorm’s experiments is reversing itself now that Kalan is dead. The demon vanishes; moments later, its piecemeal armour of reavers and madmen are returned to their own times and worlds.

All that is left to do is for Ilian to use a Black Jewel obtained from Kalan’s corpse to transfer her soul back into Hawkmoon’s body, and Hawkmoon and Yisselda return to Castle Brass.

The Quest for Tanelorn

Count Brass and Yisselda are reunited, but Yisselda and Hawkmoon’s children are still missing. If Yisselda survived the changes to the timeline because of Baron Kalan’s plots, then perhaps Manfred and Yarmila did too. Hawkmoon decides to go to Londra, to consult Queen Flana’s scientists, but a visitor arrives at Castle Brass before he can leave. It is the Orkneyman, Orland Fank, erstwhile servant of the Runestaff. Fank is in search of information – the Runestaff has vanished from the world, and he seeks to find where it has gone! Fank explains that Hawkmoon’s adventures in the world of Garathorm were not just the result of Kalan and Taragorm’s machinations. The two scientists merely took advantage of an underlying instability in reality. The Conjunction of a Million Spheres is approaching, the time when the fate of the entire Multiverse hangs in the balance. Fank believes the Runestaff may be found in the mythical timeless city of Tanelorn. Just as Yisselda’s capture led Hawkmoon to the Red Amulet, and Bewchard’s brought him to the Sword of the Dawn in Narleen, so too might the quest for his children bring Hawkmoon to the Runestaff. Hawkmoon travels on to Granbretan despite the Orkneyman’s suggestion that he seek Tanelorn, but as he crosses the Silver Bridge, he falls into another reality. He is briefly threatened by a spirit calling itself Sword. He meets Jhary-a-Conel once more, who brings him to a strange ship on the sea of fate. This ship carries heroes from many worlds and many times. There are no less than four incarnations of the Eternal Champion aboard – Hawkmoon himself, Prince Corum of the Vadhagh, Erikosë – the only Champion to remember all his incarnations – and Elric of Melniboné. The mysterious Captain of the ship explains that the Conjunction of the Million Spheres is a time of conflict between Law and Chaos, determining their relative power in the next cycle of the Multiverse. This conjunction is threatened by a pair of alien sorcerers from beyond reality. Only the combined power of the Champion Eternal can defeat them.

The ship lands at an island that contains the shadow of Tanelorn, the home of the two sorcerers. The four Champions and their companion warriors attack the isle, and manage to overwhelm the mind of one of the sorcerers. The Champions then use the sorcerer’s power to combine their forms, becoming the Four Who Are One. In this terrible shape, they destroy the second sorcerer. When the aliens are gone, Hawkmoon and the other survivors find themselves in Tanelorn, a shifting city of possibilities and portals. Erikosë vanishes for an instant, and returns with Oladahn of the Bulgar Mountains, who he rescued from death. All the Multiverse is accessible from this city during the Conjunction. Orland Fank arrives, and they encounter the Runestaff and Jehamia Cohnahlias once more. The spirit Sword is also there – it is a spirit of Chaos, a spirit bound at the start of the previous Multiverse to serve Law and the Eternal Champion. Now that cycle is ending, and the spirit will pass away unless the Champion preserves it, but it has a plan. It offers Hawkmoon and Erikosë what they most desire – his children and his friends Bowgentle and D’Averc, in Hawkmoon’s case – if they will aid it. The spirit has inhabited many forms in many worlds, chief among which are the Black Jewel of Hawkmoon and the Black Sword wielded by Erikosë and Elric. Both those forms are present, and both contain a part of the spirit’s power.

Erikosë agrees to aid the chaos-spirit and destroy the Cosmic Balance. The spirit flows into the Black Sword, and the Balance between Chaos and Law is destroyed, but Hawkmoon uses the distraction to use the Runestaff to destroy the Black Jewel. The spirit of the sword is annihilated, as is the Runestaff. The cosmic principles of Law and Chaos, of Justice and Fear are gone from reality. Cosmic authority is gone, leaving only the choices of Men to determine fate. The gods are gone. The companions leave Tanelorn, and find themselves back on the Silver Bridge between Granbretan and Europe. The strangeness is over; the Conjunction passed, and the Eternal Champion may rest in all his guises. In his guise as Hawkmoon, accompanied by all his once-dead friends and family, he returns to Castle Brass.

Here ends The Chronicles of Castle Brass.