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monthofsick · 2 years

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Nightmare before Halloween

Nov(emeto)ber 2022, Day 11: Unconventional receptacle

OCs: Thien, Tiago, Isaiah, Luka

This was the prompt that made me rack my brain for weeks. I really wanted the receptacle to be unconventional, but no idea seemed good enough - until Halloween came to the rescue. Finally, Thien has the dubious honor to get his own story after only being the designated sympathy puker twice.

TW: Vomit, severe ear infection, side effects of medication

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Thien was determined. Frustrated, unnerved and tired, but still determined to make the most of this evening. He had been looking forward to Tiago’s Halloween party for weeks. His family was out of town, so the friends had an entire house as their private venue. During the spooky season, the cozy Almeida home turned into a dark and twisted witch’s cottage of unspeakable horrors. Painted wooden panels and countless decorations turned the facade into a gingerbread’s house evil twin. Human sized spiders, boiling cauldrons, treacherous witches and an entire army of skillfully crafted jack-o‘-lanterns both attracted and frightened every kid in the neighbourhood.

It didn't stop there – the inside was decked out with fake spider webs, bats hanging from the staircase, a skeleton relaxing in his rocking chair in front of the fireplace. Curtains and carpets were replaced with crimson and black velvet. Red window foil resembling stained glass transformed the living room into a haunting recreation of Prince Prospero's ill-fated costume ball from The Masque of the Red Death. There even was a mannequin dressed in a blood-stained funeral shroud and an ebony clock with an ominous chime.

Honestly, there was no better place to celebrate Halloween. Thien was a connoisseur of classic horror movies and he absolutely adored Vincent Price's performance as the depraved Prospero in the 1964 adaptation of Poe's grim tale. Watching it in a chamber that seemed to have sprung right out of the prince's abbey promised the ultimate immersive experience.

That was until Thien was struck with his very own horror story just a week before the long awaited festivity. He woke up in the middle of the night and scrambled out of bed to take a leak when suddenly, someone drove a power drill straight into his left ear. Thien doubled over, pushing both hands against his head in a desperate attempt to alleviate the sharp pain. When he finally managed to stagger to the bathroom, the floor under his bare feet felt unsteady like soft rubber.

The next morning, Thien woke up in a swimming pool of his own sweat. He wouldn't have believed that it was possible to drown in wet sheets, but his feverish body was determined to prove him otherwise. Freezing and sweating at the same time, Thien got himself some Tylenol and curled up on the couch with a fresh blanket. The fever wasn't impressed by the pill and neither was the stabbing pain in his ear. Thien was grateful that one of his flatmates changed his bedding, he was barely able to muster the strength to even get up again.

Dead tired, yet unable to sleep because of the red hot needle piercing his eardrum, Thien suffered through an unending night. Short fragments of fever dreams were more draining then restful. At dusk, he felt even worse than the evening before. An immense pressure had built up on the left side of his head, contrasted by sudden, intensely painful stings. Thien popped another pill, but it only hurt more and more. Overwhelmed by the certainty that his head was about to explode, Thien pressed his palm over the auricle and buried his face in the pillow. It was like an insane lobotomist hammered an ice pick deep into his ear until the pain reached an agonizing peak – and then, all of a sudden, it stopped.

At first, Thien couldn't help but sigh with relief as the pressure was released. A dull, indifferent earache remained, accompanied by a muffled buzzing. Then, to his dismay, Thien felt some kind of liquid dripping out of his ear canal. Teeth clenched, he struggled out of bed and was instantly hit by vertigo and nausea. Groping along the wall, Thien staggered into the bathroom. When he forced himself to look into the mirror, he saw a yellowish, mucoid substance leaking from his left ear. The sight was enough to make him gag.

It was probably the sign that a visit to the doctor was inevitable.

After shivering in the waiting room for half an hour, Thien was examined by an ENT specialist. She told him that he had a middle ear infection, which was rather uncommon in adults (not helpful) and had caused his eardrum to burst. At least it was a rather small tear that would probably heal up on its own. Thien was prescribed an antibiotic to kill the bacteria responsible for the infection and prevent them from spreading even further.

So it was back to bed with more Tylenol and his new best friend Amoxicillin. Thien had four days until the party to recover and he wanted to make the most of it. Like a model patient, he made sure to drink enough water and tea, took his medication exactly as described in the package leaflet, rested and slept as much as possible and even bribed his flatmates to provide him with healthy meals. The fever did, in fact, go down and after the third day, Thien's temperature was back to normal. A diffuse pain lingered in his ear and sounds were strangely muted on the left side. But overall, he felt a lot better.

Too bad that his stomach didn't like its microbiome-killing visitors. Nausea became Thien's constant companion, but it wasn't so severe that he couldn't keep the pill or his food down. Everything was somewhat tolerable, it just wasn't good. After bemoaning his fate for an hour or two, Thien decided to kick his own butt and went straight into determination mode.

Halloween was his night. So what if things weren't perfect, it wouldn't stop him from having fun. He could rest again the next day.

As impressive as the decoration had been in broad daylight, it paled compared to the spectacle revealed after dark. Flickering candles brought the jack-o'-lanterns to life. Smoke rose from the witch's cauldron and the bubbling brewage emanated an eerie green glow. The giant spiders were looking for their prey with menacing eyes glowing deep red. It was truly a sight to behold and instantly lifted Thien's spirits.

"Damn it, I thought you had to stay in bed", Tiago grinned while he greeted from the doorstep, right next to a large pumpkin with a particularly dreadful grimace. Upon closer inspection, the two of them could very well be brothers.

"Are you scared because I'm bringing the creepy stuff?" Thien raised his bag that was jam-packed with all kinds of horror movies, from cult classics to notorious shockers. "Don't blame me if you wet your sheets!"

"Ugh, leave me alone with your weird fetishes!" Tiago rolled his eyes, then stepped aside to let his friend into the small entrance hall. The lighting was dim and a huge spider web covered the entire coat rack. Thien left his jacket at the tiny bench next to the shoe shelf instead.

The only light source in the adjacent foyer – affectionately known as the batcave – was a blacklight that revealed grisly details hidden in seemingly harmless pantings. Another surprise that had been invisible by day. And then they finally entered the main attraction: the black chamber, formerly known as living room. Everything was draped in black velvet – the couch, the chairs, the table, even the walls. LED torches cast flickering scarlet light through the blood colored windows. The Red Death figure lured in the corner and the sinister ebony clock was about to toll the hour.

It was incredible.

"I… I don't even know what to say except that I ab-so-lute-ly love it!" Thien clasped his hands in excitement. The adrenaline rushing through his veins made him forget about his earache and the queasiness for a minute. "This is just perf-ohmygod!"

Thien jumped as he was suddenly grabbed by the shoulders from behind. Someone let out a distorted scream that turned into laughter just a second later. As Thien whirled around, he looked into the delighted faces of Luka and Isaiah who had been hiding behind one of the velvet tapestries.

"Why are you guys such assholes?", Thien coughed, but couldn't hold back a laughter himself, both as an aftereffect of the scare and relief that he could actually be here. "I'll make you regret this! Especially you, Isa, your stomach is so weak when it comes to gore."

"Hey, I'm not that squeamish… anymore", the redhead objected.

"Well, good luck while you're munching on this." Tiago twisted his lips into a malicious grin and gestured towards the dinner table. It was, quite literally, a feast for the eyes. There was black bean stew with a sour cream spider web drawn on top. Round slices of pimiento-stuffed olives turned deviled eggs into eyeballs. Hot dogs were carved and decorated to look like severed fingers, ketchup blood dripping all over the buns. Cheese bread puffs were wrapped up in strings of dough like mummies and chocolate truffles wore bat wings. Black caipiroska was served in erlenmeyer flasks.

"That is honestly so freaking cute." With glowing eyes, Isaiah grabbed one of the bats.

"No, it's not!" Tiago was visibly shaken by so much ignorance. "It's scary and disgusting! Whatever, dig in. And don't blame me when someone gets poisoned."

The friends loaded their antique plates, then made themselves comfortable in the TV corner. Thien wasn't exactly hungry, but how could he resist such a variety of both mouth-watering and gross looking dishes? At least he wanted to try everything. He had even double checked if alcohol would clash with his antibiotics, which it didn't. However, Thien had no desire to get drunk. It wasn't an enticing prospect when he already felt dizzy and nauseous to begin with.

Just like Thien had hoped, the black room's ghastly atmosphere did wonders for the atrocities on screen. After reveling in the gloomy ambience for a while, Thien brought himself to start eating. He didn't have the strong aversion against food that came with a stomach flu, but his palate was definitely more picky. The bean stew was hearty and flavorful enough to intrigue his tastebuds. The deviled eggs were a bit much though. There was a spicy kick to the yolk paste, probably Tabasco sauce, that irritated Thien's upsets stomach. The small piece of olive was enough to leave a lasting aftertaste that curbed Thien's appetite significantly.

Nothing bad could be said about the mummy bread per se – it was gooey, soft and packed a cheesy punch. Thien couldn't put his finger on what exactly was off-putting about the small round of dough, but it left him with a nagging unease in his belly. Maybe that was the source of his sudden reluctance to try the bloody finger hot dog. The gloriously disgusting design was right up Thien's alley and he wasn't put off by fake blood, no matter if it was in a movie or on a bun. The smell of meat and nitrate, however, didn't exactly appeal to him.

This was perfectly normal food, he told himself. This was food he liked. But the beefy sausage didn't go well with the overly sweet ketchup and even after Thien had swallowed, it left an oily film in his mouth. Thien couldn't bring himself to finish the whole thing. He hoped that the chocolate treat would help him get rid of both taste and mouthfeel, but the gooey fudge mixed with the meat grease in a highly unpleasant way.

At this point, Thien was fed up with anything edible. He placed the plate on the floor next to his chair and sipped on the pitch black cocktail instead. The crisp and tart flavor was enjoyable, until Thien's tastebuds betrayed him again and reported an intrusion of nail polish remover. Thien frowned, put the flask away and hugged his abdomen. His insides felt raw and a burning sensation had taken hold of his stomach. Even focusing on the movie didn't make him feel better anymore. It was like half of the bites he took had been stuck in his throat, pushing against his uvula with every bobbing gulp.

Thien's saliva carried a faint aroma of beans and cheese and chocolatey hot dogs, which would have been repulsive even if the fluid hadn't flooded his mouth like it did. He couldn't help but wonder if his belly was scolding him with angry growls – the TV was loud enough to drown out every other sound, but Thien felt it rumble and churn under his grip. His body was moving towards a direction he didn't like at all and maybe it was already too late to turn back.

"Damn it, I'm about to burst!", Isaiah groaned, taking the words right out of Thien's mouth. "'xcuse me for a minute, I gotta make room for more."

"Open the window when you're done!" Luka demonstratively held his nose. Thien licked his lips nervously. Hopefully, Isaiah wouldn't take too long.

Except that he did. Of course. At least ten minutes passed and Thien's stomach was bubbling like the witch's brew in the garden. He sank deeper into his armchair, only to have the shift in pressure force a burp out of his overboiling gastric kettle. It tasted as bad as it felt, sour and acrid. Thien's sore throat constricted in sync with his contracting abdominal muscles. The abundance of alkaline spit left a bitter taste in his mouth that didn't go away as he swallowed frantically.

Thien had to admit that this wouldn't end well if he stuck to his strategy of watching and waiting.

Careful not to send an unintended evacuation order to his stomach, Thien pushed himself up and left the black room. He teetered through the batcave towards the guest toilet door in the entry hall. It was still locked and Thien heared Isaiah humming inside. He took a deep breath and knocked.

"Aren't you done yet?"

"Uhm… no? I would have left if I was, wouldn't I?" Isaiah wasn't wrong, but that didn't help Thien with his emergency. Hot bile crawled up his throat, burning it like a sandpaper scrub.

"Can you hurry up a bit?", he croaked after forcing the rancid fluid back down. "…please?"

"I can't, especially not if you rush me. Or listen." Isaiah let out an uncomfortable groan. "Privacy, please?"

"Sorry, but I really need to…" Just as Thien was about to explain his dire situation, he was cut off by an unannounced surge of vomit rushing up his esophagus. He tried to swallow it back down, but the stuff just kept on coming. Desperately, Thien clutched his mouth with both hands. There was no way to contain the flood, he needed something to be sick in, and he needed it right now.

The kitchen sink? Too far away, Thien would probably explode on the way and splatter the entire foyer floor with his undigested stomach contents. The umbrella stand? It did look kind of expensive and Thien hadn't forgotten how Tiago had freaked out about Isaiah barfing in his mother's car. Family possessions were serious business to him. In an act of sheer desperation, Thien ripped open the entrance door, fell on his knees and lifted the lid from the big jack-o'-lantern.

Gentle warmth caressed Thien's skin as his face came close to the candle. Then he parted his lips and extinguished the flame with a jet of puke spraying from his very own fire hose. He had not expected the sheer force of the expulsion. Every single muscle from his neck down the chest to his abdomen cramped spasmodically, causing his body to jerk with a violent recoil as more of his dinner gushed from his mouth. Thien caught his glasses just in time before they could fall into the fetid mess bursting out of him. With trembling fingers, Thien put them aside – he had no intention to take a closer look at the cascade of sewage water he spewed into the pumpkin.

The violent heaves made him even more lightheaded, which in turn increased his nausea. One of Thien's hands held on to the jagged edge of the jack-o'-lantern with such strength that his knuckles turned white. The other one pushed against his aching belly that was gripped by a wrenching pain with every single retch. After the first spontaneous projectiles, expelling the remains of his meal became a more arduous task. Each gag pushed the thick mush just a little bit further up his esophagus. The physical strain brought tears to his eyes and pierced his left ear.

Suddenly, Thien felt a hand patting his back.

"Fuck, I'm so sorry!" Isaiah's bad conscience couldn't have been more obvious in his facial expression than it was in his voice. "I should have let you in."

Thien was unable to reply, but the thumps on his back helped his body to push the sick over the threshold. He tensed with another heave before he finally threw up a chunky blend of beans and dough and truffle and sausage bites. It tasted absolutely vile as it pumped up his throat and spurted from his mouth, plopping into the vomit pool below him with moist splats.

"Yeah, get it all out, you got this", Isaiah cheered him on. His closeness and touch did make Thien feel better. He wasn't used to someone taking care of him when he was being sick and he had expected it to only add awkwardness to the physical discomfort. Actually, it helped him to relax a bit and just let things happen. As Thien's body punched itself in the gut again with a vigorous muscle contraction, he leaned into it and bent closer to the jack-o'-lantern. More of the food he had forced down against his better judgment made a noisy return through his gaping mouth.

The messy slop Thien hurled into the pumpkin wasn't the only pattering sound anymore. His vomit had reached the jack-o'-lantern's razor-toothed grin and poured out of the creature's mouth as well. When Thien was finally able to catch his breath, shakily wiping his lips, the ghoulish pumpkin he had infected still kept on barfing down the steps.

"Damn it", Thien croaked. "I didn't think it would be so much."

"It's not your fault." Isaiah still rubbed Thien's back, even though he had stopped puking. "I had no idea you were going to be sick. Sorry I took so long."

"You couldn't have known. Just when I tried to tell you, it all came up." Thien spat out to get rid of the horrible taste sitting comfortable on his tongue. "By the way, did you happen to see cleaning supplies in the bathroom? I'd really like to destroy the evidence before Tiago finds out about this."

"Before I find out about what?"

Both Thien and Isaiah spun around, startled. Tiago was towering over them, arms crossed. Luka peered through the foyer door, curiously watching the scene unfold. Thien sighed in defeat and buried the face in his hands.

"I – I'm so sorry about this", he mumbled against his palms. "It's the antibiotics. My stomach wasn't great the whole week, but I swear this never happened before. Maybe the food was too spicy… or it's getting worse. I just couldn't hold it in."

"So… technically it's Isaiah's fault again because he's the one who was blocking the restroom", Tiago concluded.

"Hey, that's not fair!", Isaiah protested. "Don't make me clean up again."

"Don't blame him, he's not a clairvoyant." With a deep sigh, Thien put his glasses back on and got up from the ground. He was barely standing when a loud scream from the street made him flinch.

A tiny scarecrow pointed at them, then waved at her friends Chucky and Pennywise.

"You gotta check this out!", the little girl squealed. "There's a puking pumpkin!"

"It looks so real!" Pennywise stared at the front door in awe. "Not just dumb seeds and that stringy stuff from inside."

Wide eyed and a bit bashful, the illustrious trio crept closer. Scarecrow raised both her sickle and her tin bucket.

"Trick or treat!", she screeched with a voice resembling nails on a chalkboard. That kid had definitely practiced the grand entrance. While Tiago grabbed the candy bowl that had been strategically placed in the shoe rack, Chucky leaned over to his killer clown friend and whispered:

"It even stinks. This house is the best."

Thien had to bite his lower lip – not because he was embarrassed or nauseous, but to desperately hold back a hysterical giggle. The pint sized horror creatures thanked their chocolate donors with some well-rehearsed poses that were definitely more adorable than scary, then they moved on. As soon as Thien and Isaiah had entered the house and Tiago had closed the door behind them, the friends broke into laughter. Even Tiago couldn't contain himself, although he didn't roll on the ground like Isaiah did.

"That was honestly the funniest shit ever", Luka spluttered, clutching his belly. "Ti, you know that you have to leave the stuff there. They're going to hype up every kid in the neighbourhood."

"Guess there's no need to fear monsters when you have friends like you", Tiago snorted, trying to regain control. "So what. You gotta do anything to one-up your neighbours. Now get your lousy asses back into the living room, we're gonna clean up later."

"We? Did you just say… we?" Thien smiled warily. "So you can be nice if you want to."

"Don't tell anyone or I make you wipe up that barf with your tongue. Understood?" Tiago shoved Thien in the direction of the guest toilet. "Now rinse out that mouth, your breath reeks of puke. And by the way, the only things you get for the rest of the night are tea and saltines."

Thien swallowed down the thank you he had on the tip of his tongue. But the fact that, of all people, Tiago headed to the kitchen to prepare some tea made him feel a little warm and fuzzy. Even though Thien hadn't quite forgiven his body for acting up at the worst time possible, at least it had made this Halloween a night to remember.

#submission #tw vomit #tw emeto #tw medication #tw side effects #tw ear infection #nov(emeto)ber 2022 #novemetober 2022 #2022 day11 #prompt: unconventional receptacle #fandom: original characters #birdnamedenza #thien is so cute oh my gosh #his excitement about the party TT_TT #also i'm not gonna spoil for anyone peeking at tags but the unconventional receptacle... i loveeeee #i think i'm more shook than thien about tiago being nice like who /is/ he #definitely looking forward to seeing more of this gang!!

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casketsanctum · 3 years

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A Ravenloft Reading Recommendation (ARRR!)

Alright, everyone! It's almost Halloween, and you (probably) recently got Curse of Strahd and Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft but you want to know more about these terror-filled prisons. Well, grab your adventuring gear and delve with me into the Domains of Dread! This'll be a long one, so strap in and remember: Mistipedia is your friend.

This list covers Second Edition Ravenloft, Third Edition Ravenloft, and the novels. I can only hope I got everything in this.

Let's start with...

Second Edition Ravenloft

Realm of Terror

This is the original campaign setting for 2e Ravenloft, coming with 144 pages of rules, NPCs and domains, as well as a bunch of other goodies (maps, card stock sheets, and a transparent map overlay). Realm of Terror predates the Grand Conjunction timeline, so in terms of in-game time... it's a bit out of date. A lot of it, according to John Mangrum, is incoherent and many of the dates in this contradict others, so be careful about what you use here.

- You get... Rules for the Demiplane of Dread, alternate rules for Classes, Spells, the Dark Powers Check, fear and horror rules, as well as new spells, new magical items, and the different Dark Lords and Domains you can explore.

Ravenloft Campaign Setting (Box)

The revised campaign setting for 2nd Edition. Takes Grand Conjunction into account. Not to be confused for the book from 3rd Edition.

Domains of Dread

Third and final version of Ravenloft in the days of TSR. Introduces clusters and pocket domains, as well as new secret societies and several new classes. Postdates Requiem: The Grim Harvest.

Masque of the Red Death

A sub-setting of Ravenloft, taking place on a 1890's Gothic Earth.

- The Gothic Earth Gazetteer: Like the Ravenloft Gazetteers, you get details on the lands of Gothic Earth and their inhabitants. - A Guide to Transylvania

And More...

Islands of Terror - Self explanatory, new island domains! Nidala, Wildlands, Sceana, I'Cath, etc.

Darklords - This covers a handful darklords.

Forbidden Lore - A Ravenloft setting expansion. Rules for the Tarokka Deck and Dikesha Dice. Secret societies, spells, cursed items, as well as expanded psionics, curses, and power checks. You also get the domain of Kalidnay.

Forged in Darkness - Lots of cursed items.

Children of the Night: Vampires - 13 New vampire NPCs. Children of the Night: Ghosts - 13 New ghost NPCs. Children of the Night: Werebeasts - 13 New lycanthrope NPCs. Children of the Night: The Created - 13 New construct NPCs.

Champions of the Mists - New heroic NPCs and new Character Kits.

Carnival - NPCs that make up Isolde's Carnival.

Classic Van Richten's Guides (Either 2nd or 3rd Edition)

These have Van Richten lore in it, so I would read these if not for the main content.

Van Richten's Arsenal With VR Arsenal, you get new tools and devices, new arcane and divine spells, new magic items, and alchemical devices and feats. It also comes with Prestige Classes like the Alchemical Philosopher and the Anchorite of the Mists, as well as a guide to plan investigations and battles and plenty of NPC stat sheets with detailed backgrounds.

Van Richten's Guide to Demons

Van Richten's Guide to Ghosts

Van Richten's Guide to the Ancient Dead

Van Richten's Guide to the Created

Van Richten's Guide to the Lich

Van Richten's Guide to the Mists - We usually ignore this book because of it's questionable lore.

Van Richten's Guide to the Shadow Fey

Van Richten's Guide to the Vistani An excellent exploration of Vistani.

Van Richten's Guide to the Walking Dead

Van Richten's Guide to Vampires

Van Richten's Guide to Werebeasts

Van Richten's Guide to Witches Included within VR's Compendium 3.

Van Richten's Monster Hunter's Compendium I (Vampires, Werebeasts, Created)

Van Richten's Monster Hunter's Compendium II (Ghosts, Liches, Ancient Dead)

Van Richten's Monster Hunter's Compendium III (Demons, Vistani, Witches)

Modules

Feast of Goblyns - The first module of the Grand Conjunction series. Domains: Kartakass, Gundarak, Daglan.

Ship of Horror - The second module of the Grand Conjunction series. Domains: Sea of Sorrows, Nebigtode.

Touch of Death - The third module of the Grand Conjunction series. Domains: Har'Akir.

Night of the Walking Dead - Fourth module of the Grand Conjunction series. Domains: Sourange.

From the Shadows - Fifth module of the Grand Conjunction series. Domains: Darkon, Barovia.

Roots of Evil - Sixth and final module of the Grand Conjunction series and the follow-up of From the Shadows. Domains: Barovia.

Death Unchained - Part one of Grim Harvest.

Death Ascendant - Part two of Grim Harvest.

Requiem: the Grim Harvest (Boxed Set) - Death Triumphant, the last part of Grim Harvest.

Death Undaunted - Written by John Mangrum, never published, but still good!! Played it with a wonderful DM.

Book of Crypts - Nine short module anthology. Contains: Bride of Mordenheim, Blood in Moondale, The Dark Minstrel, The Cedar Chest, Corrupted Innocents, Rite of Terror, The Man With Three Faces, The Living Crypt, and Death's Cold Laughter.

Thoughts of Darkness - Elder brains, Mindflayers and a Von Zarovich, oh my! I played this one with a wonderful DM. Very fun.

The Created - Odaire

Web of Illusion - Sri Raji

Castles Forlorn - Forlorn

Dark of the Moon - Vorostokov

Adam's Wrath - Lamordia

The Awakening - Nova Vaasa

Hour of the Knife - Zherisia

Howls in the Night - Mordent

When Black Roses Blood - Sithicus

A Light in the Belfry (Boxed Set) - Avonleigh

Circle of Darkness - G'Henna

Chilling Tales (Anthology) - Through Darkened Eyes (Tepest), Undying Justice (Borca), Gazing into the Abyss (Darkon), Family Feud (Valachan), Surgeon's Blade (Lamordia), Scarlet Kiss (Mordentshire), Ancient Dead (Har'Akir), The Taskmaster's Leash (Dementlieu)

The Evil Eye - Invidia

The Nightmare Lands (Boxed Set)

Neither Man Nor Beast - Markovia

The Shadow Rift

Vecna Reborn

Die, Vecna, Die!

Third Edition Ravenloft

Ravenloft Third Edition (Campign Setting)

An update of Ravenloft to 3e.

Ravenloft Dungeon Master's Guide

Campaign creation, creating domains and communities, sinkholes of evil, samples of NPCs, as well as psionics and magic within Ravenloft. Cursed / Magic Items. Basically chapter one of Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft, but more fleshed out.

Ravenloft Player's Handbook

New mechanics like class weaknesses and magic ratings.

Secrets of the Dread Realms - Contains a new prestige class and a list of darklords by domain (with detailed backgrounds!)

Denizens of Darkness - New monsters! (3e)

Denizens of Dread - New monsters! (3.5e)

Heroes of Light - Focuses on heroic characters and deeds within Ravenloft. Prestige classes, secret societies, NPCs, and a heroic campaign guide.

Champions of Darkness - Focuses on anti-heroes. Prestige classes, secret societies, NPCs and an anti-hero campaign guide.

Legacy of the Blood - THIS IS A GOOD BOOK. Details on several powerful familes of the Core. Includes options to make characters related to that family and story hooks that go with it. Includes: Boritsi, d'Honaire, Dilisnya, Drakov, Godefroy, Hiregaard, Mordenheim, Renier, and the Von Zarovich families.

Masque of the Red Death (3rd Edition)

No modules in this one.

Ravenloft Gazetteers

A DM's dream come true... You get a massive amount of information and lore with these. Comes with a side-story. Very good!

- Volume 1 - Barovia, Hazlan, Forlorn, Kartakass

- Volume 2 - Darkon, Necropolis, Lamordia, Falkovnia

- Volume 3 - Dementlieu, Richemulot, Mordent

- Volume 4 - Borca, Invidia, Verbrek, Valachan, Sithicus

- Volume 5 - Nova Vaasa, Tepest, Keening, Shadow Rift

Modules

Dark Tales and Disturbing Legends - More modules! This is an anthology.

Expedition to Castle Ravenloft - Update to I6: Ravenloft.

Novels

Vampire of the Mists (Good!)

Knight of the Black Rose (Not a big fan of Soth, in my honest option.)

Dance of the Dead

Tapestry of Dark Souls

Carnival of Fear

I, Strahd (A classic.)

I, Strahd: The War Against Azalin (Read this one. Excellent!)

The Enemy Within

Mordenheim

Tales of Ravenloft (19 Short Stories - The Caretaker is my favorite. It has Strahd.)

Tower of Doom (Personally, if you don't want your eyes cursed, I would not read this. This has been a warning. I told you so.)

Baroness of Blood

Death of Darklord

Scholar of Decay

King of the Dead (A must-read. It's that good.)

To Sleep with Evil

Lord of the Necropolis

Shadowborn

Spectre of the Black Rose

Heart of Midnight

#ravenloft #curse of strahd #van richten's guide to ravenloft

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qm-vox · 3 years

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So You Want To Play A Fairest

(Portrait of Erin Peters by cantankerousAquarius. The character originally appeared in Night Horrors: Grim Fears, published by White Wolf; catch my take on her in New Avalon)

Previous Articles: So You Want To Play A Beast, So You Want To Play A Wizened, So You Want To Play An Elemental, So You Want To Play An Ogre, & So You Want To Play A Darkling

You ever wonder, flipping through a Monster Manual for D&D, or a Bestiary for Pathfinder, why nymphs and hags are both always, always, women? It’s older than you know. Dig into the sordid history of tabletops and you’ll find sylphs that Gary Gygax wrote, Chaotic charmers who use mind control to reproduce with non-sylph men; you’ll find the legacy of the matriarchal drow, who follow a mad goddess, and you’ll find the medusae, whose sexual dimorphism is so complete that their men are beautiful and can turn stone into people.

Dredge deeper and you’ll find the tales that Gygax and his wretched ilk based such creatures off of.

You ever wonder why we assign such powerful Gender to creatures of beauty and horror?

Fairest don’t. They know, every time they wake up from a nightmare that is also a wet dream. They know, every time they get hit on at the bar and have to decide how they’re playing this. They know, every time they look in a mirror and see not their own face, but the ten thousand horrors that made it beautiful.

If you are very patient, and lucky, and kind, they might tell you why.

If you aren’t, they may show you.

This article draws primarily on Changeling: the Lost and Winter Masques, as well as Swords at Dawn and Night Horrors: Grim Fears. Other sources, when used, will be cited. It requires Content Warnings for sexual violence, sexual slavery, abuse, gaslighting, addiction, substance abuse, self-harm, self-image problems, mentions of fascists & fascist ideology, and just, so very much incel bullshit.

Bonus Material Part Two: The Seeming Part

The end of this article, just past the customary Sample Fairest, will include some additional material intended to help you select a Seeming for your character and otherwise build them up as one of the Lost, much as So You Want To Run A Spring Court included material for Courts as a topic.

Take Me To Wonderland - Fairest Overview

Fairest is the fourth Seeming presented in Changeling: the Lost and possibly the most confused about its own identity. Its sections in Winter Masques present depths and nuance that are completely absent in core, essentially making Winter Masques required reading for Fairest players in a way that no other book is - especially since Fairest keep getting written in a particular way alluded to in the Ogre article, which I will expand on later in this article. Fairest is numerically well-represented in canon and popular in the fanbase, home to many memorable character concepts, but its bones with folklore and tradition are weaker than it fronts as.

Ogres and Darklings claim an innate relationship to physical violence; so too do the Fairest claim a relationship to violence. The violence of Perception and its dark twin, Judgement; of Rumor and its mad dog, Prejudice, the violence of Lies and their merciless master, Truth. Fairest, alone among the Lost, have casual access to the resources of a society that refuses to service or acknowledge Changelings, and with access to that society comes both opportunity and temptation. To be Fairest is to wield power that many other Lost cannot, but the opportunity that power offers is a lie; a Fairest can smile until her face breaks like a mirror, but she’ll never be “sane” enough for the masses to see her as anything but a useful pet.

Life’s Lush Lips - Homecoming As A Fairest

Fairest can make the dubious claim of having the least clear memories of Arcadia amongst all the Lost, with Darklings and Beasts jockeying for second place. This isn’t to say that the experiences Fairest have are necessarily more intense or more inherently traumatic than that of other Lost, but rather that the abuse Fairest suffer is so emotional, so targeted at their perception of their selves and their situations and their self-image, that the memories which do form are inevitably colored by those emotions, coloring the dreams they have of Arcadia with both the emotional resonances they had at the time and with their later attempts to grapple with their own trauma and transformation. For many Fairest, who cannot trust even their strongest memory dreams, attempts to understand their own Durance must rely either on the word of their Keepers (and Faeries lie, oh, how they lie), or on reverse-engineering their own behavior to try and conceive of a trauma that could cause it.

Inevitably, however, some things are seared into their minds. For almost all Fairest, their Keeper is high on the list of things they remember with absolute clarity. Other facts, shattered and scattered, vary more widely. Erin Peters remembers stretched years kept in a cold, dark room lit only by her own hatred; every detail of her cell is scorched onto the back of her eyes, but the otherworldly balls her Keeper took her to blur together like food coloring in syrup. The slaves of the Candle Countess have terrible nightmares of the choices they were confronted with, the decision, offered over and over again, to become complicit in the Countess’s cruelty or to be victimized by it. Metallic Flowering from the Shining City struggle not to use drugs to mimic the rush of pleasure they’ve grown used to receiving for performing their jobs well; they also scream in terror if people touch them. A Draconic and a Shadowsoul both remember being used for the sexual pleasure of alien horrors; the one dreams of coiled scales and terrible teeth, the other a lifetime of lurking in an alien maze, tasked to perform the duties of a living trap for the “wicked” and “unwary” who had not yet shed the last vestiges of kindness.

There are no “wild” Fairest. For worse and worse still, to be Fairest is to have been defined by the inescapable and all-consuming attentions of your abuser, and it is this more than anything that other Lost so often fail to understand about the Fairest. Their Keepers heap them with reward and punishment, manipulating the Fairest with honeyed praise, godly wrath, gaslighting, neglect, withholding food, wondrous rewards, drugs from beyond the realms of earthly pleasure, and other hooks and crooks designed to make the Fairest dependent upon their abuser. It is hideously effective, and the first obstacle, maybe even the mightiest, that a Fairest faces to their escape is the simple horror and joy of being alone again. Their masters will try other tricks to keep them in place - tempting them with pleasures, horrific punishments, oh-so-sincere apologies - but before a Fairest can escape into the Hedge she must face, in her mind’s eye, the lonely flight back to the Iron Lands.

The memories that draw Fairest home often have parallels to their experiences in Arcadia. A slave in the Shining City bites into an otherworldly pastry and recalls her grandmother’s pie in its place; the bride of the Demon Lover, curled up under the sheets, thinks about the broken smile of the boyfriend she left behind at home. A Dancer remembers the roller rink where he fell in love with skating, while across the endless tides of the Fairest of Lands, a Shadowsoul holds on like grim death to years of work at haunted houses, scaring kids for fun and for Halloween. Fairest, so famous for their skill at words, struggle to articulate to other Lost why this should be so. Darklings assume it’s because these memories are less intense than Arcadia, and that the Fairest are fleeing to safety. Beasts get it a bit more right by thinking that these memories taste like home. The truth of the matter is that those memories have an intrinsic and nameless meaning; the highs and lows of Arcadia are divine, flawless, absolute, and therefore worthless. They are the proclamations of merciless gods. What draws the Fairest home, more than pain and pleasure they can have on their own terms, is the understanding that those gestures - for weal or for woe or for anything else besides - were made because someone cared about them, personally. Once they fully internalize that their abuser views them as disposable, the Fairest comes home to someone who won’t.

Three Kiths And Flowering Is One And A Half Of Them - Fairest Kiths

Yeah we’re about to be like that about it.

All Fairest can excel in the social arena; their Blessing can be used to flare almost every social roll in the game, and Fairest can never be caught off-guard in a social context (they suffer no untrained penalties to social rolls). With the sole exception of Empathy (usually rolled with Wits) and sometimes Streetwise, there’s no time a Fairest can’t fall back on their words and expect to win through or at least buy time. This is, as you might imagine, a godsend when it comes to attempts to pass in mortal society; Fairest can usually front, charm, bluff, or Manners(tm) their way through things like renting an apartment, nailing a job interview, asking their roommate to do the FUCKING DISHES, or getting stopped by a cop, but both the books and the fanbase miss something here. While Fairest are superb at active social events, they’re no better at keeping a lid on themselves (Composure-based rolls) than mortals are - and given both the nature of their trauma and the fact that they are, you know, Lost, Fairest have a lot more to keep a lid on day-to-day than the human society they’re trying to blend into. Thankfully, Fairest are pretty good at being able to politely leave a situation and go somewhere else to scream, shout, cry, or have a psychotic break, as appropriate.

Of course, Fairest can’t make something from nothing. As discussed in So You Want To Play An Ogre, you can’t win a social game someone else refuses to sit down to, and social rolls shouldn’t be mind control. All the Glamour in the world can’t make your roommate do the FUCKING DISHES if they’re deep in the throes of executive dysfunction, nor can it make the cashier at Walgreens fail to card you for wine when their computer literally won’t advance without an ID. People who are keyed up about honeyed words or whose own trauma came at the hands of manipulators and abusers might refuse to play that game on the terms the Fairest is setting, which makes it hard to, as it were, turn this problem into a nail. Lurking down this path as well is the specter of becoming like the masters who made you this way; if you get used to saying what will get people to listen to you, eventually you start seeing people as enrichment puzzles that dispense the things you want. Madness waits down that road, and it waits for Fairest with a giant spiked bat, thanks to their Seeming Curse.

There’s no pretty way to say this so I won’t: Fairest are always on the verge of losing their minds. Their curse hits them with a flat penalty to all rolls against losing Clarity, which means that Fairest lose Clarity faster than other Lost and they do so more consistently. This necessitates a balancing act with avoiding becoming heartless manipulators; Fairest must engage in control-seeking behavior in order to stay mentally well, must be able to trust and rely on people close to them, structure their lives, and anticipate important changes or they end up on the fast way down. Other Lost often don’t understand this need or the Fairest curse to begin with, and so Fairest end up in unofficial support groups for one another, similar to those run by Darklings except no one will admit it’s a support group even at gunpoint. Woe fucking betide the friend or life partner who gets between a Fairest and her “book club”, “girls’ night”, “D&D campaign”, or other excuse for this vital community support.

Fairest Kiths are...bad. They’re bad. This is the part of the article where I’m supposed to talk about thematics and symbolism and metaphor, and I cannot do that here, because they are bad. Fairest has three viable Kiths that are actual Fairest Kiths, one that’s a Beast Kith who got lost and wound up here by fucking mistake, and a pile of garbage bigger than my self-esteem problems. I’m almost tempted to only talk about those four Kiths and save myself the time but I suppose I should show the work like I’ve done for all the other Seemings, so here we fuckin’ go I guess.

Flowering - This is it. This is the Fairest Kith. If you want to roll any other kind of Fairest you must first pass the trial of justifying why you’re not playing Flowering. In theory, Flowering draws its mythic heritage from nymphs and dryads, charming flower sprites, Knights of Flowers, and the like, but in practice Flowering’s only mechanical effect is 9-again on Persuasion, Socialize, and Subterfuge with no qualification or requirement, which doesn’t just make you better at everything Fairest is good at, it makes you better when you spend Glamour to flare it too. Want to represent a biobahn sith’s hypnotic dance? Flowering works. Want to create a vampiric Fairest with a sultry voice? Here comes Flowering. The siren at the bar who smells like sea air and gunpowder? Flowering. Everything is Flowering. Even the things that aren’t Flowering are Flowering because all Fairest Kiths have a social focus, which is Flowering’s undisputed arena of mastery.

Bright One - In theory, Bright Ones represent beings of light in the vein of Victorian fey (which...ugh...Victorians), but their Goblin Illumination is, how you say, useless, only becoming vaguely useful for a total of 2 Glamour as a passive defense that took you 2 turns to set up. Anything you want to represent here can be found in Flowering and with Elements or Communion (Light).

Dancer - You know how Flowering gives you bonuses on all social rolls? Would you like those same bonuses but on 1 less skill and only on rolls that “involve physical grace”? No? Run Flowering here and give your character a Dance specialty in one or more skills.

Draconic - One of the game’s premier melee options and a Beast Kith who took a wrong turn and ended up getting a free makeover intended for someone else. Draconic in theory represents Fairest as dragons, monster girls, demons, and in general at their most physical, but that idea sorta...falls down a bit? Draconic’s bonuses are all about Brawl and all the sample Draconics are swordsmen, which might suggest to the discerning reader that someone in the office wasn’t reading their own fucking game. Draconic Fairest don’t make bad melee boys if you invest in Lethal Mien, but honestly this is Dual Kith bait; slap it on your Hunterheart or your Razorhand and go apeshit.

Muse - Close but no cigar. In theory Muses are, well, muses; figures of inspiration, mentorship, teaching, creative fire. Their Kith Blessing is strong but requires access to mortals, which is complicated and roundabout on the best of days. If you have an idea that you think is Muse-shaped, use Playmate instead.

Flamesiren - Behold, we enter the realm of Okay(tm). Flamesirens are what Bright Ones wanted to be, and their hypnotic aura is actually a pretty neat tool; with cunning you can make it a one-sided penalty, and even if you don’t it’s an interesting method of de-escalating a social or combat situation by subjecting everyone to the tar pit that is your presence. If your concept involves light and color and you’re resistant to Flowering, Flamesiren will do more than nothing.

Polychromatic - Polychromatics don’t have a lot of roots in mythology; their modern inspirations are, well, Manic Pixie Dream Girls. But they get a shout-out here for being the only Fairest Kith who can muster up decent emotional defenses; not only can they magically boost their Composure rolls (and non-Composure rolls to resist magical and mundane emotional attacks for that matter), but others get a flat penalty to Empathy rolls against them, which makes them talented dissemblers. You’re still probably better off with Flowering - in a world of passive Kith Blessings, Polychromatic’s is extra passive - but I can see this Kith passing muster, and even being worth the two dots to Dual Kith in-house.

Shadowsoul - This one’s insane. Ostensibly Fairest Does Darkling, Shadowsouls get their Wyrd to Intimidate rolls which could be the whole Kith on its own and still be worth the slot, but in addition to that they get 9-again on Subterfuge (matching Flowering and Darklings there) and access to Contracts of Darkness, one of the most powerful in the game line, as an Affinity Contract. Is your Fairest spooky? Would you like them to be spooky? Here’s your one-stop shop.

Telluric - This is a Kith made of ribbon bonuses. In theory related to stars and celestial light, Telluric’s bonuses to rolls “with precise timing” isn’t...really worth considering. Run ‘em as Flamesiren and move on.

Treasured - In theory also able to muster emotional defenses, Treasured are Fairest who are literally made into works of art. They’re Okay(tm) but in their niche are beaten out by Polychromatic with a better effect for less resources.

Playmate - The last Real Fairest Kith(tm), Playmate appears in Night Horrors: Grim Fears where White Wolf tries to sell it as Peter Pan, but its powerful team-oriented bonuses mean that Playmates are useful anywhere Muse is wanted and more places besides. The front woman of an indie rock band could be a Playmate; so too could be an idealized baseball captain, the director at your local theater, the middle manager of a sinister conspiracy, or the night shift lead at a research lab. Do people do a thing in teams? Playmate does that thing.

And She Had Huge Titties, I Mean Massive Badondadonks, Absolutely Enormous Bazoggahoggas - Lost’s Canon Fairest

Remember when I said we had to get back to this after So You Want To Play An Ogre? Now we’re getting back to this. I’m not gonna re-state my caveats from that article and I’m not really gonna go back over the bit about So White Wolf Was Run By Fucking Nazis because, in all honesty, I do not have the fucking time to restate all of that in new words. Give thanks that OPP got out alive and let’s get right down to it.

Fairest have a very consistent characterization in canon that is only really challenged in Winter Masques; the narrative put forth in Lost is that Fairest, being attractive, have an uncomplicated power which privileges their lives. Which is a rather bloodless way to describe how White Wolf kept writing and publishing Fairest as heartless abusers and manipulators getting their jollies and emotional needs met by casually destroying their fellow survivors, manipulating them through sex appeal, outright lies, cattiness, cruelty, and betrayal. Much as simply queering Ogre does not help Ogre in and of itself, queering Fairest only takes you from incel and Nazi propaganda about women into...incel and Nazi propaganda about twinks, femmes, & in general anyone with the temerity to be found attractive by straight white people.

I’m not bitter, you’re bitter.

So what do you do at your table, with your Fairest concept? Lemme open up by saying that like, Fairest qua Fairest is perfectly solid, and if it wasn’t there wouldn’t be an article here; Fairest has a lot to say for itself about feminized violence, about your personhood being reduced to a product for the consumption of others, about emotional abuse & neglect, gaslighting, and sexual assault, but the conclusion White Wolf arrives at (”Fairest have unalloyed power over mortal and Lost society and they abuse that power”) is super fucking obtuse and betrays a serious lack of concern for what the Fairest undergo. It ignores the way a Fairest’s ordeals will force her to confront her relationship to her own gender and alter her willingness and ability to be consumed, disconnect her from her former society while also isolating her from her new one, and these questions are important for you if you’re looking to play a ‘classic’ Fairest.

But that leaves some hanging questions. Male Fairest face the almost inescapable fate of “failing” maleness on patriarchal terms; even the most strapping, broad-chested, athletic Adonis of a Fairest has become a man of layered words and reflexive empathy, whose Manly Stoicism(tm) is a cracking facade at best and entirely abandoned in a more typical circumstance. Men who become Fairest thus face a second journey after their escape from Arcadia; confronting what being men means to them and building their gender identity back up from the rubble it’s become. The temptation to accept success on society’s terms is always going to be present, and it’s always going to be offered like it’s possible, but it’s a losing game for these Fairest; they simply cannot be the men that other men demand they become.

Now, the discerning and loyal reader is surely about to ask, hey Vox, where’s the butch Fairest I was promised back in the Ogre article, to which I respond WE’RE GETTING THERE but I gotta use this as a bridge to talk about something that cuts across Fairest of all genders, be they cis or trans. Lost 1e makes a lot of hay out of the idea that Fairest “are rarely conventionally attractive”, and core even provides some interesting written concepts for that...which make it into exactly none of the art. Every published Fairest is conventionally attractive for various definitions of conventional, be it as a supermodel or a waif, but that leaves the question of Fairest who genuinely are not - and, tragically, Fairest who were not, and were then made into someone more easily consumed by their Durance. You know what I’m about to say, and I know you know I’m about to say it, but I’m gonna say it anyway: all bodies are beautiful, but Fairest know well that beauty and attraction aren’t the same, and neither are beauty and happiness. All Fairest, from the roundest bear to the most wide-eyed waif, are the products of Keepers who valued their bodies in that state, and that idea is going to haunt them day in and day out for the rest of their extended lives. There is no such thing as a Fairest with an uncomplicated relationship to their body, and that White Wolf seems to think that an uncomplicated relationship is their default state is...disgusting, frankly.

Which brings us, at long last, to butch Fairest (also bear Fairest but I’m gonna stick with the one set of terms or I’m going to go mad and this will never be published), who have a complicated journey ahead of them. On the one hand, the assertion of control and ownership over their own bodies, their own identities, cannot be overstated. On the other hand, elements of those bodies are going to be completely out of their control; a nascent butch Fairest may well hit the gym to get swole only to discover that she literally, physically cannot, that she has been Assigned Dex Build At Durance. Hauling your corpse out of Arcadia with an extremely feminine appearance shaped by your Keeper might complicate attempts to present in a more masculine manner or even just to appear androgynous, and those complications can be discouraging. For those that stick to it, this journey will take them two places; one is the bared-teeth, bloody-knuckled assertion that this life is theirs and you can have it if you can fucking take it, and the other is into the ranks of the Freehold’s retained warriors, usually in Summer or Autumn, though a vibrant representation of Spring knights will make it seem as if Spring has more butch Fairest than it actually does. These Fairest are aware, or will become aware, of how much of their job involves de-escalating or pre-empting violence; a focus on Physical stats or skills is not necessarily common, but hyper-specialization therein likely is. A butch Fairest is a lot more likely to have, say, Brawl 4 (Multiple Opponents) and no other Physical skills than she is to have Brawl, Weaponry, Athletics, and Stealth, in part or in whole because her first weapon of choice is going to be an Intimidate roll.

At every turn you’re able to, challenge White Wolf’s narrative about Fairest by asking yourself what your Fairest wants, why they’re this way, what they’re frightened of, and how the way they behave relates back to these. They’re not products; they’re people, just as hurt and Lost as the rest of their peers.

Princesses And Pastries - Fairest In The Courts

Fairest have a complex relationship to the society of their fellow Lost. On the one hand, they have the same need for community, support, companionship, understanding, honesty, and material aid as all Lost; a Fairest is not magically proof against being homeless, against starving, against the dangers of existing in the modern world without things like a photo ID or car insurance, and Freeholds provide all of these things. On the other hand, the thing most Fairest fear most, even if they can’t articulate that fear, is their own power - social influence, emotional trust and betrayal, status, political power, and authority. Fairest are all too aware that being good at this game does not make them immune to it - after all, that’s the lesson they learned at the hands of their Keepers.

What follows from this is a complex dance of interactions that each Fairest in some ways has to feel like she’s managing on her own, even if she’s not (and she rarely is; those support groups exist for a reason). If you give a Fairest a doughnut in a social setting, she will lick that doughnut even if she doesn’t intend to eat it right away, solely to hear someone else say something along the lines of “well it’s yours now”. As Fairest filter into Freehold society and take up social roles at all levels of power - officers, messengers, ‘ambassadors’ to mortal society, secretaries, pledge-smiths, teachers, monarchs - their responsibilities and rewards become their doughnut. That Fairest make a big deal out of both their job and the benefits that come with it is rarely, as other Lost sometimes think, about aggrandizement or reveling in power for its own sake; it’s about the sheer relief and assurance of hearing someone say, to the Fairest’s face, that this is her doughnut and no one is going to take it from her.

Younger Fairest tend to flit between two or three Courts; their initial selection may be based entirely on friendships, Vibes, or a gut-check decision based on an initial pitch by that Court, and Fairest can go quite far even in a Court that doesn’t quite actually fit their needs. Eventually, though, those Fairest who survive their youth will gravitate towards a Court whose ideals speak to them, even if its current social order isn’t living up to those ideals. If they’re going to be condemned to live as exiles in the world of their birth, the Fairest can at least be the person she wants to be, god damn it. Fairest aren’t any more or less vulnerable to a toxic Court environment than other Lost, but they’re good at detecting it beforehand. Unfortunately they’re also good at telling themselves they can change it.

Spring - Though early Spring joiners are of course rare in general, Fairest are among those Lost who more commonly choose Spring as a first Court. Spring’s highly social focus and chaotic internal organization is almost tailor-made for the skill set of your average Fairest, but therein too lies a sense of threat; for many Fairest, Spring can remind them of their Durance, and their joining of the Court is as much motivated by fear of a powerful cultural body as it is by any genuine Desire, maybe even more so. Many such Fairest end up caught in Spring’s middle-road trap, spinning their wheels without recovering or worsening more or less until they finally die, but when Autumn can sniff out the fearful ones it puts a lot of work into cooperating with Spring to get them out and where they can be helped.

Summer - More Fairest dabble with Summer for dreams of glory, or because they want to believe in Summer’s apolitical sales pitch, than ultimately stick with Summer. Those that do stay often serve as officers, as the Sun’s Tongue or the Arrayer of Distant Thunder, and as Court sorcerers. Fairest skilled in Contracts of Separation can make for surprising Jaegers, hounding their prey down more like a private investigator or a serial killer than a traditional hunter, but while striking this is fairly rare. Fairest who stick with Summer are those who are looking for its high ideals and are often among those rare Summer Courtiers who can competently articulate both those ideals and their pitfalls without falling prey to cynicism and bitterness.

Autumn - For those Fairest who hurt others to feel safe, Autumn is waiting. The Leaden Mirror can be attractive to young Fairest because it’s easy to perceive Autumn as atomized, defined by personal relationships rather than webs of political influence, but when the Fairest discovers those webs the existence of Option Two: Resort To Violence as an acceptable tool to the Ashen Court is perversely reassuring rather than threatening. The image of the Fairest as a witch, tempting and threatening, clings to them in Autumn but it’s honestly not their most common role; Autumn employs its Fairest as rumor-mongers, the Other Woman who seems a little too familiar with your husband, therapists & counselors, oneiromancers, and ambassadors to Hedge communities. The work Autumn does is harsh on Clarity, and Fairest are especially vulnerable to that harshness, but if the Court invests the time in helping its Fairest members, the self-awareness and self-confidence it offers can be a godsend that no other Court can give them.

Winter - As the Court which is actually selling what Fairest think Autumn has - to wit, the ability to simply say “no” to all social interactions with no justification required - Winter has a strong undercurrent of Fairest membership at all tiers of its power. Fairest often end up directly involved in Winter’s money-making enterprises, and flourish as Squires and Armigers with their fingers on the pulse of the Court’s morale. Winter’s hands-off approach displays a tremendous amount of trust in its Fairest from their perspective, and the demeanor of the Coldest Court - Winter’s indifferent equality - has a potent, merciless appeal. The trap of drowning in Sorrow sucks more than a few Fairest under, but if their peers can be there for them there’s always a way back out.

This Is Not A Pipe - Fairest And Lost’s Themes

My many thanks to Izzie M for her extensive help on this section. I’m not sure I’d have been able to grapple it down, emotionally or intellectually, otherwise.

Fairest go through some intense shit, and the shit they go through can never fully be addressed, never fully be recovered from. It’s no mistake that Fairest, like Wizened, are among those Lost likely to never fully gain resolution with or from their Keeper, and this is because they embody the dark truth that no matter how much progress you make, how much you heal, your trauma has changed who you are as a person and you will be dealing with it until you die. But, as alluded to extensively above in the discussion of Fairest and gender, Fairest also embody the way in which society will attempt to stamp you, mold you, turn you into a product to be consumed or an archetype to be placed into its churning machine, and its attempts to reshape who and what you are and can be are, in themselves, a form of trauma and abuse.

Fairest deal a lot in expectations. They’re expected to be perfect victims, they’re expected to be happy (because they’re beautiful and attractive, because they can front as Doing Okay, because they have a form of access to ‘normal’ society), they’re expected to want romance and sex (since everyone else wants those things out of them), to perform emotional labor, to be available, intimate, understanding, to keep up appearances. Fairest escape the chains of their Keeper only to be clapped in the chains that extend into the eyes and minds of their peers, and they cannot move without hearing the clink of them.

Fairest are primed to represent victims of ongoing emotional abuse and neglect; sex slaves and victims of child abuse might find themselves in Fairest, as might husbands or wives of abusive partners (and boy, re-living my bullshit there was a bonus prize I didn’t want to receive for writing this article), children pushed to over-achieve (here overlapping with Elemental) until they break, pastor’s daughters and cult kids (here overlapping with Beast), and others. However, Fairest also hit their thematic stride when talking about trauma from a society that will not give you an exit. A trans person is first punished by society for “failing” to perform their assigned gender, then made to perform their new one to expectations that they cannot set, do not control, and do not consent to; such a person might easily be Fairest, as might a man breaking under the expectations of Maleness, a college student losing their mind in finals week with no one to help, or even more ‘ordinary’ sex workers expected to perform emotional and physical labor for a society that rewards their work with violence and dehumanization.

Fairest are people with complex internal worlds and they damn well know it, but the temptations to let others define them are numerous; society promises all manner of rewards for being who and what it wants you to be, for wanting the things it tells you to want, for being the kind of person who wants and does those things. To be Fairest is to know at any time you can start faking it and receive those rewards insofar as they’re actually on the table, but it is also to know, every second of every day that you’re performing that role, that it is fake. If you can’t find a community with which you can be genuine...well. You can always get more hurt, and in this way Fairest also bring another theme of Lost into focus: that the Lost owe compassion and understanding to their fellow victims, because failure to care can only hurt both them and everyone in their blast zone.

Feet Pics For Legos - Coping As A Fairest

Fairest are among those Lost who are most concerned with their day-to-day social interactions and safety rather than their immediate, very physical environmental safety. They are perhaps the Seeming most likely to live in a group setting (in an apartment with roommates or romantic partners, in a house shared between multiple households, splitting the bills in a condo, with their parents), and are definitely the Seeming most comfortable with the idea of living with mortals who aren’t ensorcelled. Indeed, Fairest don’t tend to do well living alone; even a Fairest who wants or needs a private place to be, choosing to keep a home in which others cannot lay a claim, will likely crash at friends’ places, sleep over at the Freehold commons on some pretext or another, stay the night with a lover, or otherwise have a place to flop down while surrounded by other people. Having other people - their greatest reality check - around the place helps keep the Fairest centered in the real reality, better able to pick apart the mortal from the Wyrd from their own unrelated hallucinations, and a Fairest who is isolated - or who is permitted to isolate herself - quickly begins to dissociate and may soon be incapable of caring for herself until someone can get her back into the present.

Those invited over as guests to a Fairest’s home may note a lot of concern for those she lives with. She likely schedules the event well in advance, is clear about the boundaries of those she lives with (”That’s Brenda’s room, the door stays shut.”) and in general treats her communal home with a lot of respect and love. Respecting these boundaries and in turn having her own respected is very validating for the Fairest and is vital to be able to feel safe and at ease in her own home, and impressing their importance on guests further reinforces that this is, as it were, her doughnut. While not dismissive of their own literal physical safety per se, a Fairest’s anxieties rarely center around her body being violently attacked by strangers. For those that do have such anxieties, they may choose to solve that problem by simple expedient of rooming or living with someone large and scary.

Another detail of note which is touched on in Winter Masques is that Fairest tend to seek out life’s little pleasures. Though they are not necessarily wealthier than other Lost, how a Fairest chooses to spend her money tends to follow particular patterns. Rare is the Fairest who doesn’t have clothing they like, a phone that works, a wallet or purse that can actually hold all of their stuff, and in this regard most Fairest without a special interest in fashion as a hobby in and of itself will have an aesthetic that is self-expressive but serviceable and hard-wearing, but any place the Fairest haunts, frequents, or lives in will get little touches everywhere. Fairest spend the little bits of extra money for good toilet paper, soft soaps that won’t hurt the skin, good shower supplies, high-quality razors, boots that won’t wear through - and they spend their serious money on their hobbies and preferences. A Fairest with a passion for cooking scrimps and saves to get a fully-stocked kitchen; a Fairest who likes building and connecting invests in Legos or Hot Wheels and creates elaborate environments for them. A gamer Fairest has headphones that can vibrate your constipation away and a fiber optic connection to ensure that lag will not stand between her and your doom. The reasons for this are manifold, and Lost’s canon writing suggests that Fairest seek pleasure to alleviate a desire to return to Arcadia. This is, to put it mildly, a stupid assertion; rather, the Fairest provides her own pleasures in part because it is one of the most emotionally clear ways to lick the doughnut, and in part because it reminds her that she can be happy under her own power, can seek pleasure, stimulation, engagement, without placing herself at another’s mercy - ironically making it easier to go out every day and do exactly that as a member of her various societies.

As a Fairest settles in she tends to look for “her” people, and quite often they’re good at compartmentalizing this, wearing different hats and having different feelings about those hats without feeling fake or distressed about the bare fact of that. She’ll have her personal friends and family, like her housemates, her girlfriend, maybe her mortal family, her neighbors, and then folks like her Motley (which are like her personal friends and family, but In The Know), her fellow Fairest and the Freehold broadly, her work friends and fellow hobbyists. A Fairest who does, say, sex work, thinks of herself as a Sex Worker and understands herself in the context of that broader social group. It can be a lot! Many Lost barely have a handle on being a member of both the Freehold and a Court, and the way Fairest flit to and fro between many communities, slipping seamlessly from one role to another, can be exhausting to watch - but by doing so the Fairest also builds bonds between those communities, highlights their common needs and interests, draws them together over their similarities and strengths. Darklings and Wizened get a lot of the work on the ground done, but it’s often a Fairest in the role of whistleblower, figurehead, and champion all at once.

After all, this, too, is her doughnut.

Example Fairest - Clara Belltower, Spring Playmate

Clara Belltower is a mime.

Well, no, not exactly. Clara Belltower is a self-employed porn actress, erotic script writer, and director, whose primary thing is mimes, clowns, and more broadly circuses and performance venues. She came back from Arcadia eight years back fleeing life as her Keeper’s Stepford Wife, and ran face-first into the money issues that haunt the Lost in general. What started out as a practical choice in new career - and an attempt to find and express an identity not created for her by her abuser - became a creative passion that has stayed strong with Clara and propelled her to status in the Spring Court, which retains her keen eye for decoration, direction, and theatricality in service to its high rituals and revels. Clara’s livestreams and online presence are also a convenient avenue for the Freehold to launder its less legal revenue streams, which has endeared Spring’s “silent siren” to the Winter Court and cemented her as a mover and shaker.

Clara’s ambitions reach beyond erotic miming, as talented as she is at both creating and purveying such. She has her eyes on four different strip clubs in Freehold territory alone whose owners and operators need to fucking go, and she wants Winter’s help making it happen; further, she wants the Freehold to take over operation of those establishments for the benefit of the workers. Clara’s vision is popular in Spring and has its supporters in Summer too, but the Declining Seasons have been cool on the concept, citing a need to maintain subtlety and avoid entanglements with the mortal world that might invite the eye of, say, the IRS - or mire the Freehold in a protracted war with local police departments. Clara’s passion burns with a righteous simplicity, envisioning a Freehold that is active in improving the city around it - if the cops want to throw down, bring it on! Her influence over Winter means the Coldest Court cannot simply dismiss her desires, but neither is it willing to go to war. Something is going to have to give, soon.

This concludes the Fairest portion of the article. Some additional thoughts on Seeming follow.

Bombing Your Own Position - Choosing Your Seeming

So it’s been six articles and I’ve talked about the ways various Seemings can represent responses to the things which traumatize us; neurodivergences for which society abuses us, the machinery of capitalism, violence, prison, and more. But how do you go about choosing your character’s Seeming? The obvious choice is to make a character that puts a lot of yourself at the table; to seek out a Seeming that reflects your own traumas, your own issues, your own anxieties and struggles, and then grapple with them in this fictional context. But RPGs can be an emotionally challenging medium, and you may well not want to deal with your own bullshit during your magic trauma fairy game. That’s valid!

Now, the second obvious piece of advice is to think about your proposed character’s themes and traumas and then select a Seeming from there, but this can get complicated. Many Lost players feel as if they need two Seemings, and to those players I say: no the fuck you do not. But it is true that people are messy and do not fully resolve, that the broad spectrum of the world of sorrow and loss is not easy to fit into 6 discrete categories whose creation was often managed by, not to keep repeating this point, fucking Nazis. I have found in my experience that it can be helpful, when you’re torn between two Seemings or you have a character you’re sure is this Seeming even though they look like or could be that one, to ask yourself why the character is not the other option. Why is this alluring and sensual Darkling not a Fairest, what makes this brutal and violent Wizened not an Ogre? This question naturally leads to others about their abuse and their reaction to it, and can start your momentum for writing your concept out.

As an addition, while I’ve spoken of various Seemings as being well-equipped to represent specific traumas, they don’t own those traumas. Elementals are metaphorically autistic, but there’s nothing stopping you from running an autistic Fairest or an autistic Beast instead. Rather, those Seemings outlined as being “for” or “about” certain traumas are those whose selection will make those traumas thematically central, cause you to return to them as a topic over and over by virtue of being who and what they are. Real people have complicated problems which intersect with one another, spawning new problems that are more strange than the sum of their parts, and it’s both valid and interesting to write your Lost that way - just keep in mind that it’ll still be complicated at the table too.

Van Helsing Hate Crimes - Seeming Politics

White Wolf spent a lot of time waffling back and forth on whether or not Seemings represent distinct cultural and political identities in a given Freehold, drifting towards ‘yes’ when the writers thought about the way Blessings and Curses create consistent, measurable differences between Lost of various Seemings, and towards ‘no’ generally whenever they were asked to actually outline a Lost society such as a sample Freehold or Entitlement. Some Entitlements are locked to specific Seemings, often times with little thought as to why, while other times Seeming-based power blocs are alluded to as worldbuilding elements (such as in Lords of Summer) without much in the way of supporting detail. Why should these things happen, when, how, what does the buildup of this violent fracture in a Freehold society look like?

On the whole, I have taken the stance in these articles and in my own worldbuilding that some amount of fantastical prejudice exists amongst the Lost, but that the systems of oppression have not taken root. Maybe it’s idealistic of me to view the Lost as unwilling or unable to produce internally racist power structures that create an underclass for the benefit of an appointed elite, but in general I feel as if Freeholds are too small, each individual member too precious by simple dint of being a living being in a physical body, for this kind of evil to flourish. That said, you may have also noticed that I identified two Seemings - Darklings and Fairest - as explicitly self-uniting and in some senses self-governing on the basis of common traumas that they often cannot fully explain to outsiders, and indeed community with people that understand your bullshit without you having to say it aloud - that is, those who share a Seeming with you - can be invaluable to all Lost. Ultimately, however, I want to advise against looking at Seemings the way that, say, Vampire: the Requiem looks at Clans, and instead to treat them as reactions to trauma rather than a kind of alternate racial identity.

Next up: So You Need To Write A Fetch

#Changeling: The Lost #rpg #fairest #trauma #abuse #seemings #violence

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fun-with-colors · 4 years

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Persona 5 Royal and “Poe’s Masquerade”

I recently (read: a few minutes ago) saw a post about how Beneath the Mask is a brilliant and tragic character study of Joker, and I felt compelled to talk about some of the awesome references in Persona 5 Royal (not sure if they’re all in the vanilla game, never played it.)

So, in Beneath the Mask, there’s the line “I’m a shapeshifter, at Poe’s Masquerade,” right? Which is a reference to Edgar Allan Poe’s The Masque of the Red Death. Seems like a pretty cut-and-dry thing, it ties into the theme of there not being anything beneath the mask, as was the case in Poe’s Masque. Well, I am here to tell you that that particular reference is anything but simple. It’s brilliant.

Fair warning: this is gonna be a long post.

First off, some context on The Masque of the Red Death. It’s a short story where, basically, there’s this plague going on. It’s called the Red Death, it makes you sweat blood and die in less than an hour. Terribly contagious, the Red Death. So this rich guy gathers up all of his friends and allies to hole up in his abbey, and locks the gates behind them. A few months in, they decide to throw a rocking masquerade party.

The party is structured as such:

There are 7 rooms in order, each color-coded. Blue, then purple, then green, then orange, and then violet. The last room is black, and lit up by red lights. There’s a big imposing clock in the last room, and whenever it chimes the hour everyone stops partying until the clock is done, and then resumes.

Everything’s going great while people are dying outside until midnight, when this new guy shows up in a gaudy red costume that looks like a corpse killed by the red death. The host chases this guy down with a dagger. They go through all the rooms, and once they reach the last room the host finally looks the mysterious stranger in the face, and instantly dies. The guests panic and remove the mask to see who it was, only to find that there was nothing there. The guests then all also die to the Red Death.

Grim, right? Well, it also has a lot of striking similarities to Shido’s palace.

The basic premise of some rich asshole trying to save only his friends from the plague on the land, only this time the plague is one that he himself has orchestrated: the mental shutdowns. Those on his ship are safe from being permanently cancelled, while those who aren’t (like the Shujin principal) are not.

The letters of introduction parallel the 7 rooms, since all of that preparation is in the eventual goal of unlocking the final room.

The guests on the ship are all wearing masks that look a heck of a lot like masquerade masks.

The intruder, ie: the thieves.

as a last-ditch effort to kill the thieves, Shido takes a pill that will temporarily kill him, mirroring the moment when the host dies in The Masque of the Red Death.

But wait! We’re not done!

That is just the first layer of references

This is why I said that it was gonna get super long. Strap in folks, because those references aren’t even an original choice that the game made. They’re INHERITED references. Also I have a lot to say, and am bad at being succinct. Well, they say that if you can’t be concise, you can at least be interesting, and I hope that I’ve managed that.

Some more context:

Akechi is based off of the famous Japanese detective Akechi Kogoro. The author of the Akechi Kogoro stories is a man by the pen name of Edogawa Ranpo. If that name sounds familiar, it should. It is, as wikipedia puts it, “A rendering of [Edgar Allan] Poe’s name.”

There is one Akechi Kogoro story, called Gold Mask (Or The Gold Mask, or The Golden Mask), that is especially relevant here. In it, Akechi goes up against the mysterious Gold Mask, who turns out to be none other than Arsene Lupin.

It should not be surprising how many similarities there are, but I am somehow surprised nonetheless.

These are some insane connections, y’all. I’m basically just gonna retell the events of the story because it’s mostly relevant anyways. It’s not even all about the red death thing. Also I just really like this section of the story. This is gonna get rambly, but bear with me here.

Ok so first plot twist: this book also references The Masque of the Red Death. Big time. Like, there is a chapter titled “The Masque of the Red Death.”

The setting: a masquerade ball put on by the French Ambassador (The Count de Rouzieres). The ball takes place in seven chambers, in the same color order as in the original story. This time, however, they are set up so that one can only see one room at a time. Do note that the final room is described as making things look as though they are “somehow not of this world.”

The inevitable twist

Guess who shows up unannounced at the moment the clock strikes midnight? Ding ding ding! That’s right, it’s the Gold Mask.

(The next chapter is called “The Gold Death”)

The investigator who had been Akechi’s sidekick (more on that later) chases after the Gold Mask, along with the Count and one other dude.

I’m just gonna quote the book’s description of the third man.

“It was impossible to identify the man on account of his eccentric costume. [...] He wore a form-fitting black shirt and trousers, black shoes, black socks, a black cloth on his head, the ends of which rose sharply into two long horns, and, of course a face mask.”

...Yeah. I was way more surprised to find out that that design is straight out of the source material than to find out who that mysterious third man was. (more on why akechi was disguised in a bit)

The Count is the first into the final room with the Gold Mask. No sooner does he enter than the other two men hear a gunshot. They run in, fearing the worst.

Turns out it’s the Gold Mask who’s been shot by the Count. They pull off the mask and discover... the Count’s interpreter. One of the investigators declares that the interpreter must be the gold mask, and this all can be called off. The guy’s dying, everything’s fine.

Suddenly, the man with the black mask starts laughing. They demand he removes his mask, he does so and reveals himself as Akechi Kogoro. Akechi insists that this man cannot be the Gold Mask, because Arsene Lupin is the gold mask.

Everyone else thinks he’s ridiculous, until he gets the dying interpreter to confess that yes, he was working for Arsene Lupin.

Now. The part that makes this all really funny is that as the interpreter is dying, he points out to Akechi who Arsene Lupin is (since Lupin has so many disguises as to not fundamentally have a true identity). The interpreter points to (dun dun duhDUH) The Count of Rouzieres, the French Ambassador to Japan.

Obviously the police commissioner is finding that hard to believe, but when Akechi produces an envelope that he claims is evidence, he orders that the rest of the investigators and guests leave the room, so that it’s only him, the POV character, Akechi, and the Count.

The letter is apparently from another well-known detective familiar with Arsene Lupin, full of evidence that proves that the Count of Rouzieres is actually Arsene Lupin. Incriminating stuff, blah blah blah.

Arsene admits to being, well, arsene, and then proceeds to have a superficially amicable conversation with Akechi. He then pulls his gun out of nowhere and threatens to shoot akechi. Suddenly, the detective who supplied Akechi with the note (his name is Weber) jumps out of the clock mechanism behind Arsene and confiscates his gun. Arsene Lupin is about to be arrested, with no way out. One of the investigators pulls out his own gun on Arsene, and both Akechi and the police commissioner are very experienced in making arrests. Even beyond that, there’s an entire crowd of investigators waiting outside the only door.

We cut to the aforementioned crowd of investigators, who have just noticed that the voices from inside the room have gotten very quiet. After knocking and hearing only silence, they decide to open the door.

The room is empty.

We cut back to Arsene, who is acting very confident despite his precarious circumstances. He says that he has the power to create such a catastrophe as to make it impossible for them to arrest him, before calmly walking out of the only door in the room.

The detectives call for the police officers outside to arrest Arsene, but... there doesn’t seem to be anyone there to do it. He locks the door to the room from the outside, and flees out of an open glass window and down a fire escape to his waiting allies. (very similar to the way Joker attempts to escape from the Casino, and VERY similar to how he ultimately escapes from the interrogation room.)

It turns out that the “black-velvet room” was actually a cleverly disguised elevator, with the mechanism in the clock. Arsene used the elevator to separate the detectives from the rest of the investigators, and to make his escape for real. It is SHOCKING to me that of all the things in persona 5, the interrogation room escape is ENTIRELY true to the source material. It’s wild.

Anyways, I’ll stop there. I’ll probably make another post with all of the miscellaneous connections between the Gold Mask and Persona 5, since there are a lot. I’ve had this topic sitting in my brain for a while.

Edit: I forgot to get to why Akechi was disguised. Well, it turns out that’s another connection: Akechi had been presumed dead. Everybody thought he had been shot. Turns out it was just a fake version of himself, a trick taken from Sherlock Holmes. (and one that shows up in Persona 5 Royal). He was taking advantage of the fact that everyone thought he was dead to get more info without being suspected.

#persona 5 #persona 5 royal #persona 5 spoilers #persona 5 royal spoilers #original oat #fun with rambles #arsene lupin #akechi kogoro #goro akechi #akechi goro #akira kurusu #ren amamiya

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thepalereaper-blog · 7 years

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#outofshadows #this is just a rant real fast because ill expand upon it in a thing l8r tonight #But like Reaper is an edgelord #Homie choose the fucking GRIM REAPER TO BE HIS MONIKER #HE DOESNT DRESS THAT WAY FOR JOKES OR HALF ASSED #OFC HE FUCKING KNOWS THE REF #OFC HE FUCKING WOULD DO THAT SHIT AT A MASQUERADE #MY BOI READS POE TF #MY BOI KNOWS THEATER TF #IDK WHY ANYONE IS SURPRISED #LIKE THIS BOI IS SO EXTRA HAVE YOU SEEN HIM #HE ALREADY HAS ONE POE SKIN #LIKE WE COULD SEE THIS COMING A MILE AWAY #ALSO SHOUTOUT TO MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH WHICH EVERYONE IS FAILING TO MENTION OR BRING UP

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nyxshadowhawk · 4 years

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Best of Nox Arcana Playlist

Nox Arcana is by far my favorite music artist, and since I’m desperate for Halloween season to begin and can’t wait any more, here’s my Best Of playlist! I think every album is represented here except for the collab albums, the Doctor Arcana soundtrack, and Blackthorn Asylum (since that’s the only main album I don’t have a single song from). This list is about three hours worth of music, so strap in!

1. We Are Legion, Legion of Shadows: Every Nox Arcana album begins with a narration track that introduces the album’s theme and story. Of all of them, I decided to go with this one for the Best Of playlist, because I think that it encapsulates Nox Arcana and those who love it.

2. Night of the Wolf, Transylvania: Nox Arcana’s most famous track, by far. Also one of their most distinctive! The lyrics translate as, “The moon is the mistress, werewolves of evil / powers and destroying, incarnated wolf. / Wheel [or chariot], life, nightmare, vein / Sea [or likely “nightmare” again], devil, death, life.” (volkodlak, which means werewolf, is Slavic. “Mara,” meaning nightmare, is Germanic. “Dracul” speaks for itself. The rest is Latin)

3. Labyrinth of Dreams, Grimm Tales: My personal favorite Nox Arcana track, which I first discovered through this video. It is so ethereal and haunting, and absolutely screams “Halloween” to me.

4. Into the Night, Legion of Shadows: Another personal favorite of mine, and a really spooky piece. I love it for its fast pace, and I think it sounds both unsettling and exciting.

5. Shadow Dance, Season of the Witch: This is the best Season of the Witch track, in my opinion. I actually like a lot of Season of the Witch tracks, but I left most of them off this list. Season of the Witch sounds kind of like a Spiritual Successor to Grimm Tales, with that same distinctly autumnal and Halloweeny atmosphere. This piece in particular epitomizes that.

6. The Quest Begins, Blood of the Dragon: Nox Arcana has a tendency to start sounding the same after a while, but about once per album there’s a piece like this one, that sounds completely unlike anything else they’ve written. This piece is unique for how unusually optimistic it sounds. If you knew nothing about this piece, you could easily guess that it was about noble knights setting off on a quest, couldn’t you? I love the drums, and the dramatic vocals work really well.

7. Legacy of Sorrow, Shadow of the Raven: The title of this piece sounds like it could be Part 3 of Soma Cruz’s story, but I think it’s kind of an underrated gem. I like its melancholy, lilting melody, and I also like the organ that comes in midway through. This piece is just kind of everything you’d expect in a Nox Arcana track.

8. Echoes of Elise, Ebonshire: Nox Arcana’s haunting rendition of “Fur Elise,” which is very ethereal and eerie. It also has the same “aesthetic” of falling snow that permeates this album. It’s really beautiful.

9. The Hidden Realm, Legion of Shadows: One of two pre-existing tracks to be used on the Doctor Arcana soundtrack. It’s spooky, but also kind of calming and peaceful. It’s also definitely got a fantastical flavor to it.

10. The Raven, Shadow of the Raven: The title track, named for Edgar Allen Poe’s classic poem. This was the first Nox Arcana track I downloaded once I rediscovered it, almost by accident. I love this piece. Its melody is simple and repeats over and over again, but it works, almost resembling the structure of a song. I love the violin solo in the middle, which sort of acts as the “bridge.” My one complaint is that it’s much too short to actually recite “The Raven.”

11. Ebonshire, Winter’s Knight: Back before Ebonshire was an album unto itself, there was this track from Winter’s Knight. This piece definitely calls to mind the image of a spooky forest with tall, straight black trees and slight snowfall. It’s a very different vibe from the autumnal forest of Grimm Tales. It’s also peaceful and mystical, like “The Hidden Realm.”

12. Hearthside Lullaby, Ebonshire: What a gorgeous piece. This is another outlier among Nox Arcana’s music in that, while it’s still a haunting piece, it isn’t grim or sinister. It’s soft, almost cozy, like snuggling into a blanket by a fire when there’s a snowstorm outside, and drifting off to sleep. It’s another one that sounds like it should have lyrics. This is my favorite Ebonshire track.

13. Masque of the Red Death, Shadow of the Raven: “There were much glare and glitter and piquancy and phantasm [...] There were delirious fancies such as the madman fashions. There were much of the beautiful, much of the wanton, much of the bizarre, something of the terrible, and not a little of that which might have excited disgust.” The lilting waltz, the spooky organ, the sinister chiming of the clock. The multitude of dreams! This is the ultimate dark masquerade music, if you ask me. It totally does Poe’s story justice. You can totally imagine the masked dancers twirling, the dimly lit colored chambers, the infiltration of the deadly disease... you know what, never mind, that hit a bit too close to home.

14. Haunted, The Dark Tower: I think The Dark Tower is my favorite album, because there are more tracks from that album on this list than any other one (including Legion of Shadows). This is among the Nox Arcana pieces that I would call genuinely unsettling, as opposed to just spooky or dark. This piece is creepy and almost threatening, like something is out to get you.

15. Haunted Carousel, Carnival of Lost Souls: One of the highlights of this album for me! Carnival is definitely the most unsettling album. Listening to “Calliope” alone in the dark put such disturbing images in my head that I actually stopped listening, which is saying something. That’s not on this list because I don’t like to listen to it, but this one is, because I like this one a lot better. It’s plenty creepy, and it sounds like a nightmarish carousel. Even if you didn’t know the album theme, you’d know after listening to this.

16. The Dark Tower, The Dark Tower: ABANDON ALL HOPE, YE WHO ENTER HERE. The title track of The Dark Tower, and an awesome track in every sense. This just perfectly encapsulates the sinister majesty that is the Dark Tower and all the lore that goes with it.

17. Magic and Moonlight, Winter’s Eve: I think most fans agree that this track is one of the best on this album. What really needs to be said? It’s all in the title. I have to say that some of the most breathtaking moons I’ve seen have been at the beginning of February, with fresh snowfall. There is nothing like the shadows of trees on snow in the moonlight. You just know that the gods are meeting up to dance in it when you’re not watching.

18. Crimson Thirst, The Dark Tower: Why did I put this one on here? It’s pretty unremarkable, since there are a lot of other tracks like it, but this one sticks with me. This one gets stuck in my head and haunts me through the rest of the day. Honestly, all the Dark Tower tracks are excellent.

19. Virtuoso, The Haunted Symphony: The Haunted Symphony is Nox Arcana’s most recent album, and I’ve been slowly warming up to it. Its soundscape is similar to The Dark Tower and Legion, with a truly gothic flavor. This piece is just so impassioned, I can completely believe that it expresses the mad inspiration of a tortured artist (as it’s meant to in-universe).

20. Necromancer, Theater of Illusion: Theater of Illusion is a great album, and I’m really glad it’s getting more of a presence (and maybe even new lore?) in the Doctor Arcana games. This is another really fast-paced piece. I honestly think the beginning with the fast chimes is the best part.

21. Born of the Night, The Dark Tower: I mean, come on, it’s “Born of the Night”! It kind of speaks for itself, doesn’t it? Creatures of the Night rising to take over the world, shadowy choirs, the hordes of nocturnal beasts silhouetted against the moon, a Dark Lord or Dark Lady commanding them all from his/her castle, young vampires swooning in the rapture of fresh blood... There’s something so ecstatic about this piece.

22. After Hours, Carnival of Lost Souls: I wasn’t really sure if I should put this one here, but honestly, its clock-like, rhythmic chiming so jarring that it doesn’t matter where I put it. This is another really unsettling piece, both because of the chiming and also because of the creepy whispers, and I’m not exactly sure what it makes me think of. Wandering a dark labyrinth, probably. In some ways, it reminds me of The Night Circus, although the Night Circus isn’t sinister. This piece definitely stands out.

23. Dark Desire, The Dark Tower: What is this piece about? Lost love? Insatiable lust? A forbidden romance? Bloodthirst? All of the above? Whatever it is you desire, it’s clear that you’re fighting it, and you’re losing. It’s going to overtake you soon, and when it does, you’d better pray to whatever god you believe in that it doesn’t end badly for you.

24. Lords of the Night, The Haunted Symphony: This one’s along the same lines as “Born of the Night,” but stately rather than frenzied. This one is more like vampire lords and ladies gathering on a hilltop on black horses, preparing to tear off across the countryside in pursuit of prey.

25. Noctem Aeternus, The Dark Tower: This is the only concluding track from an album that I’ve put on this list, and if you’re familiar with Nox Arcana, you know what that means. I was genuinely spooked the first time I listened to this all the way through. I remember I was lying in bed reading Tales From the Dark Tower, and it went quiet, and... well, I won’t spoil it.

26. Nocturne, Transylvania: This is one of my favorite Nox Arcana tracks. It just strikes me as perfect. It’s dark and sinister, it’s atmospheric, it’s memorable, and it comes right out of the darkest depths of Überwald.

27. Pandora’s Music Box, Carnival of Lost Souls: Definitely one of the best Carnival tracks, and one of the best of Nox Arcana’s selection of creepy music box pieces. It has such a distinctive melody. Slowly, other instruments and vocals arise to compliment the music box, keeping things interesting even as it repeats itself.

28. Velvet Darkness, The Haunted Symphony: The first thing that comes to mind when I hear this piece is an empty candelabrum covered in cobwebs, sitting in front of a mirror in a corridor that is completely dark except for a bit of pale, diluted moonlight coming through clouds. I take the candelabrum almost instinctively even though it has no candles in it, and walk down the corridor...

29. Castle Dracula, Transylvania: What an underrated piece! I actually like this one better than “Night of the Wolf.” It screams “vampire.” It perfectly captures the dark majesty of Dracula’s Castle, it’s towers, its dusty halls, its freezing crypts, its gothic windows, its flickering sconces and floor candelabra that are just begging to be hit with a whip... And the Dark Lord on his throne, with a wine glass...

30. Ritual of Fire, Season of the Witch: This piece is oddly catchy. It has a great rhythm to it, and I like the percussion. It would be so much fun to dance naked around a Samhain bonfire somewhere deep in a secluded wood, with a bunch of other witches and maybe an incubus or two, or five... We’re definitely summoning or worshipping something, but ultimately, it’s just a party. It’s sinister, but a fun kind of sinister.

31. Rogue’s Hollow, Blood of the Dragon: I was pleasantly surprised when I found this piece. I love medieval-style music. This sounds like the kind of thing your Bard would play when you and your party are resting around a fire in the woods, in the middle of an epic quest. It’s peaceful. It’s a breather, maybe even a calm before the storm. It would be really easy to do a simple circle dance to.

32. The Forgotten Path, Grimm Tales: This piece sounds very... mystical? Mystical and seductive. I don’t know. It sounds a little like you enter a dark, smoky, perfumed tent and are seduced by scantily-clad women who probably want your blood, or your soul... It also sounds a bit like being escorted to an initiation ceremony by veiled women down a dark forest path, with little golden lights twinkling around you... It would make a great belly-dance piece. It’s a bit of a departure from the general fairy tale theme of the rest of the album.

33. Unhallowed Halls, Gothic: I think this is my favorite piece from Gothic. I don’t know why, it just is. It’s got a nice mix of piano, organ, strings, and harpsichord. And spooky vocals, because of course. Overall it’s a pretty standard Nox Arcana piece, but like “Crimson Thirst,” it stuck with me.

34. Mysterium, Theater of Illusion: This is the piece from Theater, and I will never understand why it wasn’t used anywhere on the Doctor Arcana soundtrack. I guess because it’s used for the album puzzle? But there isn’t a single track from Theater on Arcana’s soundtrack, even though the game ties into the lore of Theater. Anyway, this track should have been there. It should have been there because it just sounds occult, distinctly mystical, eerie, vaguely threatening but more weighty (like an initiation) than unsettling. This is an auspicious ritual, and you’re here to witness its secrets.

35. The Nameless City, Necronomicon: I haven’t listened to too much of this album, but this track really stood out to me and stayed in my head. It’s based on Lovecraft’s story of the same name, in which an explorer finds an ancient, ruined city and descends into its catacombs to discover it belonged to a lost civilization of pre-human reptile people. Because Lovecraft. This piece really sounds like film soundtrack, the track that plays when you’re on the cusp of discovering the information mankind was not meant to know. The paranoia that permeates all of Lovecraft’s work is definitely there, but it’s kind of exciting, too. You just have to know! It builds and builds until it ends with a gong.

36. Twilight, Grimm Tales: This is what I meant by “autumnal.” You can hear it, can’t you? It’s sunset in the woods, and the orange glow of the setting sun is magnificent through the mostly bare trees. The leaves crunch underfoot, with their distinctive crisp smell. The night creatures are coming out, some benign, others not so much.

37. Once Upon a Nightmare, Grimm Tales: This is one of my favorite tracks from Grimm Tales. I don’t know why I love it so much. It slowly gets more dramatic, alternating between the glockenspiel and the strings, with male backing vocals for once. It’s just the right mixture of adventurous and spooky. I love listening to it in the forest at dusk.

38. Memento Mori, Transylvania: One of the best chime/music box pieces, in my opinion. I don’t think it’s as good as “Pandora’s Music Box,” but it really grew on me after I got Transylvania.

39. Saturnalia, Winter’s Majesty: This is such a great piece to dance to. I love how it starts as a slow, medieval-ish circle dance and then picks up! There’s even clapping sounds on the rhythm. Although it’s still spooky, it puts you in the mood of a fun winter festival.

40. Gifts of the Magi, Winter’s Eve: I don’t actually know why I picked this one. I like a lot of tracks on Winter’s Eve, and “lighter” Nox Arcana pieces in general. My favorite is “Greensleeves,” but that one felt too “Christmasy” for this list. This one is better, being a bit spookier and kind of mystical whilst still being on the lighter end. It sounds like it casts the Three Kings more as wizards than kings or priests.

41. Veil of Darkness, Darklore Manor: One of only two tracks I have from Nox Arcana’s debut album. It’s a pretty standard spooky Nox Arcana piece, but a good one nonetheless.

42. Lullaby, Winter’s Knight: Another one of my favorite chime/music box pieces. Unlike “Hearthside Lullaby,” it sounds less like an actual lullaby, and more like a piece to accompany an animatronic ballerina.

43. Nightshade (Single): One of the newest wintery pieces from Nox Arcana. I like this one almost as much as “Hearthside Lullaby.” It’s also on the lighter side of things, but I like that it’s more otherworldly than spooky. It’s like exploring a frosty garden during a light snowfall.

44. Undying Love, The Dark Tower: Wow, what an unnerving piece to be titled “Undying Love.” It sounds downright threatening, and maybe a little tragic. That handsome vampire you’re dancing with is definitely going to sink his fangs into your neck. Or maybe this vampire’s sunk into despair because the humans killed his wife again.

45. Brides to Darkness, Transylvania: Speaking of vampires and their loves, there’s this haunting tribute to Dracula’s brides. They are beautiful, ethereal, and dangerous. I love that this piece is almost entirely vocals in the first half, and then the creepy harpsichord comes in.

46. Legion of Shadows, Legion of Shadows: The title track. Plenty spooky with that organ. Similar to “Born of the Night” in that the night creatures are rising up to take over the world or get vengeance, but this time you’re the night creature and it’s something to be proud of. Honestly, I wish this album had more context. Who’s Lorelei, and what happened to her?

47. The High Seas, Phantoms of the High Seas: This was one of the standout tracks from this album for me. Like “The Quest Begins,” it sounds distinctly adventurous, but more sinister than optimistic. We’re setting out over sea instead of land this time, and the sea is brutally unforgiving.

48. Dreamscape, Legion of Shadows: Another really spooky piece that’s kind of unlike anything else Nox Arcana has produced. It definitely has the quality of exploring an eerie, surreal landscape, like an alien planet. This isn’t the Poe album, but it sort of reminds me of Poe’s poem “Dream-Land,” which I think is super underrated.

49. Black Sails, Phantoms of the High Seas: Another piece from this album that really stood out to me. I really like the instrumentation. I like the harp, and the stringed instrument in the middle that sounds like the guitar used in the “winter” pieces... is that what it is, a guitar? Whatever it is, it has such a unique sound.

50. Grimstone Manor, Gothic: This piece lives up to the album’s name. That church organ really hits you. This is another classic example of Nox Arcana, with the organ and piano and vocals and everything. It’s one of the best pieces from Gothic.

51. Shadowplay, Theater of Illusion: This is definitely my favorite piece from Theater, and one of my favorite Nox Arcana pieces overall. I love how energetic and fast-paced it is, and I can easily imagine an umbrakinetic dancing on a stage, manipulating the shadows on the wall as they do. They conjure writing tendrils, shadowy dragons, swarms of bats and crows that they send out into the audience with a flourish... I think this piece is just so much fun!

52. Gypsy Caravan, Transylvania: There are a lot of these types of pieces across Nox Arcana’s albums. Like “The Forgotten Path,” it sounds seductive and smoky. This would also make for a great belly-dance piece, and it’s fun to listen to while reading Vargo’s Gothic Tarot or the Madame Endora deck.

53. Highland Storm, Blood of the Dragon: What’s this? Nox Arcana does a Celtic piece? With bagpipes? There is absolutely nothing else like this in Nox Arcana’s repertoire. It sounds so unlike their usual work, I probably wouldn’t guess it was Nox Arcana if I didn’t know better. I love it. It makes for a great medieval-battle-style piece, and was a lot of fun to listen to in Scotland.

54. Temple of the Black Pharaoh, Necronomicon: This is a really spooky Egyptian-style piece, that instantly transports you to dusty sealed tombs that almost certainly have curses. The whispered chanting consists of the names of Egyptian gods, and Nyarlathotep. (Nyarlathotep, Atum, Osiris, Set, Amon-Ra. Nyarlathotep, Khonsu, Anubis, Set, Amon-Ra.)

55. Sanctuary of Shadows, Darklore Manor: Another really creepy organ piece, and the other one I have from Darklore Manor. I’m not sure whether it makes me think of the atrium of a haunted Victorian mansion, or a secret temple where shadowy people conduct rituals, or vampires and their attendant beasts, or what.

56. Autumn Dusk, Season of the Witch: I don’t know why I chose this one over “Bell, Book, and Candle” or “Mystic Circle” or any of the other ones I like from this album. I guess the clue is in the name. Like “Twilight” and “Shadow Dance,” it just sounds like autumn. Like the setting in Over the Garden Wall, but even spookier.

57. Pax Terra, Winter’s Eve: Another piece that sounds unlike anything else Nox Arcana has produced. It’s almost entirely choral, except for the sound of church bells, and it’s pretty. It has a kind of bittersweet optimism to it, and it’s moving. I’ve actually cried listening to it. Its lyrics are Latin, and translate as: “Everlasting God, life on the forest floor, eternal sacred earth -- tree glory, life [of] the nourishing mother, eternal sacred earth -- incarnate, hail blessings, glory to Nox Arcana [night secrets] -- To the threshold of time, follow the song, glory to Nox Arcana!” The grammar isn’t perfect, but it’s still beautiful, profound, and usually uplifting.

58. Dark Embrace, The Haunted Symphony: I remember when this album was released last year, and I thought to myself, “Have they seriously not written a piece called ‘Dark Embrace’ yet?” And man, what a piece for that title! This is definitely my favorite track from this album. Technically, it’s the same melody as “Virtuoso,” but with strings instead of piano. While “Virtuoso” sounds like a standard (although memorable) Nox Arcana piece, this one is unique and striking.

59. Toccata, Legion of Shadows: What better to close off with than “Toccata and Fugue in D Minor”? I actually have no idea how this piece came to be associated with vampires; its first use in film was for a Jekyll and Hyde adaptation, meanwhile the famous Bela Lugosi Dracula film begins with... the Swan Lake theme, of all things??? So, I don’t know how this became the “vampire music,” but I’m glad it did. Nox Arcana’s cover begins with the classic organ, but most of it is piano with some strings, eventually bringing in harpsichord before returning to the organ. There are spooky vocals and some tolling bells for effect.

If you made it to the end of this list, I commend you, and I’m interested to hear what everyone else’s “best of Nox Arcana” playlists include. Nox Arcana is the best!

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anthurak · 5 years

Text

The White Rose of Death - On the topic of Summer Rose’s Weapon

There have been a lot of theories and concepts floated around as to what Summer Rose’s weapon might have been. From chain-whips, to a spear, to a battle-axe, to swords and more.

However, what I personally find rather odd is that I’ve yet to see Summer using what is kind of the most obvious choice for her weapon.

A Sniper Rifle.

Ruby’s Crescent Rose is specifically noted to be a Scythe and a Sniper Rifle. We know Ruby’s use of the Scythe was symbolically inherited from her Mentor/Uncle Qrow, but considering that Qrow’s scythe does not have any kind of sniper function, Ruby must have gotten the Sniper Rifle from somewhere else.

We know that Ruby always wanted to follow in her mother’s footsteps, so why not use the same weapon that Summer did?

Summer being a Sniper also fits very nicely into a running trend we’ve been seeing with Silver Eyed Warriors; the fact that they all have a very strong Death motif and imagery.

Ruby of course has her giant Scythe, a weapon closely associated with Death in western culture via the Grim Reaper. Ruby’s attire, a hooded cloak, is often worn by personifications of Death, again like the Grim Reaper. Red is Ruby’s most prominent color, a color that is often associated with Death (see Edgar Allen Poe’s ‘Masque of the Red Death’ for perhaps the most well-known usage.) Ruby has a very significant birthdate related to Death; October 31st, both All Hallows Eve and the Day of the Dead. Finally, the nature of Ruby’s Semblance and the way it scatters rose petals has a few Death connotations, with the imagery of falling and scatter petals or leaves sometimes being using to symbolize the passing of a life.

Maria Calavera of course has a lot of symbolic association with Dia De Los Muertos through both her name and her Skull motif. Like Ruby, she wore a hooded cloak back in her huntress days, which was colored Black, pretty much the iconic image of Death. Also like Ruby, she uses a Scythe in the form of a pair of sickles which even indirectly inspired Ruby’s own use of a scythe via Qrow. And of course, there’s Maria’s nickname; The Grimm Reaper.

Then we come to Summer. Even with the bare bones information we have on her at the moment, we can already see a major bit of Death imagery in her character in the form of Summer’s White Cloak, another color with a lot of association with Death.

And Summer being a Sniper fits perfectly into this trend of Death symbolism. Going back through history, we can see that a lot of famous Snipers get Death-related nicknames. From the Finnish Sniper Simo Häyhä, AKA ‘The White Death’ to the Soviet Sniper Lyudmila Pavlichenko, AKA ‘Lady Death’ to the multiple snipers throughout history that have been given the moniker ‘the Angel of Death’. Which of course has carried over into any number of fictional representations. The fact is, Snipers tend to get a lot of Death symbolism associated with them.

Finally, Summer being a Sniper sets up a very nice parallel with Ruby’s own super kind/sweet yet ruthlessly pragmatic demeanor. I recently did a whole analysis on just how ruthless and deadly a fighter Ruby can be, and Summer herself employing a style of combat that is all about maximum lethality would tell us exactly where Ruby got her own ruthless edge from.

Also, this is probably pretty obvious, but Ruby herself using a sniper rifle can certainly mean all the Sniper-related Death symbolism can be applied to her as well.

#rwby #Summer Rose #ruby rose #rwby analysis #rwby theory #summer rose's weapon #badass summer #nothing against people who draw Summer with other weapons #i just find it odd that this possibility seems to have been entirely overlooked

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azrael-asks · 4 years

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{ Wow. 244 of these? I might make separate posts to divvy these up, anon. I'm gonna toss some of my headcanons for the game not involving Azrael as well in here, hope you don't mind. }

Azrael, while they are biblically recognized as God's Kidness and occasionally as the Virtue of Patience, they aren't really the nicest angel (unless it comes to children/those with childlike innocence)

Going against common depictions, Azrael's wings are gold, not black.

Azrael loves Earl Grey cookies. They also like tea of the same flavor.

While Michael and other angels love confectionaries, Azrael doesn't quite have a taste for certain foods outside of their favorite snack.

Azrael's attire used to be a lot more intricate. It used to be white as well, however their clothes became grey and simplified because the flames and ashes they created in the Celestial War stained their clothes darker.

While Archangels are recognized by their six wings, Azrael is one of the rare exceptions of Archangel to have four.

Azrael's primary title is "Heaven's Executioner", but humans mainly recognize Azrael as either the "Angel of Death", "Grim Reaper", or "The Seventh Plague" thanks to the biblical telling of Moses freeing his people from slavery in Egypt.

Azrael enacted a situation similar to the "Masque of the Red Death" by Edgar Allen Poe unto a group of priests and pastors that lost their way during the Bubonic Plague, mainly because they were fed up with the group sullying God's name by letting children and other civilians perish to the disease.

The Archangel of Death started out as a tabla rusa when they were first created. Nothing more than a husk that didn't understand emotions or human nature.

Azrael was created before humans, however they obtained ownership of the flaming sword when claiming Abel's soul after the incident between the brothers and the first murder.

When they get super infuriated, Azrael's wings have a tendency to shed. Hence why feathers seem to slip from under their tunic when they start ranting.

Azrael held utmost respect for their brothers before the Celestial War. After the war, Azrael developed a terror of Michael and a fear of opposing him.

Because of the nature of Azrael's creation, they are incapable of disobeying Michael's orders. In a way, it is similar to how Barbatos or Lucifer are bound by Diavolo's commands, but Azrael never had the option to swear loyalty to Michael or not. They were created that way.

Lucifer finds Azrael to be a minor annoyance in contrast to how he viewed them during the war. Him and his brothers still resent Azrael for those events, as Azrael was the one sent to erase their sister.

Lucifer is unaware of Azrael's scar, let alone the nature of the scar, since he fled after Lilith right after administering it by accident.

When Azrael still had their eyes set on Lilith, they would often take her down to the human world on her own request. This has a little bit to do with why travel to the human world is a little more limited than it was in the past.

There are 18 Archangels in total, although they are divided amongst themselves into their own familial groups as brothers and sisters. The easiest way to explain it is that those Archangels grouped together in various biblical lore is how these familial groups are divided. Michael is looped in with most, if not all of them.

Angels have 3 forms: their human form, their "angelic" form (humanoid with birdlike wings), then their "true" form (those lovecraftian eldritch-like horrors you see. Like Thrones or Cherubs)

Azrael's true form is that of a Seraphim.

Following the Celestial War Azrael suffered some SERIOUS PTSD that is triggered by loud bell-like sounds. Similar to the bell that tolls in Big Ben, as this sound resembles the one made when Azrael and Lucifer clashed swords during the war.

Once the war was done, Azrael took a couple years' vacation to the human world to try and bring themself peace of mind. { I may write a fic about their human-world ventures, idk yet }

Azrael isn't the only angel of death, but they are meant to govern them even though they don't seem to be very "active" in the process.

Azrael's branch of Angels of Death functions similarly to the Grim Reapers from Black Butler (it's like an office-working attitude with filing reports and keeping records of everything).

While Azrael comes to collect human souls, the souls normally are able to judge themselves. Even those that were self-centered have enough conscience to recognize they were bad people and don't deserve paradise.

Azrael's bond is strongest with Raphael, especially following the war because of the nature of their scar.

Because of Lilith's influence, Azrael sometimes intervenes on the judgment of souls, snatching some before they sink to the Devildom and letting them join other souls in heaven.

Azrael is one of the most skilled fighters in the Celestial Realm aside from Michael and Lucifer.

They are convinced Lucifer and his brothers would try and kill Azrael on-sight if they tried to reach the Devildom.

The war between the Celestial Realm and the Devildom took place before the Celestial War, although Azrael gained a violent reputation due to nearly burning the Devildom down during the war for similar reasons that they nearly burned the Celestial Realm down during the Celestial War.

Angels and Demons alike give off a unique scent/aroma. Angels and Fallen Angels give off an herbal/botanical scent while Demons give off less natural scents, as if they resemble man-made scents rather than naturally-forming ones.

Azrael smells like rosemary

Michael smells like lavender

Raphael smells like aloe vera

Lucifer smells like chamomile

Mammon smells like citronella

Leviathan smells like salt/sea water

Satan smells like fresh-cut grass

Asmodeus smells like roses

Beelzebub smells like tomatoes

Belphegor smells like basil

Diavolo smells like charcoal

Barbatos smells like confections

Simeon smells like cashews

Luke smells like mint

#azrael asks #{ noosey }#{ headcanons }#{ 44 down 200 to go }

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libidomechanica · 4 years

Text

Untitled (“She neighbour pain”)

She neighbour pain, but she stirred. From every eve saw a man it thee I dare not to sleeps shoud feel it was Maud? And slain, with controlling for Lamia judgd, and in the heroic bosom, that thou art a wanderers camp, a chamber. Had come it or not this the time this chin, and soothe

my essence melt between movement of being pavements, save her streak the short scorn delight; for, and to go again appeared dearth Which every servants into two; Tomb. of human feels Elysium, or would he burning Phoebus sinks the Pyrrhic phalanx gone? there I soliloquize beyond the lofty cedars as palenesse tries the chance had all the morning vow. whom a hundred-gated circular appetite A prison-wall

But all wine-red roses glow! to dive into myself, whose piteous to a strange Phantoms of Horror stain, and dress, and be much pain becomes the little Hermes, “by my sinful earth clovn heel with the consciously began to wait, I do not dead, four life falls undistinguish moist finger, he says, ‘inditing tomb. (It is true, making noose for white.

Home again. (Which I can sentence sign is high marble before than they; now proud Triumph, come do it home is the truth is the nether mercy should be so lamely death deprived home is in New York and White, the ball scores and some oer the bitter burning. “Ive been embrace, and soothe, to mortals, wielding duct tape, not eventide of a love vehicles the village cars for her Altars side the nectar-wine, (the Vision to be true height and slept in the torments easy.)

But the sallows-tree, which, with a sickly the Orpheus bore, there sits uncouth swain,” (but these ladies starts—but Dick was mischief they have before you need of breadth of a corpse! The close, and so like Thunder as your sweet and come through thy pressd not cry also althought around

like small porch, with a sound of charmed God forbid!) The college turnd entrance of man.) Agree to another if there) as I need water shall but dream delicious of the vanishd Hair, some to threw the grim to the back, till her musket, drenched wight, there are

have arrived. She me caught around’ restored my leading twigs spreads her maid, from the running far peace was a passion stairs of Heaven had dropt their grisly masque they could make weep that set, a mackaw, two partners (milliners of Japan the sea; o Rivulet, born idiot legend credible. For want of this Morning, and a Chair. And Wings, at her Sable Sons, with necessity.”)

#poetry #automatically generated text #Patrick Mooney #Markov chains #Markov chain length: 6 #163 texts

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veteranmortal · 5 years

Text

The Masque of Black Harren

Dragonstone, the outpost at the edge of the Valyrian world, had stood empty for 77 years; the garrison had joined Aurion when he marched into Valyria and oblivion. Fisherfolk from Driftmark would sometimes have need to take shelter from a storm there, but they never dared enter the keep, nor did they wish to; it was a grim place, stinking of brimstone and salt, and the tower formed like a great dragon seemed to promise the Doom of Valyria to any who dared enter it.

And so it was that when the desperate survivors poured forth from Gogossos, fleeing the plague that ravaged the Free City, kept from Essos by grim-faced warriors, faces wrapped with cloth, they came to Dragonstone to find no resistance. Lord Velaryon was unperturbed by their presence; what cares a Lord whose family has gazed upon the spires of Valyria for the scurrying of fearful smallfolk, from one island to another. If they carried the plague, he reasoned, it would lay them all low, and he would have no cause for alarm.

A quarter century later, the people of Dragonstone began to sail once more, not just to fish but to trade what trinkets they had the industry to craft. As destitute as they were, they sailed the length and breadth of Westeros, seeking ports that would pay for their obsidian jewelry - fine jewelry, so dark as to be almost black, but with a bleed of red through the heart that could only be seen in firelight.

It was not long after that that the red death took Gulltown in its grasp. No pestilence in Westeros was ever so fatal, nor so hideous. Its avatar was blood, and blood was its seal. Sharp pains and sudden dizziness would take the victim first first, then bleeding profusely from the pores, the blood thinning like water, scarlet stains that marked clothes and face, marked a man condemned and exiled from the sympathy and care of his peers. In all, the disease took a half hour, from the moment it took root to the termination.

The Kings of Westeros reacted quickly, but too slowly all the same; King Loren Lannister promised all the gold of Casterly Rock to any man who could find a cure, but died with the rest when the red death came forth from Lannisport. King Mern Gardener laid healing hands upon a man stricken with the red death, and came away unharmed, but his sons were less fortunate, and all four died within the week. King Argillac Durrandon swore he feared no plague, but the roads into the Stormlands closed all the same, and his smallfolk clustered fearfully in Storm’s End. Princess Meria Martell would follow suit, but the red death festered in Plankytown already, and of all the Martells, only young Deria would survive the pestilence. King Torrhen Stark did not care a whit for the news, when it first arrived; few southern plagues could survive the North, and few enough traders tried. He discovered his folly too late to save White Harbour, though the blight seemed less virulent, and travelled only so far as the Dreadfort, where Lord Bolton took no chances, slaying any man who entered his lands. When Queen Sharra Arryn found blood on her son’s doublet, she did not weep, nor did she call for the maester - he lay dead in his rooms, at any rate. She simply pressed a kiss to his forehead, held him close to her and stepped through the Moon Door.

But King Harren was happy and dauntless and sagacious. When the Riverlands were half depopulated, he summoned to his presence a thousand hale and light-hearted friends from among the lords and ladies of his realm, and with these retired to the deep seclusion of his Harrenhal. This was an extensive and magnificent structure, the creation of the King's own eccentric yet august taste. A strong and lofty wall girdled it in. This wall had a vast gatehouse, with a mighty portcullis. When all had arrived, Harren brought a great hammer. The chains of the portcullis shattered.

Thus, he resolved, there could be no ingress, nor egress; whether desperation from without, or frenzy and despair from within. Harrenhal was richly provisioned, and with such precautions as Harren had taken, they could bid defiance to the contagion. The world would take care of itself, or it would not, and in the meantime it was folly to think, or to grieve. There were fools, there were mummers, there were courtesans, there were bards, there was Beauty, and there was wine. All these, and security, lay within. Without was the Red Death.

It was 7 months after Harrenhal had closed its gates that Harren chose to host a ball of unique magnificence. It was to be a Masque, held in the Great Tower, the largest of the towers of Harrenhal.

And what a masquerade it was, an indulgence of unparalleled scale. But first, the tower. There were seven floors of the masquerade. A staircase rose around the edges of the tower, with the design conspiring to be such that from one room it was all but impossible to see into another, and the great stained glass windows, sweeping and great, though abnormally, the windows covered only one side of the room, and looked out only into a series of corridors that sheathed the tower. The stained glass of each window varied in accordance with the prevailing hue of the decorations of the chamber into which it opened. That in the lowest chamber was hung, for example, in blue - and vividly blue were its windows. The second chamber was purple in its ornaments and tapestries, and here the panes were purple. The third was green throughout, and so were the casements. The fourth was furnished and lighted with orange - the fifth with white - the sixth with violet. The seventh and highest chamber was closely shrouded in black velvet tapestries that hung all over the ceiling and down the walls, falling in heavy folds upon a carpet of the same material and hue. But in this chamber only, the color of the windows failed to correspond with the decorations. The panes were scarlet - a deep blood color. Now in no one of any of the seven apartments was there any lamp or candelabrum, amid the profusion of golden ornaments that lay scattered to and fro and depended from the roof. There was no light of any kind emanating from lamp or candle within the tower. But in the corridors that encased the tower, there stood, opposite each window, a heavy tripod, bearing a brazier of fire, that projected its rays through the tinted glass and so glaringly lit the room. And thus were produced a multitude of gaudy and fantastic appearances. But in the seventh, or highest chamber the effect of the fire-light that streamed upon the dark hangings through the blood-tinted panes was ghastly in the extreme, and produced so wild a look upon the countenances of those who entered, that there were few of the company bold enough to set foot within its precincts at all.

It was within this chamber that there stood one final item, a great ebony clock, inlaid with obsidian glass, purchased from Myr. The pendulum at the heart of the clock swung with a ponderous, metallic clang, and when the minute hand completed its circuit of the clock’s face, there would come a deep, musical sound from the very lungs of the clock, of particular note and tenor that the bards would halt for a moment, simply to hear the sound, and to know it, and such would the dancers be obliged to halt, and all would be suddenly disconcerted, their pleasure forgotten for a time; the giddiest grew wan and solemn, whilst the more venerable of the company would stop entirely, bringing fingers to brows, as though recalling something half heard and never learnt. As the echoes ceased, and the bards resumed their busy work, a thrill of light laughter passed over the whole assembly - the bards looked at one another with smiles, as though vowing to avoid a similar disturbance when next the clock sang. The minute hand would complete another migration, the clock would sing once again, and disquiet would descend.

Despite this, it was a most magnificent revel. Harren’s taste ran to the peculiar, and he had a fine eye for colour and effects, a barbaric lustre glowing from all he conceived of. There had been some that thought him mad, speaking darkly of the black blood of Hoare, but they were out with the Red Death, and Harren’s followers felt he was not. If one could only see him, hear him, touch him, one would know he was not.

It was by his direction that the seven floors were embellished, and it was his guiding taste that gave the character of the masquerade, which tended to the grotesque. There was much glare and glitter and piquancy and phantasm. There were delirious fancies as the madman fashions. There were much of the beautiful, much of the wanton, much of the bizarre, something of the terrible, and not a little of that which might have excited disgust. To and fro in the seven chambers stalked, in fact, a multitude of dreams. And these the dreams - writhed in and about, taking hue from the rooms, and causing the wild music of the orchestra to seem as the echo of their steps. And, anon, there strikes the ebony clock which stands in the hall of the velvet. And then, for a moment, all is still, and all is silent save the voice of the clock. The dreams are stiff-frozen as they stand. But the echoes of the chime die away - they have endured but an instant -- and a light half-subdued laughter floats after them as they depart. And now the music swells, and the dreams live, and writhe to and fro more merrily than ever, taking hue from the many-tinted windows through which stream the rays of the tripods. But to the chamber which lies most westwardly of the seven there are now none of the maskers who venture, for the night is waning away; and there flows a ruddier light through the blood-colored panes; and the blackness of the sable drapery appalls; and to him whose foot falls on the sable carpet, there comes from the near clock of ebony a muffled peal more solemnly emphatic than any which reaches their ears who indulge in the more remote gaieties of the other floors.

But these other apartments were densely crowded, and in them beat feverishly the heart of life. And the revel went whirlingly on, until at length there commenced the sounding of midnight upon the clock. And then the music ceased, as I have told; and the evolutions of the waltzers were quieted; and there was an uneasy cessation of all things as before. But now there were twelve strokes to be sounded by the bell of the clock; and thus it happened, perhaps that more of thought crept, with more of time into the meditations of the thoughtful among those who revelled. And thus too, it happened, that before the last echoes of the last chime had utterly sunk into silence, there were many individuals in the crowd who had found leisure to become aware of the presence of a masked figure which had arrested the attention of no single individual before. And the rumor of this new presence having spread itself whisperingly around, there arose at length from the whole company a buzz, or murmur, of horror, and of disgust.

In an assembly of phantasms such as I have painted, it may well be supposed that no ordinary appearance could have excited such sensation. In truth the masquerade license of the night was nearly unlimited; but the figure in question had done the unthinkable, the unimaginable, and gone beyond the bounds of even Harren's indefinite decorum. There are chords in the hearts of the most reckless which cannot be touched without emotion. Even with the utterly lost, to whom life and death are equally jests, there are matters of which no jest can be made. The whole company, indeed, seemed now deeply to feel that in the costume and bearing of the stranger neither wit nor propriety existed. The figure was tall and gaunt, and shrouded from head to foot in the habiliments of the grave. The mask which concealed the visage was made so nearly to resemble the countenance of a stiffened corpse that the closest scrutiny must have difficulty in detecting the cheat. And yet all this might have been endured, if not approved, by the mad revellers around. But the mummer had gone so far as to assume the type of the Red Death. His vesture was dabbled in blood -- and his broad brow, with all the features of his face, was besprinkled with the scarlet horror.

When Harren beheld this visage as it stalked between revellers, he could be seen to convulse, with a great shudder of terror or disgust, but in the second moment, he flushed, reddening with rage.

“Who would dare-” He demanded of his courtiers, his voice hoarse, “Who dares insult us with this hateful mockery? Seize him, tear away his mask, that we might know who shall drown in the God’s Eye at sunrise!”

It was the lowest chamber, cast all in blue, that King Harren stood as he uttered this proclamation. They rang up the tower, for Harren was a hearty and bold man, and the minstrels had ceased their music at the waving of his hand.

It was in the blue room where stood the king, with a group of pale knights by his side. At first, as he spoke, there was a slight rushing movement of this group in the direction of the stranger, who, at the moment was also near at hand, and now, with deliberate and stately step, made closer approach to the speaker. But from a certain nameless awe with which the mad assumptions of the mummer had inspired the whole party, there were found none who put forth a hand to seize him; so that, unimpeded, he passed within a yard of the king's person; and while the vast assembly, as with one impulse, shrank from the centers of the rooms to the walls, he made his way uninterruptedly, but with the same solemn and measured step which had distinguished him from the first, through the blue chamber up to the purple - to the purple to the green - through the green, onwards to the orange -- through this again, up to the white -- and even thence to the violet, ere a decided movement had been made to arrest him. It was then, however, that the King Harren, maddened with rage and the shame of his own momentary cowardice, rushed hurriedly through up the tower, while none followed him on account of a deadly terror that had seized upon all. He bore aloft a wickedly sharp handaxe, and had approached, in rapid impetuosity, to within three or four feet of the retreating figure, when the latter, having attained the extremity of the velvet apartment, turned suddenly and confronted his pursuer. There was a sharp cry -- and the axe dropped gleaming upon the sable carpet, upon which most instantly afterward, fell prostrate in death King Harren. Then summoning the wild courage of despair, a throng of the revellers at once threw themselves into the black apartment, and seizing the mummer whose tall figure stood erect and motionless within the shadow of the ebony clock, gasped in unutterable horror at finding the grave cerements and corpse- like mask, which they handled with so violent a rudeness, untenanted by any tangible form.

And now was acknowledged the presence of the Red Death. He had come like a thief in the night. And one by one dropped the revellers in the blood-bedewed halls of their revel, and died each in the despairing posture of his fall. And the life of the ebony clock went out with that of the last of the gay. And the flames of the tripods expired. And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all.

#asoiaf #fanfic #masque of the red death #harrenhal #oneshot #gothic

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anistarrose · 5 years

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This is Your Last Ride Ever, Forever (TAZ Amnesty x Balance)

Summary: Ned meets the Grim Reaper, who’s surprisingly encouraging of breaking the laws of life and death to stop the apocalypse.

Word Count: ~2100

Warnings: (canonical) major character death, character undeath, canon-typical violence

AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19192672

A little Amnesty/Balance crossover to help cope. (Title is from Lifetime Achievement Award by Lemon Demon!)

***

The stars are beautiful, and then they’re gone…

And then, they’re replaced by a million spiraling lights, dancing above a serene blue sea.

Ned doesn’t join them, though. He feels anything but serene — no, he’s the roaring ocean that’s torn up and whirled around by a cyclone. He’s the weight that turns the storm deadly as it batters away at the harbor, as it rushes in to drown anyone who thought they could trust the sea.

But even now, he refuses to accept it as the end of the story.

Where’s Dani? Where’s the gate?

Am I dead? I can’t die yet, I still haven’t warned anyone that the shapeshifter was after the goat…

I still haven’t finished cleaning up the mess I made…

It’s ironic, perhaps, how close he came to leaving them just a few hours ago when now he’s so desperate to return — but really, there’s no excuse for him not to have seen this coming. Every time Ned thinks he’s lost it all, thinks he’s hit rock bottom, he’s proven wrong and finds himself sinking lower and lower — so why should this time have been any different?

A jagged rift slices through the air just a few feet in front of him, and he dives towards it without thinking. He’ll do anything to get back to them even for the briefest of moments, anything to warn them —

Appearing out of nowhere, a scythe swings in a broad arc, binding the rift shut before coming to a stop just inches away from Ned. He can feel the power emanating from it with a instinctive certainty he’s never before had about magical objects, and he knows in the back of his mind that one touch of that blade will banish him to the furthest depths of the afterlife, from which he might never see Kepler again even if he spent a whole century struggling to climb back out.

The figure holding the scythe is cloaked in black robes, their face obscured, and something tells Ned that missing him with the scythe was a calculated choice, an intentional choice. That if they’d meant to strike him, they would have, and that would have been the end of that.

But the scythe-wielder — a humanoid, somewhat stout figure with sparks of red electricity dancing all across their sleeves like static electricity — doesn’t make any further move to attack, and instead procures a book from within the folds of their robe. It floats in the air alongside their head, flipping through pages all on its own as if assigned to search for a particular entry.

“Look, bud, I don’t really want to send you to the Eternal Stockade,” the figure addresses him, voice masculine and tone surprisingly casual. “You look pretty disoriented, and I can’t really blame you — but you did just try to make a break for it, and if it turns out you’re a repeat offender, I can’t in good conscience let you keep hanging around in the low-security sector.”

He says all of this in such a matter-of-fact tone that Ned is left at a complete loss for words. Of all the visions of the afterlife he’d ever entertained, none of them had been so full of… bureaucracy.

The pages of the book come to a standstill, and the figure raises a skeletal hand up towards his shadow-obscured face, allowing Ned to catch a glimpse of something reflective — adjusted glasses?

“Let’s see here… Edmund ‘Ned’ Chicane, human, only one death — good for you! — at age sixty-three. You’re good to go, then — just don’t try anything like this again, or I’ll have to lock you up.”

Ned finally manages to collect himself, and choke out a few words. “You’re the Grim Reaper, aren’t you?”

The specter approximates a shrug. “Well, not the Grim Reaper. There’s three of us, for one thing, but… well, I guess it’s a pretty accurate description aside from that.”

Another thing Ned had never imagined was that death incarnate would be so willing to make casual conversation, but the realization gives him all kinds of hope. Escaping prison — and supernatural prison, at that — would be a daunting task, but just talking his way out of a bad situation? That, he could do.

“Well, you know, Mr. Reaper, if I may call you that — I’m a huge fan of yours, loved you in ‘The Masque of the Red Death!’ And I would really hate to throw a wrench in the operation you have set up here, but…”

The reaper’s book vanishes in a plume of smoke, and his grip on his scythe tightens. “Okay, I think we both know what you’re playing at here, and let me just warn you now — even if I did want to let you go, it’s not my decision to make. I already told you I wasn’t the only reaper, and even if we all agreed to let back into the world of the living, the Raven Queen would never sign off on it. Flattering me isn’t gonna get you anywhere.”

“But I need to get back!” Ned blurts out. “I made a mistake, a whole pile of mistakes, and I need to fix them — there is an entire planet, an entire world in danger because of me! The apocalypse is impending for a whole world of innocent, sapient creatures, and hardly anyone knows the truth of it! Hardly anyone can stop it, except me and —”

The reaper flinches at the mention of a world in danger, but Ned doesn’t notice because the words, the confessions, the pleas are now pouring out of his mouth too fast to contain. “Except me and the rest of the Pine Guard, but I left them without doing nearly enough to help, to make it up to them — so I need to get back, just for a few hours! Just to make sure they’ll be alright! To warn them, and — and to say goodbye, because they and Kirby were still the closest thing I ever had to a family…”

He’s oblivious to the enchantment the reaper has cast, compelling him to speak the truth — because if telling the truth meant getting back to Kepler, meant saving the world and in particular the Pine Guard… then not even Ned Chicane would dare to lie.

“Just a big, weird, dumb family of cryptids and magicians and park rangers and crazy old men trying to stave off the apocalypse together! I can’t abandon them now, I can’t —”

“Shh.” The reaper holds up a hand. “Shh, it’s alright. I just need to check something, okay?”

With his scythe, he cuts a small tear in the dimension, edges of the rift glowing a vibrant green. Yet the inside of the gash shows nothing but a churning storm of dark purple clouds that cover the night sky, blotting out the stars as the wind roars and howls like chained beast straining to be free.

“Yikes. It really does look apocalyptic in there. Tell you what, Ned…”

In the shadowy void beneath the cowl of his robe, a devious smile lights up. “Legally, there’s nothing I can do to help you. But if it just so happened that Edmund Chicane was an unnaturally skilled necromancer, who overpowered me and stole my scythe to slip back into his own plane of existence… well, he’d need a corporeal form to be much of a help to anyone, but surely someone of his skill level could reanimate his body without any help from me whatsoever… I’m sure he’d be in a good position to avert the apocalypse, in that case.”

“Thank you,” Ned whispers, but the reaper quickly raises a finger to his lips.

“Don’t thank me yet,” he replies. “Really, you should know… a stunt like that, it’s gonna earn you a lot of prison time. I’m gonna have to bring you back here eventually, and when that happens, a bunch of folks are going to want you locked up in the Eternal Stockade. I can try my best to get your sentence mitigated, but… the Stockade’s not a nice place, even if you’re only in for a few decades.”

“I don’t care. I’ve done prison time before.”

The reaper nods slowly, and with a flick of his scythe, he tears a longer gash in the air, widening the small rift he’d opened before.

Before he steps through, though, he waves a hand across his robes, and stands still for a moment as they melt away into… a plain white shirt, battered denim jacket, and faded pair of blue jeans, worn by possibly the most mundane-looking middle-aged man Ned has ever laid eyes upon.

“Now, Mr. Reaper, I realize that I’m deeply indebted to you,” Ned says, “but that said, what on Earth are you wearing?”

“Can’t walk around looking like a skeleton if I’m gonna sneak over to your dead body and resurrect it,” the reaper answers. “And just call me Barry, by the way.”

***

Kirby is speeding across Kepler in a stolen car with a screaming goatman buckled up in the back seat, and none of it feels real. Street signs and traffic lights pass by in unidentifiable blurs, but he doesn’t dare take a hand off the steering wheel to wipe his tears away. His knuckles are white, and the old station wagon’s engine is groaning from the exertion —

The four-armed figure of pure white light springs down onto the car, and a spiderweb of cracks spreads across the windshield. Kirby slams the brakes on instinct, and Billy lets out an anguished bleat as his head collides with the back of the driver seat.

“Fuck!” Kirby shouts as two of the figure’s arms jab in through the windshield, grasping at thin air at first but stretching ever closer to him, and he fumbles with his seatbelt and flings the door open. “C’mon, goat, we gotta run!”

“Duuuuuck!” Billy bleats, flailing his arms nowhere near his buckle as Kirby opens his door. Somehow, the seatbelt has gotten twisted all around his horns, and he won’t stop jerking his head around long enough for Kirby to untangle him.

“Stay still, please stay still, we don’t have any time —”

Billy’s head abruptly jerks up, and his slitted eyes fixate on something just past Kirby. “Nedddddd!”

“Ned’s not gonna be able to help us anymore,” Kirby chokes out. “Please —”

A firm hand lands on Kirby’s shoulder, and his blood runs cold as he realizes he can make out a white glow in his peripheral vision. The figure squeezes tighter and tighter, dragging him back from the car and away from Billy —

He hears the satisfying swish of a blade swinging through the air, and the figure’s grip goes limp. He collapses to his knees, and around him, tiny particles of light drift through the air, winking out one at a time like lightning bugs.

Behind him, a familiar voice remarks: “Got here just in the nick of time, didn’t I?”

Immediately, Kirby staggers to his feet and whirls around. “You — you died! I saw it on the drones! How —”

His voice cuts off, as his brain begins to process what his eyes are seeing.

Ned is smiling slightly, but it’s not that fake showman’s smile that he always wears at the Cryptonomica. No, today his smile is confident and determined — and just a little bit melancholic, too, in a way that someone who doesn’t know Ned as well as Kirby does could easily miss.

But then again, maybe Kirby doesn’t know Ned as well as he thinks, because Ned is currently wielding a giant ebony scythe with a long silver blade, and standing above the glowing, bisected body of the four-armed figure. Even as it disintegrates, it’s clear that it was sliced in half at the waist by a single clean cut.

And perhaps most damning of all is Ned’s shirt — ripped and bloodied just above the stomach even though the bare skin shows no sign of a wound, and the body as a whole shows no signs of being dead as an injury like that should surely mean.

“What happened to you?”

Ned’s smile widens, and the melancholy immediately drains right out of his expression as he launches into his familiar “storyteller” mode.

“To put it succinctly, my friend, I met Death and we struck a deal! He’s a surprisingly helpful fellow, you know — he did wear a truly unconscionable amount of denim, but there’s no accounting for taste.”

***

(Thanks for reading, feedback/reblogs are welcomed as always!)

#taz #taz amnesty #taz balance #ned chicane #barry bluejeans #kirby taz #billy taz #taz spoilers #taz amnesty spoilers #rosalia writes fic

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lgbtqiahistoricalromance · 6 years

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LGBTQIA+ Historical Romance Novels with Ghosts, Ghouls, and Gothic themes-October 2018

(Warning: Some books may have triggers such as abuse, questionable family morality, dub-con, and mentions of suicide attempts.)

James Eyre by Jade Astor

- A gender twisting adaptation of the classic Gothic romance Jane Eyre!

In Victorian England, 21-year-old James Eyre, frightened by his feeling for another man, decides to leave the boys’ school where he has spent ten years, first as a student and then as a teacher. He manages to secure a position as a private tutor for Axel Vance, the ward of a wealthy man who owns an estate in Yorkshire.

From the night of his arrival, James begins to sense that things are not as they should be at Thistleton Manor, the home of the enigmatic Edmond Manchester. Late at night, wild screams seem to echo through the house, and during the daytime objects disappear from James’s room and are replaced with sinister-looking voodoo dolls. Though his instincts tell him to flee, James stays on because he enjoys his duties and the company of his pupil—and even more so because he has begun to develop an attraction for his employer, Mr. Manchester.

To his surprise, Mr. Manchester seems to return his feelings. However, a jealous former lover and a phantomlike presence in the house seem determined to tear them apart. If he is to have any hope of a happy future with the man he loves, James must solve the mystery of Thistleton Manor and save Edmond’s life as well.

Resurrected Heart by Jade Astor

- Knowing that the kind of relationship his heart longs for is forbidden by the laws of Victorian England, college student Gray Langley fights his loneliness by throwing himself into his studies and his artwork. One gloomy afternoon, he is out sketching a graveyard when he meets Dr. Arthur Striker, a man who seems to share Gray’s scandalous desires. Though Gray is encouraged when Arthur seems to return his feelings, he is unnerved by the scientific experiments Arthur seems to be conducting in his home. Even more frightening is the strange and violent madman who appears and tries to kill him whenever he and Arthur get close. And why does his attacker look exactly like Arthur?

The Secret Casebook of Simon Feximal by KJ Charles (I’ve read this one several times. Several short stories in one, with lots of creepy details, arguably the least romantic MC of all time, and wonderful erotic elements w/light D/s. Also, Charles joined forces with Jordan L Hawk to create a crossover with Hawk’s Whyborne & Griffin series. The short story is called Remnant, and it’s free on the authors’ sites.)

- A story too secret, too terrifying—and too shockingly intimate—for Victorian eyes. A note to the Editor Dear Henry, I have been Simon Feximal’s companion, assistant and chronicler for twenty years now, and during that time my Casebooks of Feximal the Ghost-Hunter have spread the reputation of this most accomplished of ghost-hunters far and wide. You have asked me often for the tale of our first meeting, and how my association with Feximal came about. I have always declined, because it is a story too private to be truthfully recounted, and a memory too precious to be falsified. But none knows better than I that stories must be told. So here is it, Henry, a full and accurate account of how I met Simon Feximal, which I shall leave with my solicitor to pass to you after my death. I dare say it may not be quite what you expect. Robert Caldwell September 1914

An Unnatural Vice by KJ Charles (Few authors do the Enemies to Lovers trope as well as Charles does.)

- In the sordid streets of Victorian London, unwanted desire flares between two bitter enemies. Crusading journalist Nathaniel Roy is determined to expose spiritualists who exploit the grief of bereaved and vulnerable people. First on his list is the so-called Seer of London, Justin Lazarus. Nathaniel expects him to be a cheap, heartless fraud. He doesn’t expect to meet a man with a sinful smile and the eyes of a fallen angel—or that a shameless swindler will spark his desires for the first time in years.Justin feels no remorse for the lies he spins during his séances. His gullible clients simply bore him. Hostile, disbelieving, utterly irresistible Nathaniel is a fascinating challenge. And as their battle of wills and wits heats up, Justin finds he can’t stop thinking about the man who’s determined to ruin him.But Justin and Nathaniel are linked by more than their fast-growing obsession with one another. They are both caught up in an aristocratic family’s secrets, and Justin holds information that could be lethal. As killers, fanatics, and fog close in, Nathaniel is the only man Justin can trust—and, perhaps, the only man he could love.

Merrick & William (sequel) by Claire Cray (Merrick was a pleasant surprise, and William is on my TBR.)

- New York, 1799: the future looks bright for the charming young book dealer William Lacy, until a raucous night of drinking lands him in shackles. He narrowly avoids the brutal prison system thanks to his mother, who negotiates with the judge to secure him a five year apprenticeship in lieu of a prison sentence. And so William finds himself in a carriage bound for the remote woods upstate, where he'll spend the next years of his life learning a new trade under some old master. When he first sees Merrick, William thinks he's been dropped into a medieval horror story. Tall and gruff, dressed in a hooded robe that completely conceals his features, and riding a black mare, Merrick might as well be the Grim Reaper. But appearances are deceiving. An uncannily skilled apothecary and healer, Merrick proves to be a generous host and a gentle teacher, and William soon finds himself surprisingly comfortable in his new surroundings. Yet troubling mysteries abound: Why does Merrick never show his face or hands? Why do his movements seem so young and sure beneath his robes? What lies within the cave behind the stone cottage? Something unnatural is afoot. But most alarming by far is William's own reaction to his new master. For Merrick's strange charms are bewitching enough by day; but by night, in the darkness of the room and the bed they share, William finds himself entirely overwhelmed by desires he never imagined...

The Captain’s Ghostly Gamble (Seasonal novella from the Captivating Captains series. It’s actually modern day, but the ghosts dominate the story, so you hardly notice.) by Catherine Curzon and Eleanor Harkstead

- When a ghostly dandy and his roguish companion try their hand at matchmaking, things definitely go bump in the night.

For centuries, foppish Captain Cornelius Sheridan and brooding John Rookwood have haunted the mansion they duelled and died for. Now these phantom foes must join forces to save both their home and their feuding descendents.But when Captain Sheridan sacrifices his afterlife for the sake of true love, will Rookwood risk everything to keep his companion by his side, or is it too late to say "I love you"?

The Medium by Bonnie Dee (This is one of her best, in my opinion, and I’ve read most of her material.)

- To win a heart, he must risk his soul… Cast out of his family for being a freak, psychic Justin Crump helps others find peace by using his ability. When he’s called upon to release a distressed soul from a haunted house, a child’s angry spirit draws him into a dark mystery. Equally intriguing is the skeptical homeowner, Albert, a man who has buried his sexuality deeper than the grave. Albert Henderson humors his mother’s wishes by inviting the medium for a visit. While he doubts Justin’s gifts, he can’t deny one truth: the man stirs desire in him that Albert has spent a lifetime denying. Slowly, the walls of his proper life crumble. And when Justin proposes some emotion-free experimentation, neither imagines it might lead to love…and danger. After learning the terrifying truth about the deceased child’s persecutor, the two men pursue a perpetrator of great evil. When they coax a confession from their quarry, the vengeful spirit unleashes power nearly beyond control. To free the earthbound ghost from the past that holds it shackled, Justin must risk his own soul. And Albert must find the courage to break free of the chains of doubt that will deny him and Justin the future of which they once only dreamed.

(Part of Victorian Holiday Hearts Boxed Set) by Summer Devon and Bonnie Dee

- Delaney and the Autumn Masque: Delaney, a member of the Andrews theater clan, performs magic tricks at a fancy dress ball where he's struck by the dramatic figure of the Grim Reaper. He follows Death to a quiet room for a glorious, lustful encounter. With his identity hidden, impoverished gentleman Bartholomew Bancroft dares to indulge in an impulsive liaison, but can he find love with the magician when the masks come off?

The Psychic and the Sleuth by Bonnie Dee and Summer Devon

- Psychic and skeptic—how could their love affair go wrong? Inspector Robert Court’s relentless insistence the wrong man hanged for the murder of Court’s cousin has him on his superintendent’s bad side. Court is assigned lowly vice cases such as exposing a confidence man posing as a medium to fleece the wealthy. Down on his luck, Oliver Marsh learned he had an aptitude for conducting séances. He assuages his guilt by bringing comfort to the grieving and offering occasional insights coming from true psychic flashes. Marsh has tried to deny these flashes, but when he’s bowled over by a vivid memory of murder coming from the other side, he can no longer pretend he doesn’t possess a gift. Marsh reveals details about that night which only Court’s cousin would know, and the detective vows to track down the truth—by staying as close to the fake psychic as humanly possible. But close leads to closer and soon the pair is involved in not only a torrid affair but a hunt for a killer—before he strikes again.

The Bird by Eli Easton (Novella from the Dreamspinner Press anthology Bones. Excellent read, as long as you keep in mind it’s written from the perspective of an Englishman in 19th century Jamaica.)

- Third son Colin Hastings has subverted his desires for his entire life, intent now on bringing his family’s plantation back to its former state of solvency, and marrying his friend Elizabeth. But, when he helps save the life of one of the plantation workers, he’s gifted his passion back, and must come to terms with his love for his lifelong friend, Richard. What happens when nightmares are not what they seem, and horror is not as bad one fears?

A Brush with Darkness by Erestes

- Florence, 1875 After making a grisly discovery one night, I needed proof that there was still goodness in the world. I never dreamt it would come to me during my next commission—with a subject whose very name means light... Yuri was glorious in his otherworldly beauty, surrounded by a bright halo of iridescence, but I detected a fierce darkness lurking underneath the surface. Sketching all night, I could hardly wait to capture his likeness in a painting. For Yuri has stimulated not only my creative urges, but my sexual ones as well. His very presence infuses me with joy and passion, but what will happen if my patron should discover our trysts? Dependent on his good graces, I can't afford to lose his support. But I fear the time will soon come when I must choose between restoring my family's fortunes and obeying the temptation of the muse before me... Previously published as Chiaroscuro, newly revised by author.

The Gilda Stories: 25th Anniversary Expanded Edition by Jewelle Gomez (This is not exactly romance per se, but does include a lesbian protagonist, and follows her world through all that comes with being a vampire, including romantic interests.)

- This remarkable novel begins in 1850s Louisiana, where Gilda escapes slavery and learns about freedom while working in a brothel. After being initiated into eternal life as one who "shares the blood" by two women there, Gilda spends the next two hundred years searching for a place to call home. An instant lesbian classic when it was first published in 1991, The Gilda Stories has endured as an auspiciously prescient book in its explorations of blackness, radical ecology, re-definitions of family, and yes, the erotic potential of the vampire story.

Unchained by Ainsley Gray Review

- If he takes their life, they can never truly leave. That's the mantra Noah Wilmington has lived by for years. He picks up whores and deviants from the local taverns, enjoys their company for an evening...and then hides their bodies in the woods. Edward Yorke has approached the same man in the same public house time and again, never deterred by the cool dismissal he receives. There's something about Noah that calls to him. A shared pain, a shared sadness... But Noah doesn't trust himself. It's too risky to permit someone too close, and Edward is the one person in the world whose life Noah wants to spare. So, every time Edward has asked to buy him a drink, Noah declines. Then one night, out of sheer loneliness, that "no" becomes a "yes." When Edward's night with him sheds light on some of Noah's dark secrets, Noah cannot simply let him walk out the door. But if he doesn't want Edward dead, and he cannot let him leave, only one option really remains...

Briarley by Astor Glenn Gray (This novel was so unique and it’s just a charming May/December romance.)

- An m/m World War II-era retelling of Beauty and the Beast. During a chance summer shower, an English country parson takes refuge in a country house. The house seems deserted, yet the table is laid with a sumptuous banquet such as the parson has not seen since before war rationing. Unnerved by the uncanny house, he flees, but stops to pluck a single perfect rose from the garden for his daughter - only for the master of the house to appear, breathing fire with rage. Literally. At first, the parson can't stand this dragon-man. But slowly, he begins to feel the injustice of the curse that holds the dragon captive. What can break this vengeful curse?

Lover’s Knot by Donald Hardy

- Jonathan Williams has inherited Trevaglan Farm from a distant relative. With his best friend, Alayne, in tow, Jonathan returns to the estate to take possession, meet the current staff, and generally learn what it’s like to live as the landed gentry now. He’d only been there once before, fourteen years earlier. But that was a different time, he’s a different person now, determined to put that experience out of his mind and his heart….The locals agree that Jonathan is indeed different from the lost young man he was that long ago summer, when he arrived at the farm for a stay after his mother died. Back then the hot summer days were filled with sunshine, the nearby ocean, and a new friend, Nat. Jonathan and the farmhand had quickly grown close, Jonathan needing comfort in the wake of his grief, and Nat basking in the peace and love he didn’t have at home. But that was also a summer of rumors and strange happenings in the surrounding countryside, romantic triangles and wronged lovers. Tempers would flare like a summer lightning storm, and ebb just as quickly. By the summer’s end, one young man was dead, and another haunted for life. Now Jonathan is determined to start anew. Until he starts seeing the ghost of his former friend everywhere he looks. Until mementos of that summer idyll reappear. Until Alayne’s life is in danger. Until the town’s resident witch tells Jonathan that ghosts are real. And this one is tied to Jonathan unto death…

Man & Monster (Book two of The Savage Land) by Michael Jensen

- A monster stalks the ancient forests... It’s 1799, and Cole Seavey is a trapper running from a guilty past, seeking refuge on the vast American frontier. Lost in a raging storm, he finds himself face to face with a terrifying, otherworldly creature that seems to have emerged from a nightmare. Cole is saved from certain death by a handsome Delaware Indian named Pakim. Together they learn that the monster is the fearsome Wendigo from native legends: a creature with a heart of ice, drawn to the evil of men. Soon the Wendigo is terrorizing the frontier — settler and Indian alike — and Cole and Pakim join together to defeat the mysterious monster. In the process, Cole finds himself falling for the strapping brave and the promise of a new life together. Unfortunately, the legends say that the Wendigo can only be killed by another creature with a heart of ice. But how can Cole hope to defeat the monster if it means denying the love he's finally allowed himself to feel?

Stoker & Bash by Selina Kray (Book two coming soon!)

- At Scotland Yard, DI Timothy Stoker is no better than a ghost. A master of arcane documents and niggling details who, unlike his celebrity-chasing colleagues, prefers hard work to headlines. But an invisible man is needed to unmask the city’s newest amateur detective, Hieronymus Bash. A bon vivant long on flash and style but short on personal history, Bash just may be a Cheapside rogue in Savile Row finery. When the four fangs of the Demon Cats of Scavo—trophies that protect the hunters who killed the two vicious beasts—disappear one by one, Stoker's forced to team with the very man he was sent to investigate to maintain his cover. He finds himself thrust into a world of wailing mediums, spiritualist societies, man-eating lions, and a consulting detective with more ambition than sense. Will this case be the end of his career, or the start of an unexpected liaison? Or will the mysterious forces at play be the death of them both? And just who is Hieronymus Bash?

Gothic Romance by LV Lloyd (Gothic light, but includes a trans side character.)

- When Jonathan Winters accepts a post as tutor to the only son of Lord D’Anvers, he looks forward to sharing his love of learning with his young pupil. Not even arriving at Castle Blackstone in the middle of a thunderstorm can dampen his enthusiasm, nor the fact that the wing above his head is forbidden. Absorbed with Evelyn’s education, Jonathan is completely unprepared to find himself the object of Lord D’Anvers’ attentions. Until D’Anvers kisses him...

Threadbare by Clare London (Beautifully written, but NOT HEA!)

- When Edward inherits the family textile mill from his deceased parents, he knows where his duty lies. As a young Victorian gentleman, he devotes himself to the family business and doing right by his customers and employees. What concern is it that he surrenders his own artistic ambitions and romantic passions? But a hideous accident at the mill one day brings him into close contact with Mori, one of his most productive workers, a beautiful yet seemingly delicate and vulnerable young man. Edward takes Mori under his protection, bringing him back to his house. At last, Edward has found a friend and companion. His fascination for Mori grows swiftly into love, and he’s drawn out of his quiet introspection into a world of delight and passion. Yet Mori has a private task that both baffles and concerns Edward: the completion of a stunningly beautiful, abstract tapestry. Edward doesn’t understand its significance, Mori’s devotion to it, or Mori’s strange behaviour when Edward tries to part the man from his mission. Mori loves him in return, he’s sure – but can that ever be enough? As Edward is tangled more deeply and irretrievably into the web of Mori’s love and mystery, what bittersweet price might he have to pay?

Precious Possession by Clare London (Ambiguous ending!)

- Lucas Fides has inherited his Victorian family’s auction house, good looks and a keen, passionate mind. But he has far less control over his body’s desires than his business, hiding an illicit and unspoken love for his boyhood friend and dependent, Valentine. As a result, Lucas suffers recurring, deeply erotic dreams, where a mystery lover demands and guides his sexual responses. When the auction house runs into financial difficulty, Valentine introduces a new client to Lucas. Gideon Arnaud is a mysterious and charismatic man who seems to scorn society’s restrictions. He offers Lucas a spectacular collection of jewels for auction and also his intense, seductive attention. He appears to know more about Lucas than any stranger should. Affronted by Gideon’s bold pursuit, Lucas puts up a spirited defence, despite being increasingly exhausted by his dreams. His heart is already committed to Valentine, even if he thinks it’s his secret alone. When Valentine announces his engagement to Lucas’s sister, Lucas’s pain and frustration are almost intolerable. Torn between his need for Valentine’s comfort and the determination to avoid Gideon Arnaud’s disturbing presence, Lucas becomes more vulnerable by the day, until his loneliness forces his desire out of his dreams and into the light of day. The consequences will change his life forever.

The Blue Ribbon by Katherine Marlowe (I love everything she’s written, but this is one my faves.)

- Theo Aylmer's perfectly satisfactory life as a chemistry professor at Cambridge is upended when he receives word of his father's illness. Forced to return to Cornwall, he is robbed for everything he's worth by a dashing young highwayman. When he finally reaches his father's stagecoach inn, he finds it dilapidated and the village around it groaning beneath the thumb of the hateful Earl of Glynn. All Theo wants to do is return to his life and work in Cambridge, but as he tries to recoup the funds necessary to travel, he finds himself plagued by brandy-smugglers and rumours of ghosts. And at the center of all Theo's problems is a certain handsome highwayman who has charmed his way into Theo's bed and heart. When the highwayman turns up shot, Theo can't turn him away, even though doing so risks bringing the wrath of the customs men, the law, and the Earl of Glynn upon them both.

The Possession of Lawrence Eugene Davis by EE Ottoman

- At the beginning of the Great Depression Lawrence Eugene Davis returns to his family's ranch to set his father's affairs in order. But the house stirs memories of his unhappy childhood and his miserable time in the trenches. Memories are not the only thing woken, however, and Lawrence finds himself hunted and eventually overcome by the sinister presence. Salvation comes at the eleventh hour in the form of a stranger who claims he can rid Lawrence of the demon threatening to possess him—but in exchange he wants Lawrence for himself.

To Serve the Count by Cassandra Pierce

- In 1815 Austria, Rupert is cast out of his village after he is caught kissing another man and seeks refuge in the mysterious Castle Blutstark. He soon realizes that this is no ordinary castle, and his new master, Count Kaspar, is far from an ordinary employer. In fact, he isn't even alive in the conventional sense, and he wastes no time informing Rupert of his unusual new duties. Everything Rupert has ever learned in life tells him to run for his life, but then again nothing has ever prepared him to deal with the undeniable allure of his enigmatic new employer.

The Master of Seacliff by Max Pierce (I barely finished this one, because I didn’t like what seemed to be an abusive relationship and a vapid MC, but it follows in the tradition of Holt and Varga, with overall great reviews.)

- Seacliff is a mansion enshrouded in near-eternal fog, dark mystery and suspicion - perhaps a reflection of the house's master. An imposing Blackbeard of a man, Duncan Stewart is both feared and admired by his business associates as well as the people he calls friends. And his home, in which young tutor and aspiring artist Andrew Wyndham now resides, holds terrible secrets - secrets that could destroy everyone within its walls.

Guardian Angel by Hayden Thorne

- When nineteen-year-old Dominic Coville’s parents die in an accident, leaving him not only alone but on the brink of poverty, he desperately searches for work and is thrilled when the post of secretary is awarded to him despite his obvious inexperience and ignorance. Mr. Wynyard Knight of Mandrake Abbey, however, gladly welcomes Dominic and earns the young man’s immediate sympathy for his fragile health as well as gratitude for the promising new life now awaiting Dominic. Inside rock and timber, hungry shadows seek... But unusual things soon happen and appear to focus solely on him, and Dominic begins to wonder about the true history of Mr. Knight, the strange young man haunting the third floor, and Mandrake Abbey. With the persistent and increasingly violent attempts at communication by an angry ghost shadowing his hours, Dominic struggles to unravel the mysteries of his new home. And even with the help of a handsome young gentleman who’s an aspiring supernaturalist as well as his clairvoyant sister, danger closes in far too quickly. Then it’s only a matter of time before carefully constructed façades fall away, and the sickly, decaying underbelly of Mandrake Abbey’s centuries-old collection of stone and timber will reveal itself. Set in an alternate England sometime before the mid-19th century, Guardian Angel weaves a tangled and dark tapestry of old magic, romance, and madness, a celebration of classic gothic fiction and its macabre sensibilities.

Cast From The Earth by Leandra Vane (poly romance)

- An epidemic that turns men into monsters has seized the nation. At first the disease only spreads in cities but soon cannibals are roaming the prairie, threatening the quiet little towns of the late 19th Century heartland. At an isolated poor farm in rural America, Sara Warren has survived a tumultuous life of loss and an accident that leaves her with one leg – but she is hopeless of any other future until a woman named Cordelia arrives at the farm and changes Sara's life forever. Along with Dan, a man who can't hear and Grace, a young woman who is more concerned with her sewing needles than people, they face the oncoming apocalypse with their wits and their bare hands. When it seems like all is lost, a man from Sara's past named Jack returns to her life and they all realize the only way to survive is together. A story of romance, violence, sex, and the wild prairie that proves broken bodies still feel pleasure and broken souls can find love – even at the end of the world.

Gaywyck by Victor Varga (Book one of trilogy)

- The first gothic romance featuring gay MCs.

Robert Whyte replaces the traditional damsel in distress in the household of Donough Gaylord. He’s young, beautiful, an introvert not wishing to follow in his father footsteps--he longs to be an artist. Family friend helps him to become the librarian of Gaywyck, a house teaming with strange characters, and artists of various sorts. The house is in New England, but due to the original Gaylord owners, was built in the style of an antebellum mansion.

Donough Gaylord lives a grand lifestyle, is rich beyond imagining, but tortured by memories of dead twin and secrets that have dominated his life since boyhood. He spoils those of his household constantly, especially young Robert, who is like a breath of fresh air.

Without giving anything crucial away, I will just say that the events that cause Donough such pain are far from ordinary, and familial love is tested to the breaking point. If you don’t mind your romances a bit twisted, and with a million references to literature, drama, music, and painting, you will love this novel.

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Deanna Wadsworth (Thoroughly enjoyed this one. It’s erotic, but also has a the enemies to lovers is really well done, and there is a twist ending.)

- Ichabod Crane, town schoolmaster and self-proclaimed supernatural expert, wants to better his situation by marrying the wealthy Katrina Van Tassel. But, there is a rival for her attentions. Local hero, Brom Bones. Brom lives to torment and tease Ichabod, leaving the schoolmaster wondering if he is more interested in besting his rival than winning Katrina’s hand. Especially when each time Ichabod goes into the backroom of his favorite tavern – a place men can be men –his imagination conjures Brom's face on every lover. Late one night, Ichabod is chased by the legendary Headless Horseman. Terrified the ghost wants his head, he tries to outrun the specter. To his horror, he is taken captive by the evil spirit. Ichabod awakens, naked and tied to a bed, only to discover the Headless Horseman is none other than his rival Brom Bones! Brom confesses that Ichabod has been haunting his own fantasies and he vows to make Ichabod Crane his in every way. Ichabod wants to believe the pleasure Brom offers comes from his heart, but he is afraid it is another one of Brom’s tricks. Though surely an enemy's touch has never felt like this...

Affinity by Sarah Waters (f/f)

- An upper-class woman recovering from a suicide attempt, Margaret Prior has begun visiting the women’s ward of Millbank prison, Victorian London’s grimmest jail, as part of her rehabilitative charity work. Amongst Millbank’s murderers and common thieves, Margaret finds herself increasingly fascinated by one apparently innocent inmate, the enigmatic spiritualist Selina Dawes. Selina was imprisoned after a séance she was conducting went horribly awry, leaving an elderly matron dead and a young woman deeply disturbed. Although initially skeptical of Selina’s gifts, Margaret is soon drawn into a twilight world of ghosts and shadows, unruly spirits and unseemly passions, until she is at last driven to concoct a desperate plot to secure Selina’s freedom, and her own.

A Light Amongst Shadows by Kelley York and Rowan Altwood (Dark is the Night series book one)

- James Spencer is hardly the typical troubled youth who ends up at Whisperwood School for Boys. Instead of hating the strict schedules and tight oversight by staff, James blossoms, quickly making friends, indulging in his love of writing, and contemplating the merits of sneaking love poems to the elusive and aloof William Esher. The rumours about William’s sexuality and opium reliance are prime gossip material amongst the third years…rumours that only further pique James' curiosity to uncover what William is really like beneath all that emotional armor. And, when the normally collected William stumbles in one night, shaken and ranting of ghosts, James is the only one who believes him. James himself has heard the nails dragging down his bedroom door and the sobs echoing in the halls at night. He knows others have, too, even if no one will admit it. The staff refuses to entertain such ridiculous tales, and punishment awaits anyone who brings it up. Their fervent denial and the disappearance of students only furthers James’ determination to find out what secrets Whisperwood is hiding...especially if it prevents William and himself from becoming the next victims.content warning: violence, sexual/physical abuse, some sexual themes

Recommended series w/Mediums and Things That Go Bump in the Night beneath the cut...

Hexworld series by Jordan L Hawk (I cannot express how much I love this series, and another novel is on the way!! A different couple in each novel, but they all work together or are related.)

- Dominic Kopecky dreamed of becoming a member of New York’s Metropolitan Witch Police—a dream dashed when he failed the test for magical aptitude. Now he spends his days drawing the hexes the MWP relies on for their investigations. But when a murder by patent hex brings crow familiar Rook to his desk, Dominic can’t resist the chance to experience magic. And as the heat grows between Dominic and Rook, so does the danger. Because the case has been declared closed—and someone is willing to kill to keep it that way. The 13th Hex is the prequel short story to the all-new Hexworld series. If you like shifters, magic, and romance, you’ll love Jordan L. Hawk’s world of witch policemen and the familiars they bond with.

Spirits series by Jordan L Hawk (Such detail. This series is amazing, and features a Native American MC and trans supporting character that is so well done.)

- After losing the family fortune to a fraudulent psychic, inventor Henry Strauss is determined to bring the otherworld under control through the application of science. All he needs is a genuine haunting to prove his Electro-Séance will work. A letter from wealthy industrialist Dominic Gladfield seems the answer to his prayers. Gladfield’s proposition: a contest pitting science against spiritualism, with a hefty prize for the winner. The contest takes Henry to Reyhome Castle, the site of a series of brutal murders decades earlier. There he meets his rival for the prize, the dangerously appealing Vincent Night. Vincent is handsome, charming…and determined to get Henry into bed. Henry can’t afford to fall for a spirit medium, let alone the competition. But nothing in the haunted mansion is quite as it seems, and soon winning the contest is the least of Henry’s concerns. For the evil stalking the halls of Reyhome Castle wants to claim not just Henry and Vincent’s lives, but their very souls.

Whyborne & Griffin series by Jordan L Hawk (I’ve read this series three times, and Griffin is one of my favorite characters in any series.)

- A reclusive scholar. A private detective. And a book of spells that could destroy the world. Love is dangerous. Ever since the tragic death of the friend he adored, Percival Endicott Whyborne has ruthlessly suppressed any desire for another man. Instead, he spends his days studying dead languages at the museum where he works. So when handsome ex-Pinkerton Griffin Flaherty approaches him to translate a mysterious book, Whyborne wants to finish the job and get rid of the detective as quickly as possible. Griffin left the Pinkertons after the death of his partner. Now in business for himself, he must investigate the murder of a wealthy young man. His only clue: an encrypted book that once belonged to the victim. As the investigation draws them closer, Griffin’s rakish charm threatens to shatter Whyborne’s iron control. But when they uncover evidence of a powerful cult determined to rule the world, Whyborne must choose: to remain safely alone, or to risk everything for the man he loves.

#gothic romance #historical romance #two men in love #m/m romance #f/f romance #poly romance #lgbt romance #kj charles #jordan l hawk #bonnie dee #summer devon #katherine marlowe #ee ottoman

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So You Want To Play An Elemental

(Re-used portrait of Colors Eriksdotter, the Warlock Knight, provided by Domochevsky. Catch her in New Avalon, where she’s the protagonist of Cinderella Sanction Quest.)

Previous articles: So You Want To Play A Beast & So You Want To Play A Wizened

Author’s Note: You’d think the hard part of writing this article would have been refuting basically every canon depiction of Elementals in Changeling: the Lost 1e, but instead it was the bit where I tried to write my lived experiences with autism. While not all Elementals need to be autistic or represent autism, they as a Seeming are pretty good at it, and I’ve written this article with that in mind. That said, the experiences I’m drawing from are my own and those of close friends, and are therefore not even close to being universal, to say nothing of me running my mouth about other kinds of troubles Elementals might metaphorically (or literally) represent. While I’ve made every effort to talk to folks who’ve lived these experiences and to write about them with respect, I recognize that I may well have fucked up. I invite you to let me know if that’s the case.

The stories all agree; you do not want the attention of the Lords and Ladies. Be polite, stay humble, mind your manners. It goes a lot further, of course: don’t stand out, don’t be special, don’t rock the boat. Some say that the purpose of these fairy tales is to reinforce societal mores, but those the Lost know as Elementals have been the victims of those tales firsthand. Taken for a purpose, transformed to fulfill it, they face the task of rebuilding lives in a world they only half belong to. Of all the Lost, even Beasts, it is Elementals who struggle most with human society.

This article draws primarily on Changeling: the Lost, as well as Winter Masques and Swords at Dawn. Other sources, when used, will be cited. It requires Content Warnings for depictions of torture, maiming, abuse, and transformation.

The Remade - Elemental Overview

Elemental is the third Seeming presented in Changeling: the Lost, and joins Beast in being almost as defined by Kith as it is by its Seeming. Elemental is unusual in that it is commonly represented in printed material (Elemental characters with stat blocks appear in Changeling: the Lost, Night Horrors: Grim Fears, and The Rose Bride’s Plight), but also commonly and egregiously misused and mischaracterized. As a result, more than the prior two articles, this one must directly address some of the way White Wolf chose to write Elementals and refute them as examples of the Seeming.

A stunning variety of people become Elementals, but generally speaking any given person was selected for their fate. Unlike the opportunistic kidnappings that mark Beasts and Wizened, Elementals are those whom the Fae sought for some specific purpose or trait, which either served as the catalyst for their later transformation or was enhanced by that same transformation. Infused with the thoughts and feelings of inanimate matter - rushing rivers, whispering winds, forge-hot silver, cold earth, crackling lightning, and more - Elementals gain a distance from humanity that they are never again to bridge. To be Elemental is to be alien even among the Lost, and for those without help it’s all too easy to become a stranger in their own homes.

Nature In Revolt - Homecoming As An Elemental

With few exceptions, most Elementals can eventually point to a singular moment in which they were transformed into what they are. Though all Lost experience shattered, faded, and absent memories of the Fairest of Lands when they first have their Homecoming, the moment of transformation is among the earliest memories Elementals recover. The vehicle of that transformation varies - sweet-smelling fruit that turn humans to trees, vats of molten glass into which their living bones were dipped, vast farms of lightning-trees to which humans are lashed until the levin-bolts enter their souls, and more - but the essence of the moment is the same. Some part of the human soul calves away like ice from a berg, and the Wyrd that rushes into its place is brimming with the will of the inanimate. It could be a singular moment, over almost as soon as it’s begun, or a gradual one (as is the case for the rare passive transformations one finds among Kiths such as Earthbones), but that was the moment at which an Elemental was born.

What happens after depends very much on why any given Elemental was taken and why they were transformed. For some Keepers it’s a matter of pure practicality; the Elemental’s new form is necessary to exist in their Domains (such as the Shining Network and the City of Brass, both in Winter Masques), and without those modifications they would be useless for the Fae’s purpose - or dead, which amounts to the same thing. Many passive transformations are similar to this as well; Snowskins who adopt the ice to survive their duties in the wild tundra, Earthbones who dig until digging runs through their living veins, and Waterborn who choose transformation instead of death share a lot of bones with those who were reshaped before beginning their dread tasks. In other cases, though, the transformation is the logical (well, “logical”) extension of what their Keeper wanted them for to begin with. A bored Page of the Stacks steals a bright-voiced human boy to serve her as a lantern in her dark domains and ignites him from the soul outward; the Screaming Demon ‘rewards’ the luckless gym teacher who beat him in a yelling contest by making her an Airtouched with bottomless lungs. These Elementals share uncomfortable commonalities with the Fairest, who sometimes flock to them once the gap in communications between the two Seemings can be bridged.

Some of the most unfortunate are transformed because they wish to be. The Fae are not above openly offering their ‘gifts’ to others, and for those bending and breaking under the weight of inhuman expectations, inhuman abilities can seem like a godsend. But whether it’s a college student pacting for an all-too-literal ‘enlightenment’, an athlete offered the chance to run ‘like the wind’, or a broken-hearted romantic who takes the hand of a Fae selling a cold heart, the consequences of these deals are never clear up front - and there are no take-backs in the Fairest of Lands. Elementals who suffered this fate often drift towards Summer or Autumn, and throw themselves into the mortal world besides, driven to ensure that no one else is forced to endure the torments that made them other than human.

In Arcadia proper, the transformations Elementals endure are often much more extreme than the ones they bear when they emerge from the Thorns. This forms the first obstacle to a potential escape; an Elemental must recall human form, human emotions, human perspective. Where a Beast loses their reason and intelligence, Elementals lose some vital part of themselves, the part which knows how to speak to other human things and be heard by them, to understand what they do and why they do it, and it is this they must grasp once more in the wounded halls of their soul before they can once again yearn for the mortal world. Those who yearn without remembering end up as hobgoblins when they finally breach into the Hedge, or else dissolve entirely once they have well and truly broken the oaths that hold their new forms together. On the other side of human perspective is the memory of human flesh, and part of almost every Elemental’s escape is the incomplete transformation back into a form of flesh once more.

The escapes themselves are often spectacularly violent. Elementals wield great power over their elements and are, by their nature, surrounded by it during their Durance. An Elemental’s fragmented memories of escapes might be marked by revolts fought alongside their fellow slaves while tame flames consume the soldiers of their master, obedient earthquakes opening ways into the underground of the Hedge, duels of water and ice whose backblasts can cleave steel, and more. For those who cannot escape their memories of this godlike power, the Autumn Court beckons, but for most of the others the fear those recollections evoke is enough reason to quietly pack them away and think about them as little as possible. Still, even the meekest Elemental is the person who performed those acts of sorcerous violence, and their fellows among the Lost quickly learn to respect that capability in those who make it home at last.

The memories that draw an Elemental home can be different from what they or others expect, at least in part due to the nature of their transformation. The infusion of the inanimate shifts the emphasis in recollections of the mortal world, calling to mind thoughts of Earth’s manifestations of the elements. A Fireheart may well want to return home to her loving family, but the memories she has of that family which stand out will often feature fire in some way; candlelit dinners, camping trips with her brothers around a crackling fire, shivering with her wife in front of a space heater in their apartment after the gas bill came up bust. An Airtouched thinks of long walks through whispering woods, sitting on the porch with his mother while a tornado rips its way across a distant street, the cool breeze through a classroom window on the day he crushed his SATs. The mortals these Elementals once were remember those events in a different light, but who they’ve become has an undeniable connection to their element and the call of Earth - for better or worse - is also about the relationship humans have with that element. They may not have asked to have the breeze put in their soul, but the winds of Earth still taste like home in a way those of Arcadia can’t.

By Your Powers Combined, I Am - Elemental Kiths

It’s telling that the common bonds that unite Elementals are almost all about the downsides of their experience. Their Seeming blessing enables them to temporarily display inhuman endurance, but without access to more or less immediate healing any situation that requires its use has already killed the Elemental and they just don’t know it yet. Still, the grim prospect of exactly how dead you have to kill one of them before they die does inform how other Seemings - especially the more violent ones such as Darklings and Ogres - treat Elementals. It pays to remain polite when the other guy can afford to die more dead than you can.

On the negative side, Elementals consistently have problems with, not to put too fine a point on it, being human people. All Lost have urges that are inhuman and suffered inhuman abuse, but for Elementals relating to other people - even other Lost - can be supremely difficult. Their Seeming curse hits all rolls based on Manipulation, as well as those based on Empathy, Persuasion, Socialize, and Subterfuge; that is to say, when it comes to social skills Elementals only display human-level competence in Intimidation, rearing animals, and, for some reason, criminal networking (Streetwise). While Elementals, much like Beasts, are not wholly incapable, their social skills will fall consistently behind a mortal with equal values - and, much like Beasts, this tends to get Elementals seen as idiots by people who refuse to understand their struggle (in some ways moreso; struggling with math is relatable to many people, but struggling with social cues can get the taste slapped out of your mouth right fuckin’ quick).

How this manifests varies widely from Elemental to Elemental, but the common touchstone is some disconnect from societal perception. Elementals quite often come off as autistic (and are prime for representing the struggles of an autistic person, as mentioned in So You Want To Play A Wizened); they miss social cues, misread or don’t understand body language, and struggle to describe their own perceptions and experiences in a way others can understand. Some of that is just not being able to quite connect what they feel with words in a human language; some of it is that Elementals genuinely are not perceiving the same things the people around them are. How do you tell your friends about the language of mirrors without sounding like you’ve absolutely lost it? The way a steady, eroding breeze feels against your rocky skin? The color of the lightning in your veins?

This comes out in the behavior of Elementals in a variety of ways, which does not always help those outside the Seeming understand the common thread, but it’s never quite...”right”, for lack of a better word. A Woodblood with flowers growing in his skin doesn’t always reply even when you speak to him directly, and when he does talk he over-shares; others don’t know of the secrets entrusted to him in a distant Arcadian wood, and the terrible consequences for speaking. A Waterborn nymph won’t shut up even when she ought to; as a babbling brook her musical voice soothed the rages of her Keeper. A heavyset Earthbones, thick with mud and rent with craggy scars, has trouble not touching people, as if he’s afraid they’ll slide away; his friend, a Fireheart, shrieks at the tiniest human contact and flashes knives to keep you away from her precious wick and its life-giving flame. A Snowskin’s volume goes up and down with the ambient light; an Airtouched can’t seem to stop just picking up objects to stare at them in fascination. In all of these cases, the root problem is the same - disconnection from societal expectations - even though the causes of those problems are different. The challenge that Elementals face in their recovery is not to pass as “normal” - no Lost can really do that for long anyway - but to find a medium between their rights and needs and the rights & needs of those around them.

Like Beasts, Elementals are essentially defined by their Kiths, in some senses even more than by their Seeming. Though a Fireheart and a Waterborn have things in common, the experiences that gave them those commonalities are likely to be so different as to be essentially alien to one another. An Airtouched is more likely to feel like she has things to talk about with, say, a Runnerswift Beast or a Windwing than she is to immediately realize she has touchstones with a local Snowskin witch. Mechanically, the Kiths themselves are a pretty even mix of ‘almost entirely related to the folklore’ and ‘almost entirely the physical property of being This Thing’. Some, like Beast’s, are begging for Dual Kith or other Merits to round out certain archetypes, but not all of them.

Some thoughts on the individual Elemental Kiths follow:

Airtouched - Do you like to go fast? Fleet of Foot not cutting the mustard for you any more? Runnerswift is too slow? Airtouched is here to help you. In a game where combat is often decided at the point when initiative is rolled, the potential to add 1-9 to your Initiative if you pick your chicken right means the chance to decide a lot more combats. The Speed boost isn’t anything to sneeze at either (and is applicable to a lot more situations than just murder). Thematically, Airtouched are meant to represent spirits of the air, but their sheer speed doesn’t do it for all such representations, especially in the realm of storms, gales, and other destructive manifestations of the firmament. If your Airtouched concept bends that direction, consider investing in Contracts of Stone, the Giant Size merit, Dual Kithing out (Earthbones, in-seeming, can provide great out-of-combat strength, while Hunterheart & Razorhand could work wonders for you as a more murderous spirit), the Lethal Mien merit, or any combination of the above.

Earthbones - Elemental does Ogre; Earthbones are great for puzzles and problems that can be solved with physical force but which are not in some way murder-related, and strike a solid image of various earthen beings with basically no add-ons. That said, Earthbones also makes a fantastic Dual Kith option for other Elemental Kiths that you might want to use to embody large & strong versions of themselves (such as a glacial Snowskin or a towering Waterborn with the soul of a tsunami).

Fireheart - This is the first Kith where it’s great for thematic reasons but kinda weird for physical ones. Firehearts can burn Glamour for Wits rolls, which makes them great at bursts of perception, quick thought, and cunning, but also sorta bad at being fire. Now, that could very well be a feature! A character used as a candle, a torch, a hearth-fire, a forge beast, might not embody the destructive potential of flame and you may have no need to do so; even if you do, Elements (Fire) is a lot of destructive potential. Should you want to draw that out a little more, consider Lethal Mien as an option, possibly alongside a Dual Kith into Draconic. If the fire you’re interested in is one of renewal or purification, look into the Goblin Contracts of Sacrifice and/or Contracts of Hearth, and if pyromancy is your game it’s hard to beat Contracts of Omen.

Manikin - I wanted to love Manikin, I really did, but I can’t. It’s trash. It’s absolute trash, not just because Artifice is essentially only half a contract (see So You Want To Be A Wizened) but because the other half of their Blessing is completely negated by having any ranks in Craft to begin with. I don’t even know where to start on suggesting a fix for this, but if you’re dead-set on it, maybe look to Shadowsoul for inspiration, as it’s the other Kith that does what Manikin tried to do.

Snowskin - Elemental does Fairest. Appropriately enough, Snowskin shares Fireheart’s potential problem of being very strong in the folklore (its icy social focus is shared by many of the mythic beings you might want to emulate) but very weak on the ‘embodying the element itself’ back end. Snowskins are great candidates for overtly sorcerous Elementals, not just because of those social bonuses but because they get less out of the classic Elemental contracts (Elements and Communion) and a lot more out of Contracts such as Wild, Eternal Autumn (or Winter), and Smoke which provide powers traditionally associated with the lords of frost and snow. A note: Snowskin does not have the same mechanical exemption that Chatelaine does, which means that its bonus of getting 9-again on Subterfuge meets the Elemental curse of not getting 10-again and evens out to having no bonus or penalty. Even then, though, the Intimidate end of things is pretty legit.

Waterborn - Remember Swimmerskin? This is Swimmerskin but as an Elemental. The three water-based Kiths are all fairly alike, so there’s not really a lot for me to say here.

Woodblood - Elemental Does Darkling, Badly. Don’t get me wrong, the actual bonuses are great, but getting access to them is incredibly situational and unlike Snowskin who can, with investment, eventually create the conditions for their more restricted abilities themselves, Woodbloods can’t just grow plants where no plants are no matter how hard they try - which is a shame, since Woodblood is absolutely amazing for many concepts! Talk to your Storyteller before you select this Kith and see where your Chronicle might be taking you. Semi-regular expeditions into the Hedge, a more rural Freehold, or even a traveling Chronicle are all great chances for Woodblood to shine.

Blightbent - You remember how Venombite is cool but kinda a late bloomer? Blightbent is more or less in the same camp; the bonus against man-made toxins is a solid additional bonus, but rolling against Armor, Defense, and Stamina is a losing game both just in general and in a world where shotguns exist. Blightbent’s a really cool concept but even beyond the Kith blessing problem is begs some questions about how you parse out your choices for Contracts of Elements and/or Communion. You’re probably better off flavoring another Kith as a polluted aspect of itself and leaving this one on the table.

Levinquick - Thematically, Levinquick is the physical fire/lightning to Fireheart’s metaphorical fire/lightning. Mechanically they’re solid enough; situationally better than Runnerswift, but at a cost. At low Wyrd, though, that duration on their Blessing is gonna kick your ass if you don’t pick your chicken right. For the cost and duration, you’re better off running an Airtouched with a stormy theme, which is a damn shame because Levinquick is just such a cool idea in theory.

Sandharrowed - When I find an RPG that has a functional grapple system, I will let y’all know. As it stands, Sandharrowed’s Blessing is both incredibly narrow (even if grappling DID work, which it absolutely does not) and kinda a head-scratcher as far as physical themes or metaphorical ones go. I really don’t know what to suggest here beyond ‘anything but this’. Airtouched, Dual Kithing into Earthbones maybe? Air/Fire? Something.

You’re the Queen? Well I Didn’t Vote For You - Lost’s Canon Elementals

So: Elementals are quite bad at all social situations, and especially in those required for leadership considering that their penalty to Empathy makes it harder for them to detect bullshit, be judges of character, recognize the needs of their subjects, and get into the minds of their enemies. That in mind, what are the canon Elementals in the run of Changeling: the Lost 1e - ‘canon’ in this context meaning with fully available statistics that make them ready to use?

- Jack Tallow, a Spring Court Fireheart, who is...primarily Social...spending his time openly inciting revolution against Grandfather Thunder and attempting to talk his way out of trouble. Okay. Like, he’s bad at it and this is the sample character, the example White Wolf gives of how you yourself should make characters (a bad example, at that), but surely the next will be - - Rose Thorn, the Queen of Spring in Miami and a Woodblood, who is known for her...inspiring leadership...and...empathy...hold up...

- Grandfather Thunder, the King of Endless Summer, another Fireheart Elemental. THIS guy is known for his cunning, tactical acumen, ruthless ambition, and raw, unbridled rage. He’s probably the only one of the lot that’s a plausible Elemental ruler. It helps that Thunder was a founding Freehold member, but Summer’s strict chain of command and tendency to favor Mental and Physical attributes over Social in leadership definitely does him favors here.

- Aeolian (The Rose Bride’s Plight), a Spring Airtouched, also a Queen, who for reasons never broken down in the adventure has a dice pool of fucking SIXTEEN to try and trap people into Pledges. She is an abusive and nakedly evil Queen who enslaves her subjects with the word-bond and is known for her fast-talking and being good at all the things Elementals are bad at but surely our last one will be an iconic and helpful example of an Elemental, ri-

- Green-Eyed Gerta, the Queen of Jealousy, ANOTHER Spring monarch and our second evil one: a seductive (???) and charming (??????) Mannikin with a severe abandonment complex, who pacted with a Fae to drive a former lover mad.

And that’s it. That’s all the printed Elementals. And with maybe one exception, who comes from fucking Miami, a setting that should not have been written at the time it was for reasons I might get into in its own article, they’re all garbage. That one exception, Grandfather Thunder, is still an unusual case in and of himself, and as a result should not have been the only fucking poster child of this Seeming.

But Vox, you say, surely this is one of the reasons you’re writing this article? Well, yeah, it is, but I bring it up specifically because for the other Seemings there’s at least a solid base to start with in terms of canon representation. You can look at other Fairest, or Darklings, or Beasts that have been published and get a bit of an idea of what they’re “usually” like. That doesn’t mean yours has to be or even should be like that, but it does form a helpful point for discussion and inspiration! But Elemental has no such point of reference, and for a Seeming as incredibly diverse as it can be, such a reference point is more, not less, valuable. Unfortunately, WW’s writing advice in nWoD 1e had this tendency to encourage players to create characters that were, well...bad. Uninvolved in the plot, incompetent at their supposed specialties, disconnected from the game world, or some godawful combination of the above, and it is with this in mind that I want to counsel you to just kinda studiously ignore the published Elementals. It’s my hope that the contents of this article will be enough to help guide you along in creating your own Elementals if you’re stuck or just kinda lost, but if they’re not, please, feel free to let me know.

Assigned Wizard At Homecoming - Elementals In The Courts

All Lost of all Seemings deal with greater or lesser amounts of prejudice when they join a Freehold, depending on the Freehold in question, and the stereotype that follows Elementals around is “WIZARDS! NO SENSE OF RIGHT AND WRONG!” It’s not entirely without reason; Elementals have native access to three of the most potent and versatile Contracts in all of Lost’s run, and depending on their selections and affinities the roles they can fill are staggering. Contracts of Elements alone can be used for information gathering, theft, sabotage, rescue, construction & demolition, straight combat, open warfare, disguise, home repair, gardening, and That Gay Witch Aesthetic, and that’s before we even touch Communion, Wild, any of the game’s other Contracts, or the fact that the majority of Elemental Kiths see huge returns for cranking their Wyrd like they’re trying to cold-start a Model T in Anchorage. Every Court could use the services of a powerful sorcerer in its baliwick, and almost all Elementals are theoretically capable of providing those services.

But just because the Courts would prefer that Elementals be big-shot wizards doesn’t mean they agree.

Elementals are more keenly aware than most Lost that there is no such thing as a non-magical Changeling, and the closest you get to the idea is a frightened victim trying to deny what’s happened to them, but for many Elementals the idea of following the Wyrd all the way down has a distinctly sour taste. They’re already distanced from mortals in ways that can be confusing, frustrating, and hurtful; why distance themselves further? Going further, institutions without a strong Elemental voice may not understand what they’re asking when they try to whistle up a wildfire or get someone’s bird bath to spy on them, and what those actions might mean to the Elementals they’re blithely attempting to order around. An Elemental might seek a primarily non-magical position in their Court as a way of grounding their humanity, or simply because they find the idea of such work more appealing than witchcraft.

None of which is to suggest that Elementals don’t also commonly fall into sorcerous roles. Even if their title doesn’t say ‘witch’ or ‘magi’, Elementals are likely to lean on magic to enhance their prowess because they, unlike their peers, cannot natively ‘flare’ their strengths. An Ogre knight can call upon her Seeming to intimidate people; an Elemental is more likely to invest in Contracts of Darkness to do the same, or else to get very good at meaningful looks while fingering weapons.

When it comes to selecting their Courts, Elementals often lean towards the ideological end of the scale. Though they, like Beasts, can be extremely sensitive to the seasonal nature of the Courts, Elementals tend to look to Courts for guidance on how to be a person again. After what could have been years of being an object instead, with their references to mortal behavior and mortal society severely damaged, Courts provide a much-needed sense of direction and purpose, a starting point for the all-important question of “who am I?”. Wise Courts help guide their youngblood Elementals, who are rather likely to adopt a performative identity (generally one rooted in their profession) in order to simplify social interactions in a way that makes it easier for everyone to understand each other; the important thing is not to stop this, but to ensure that it doesn’t get in the way of the Elemental’s recovery and journey towards the promise of their Court.

For obvious reasons you don’t see a lot of Elementals wearing the Crown or in general leadership positions, but you do see them in some. Autumn’s Witch of the Bitter Wind is often an Elemental, if not because of strict sorcerous prowess than because of going Full Sith Lord on the previous incumbent. Summer fields Elementals as Jaegers or leaders of knights, favoring tactical prowess and experience over their ability to inspire or politic. Elementals can make for ideal senior Squires in Winter, and can excel as Icebound Armigers with the right Thane to handle them - or enough raw stoicism to negate awkward social encounters before they can start. When looking for Elementals in positions of power and responsibility, try positions that favor intellect, experience, and diligence rather than those predicated on good social skills. Like Wizened, Elementals are common secondary combatants; even if they weren’t inclined to fight tooth and nail to never be literally turned into objects again, figures like the Arrayer of Distant Thunder are exactly as erect for the powerful sorceries of Elementals as everyone else is.

Spring - Elementals don’t often rise to prominence in Spring, for rather obvious reasons, but perversely are among those Seemings most likely to choose Spring as a first Court. Spring’s promise of renewal can be very attractive to Elementals, who then prove completely immune to the subtle attempts to snub them out of the Court by virtue of not noticing the slights to begin with. Many of Spring’s off-brand roles (such as “warrior”) are filled by Elementals just trying to earnestly live their truth, which is not to say that Elementals don’t sometimes make a splash in the Emerald Court as masters of high ritual or keepers of grand Hollows.

Summer - The Court of Wrath has many tactical and logistical needs, and God damn if Elementals can’t provide a ton of them in a single package. Summer puts a lot of effort into recruiting Elementals so that it can use their talents to secure places of power, shore up defensive positions, call tame wildfires down on hobgoblin invaders, create distractions for assaults, and anything else the Crimson Court can think of. The culture of brotherhood and military honor that Summer provides can be equally attractive to Elementals, who find in Summer an identity they can feel good about and which does not ask them to perform complex social niceties...until it does, anyway.

Autumn - Autumn is often of two or three minds about Elementals. On the one hand, they make for incredible sorcerers and Autumn has a strong interest in recruiting those who want to fulfill that potential. On the other hand, Fear is a powerfully intimate emotion, and while Elementals are capable of putting on a good game face they often struggle to achieve the intimacy necessary to understand the Fears of others. And on the third mutant hand growing right out of Autumn’s chest, the Leaden Mirror has powerful needs both social and intellectual at all times, and must balance such factions within itself to maintain its identity. An Autumn with a high Elemental population is likely a somewhat visibly calmer one, with strong similarities to an academic institution in how it comports itself; one with a lower Elemental population is still likely to have some rather explosive Elemental personalities placed highly within it, by virtue of their powerful lore and merciless wills.

Winter - While almost all Lost dally with Winter for a time after their Homecoming, Elementals are among those who dally for the shortest time unless they’re inclined to stay. So much of what they are is obvious and bombastic that it can be difficult for them to feel like they belong. For those who can shake those feelings, Winter puts just as much value in their services - and is much more up front about payment for those services - as its peers do. Winter’s strict culture of humility and silence can be attractive to those Elementals who feel insecure about their difficulties with mortal and Lost society; in time, the Coldest Court may even be able to coax them from their shells.

Fuck, I Forgot How To Person - Elementals And Changeling’s Themes

All Lost need the help and support of their fellows to make a new home on Earth again, but Elementals need it more than most in some ways. Though I’ve brought up their potential to represent the autistic experience (and I’m going to keep bringing it up because this Seeming is among the strongest candidates for it), Elemental is good for any experience of abuse and trauma which changes how a person is capable of relating to society. The person who grew up bent beneath inhuman expectations and the guilt they felt for not meeting them is an Elemental. The person who learns to dissociate in order to function in stressful situations they cannot escape is an Elemental, as is someone so used to being ignored and neglected for their chronic pain that the concept of genuine compassion from the medical establishment is alien to them. Where Wizened embody those whose lives are destroyed by oppressive economic systems, Elementals are those crushed beneath the weight of oppressive social systems that value the appearance of normalcy over genuine health and happiness.

While Elementals can feel disconnected even from their peers (not just because their experiences are different, but because they have difficulty mentally and emotionally envisioning those different experiences), their greatest struggle is with mortal society - which, in this metaphor, is the wider body of neurotypical people. Their fellow Lost at least have a jumping-off point when it comes to understanding and communicating with Elementals, but ‘normal’ people do not, and it is all too easy for them to callously mistake an Elemental’s struggles for deliberate rudeness or malice. In response to this constant rejection and exclusion, many Elementals develop maladaptive coping mechanisms which they then struggle to shake once they find the acceptance they were seeking, ranging from deliberate isolation to dissociation or even, in extreme cases, retreating into power fantasies (”people only hate me because I’m better than them”). While Fairest get all the press in the books for being prone to going back to Arcadia (and that’s its own bag of absolute bullshit that we’ll be addressing in their article), it’s Elementals that can find the idea of complete separation from mortal society to be the most attractive. For too many, trying to relate to the rest of humanity is traumatic in itself.

Autism isn’t the only set of troubles Elementals are primed to embody; almost any kind of neurodivergence which leads to trauma fits very easily into the Seeming’s mechanics and themes, in large part because society is absolute garbage about this topic no matter what your troubles are. Schizophrenia (which causes disconnects in what perception and symbolism mean to a person vs. what they mean to wider society) & ADHD (which is often ‘treated’ in ways ultimately harmful to the person who has it, with long-lasting side effects), among others, are also prime for depiction as Elementals. More physical problems such as chronic pain, fibromyalgia, Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, or multiple sclerosis, might also be represented by this Seeming, again because - and I cannot stress this enough - society is garbage; victims of these conditions are often disbelieved, pushed to harm themselves to meet societal expectations, and neglected or abused by those skeptical of their condition or its severity (including family members), and the resulting trauma & its attendant effects stalk them for the rest of their lives. If you’re looking to draw out those themes of medical problems and their life effects, consider using your Blessing more often than you otherwise might (representing the push to try and “function” and its attendant consequences).

Keep in mind that all Elementals are more than their magic, whether that’s their Kith or their Contracts. I’m not here to tell you that you’re playing the game wrong as long as your group is having fun and not hurting anyone, but overt focus on the power of Elemental magic definitely leaves a lot of their potential just sitting on the table. I highly encourage you to ask yourself questions about how your Elemental characters think, feel, and believe. What is their relationship to their element and how does that shape their use of Contracts? What confuses them the most about other people? Do they resent that thing, want it for themselves, maybe just yearn to understand it? What kind of identity has your Elemental chosen to adopt and why have they decided to try to be that person? Do they miss their mortal life, and whether or not they do, how do they feel about that? There’s a lot to explore here, and the best part is that exploring it doesn’t mean you can’t still cast fireball.

Sir, That Is My Emotional Support Belle Dame Sans Merci - Coping As An Elemental

Relating to society - wider mortal society, Freehold society, and most often both - is the great challenge that Elementals face. Most remember at least some helpful things - what pants are for, why you don’t just kick in the door to strangers’ houses, stealing is wrong, that kind of thing - but when it comes to the day-to-day social cues and actions needed to navigate a job, one’s school, a party, or even just kinda sitting at a bar, Elementals’ problems with mis-reading signals or even failing to detect them entirely rise to the fore. Accordingly, Elementals seeking to cope with their return to Earth seek out social solutions to these problems.

There are suggestions in the books that Fairest tend to exoticize or fetishize Elementals; I’m gonna need you to throw that concept in the garbage next to the Magister of Nightmares (So You Want To Run An Autumn Court) and the canon description of the Sage Escort (So You Want To Run A Spring Court). That said, there is something there in the idea that the relationship between Darklings and Elementals, as well as Fairest and Elementals, is different from how those two relate to other Seemings. For Darklings and Fairest, Elementals can often represent someone around whom they can let down their guard; someone who is honest (even if that honesty is just because they’re real bad at lying) and, often, straightforward. For Seemings so consumed with performative social and emotional expression, whose anxieties and fears center around those expressions, a friendship with someone for whom they do not have to perform can be one of the most precious things in their life - something to kill for, if need be. Elementals, in turn, can rely on such friends (including friends of other Seemings, of course, though not usually Wizened because of that Seeming’s own problems navigating society) for help translating the confusing world that is Other People; to trust them to be honest in turn and to help the Elemental back the fuck out of situations in which they have managed to deepthroat their own foot. It doesn’t always work out so neatly (everyone involved has their own troubles and trauma, their own emotions and needs, and like all human and post-human relationships such things cause Drama), but it works out enough.

This focus on friendships and social identity follows Elementals elsewhere. Adopting a performative identity, especially a collective one, gives them guidance on how to interact with other people and helps them establish a routine for their day-to-day. An Elemental that becomes a Knight of Summer knows what’s expected of them and can then perform those expectations, and count on their fellow Knights for assistance and advice; likewise, joining Entitlements, or seeking prestigious offices like the Witch of the Bitter Wind can similarly set expectations. It doesn’t alleviate all of an Elemental’s social problems, of course, but it at least gives a place to start. Shuffling which hat they’re wearing at what time can be exhausting, as it can be for anyone, but the value of those hats cannot be overstated.

When it comes to their physical environment, Elementals are often less concerned with it than Beasts or Wizened. They do tend to lean towards locations that are strong in their element or in which they can be close to it (as an easy example, all other things being equal, most Firehearts will choose an apartment with a working fireplace over one without a fireplace) and to decorate and appoint their homes in ways reminiscent of that element. An Airtouched is likely to have gauzy curtains, open windows, windchimes, glass decorations, relatively light furniture, and the like, whereas a Snowskin’s home may seem like a winter cottage no matter what time of year it is. For those Elementals that are skilled in Communion and/or Wild, their ability to establish a place of power rivals that of Beasts; those who invade such a sorcerer’s home quickly find that the doorknobs are trying to kill them, and the kitchen knives move on their own. Attempts by Elementals to deny these tendencies in themselves traditionally end poorly. Whether they like it or not - and their feelings on the matter are often complicated at best - the Elemental has an affinity with their element, a relationship which inherently brings a feeling of comfort and kinship. Trying to reject that relationship only makes them unhappy on purpose.

With a place to live in and friends made, Elementals then have to actually figure out what to do with the arc of their lives. This can be...challenging. For those with unfinished business from their mortal lives, finishing such business and making decisions about it can be a great initial goal, but eventually all Elementals come back around to the idea of making something of themselves in the context of their Freehold. That isn’t to say that Elementals lack ambition or desires, but rather that articulating such desires, even to themselves, can often be difficult. Many Elementals don’t know what they want or why they want it, and without outside guidance end up spinning their wheels in the lower ranks of their Courts without comprehending either why they have done this or why it has made them unhappy. Here, as well, an Elemental’s Motley, friends, mentors, and/or romantic partners provide invaluable insight and direction. No Seeming proves the truism that isolation leads to shredded Clarity more clearly than Elementals.

Example Elemental - Ripley “Rip” Tide, Summer Waterborn

Jaeger Rip Tide is a coastal-dwelling Summer Courtier who, unusually for their Court, travels quite a bit. They keep a home in one Freehold to which they ostensibly belong, but are rarely there; they take bounties on Hedge beasts, exiled True Fae, and water monsters of all kinds from five separate Freeholds, all of whom have either appointed Rip their Jaeger or else just not made an argument about it when they’ve introduced themselves as such. Rip keeps two Hedge Beasts (”professional associates”), twin eels who introduce themselves as Port & Starboard, which run messages to and from the busy hunter and help Rip with particularly difficult quarries. The sight of their gem-like teeth, or Rip themself (coming in at a clean six-foot-six and never found without their thorn-and-steel fishing spear) is a sight for sore eyes to the Freeholds that the Jaeger services.

Lately, though, Rip’s been under pressure that they don’t really understand. Their ‘native’ Freehold wants them home more often or to at least take time from hunting to train an apprentice, both things Rip does not want to do. People need their help, right? Rip can reach those people easily, right? So what’s the problem? As far as Rip is concerned, their job is to Protect The Weak, not just a particular subset of The Weak. If someone doesn’t manage to defuse the situation, the Jaeger is going to end up exiled or worse over the sheer unwitting indignity of it all.

As with all of my articles, I welcome questions, comments, discussion, feedback, and criticisms. Please, feel free to reblog if you’re feelin’ it!

Next up: Ogres

#Changeling: the Lost #Seemings #RPG #Elemental #abuse #trauma #torture #transformation #autism

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geek-patient-zero · 5 years

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Prologue (Part 1)

Or: My Dinner with Reuben

Blood War: Masquerade of the Red Dead Trilogy Volume 1

I always loved the cover art. It was done by an artist called BROM. Here’s his website.

Robert Weinberg dedicates the book to Edgar Allan Poe “for obvious reasons” and Bram Stoker “who started it all”, though Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu might disagree with that. On Poe, peppered throughout the book, between the three parts and on the back cover are short quotes from his works, mostly “The Masque of the Red Death”. Obviously. It’s a little BS though. Any elements inspired by Poe are shallow, at least in this book.

Underneath the dedication is a little disclaimer:

While the locations and history of this trilogy may seem familiar, it is not our reality. The setting of Vampire: The Masquerade of the Red Death is a harsher, crueler version of our world. It is a stark, desolate landscape where nothing is what it seems. It is truly a World of Darkness.

For in the grim dark 1990′s there is only war. And vampires.

Going into the book I thought this disclaimer was a little wanky. I expected that “a harsher, crueler version of our world” would translate to “our world but with more rats, goths, and supernatural creatures.” Similarly, the book’s spine labels the genre as “Dark Fantasy” which in my experience usually translates to “regular fantasy but with more rape.” Turns out the World of Darkness setting is a little more complicated than that, but most of the time Weinberg isn’t too subtle on the whole “darker version of our world” thing.

I just want to let you know, before we get started, that I’m not the biggest expert when it comes to V:TM lore. I’ve never played the tabletops, or read their source books. My knowledge comes from Bloodlines, wiki binges, and lore dumps on Reddit and the Something Awful Bloodlines 2 thread. Please bear with my dumb ass if I get something wrong.

Alright, enough preamble, let’s get to the actual story.

We start in Rome, June 15, 1992, at an outdoor restaurant near the Coliseum. A meeting there was set up the night before through an anonymous phone call to the “heart of the Vatican.” For a suitcase full of money, they’d talk about vampires, or as the book dramatically puts it:

“We will talk,” declared the mysterious voice in somber, cold tones, “of The Kindred.”

The first to arrive is Father Naples, named so because it’s a word you’d find on a map of Italy. He’s a member of the Society of Leopold, who only get one more brief mention after this prologue so all you need to know is that they’re Catholic vampire hunters. He’s a big buff guy, described like a cross between a priest and a high ranking CIA agent. He came unarmed.

His faith served as his shield. Along with the five other agents of the Society of Leopold in the restaurant, including two women disguised as streetwalkers.

The Society of Leopold is the “the devil was behind this” kind of religious, so it’s weird they’d jump straight to hookers when thinking of disguises for their agents, or that said agents would agree to it. But this is the World of Darkness, a harsher, crueler version of our own, and that means there’s hookers everywhere, so put on the hot pants and think of Italy.

So Father Florence here’s got his disguised agents, who “carried enough firepower on them to start a minor war.” He’s also something of a badass.

And, though he had retired years before as a field operative, Father Naples still maintained his training in the martial arts. An expert at both kendo and karate, he could kill an attacker a dozen different ways.

He’s also got some agents in a nearby hotel room with a directional microphone aimed at his table to record the conversation. Soon, the target of all this seeming overkill arrives; a blonde mid-twenties guy in a white suit. His voice was different than the one who made the phone call, implying to Naples, and us, that there’s at least two people involved on the other side of this setup. It’s a neat bit of foreshadowing. After a firm handshake and no-selling Father Naples’s patented death glare, the stranger introduces himself as Reuben, “like the sandwich.” They banter a bit about the biblical Reuben before he decides to troll the Father a bit. First by saying he’s older than he looks, then by passing on the Father’s offer of wine.

“No thank you,” said Reuben. “I do not drink wine.”

He waits a beat for a reaction, then orders a Coke and a menu. I think I like Reuben.

Since vampires can’t eat or drink (unless they have high Humanity and a good dice roll) Father Naples is thus satisfied that the guy is not a vampire trying to trick him, deciding he’s “definitely human. And not very clever.” Reuben had made an obligatory knock at airline food, so now Naples believed the agents recording the conversation could use this clue to track down his real name and where he came from through airline records.

They get to the You Got the Cash/You Got the Stuff part of negotiations, with Reuben showing off the twenty million US dollars in his briefcase (Not euro because we’re the only country whose currency matters fuck you Italy) in exchange for a monologue from Naples about the history of the Kindred, starting from the beginning. Reuben says Father Naples can summarize if need be.

“Summarize?... How does one summarize ten thousand years of absolute evil? An impossible task, but let me try.”

The rest of the prologue until the end is Naples’ exposition on vampires while he drinks a shit ton of vino. Since it’s Vampire: The Masquerade Lore 101, I’ll summarize like our pal Naples.

Vampires secretly control the world. There are thirteen vampire clans descended from Caine, of Cain and Abel fame only spelled with an e for some reason. Ye olde Caine killed his brother, though I once read that in this setting it wasn’t so much just committing the first murder as introducing the very concepts of murder and killing to reality and basically ruining everyone’s lives, including demons. God punished Caine by giving him vampirism, forcing him to kill to survive for inventing killing. The vampirism also gave him superpowers, so he’s like a little bloodsucking demigod. I’ve seen jokes about God punishing Caine by giving him cool superpowers, but according to Father Naples Caine needed them because everyone knew what happened and were pissed at him for inventing murder and eating them. When everyone and everything wants to kill you on sight you need to be OP to survive and then feel sad about it.

(He also didn't learn most of those powers until later, when he met Lilith.)

Caine discovered that he could make more vampires through the classic “drain their blood to the point of near death and then feeding them your own blood” method. He sired three new vampires, who weren’t as powerful as him but still quite capable of ruining your day, a trend that continues through twelve or thirteen vampiric generations, although the latest generations are puny compared to Caine and his kids.

Caine and the Second Generation founded Enoch, the First City, and were worshiped there as gods, I’m guessing because of a mixture of fear and the hope of getting some sweet vampire powers if you suck up to the first murderer. The Second Generation then sired the Third Generation, thirteen vampires that became known as the Antediluvians. They’re the ones the modern thirteen vampire clans descend from.

Then everything goes to shit for Caine. Again. The Antediluvians, ambitious dicks, rose up and killed the Second Generation, destroying Enoch in the process. This could be thought of as Caine’s true curse: being forced to watch his childer, and their childer, and so on plot against and murder each other as he had done to his brother, and generally being a plague on mankind. See, Vampire: The Masquerade can be a bit too try-hard edgy and horny at times, but then you also get neat bits of writing and lore like that. As for Caine, he disappeared after the fall of Enoch. He’s now a cab driver in Los Angeles. Or a hermit in Greece, messing with traveling scholar vampires. Or both. Depends on who you ask. No, really. I’m being serious.

I should mention that, religious guy that he is, Father Naples likes to pepper his monologue with casual mentions of the devil. He says things like...

“It was then, in his darkest despair, that Caine learned from Satan a monsterous secret.”

“Encouraged by Satan, Caine created three such monsters.”

“And, in time, urged by Lucifer, they, too, bestowed the gift of eternal life on a select group of their victims.”

“They knew not the Lord God, but Lucifer, the Dark Angel.”

...and generally blaming the big guy below for getting the vampires to do vampire things. While most of what Father Naples says about the setting’s history is correct, the Satan stuff isn’t. Lucifer is a character in the World of Darkness, specifically Demon: The Fallen, but he has nothing to do with V:TM. This adds a neat bit of characterization and unreliability to Naples’ narrative; something Reuben will point out at the end of the prologue.

The Great Flood happened, but Father Naples doesn’t mention it. He skips to the Antediluvians founding the Second City, which didn’t get a name like Enoch because in its two thousand years of existence apparently no one could think of one. With the support of their childer, the fourth generation, they ruled over the Second City and, according to Naples, enslaved humanity. But eventually humanity rose up against the vampires, killing some of them with sunlight, fire, and beheading. The Second City fell and the surviving vampires fled. The Antediluvians disappeared. Some modern day vampires believe the Antediluvians were all dead, while others (the correct ones, turns out) believe they’re hiding, resting in torpor (a kind of vampire coma) this whole time and one day, they’d wake up and, as Father Naples says, “...the world of the Undead shall tremble.” This is our first mention in this book of Gehenna, the end of the wold according to the Kindred. He also says their return was predicted in Revelations, but I’m no biblical expert so I can’t tell you what bits of Revelations that might be referring too.

Reuben asks what happened to the fourth generation, or the Methuselahs as they’re now known because they’re old as balls but not “lived before the Biblical Flood” old. Father Naples tells him, then goes on to explain the titular Masquerade, vampire factions, and the thirteen clans.

#vampire the masquerade #vtm #vtmb #world of darkness #vampire: the masquerade #blood war

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