An epic trilogy to challenge the Lord of the Rings; this trilogy is an adaption of the Hawkmoon novels:
All of Europe is falling under the rule of the Empire of Granbretan. The German province, Koln, is taken and the legendary hero of Germany, Duke Dorian Hawkmoon von Koln, is captured. Hawkmoon agrees to serve the Empire of Granbretan in exchange for his life. The leader of King-Emperor Huon's forces, Baron Meliadus, uses Hawkmoon as a mouthpiece to bring the rest of Europe into the fold as subjects to Granbretan. Hawkmoon sees the horrid things done by the various soldiers and warriors of Granbretan. It drives Hawkmoon to throw off his servitude to Granbretan; he is promptly taken to the dark city of Londra, to the sorcerer-scientists of Huon.
Baron Meliadus is sent to reestablish peace in Europe--a peace that allows the warriors of Granbretan to do as they would with the people--by securing an alliance with the renouned kingmaker and kingbreaker, the mercenary Count Brass, who is lord protector of the Kamarg in France. Meliadus's affection for Brass's daughter compromises his mission. Meanwhile, Hawkmoon is brainwashed and implanted with a black jewel.
Hawkmoon is sent to Castle Brass to secure Brass's allegience to Granbretan. The jewel allows the sorcerer-scientists to see everything Hawkmoon sees. If Hawkmoon tries to act against orders, the jewel will consume his mind. Count Brass uses a sorcery to dampen the jewel's power, and Hawkmoon becomes a hero to the Kamarg by leading a resistance against Granbretan.
The dragon mounts, and anti-aircraft turrets that surround the marshes of the Kamarg are barely able to resist Granbretan's ornithopters, flame-lances, and battle barges. The Kamarg can't withstand another attack, and the threat of the black jewel reawakening is imminent. Thus Hawkmoon embarks on a quest into Asia to find a monk whose knowledge of sorcerery is sufficient to deaden the black jewel.
Within Asia, Hawkmoon learns that Granbretan is expanding its empire to engulf Asia and Amarekh across the sea. Hawkmoon saves the monastery-city where the monk lives from Granbretan's soldiers; the monk will not remove the black jewel. It is a counterbalance to the Runestaff, which Hawkmoon must seek out. Only a paragon of the Cosmic Balance can withstand the kind of rotten, degenerate Law that emerges from the Chaotic nature of Granbretan. Thus, Hawkmoon is told to see the Runestaff.
Hawkmoon returns to Castle Brass to find a smoking ruin. He grieves for the people of the Kamarg, raped and killed while others were crucified as punishment for their rebellion. Within the ruins, a knight in jet and gold armor emerges. The knight encourages Hawkmoon to pursue the Runestaff and points him to the desert city of Soryandum.
In the fantastic laboratory of the chief sorcerer-scientist, Baron Meliadus learns of strange occurrences throughout Europe: cities exploding in flames, ashes raining from the sky, the dead rising from their graves. It seems that some fundamental force governing the order of the Multiverse has been disrupted. Meliadus brings his concerns to King-Emperor Huon, who sees wisdom in Meliadus's words. He confides in Meliadus that the black jewel was gained through a compact with an unknown force that would be considered "elemental" or "demonic" by less educated minds.
After meeting with Huon, Meliadus visits his paramour, Countess Flanna. Flanna had been having an affair with the chief sorcerer-scientist before coupling with Meliadus, and had heard as much about supernatural dealings. Flanna and Meliadus feel Huon is dangerously close to overreaching. Just recently, a couple of Granbretan's warriors were murdered by the Londra peasantry. Flanna and Meliadus decide that, by finding the Runestaff and putting an end to the strange disasters--the dead rising, spontaneous combustions, rains of ash etc--they could head an uprising to depose Huon and usher the Empire of Granbretan into a new era of a kinder, gentler rule.
Hawkmoon reaches the ruined city of Soryandum and is attacked by an insectoid mechanical behemoth. He defeats the mechanized guardian; the wraithfolk of Soryandum reveal themselves to Hawkmoon. The black jewel drew them. It is revealed that the wraithfolk had given Count Brass a machine that shifted Castle Brass to another reality within the Multiverse. The machine's twin is in their possession, and is given to Hawkmoon. Hawkmoon learns that the Runestaff is kept in Dnark. At that moment, a team of Granbretan's warriors--led by the Frenchman Hulliam D'Averc--reach Soryandum. Hawkmoon panics and activates the machine, leaving Soryandum.
Hawkmoon finds himself in a version of Europe where King-Emperor Huon has acquired the Runestaff. The continent is warped, mutated, her people bizzare human/animal hybrid beasts. Demons and elementals stalk the land as the world slowly decays. Hawkmoon reunites with Count Brass and the nobles of Castle Brass. They use the machines to return to their version of the Kamarg.
Baron Meliadus, moving among the people who have since resettled the Kamarg, stirs up resentment against Count Brass and Hawkmoon. He calls them butchers of the people and arms the civilians. Thus Castle Brass is assaulted by the peasantry, forcing Hawkmoon, Yisselda (Brass's daughter), Brass, and the monk-poet Bowgentle to flee the Kamarg on dragonback. Hulliam D'Averc tails them in a stealthy ornithopter while Baron Meliadus marshals a force to sail for Dnark. Flanna begins building a following among the nobles of Huon's court. The chief sorcerer-scientist Kalan gets wind of Flanna's plans and begins to move against her.
At Dnark, Hawkmoon and co reach a phantasmagoric city where the Runestaff is guarded by Jehmiah Colinadous. Hulliam D'Averc has beaten Hawkmoon and co to Dnark. In the City of Glowing Shadows, a place of neutrality, Hawkmoon, Brass, Yisselda, and Bowgentle reach an accord with D'Averc and bring him into their fold. Then Meliadus and his armies arrive, flame-lances and airship cannons blazing. The reptilian defenders of the City of Glowing Shadows are cut down by Meliadus's forces while Hawkmoon and co escape to D'Averc's castle in France.
In the castle, they devise a plan for entering the throne room of King Emperor Huon to kill him and seize control of Londra. Meliadus, at the City of Glowing Shadows, recovers a sword from the chamber of the Runestaff. It's pomel is made of black jewel, with a piece missing. Realization dawns on Meliadus. He turns back for Londra.
King Emperor Huon, appraised of the state of his court, has Flanna brought before him and executed for her treason. Her blood is used as an offering to the demonic elemental that gave Huon the black jewel; this being who gave Huon his immortality, provides sorcerer-scientist Kalan with a means of reactivating the Jewel in Hawkmoon's head.
Meliadus arrives to find Londra under martial law under Huon's orders. Meliadus uses the supernatural qualities of his black sword to bring the civilians and willing warriors of Granbretan under his sway. Meliadus descends on Huon's palace, manages to infiltrate it, and shatters the throne-globe that has housed King-Emperor Huon for hundreds of years. The old, fetal-looking thing is easily slaughtered by Meliadus's blade. Meliadus is quick to bind Kalan to him in service, and orders him to go through with reactivating the black jewel.
At the gates of Londra, Hawkmoon and co are surprised to see the people's uprising against Granbretan and use it to their advantage. During the battle, Hawkmoon sees Count Brass and Bowgentle killed. Their deaths are unheroic; Hawkmoon and Yisselda fight through to the palace of King-Emperor Huon. Right then the black jewel is reactivated, and Meliadus orders Hawkmoon to stand down, or see Yisselda and his unborn children dead on his own blade. Hawkmoon begins to do so; Yisselda snatches a flame lance, sprints for Meliadus, and just as she switches the device on, the black jewel is given the order. Hawkmoon is thrown across the throne room, his blade impaling Yisselda. She drops the flame lance just as Meliadus is scorched by the fires. He flees, screaming. Hawkmoon is left in the throne room, sorrowful. Outside the war rages, with dragons being impaled on Londra's spires by the ornithopters and airships of Granbretan while soldiers and civilians are ground to bloody pulp under the tread of tanks.
Hawkmoon uses the black sword that Meliadus dropped to cut the black jewel from his head. Something jumps from the blade's red runes into the jewel, whispering sweet comforts to Hawkmoon. Within his mind's eye, Hawkmoon confronts a manifestation of the jewel and shatters it. Upon coming to, Hawkmoon finds that the black jewel has gone gray.
Hawkmoon leaves Londra, confused and angry, heading for his German province of Koln. There he is met by the knight in jet and gold who admonishes Hawkmoon for fighting to preserve a dead past in the face of a golden future. That is why his closest friends and allies suffered ignominous deaths at the battle of Londra. Angrily, Hawkmoon kills the knight in jet and gold. All of Europe is stuck in the seething turmoil of the war that he had started. Thus, Hawkmoon decides to dedicate his life and afterlife to the defense of Koln.
At the movie's close, Hawkmoon and other nobles are gathered at Wolf's Palace, in Londra. There, King Meliadus discusses the terms of a new Europe, a different Europe than one that existed under King-Emperor Huon. Meliadus intends to honor Flanna and those who died for Huon's madness by turning Granbretan into a bastion of knowledge and academia. He hopes to make Europe a beacon of reason and learning in the world.
The End.
I should add that Granbretan's troops wear beast masks, giving their armies and society a rigid caste system. It is considered an abomination to appear without one's beast mask in public.
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