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http://zermoth.net/mabi/library/view/en/040-03-002
Dark Knights and the Armor of Blackness
Table of Contents
1. Preface
2. Wallace's Manuscript
3. In Conclusion
Preface
I was looking for a job some time ago, as many young people of my age do, when I was introduced to a man who had left his own family to pursue research all alone in his house. According to the man, living and working all alone for some time now had made him start to feel frustrated and somewhat isolated. He wanted to hire me to relieve some of that frustration.
So this man became my Master- His name was Wallace and the subject of his studies were the Dark Knights. Who were these beings cloaked in their armors of blackness that they are able to exhibit such superior powers? How is it that they are able to antagonize Paladin himself? And who are they to remain in Erinn all this time under such a veil of secrecy? My Master spent all of his energy on the study of Dark Knights and by my Master's side, I faithfully assisted his investigations..
Come to think of it, my Master was so absorbed in all the ancient manuscripts, relics, paintings and peoples' testimonies that despite his almost strangely obssessive fixation on the topic, I never felt tired of the work or felt that I was not being treated right. My Master was a very mild tempered and thoughtful man. I was very happy with the work I was doing and felt fulfilled serving my Master. I think he too saw me as a dependable, trusty assistant.
It was about 3 months into my job when my Master disappeared without a trace. At first I simply thought that he had heard of some lead to a newly recovered armor or object that would lead to some part of an armor, and thought that he had urgently left to investigate the site of discovery because that is what he would do, in fact quite frequently. But when days passed and then months passed without a word from my Master, people began to create search parties to look for the whereabouts of my Master. But despite all of our efforts, there was no trace of him anywhere to be found.
After about six months, everyone began to assume that my Master was dead. His family wished to at least recover his body, but at the time, that seemed like an impossibility.
The family members decided to burn all of my Master's belongings and because my contract with the Master was still in effect, I helped them organize all of his belongings. Throughout this process, I realized that burning the Master's research findings would be wasting away the body of his life's work, so I decided to keep the records of his work in a separate place.
While looking through his belongings and research documents, I started reading his manuscripts when I realized something that literally shocked me to the core, to the point that I nearly lost my breath and felt an electric shock run through my spine.
I had always thought of the Dark Knights as equally powerful as the ancient Fomors but the Master had already clearly described all about the Dark Knights' existence and characteristics in this manuscript, not to mention that he had in fact described in detail his possible whereabouts.
I lost a couple of nights' sleep thinking about what I should do, and decided to compile his manuscript into a book after carefully persuading the Master's family.
If you are reading this book, I presume that you are someone that is deeply interested in knowing about the Dark Knights. I hope that by reading this book, you will realize what dangerous beings these Dark Knights really are and deeply consider the meaning behind their armors. My hope is that you will decide to protect your own precious life knowing how a life can be completely ruined by your own curiosity.
Wallace's Manuscript
When I first read that a certain group of Fomors wear pieces of the Dark Knights' armor as amulets, I felt my heart poundnig with a surge of excitement. Finally, I thought to myself, I have discovered a way to get a hold of a piece of the Dark Knights' armor in my hands.
I've always enjoyed stories about the Dark Knights, ever since I was a child. There are a number of known legends about the Dark Knights but one of the things that had always interested me the most was the fact that the Dark Knights have as much colorful historical tales of heroism as tales passed down about the Knight of Light's legends of heroism. Even if such tales of heroism were amongst Fomors, and not of men, it was still an incredibly interesting body of legends which always interested me deeply.
Seeing how popular those black armors, described as Armors of the Dark Knights, are in Erinn, I am probably not all that unique in my interests in the Dark Knights. I think a lot of people in Erinn actually call anyone that is dressed in black armor a Dark Knight. Legends of the Dark Knights are a part of children's literature and are seen as fictitious stories meant to illustrate Paladin's omnipotence.
However, I believe that these Dark Knights have more to them than the black armor that they wear. They are not beings that were fabricated to illustrate the duality of darkness and light. I believe that Dark Knights are real beings. Furthermore, the Dark Knight's armor which was found amongst the relics as of recent, do support my trajectories. The Dark Knight's armor is often described as a Spirit armor, according to ancient legend. I believe that makes the Dark Knights' armor on an equivalent level of importance as that of Paladins' armor.
Many people think of Dark Knights as fictitious characters which were created out of peoples' boredom, but when actual pieces of the Dark Knights' armor were discovered and studied as magic, the results were quite interesting. That is because all of the hidden secrets behind the Dark Knights' magic powers had everything to do with the armor itself.
According to my findings, the Dark Knight's armor is cast by a spell to fully protect the wearer from any and all external shocks or attacks and it is this spell that makes the material as well as color of the armor look and feel the way it does. The spell that shrouds the armor has the effect of separating the wearer from the external environment, so to speak, and the power of the armor is continually fed into the armor, somehow, independent of the wearer's awareness. This is the reason the Dark Knight's armor is described as the armor of blackness in ancient manuscripts, that is because the magical power that shrouds the Black Knight's armor takes the wearer to a mysterious abyss of blackness.
If this armor had been found in its full form, we wouldn't have to be studying the armor's small pieces to find out more about its properties. In fact, all we would have to do is put on the armor to find out about the powers of the armor. But we haven't had such luck as of yet, and those who study the Dark Knight's armor, including myself, are, in the mean time, doing everything to try and locate a fully preserved Dark Knight armor. One thing that has been comforting is that we have been excavating many little pieces of the Dark Knights' armor, one at a time. Some of the pieces have been destroyed to such an extent that there remains no trace of any magic on the physical material of the armor. In such cases, we have had to analyze the material itself to see if the piece that we have excavated is in fact a remnant of the armor or not, basing our speculations solely on its shape. But sometimes, we would find small traces of magic remaining on the pieces of armor that was found which is in turn both a great reward as well as an excruciating process as we try to imagine and speculate the properties of the original magical spell as well as how such a spell would have been shrouded upon this piece of armor.
If there was a way for us to know how the Dark Knight's armor is made, we probably wouldn't have to be struggling and speculating to the extent that we do. But I was lucky to have found my research partner and friend, Punbar. He had been investigating the secrets surrounding the Armor of Blackness for almost a decade, and was a man of great intelligence and passion. Punbar wanted to compare and bring together our findings, and because of my deep curiosity to find the original shape of the Dark Knights' armor, I agreed to his request.
When we brought all of our pieces together, we found that our pieces didn't really go together perfectly. That just meant that the various pieces of armor that we had each gathered were coming from a number of different armors and for what it was worth, we were finally able to physically see the general shape of the Dark Knight's armor right before our eyes.
Punbar and I were ecstatic. And such a joyful moment led me to entrust my armor pieces to Punbar since he was the one to think of bringing our pieces together in the first place. I just took a specimen to experiment with on my own. We both felt satisfied with this arrangement, and I made regular visits to Punbar, twice a week, in fact, to examine the armor. Punbar took impressive care of the sample armor. In fact, it seemed to have improved in its condition over time. Parts of the armor that had been corroded seemed to lose its dullness, and parts that didn't exactly connect to each other properly seemed to find its own proper place on the body of the armor. It was looking better and better, to the extent that it started to appear as if all the pieces had originally come from a single body of armor..
Some months later, I heard through some other researchers that the Dark Knights' armor was missing. I was at the time working on testing the correlation between the suddenly rising power of the spell over the armor and the changes of season when I heard the news. I had been hearing from other researchers that there have been robberies of armors that have been pieced together by other researchers but didn't really worry as I knew that Punbar was meticulous in his care of our armor. We continued on with our research interpreting the newly found ancient war manuscripts which talked about Dark Knights and I was looking forward to doing the translations myself as I had always been interested in ancient languages.
Translating documents was not an easy task, but it was not completely outside the range of my expectations. The content of the manuscript, however, did exceed my expectations because it provided an explanation for why the Dark Knights' armor were always found broken into pieces. That, according to the manuscript, was because the only way to undo the spell of the armor is to destroy the armor itself. What does it mean to take away one's powers by destroying the armor, not the person wearing the armor? I don't see why they would go to all the trouble of destroying the armor especially when considering the future generations who might want to wear the armor, so why is it that there are no armors that have been left in their original shape without being destroyed?
With the various reports of robberies amongst our fellow researchers came other disturbing news. One of them was that the robber had murdered the researcher of the armor. There were rumors that the robber was conducting the perfect crime, leaving absolutely no trace of the researcher's body to be found anywhere. I began to worry about Punbar and Punbar would comfort me by saying that he was surrounded by Paladin trainees who were protecting him. But whenever my anxieties would seem to settle, there would be news of another robbery, with the same story about the perfect crime committed by this hyper intelligent robber who left no traces behind. There was something ominous about all of this. I started to wonder if maybe the Fomors did not want humans to keep investigating into the secrets of the dark world. If I were to continue on with this research, could something bad happen to me too? These thoughts of anxiety, though, only affected me at night, and I was able to live my life without any major disruptions as I was able to convince myself that there was nothing to worry about.
It was around then that I noticed that Punbar had become visibly weak and was turning increasingly sensitive. His complexion was looking dim. I was certain that he was affected by his anxieties just as I was. The armor, on the other hand, was looking rather shiny and in good condition. Kept in such good condition, I started to worry that our armor would be subject to the robber's interest eventually.
About a week later, the thing that I worried the most about actually came true. At that time, I was preoccupied with interpreting a poem about the Armor of Blackness. The poem talked about how the Armor of Blackness increases the wearer's desires to produce such power and materializes human desires in the form of strength, but that while it does so, it completely absorbs the wearer's own feelings and will. I began to wonder if the armor could have such effects on the people who possess the armor, and started to consider whether Punbar's strange behaviors as of late had something to do with the armor that we had put together for the purpose of finding its original shape. So that is why when I went to see Punbar, I had listened to Punbar's explanation in the first place..
It was that very same night that Punbar disappeared along with the armor. I found all the Paladin trainees in front of Punbar's house severely injured. I wondered if Punbar had been kidnapped along with the armor by some mysterious power but I also wondered if the armor had affected Punbar himself in some way. Perhaps the magic powers of the pieces of armor had spellbound him to piece the armor together, only to then eventually put it on himself. Of course this theory doesn't necessarily explain the disappearance of the other researchers but...
Perhaps that is the curse of the Dark Knights? I cannot say for certain but that is what I feel. And if there is no other way to confirm this hypothesis, I will go to the Fomors in the dungeon who supposedly wear these armor as their amulets, to find out. After Punbar disappeared, I've been thinking about taking my assistant Pintan and starting over with the piece of armor we have found together.
In Conclusion
This the end of my master, Wallace's records. My Master disappeared with the armor that he had pieced together, and we have yet to find any traces of him or the armor. I do not want to think that my Master had fabricated such a situation just to prove his conviction about this topic. So if that is the case, I am left to draw just one possible conclusion. There are a number of mysterious secrets that surround these armors of blackness, one of the secrets being that the armors are capable of casting a curse upon us. If any of you readers are to come across a demon and/or an object that appears to be a piece of armor, I would recommend that he/she consider the content of this book. And if you, by chance, see my Master anywhere, I sincerely hope that you will let me know.
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