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theoriginalcarnivorousmuffin · 3 years

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Hey, you once mentioned something about Tom Riddle being a little suicidal. Your new post reminded of that and I wonder why you think that. It’s the complete opposite of what the books want you to think.

Alright, it’s time, let’s do this.

My standard disclaimer whenever we venture into the dark pit that is my thoughts on Tom Riddle: I’m going to say a lot of controversial stuff that fandom generally doesn’t agree with, I will say so much of this shit that I simply do not have time to explain it all, I expect 99% of you to disagree with me and the other 1% to be so horrifyingly offended that I dare to contemplate a world in which Tom isn’t always an overly competent psychopath that they leave me notes telling me to take this trash out of their character tags.

We good? Alright.

So, when I say a little suicidal, I mean that he is suicidal.

Not on the level that he’s going to kill himself tomorrow, or even has plans to kill himself, but in that he makes very strange decisions for someone who desperately wants to live.

And yes, I realize I speak blasphemy given that Tom Riddle’s entire m.o. is supposed to be his crippling fear of death.

Oh man, this one’s going to be so long.

So, my reasoning comes down to a few things:

The location of the horcruxes and the nature of their protections.

The events of Deathly Hallows and Tom’s final actions in the novel

The nature of horcruxes and what it means to not only be able to create one but what it does to you (caveat that I am going to headcanon hard here and speak utter blasphemy)

So, let’s start in order this time, because I think the first two are actually far easier for me to explain.

The Location and Nature of the Horcrux Protections and the Trouble with Backdoors in Security

So, first, the horcruxes are all conveniently located in Great Britain. Not even just in Great Britain, all in places that Albus Dumbledore and later Harry Potter can track down with relative ease, all fairly close to each other.

Now, part of this is undoubtedly attributable to Tom’s overly romantic nature.

Yes, Tom Riddle is a giant romantic, though not necessarily in the traditional sense everyone thinks of. The film “Patton” and its treatment of Patton comes to mind. Tom Riddle is a man enamored by a sense of greatness, of being remembered in this world rather than fading into oblivion, by the significance of places and times in history not only of the world but of himself. He creates an entire, grand, persona for himself because to live an ordinary life for him is to be worthy of nothing.

So, given that, of course Tom places the horcruxes in sentimental locations that have personal meaning to him.

However, it also makes them perilously easy to find and collect.

By itself, this wouldn’t spark my notice.

The ability to destroy horcruxes are not easy to come by. There’s only one basilisk and it’s by chance/Lucius fucking up that Harry gains access to the necessary basilisk venom. Using Fyendfire is an incredibly dangerous thing to do and just as likely to blow up you and the next three towns over as it is to destroy a horcrux. And if there are other means of destroying a horcrux they’re just as hard to come by or just as dangerous.

It’s not quite throwing it into the fires of Mt. Doom from which it was forged but it’s pretty damn close.

So, really, without JKR’s convenient Deus Ex Machina giving both him and Dumbledore the means to actually destroy these things, Tom Riddle’s horcruxes are pretty damn safe no matter where we put them. As we see from the locket, which Regulus manages to collect but Kreacher cannot destroy even after several decades.

However, what does spark my notice, is that the horcruxes can be collected by someone other than Tom Riddle when it appears as if they were never intended to be. What do I mean by this?

From what we see, there’s no benefit to Tom if the original horcruxes are found by anyone. He doesn’t seek them out to restore his original body, they’re just anchor points that should be hidden at all costs. So, he’ll never need a Death Eater to go collect them for him should he be indisposed (indeed, to do so would require a tremendous amount of trust in people he has very little trust in).

So, why hide them in such a way that others can access them? There are canon based options which would have prevented anyone else from reaching them. Given the existence of age lines, I imagine Tom Riddle could make some arbitrary barrier keyed only to himself. There are mokeskin pouches, such as the one Harry is given in the seventh book, which we know can only be accessed by whoever they’re keyed to. There’s the Fidelius Charm which, true requires a secret keeper which Tom would be very meh on, but options exist.

Tom Riddle could wipe the locations of his horcruxes off the face of the map. He chooses not to. Which leads me to believe that, at least on some unconscious level, he wants the horcruxes to be found.

Then we have the protections.

Specifically, I’m thinking of the locket here.

Yes, the protections are very formidable, but they’re also goddamn weird.

Rather than make the horcrux simply inaccessible, kill all those intruding, instead the intruder has to go through a very “Saw” like puzzle in which they drown themselves in despair until they finally get the locket, at which point they likely suicide by zombie.

More, there’s no hint that there’s any other way to retrieve the locket.

Backdoors in security are a very bad idea. What they do is weaken the security as a whole and, if you can take a short cut is, it means that someone who is clever enough and motivated enough can to. Dumbledore is both clever and motivated enough, and I imagine if there was a way to get the horcrux that involved not doing this ridiculous task he would have done it.

More, we’d be back to the land of Tom making sure only he can access the horcrux by requiring a password, keying it to his magical signature, or something so that no one else could get it.

Which means, that’s right, if Tom wants to get the locket he’s drinking the goddamn despair juice just like the rest of us.

What kind of a person would do any of this?

I’ve gone over this before, but I don’t think Tom Riddle’s crazy. Rather, in this case, I think he’s driven by an unbelievable amount of nihilist rage and is also quite depressed.

Tom goes to collect his horcrux, “Ah, it’s time to remember what a miserable life I’ve led and the sheer awfulness of my own existence. Good, I was starting to feel a little too happy. Let’s see if I get eaten by my undead, vengeful, victims today.”

The Events of Deathly Hallows and Tom Riddle’s Death

I think Tom Riddle’s final death in the books was suicide.

Tom takes over the Wizarding World, finally, and it’s as miserable as ever.

He’s trapped in this sham, barely functional, probably very painful body. His Death Eaters are completely out of control and for all that he wanted society to burn it’s now burning and no one’s even learned anything from this. Children in Hogwarts are being routinely tortured and have now staged a rebellion in which he’s having to slaughter them (I have reasons to believe that this is not what Tom Riddle wanted, at all, but that’s best saved for another post), and then he learns his horcruxes have all been destroyed without him even noticing.

There’s so little left of him, he has accomplished nothing, and there’s Harry Potter back from the dead yet again, gloating at him that love conquers all and Tom Riddle will never understand.

And Harry’s right, Tom Riddle will never understand, the world is meaningless and flat to him now and he finally understand that there’s no point to it. I think Tom Riddle decides he’s done. He’s just done.

He enters in a duel with Harry Potter knowing the weird nature of their wands. Now, it can be assumed he used the Elder Wand, but we know they get locked in Priori Incatatum , and that makes no damn sense with the Elder Wand (well, wandlore in general is silly, but I’m working with what JKR gave me here). So I choose to take JKR at her somewhat established canon and say that, no matter what Harry thought, Voldemort was using his original wand.

He throws out the killing curse, despite having now witnessed Harry resurrecting twice to this thing, and within two seconds it rebounds and kills him.

Voldemort’s death is a lot like this scene from the recent, terrible, 2020 live action Mulan (10/10 do not recommend). Now, we’re supposed to think that this scene is the witch saving Mulan’s life and thus showing her hope for the next generation. In actuality, the witch literally flies into an arrow she could have easily deflected from Mulan’s path. It’s a suicide that Mulan is too stupid to notice.

Tom chooses suicide in the most ridiculous, flamboyant, and easily written off manner one can and no one even notices. Instead Harry crows that he has personally defeated Voldemort, with the power of love no less, HUZZAH!

And the castle parties.

The Nature of Horcruxes

I almost don’t want to include this because it’s so... well, I’m really drifting far from canon and fandom now.

However, with horcruxes, there’s always an overriding question of why Tom is able to make so many when we don’t see anyone else with these things around (especially as it’s clear that murder doesn’t simply happen for those that now have horcruxes).

Usually, you have fic authors just sort of shrug and go, “Well, he’s that evil, I guess.” Sometimes you have them go, “No one else is crazy enough to keep going, and that’s why Voldemort’s cuckoo bananas.”

One very good explanation I’ve seen is that it’s because most people, when they murder, feel remorse immediately. The soul split happens, but they’re haunted by the murder for the rest of their life, and thus the horcrux isn’t made. Voldemort, feeling nothing when he kills anyone, is thus able to make them even for when he’s only indirectly associated with the death in question.

However, to me that never really jived philosophically.

Mostly, I simply cannot imagine that tearing apart your very soul is an act of indifference. Here’s how I see it: to do something like that to yourself, you must care, you must care beyond all imagine and human endurance. Your soul literally cannot abide it and saws itself in half, purging what you cannot stand about yourself the most.

The remorse part is, yes, remorse for the act and the victim but more to the point it is the ability to forgive and reaccept the worst part of yourself. That part of yourself that you purged and destroyed, which is nearly impossible to do and might very well destroy the fabric of who you are).

In other words, while creating a horcrux is an abominable act of hatred, it is also one of profound self-hatred.

Tom Riddle loathes himself so much that he is able to do this over and over and over again.

As Tom Riddle goes on he makes himself into less and less and less of himself until he probably doesn’t even know who he is anymore. He just knows, whatever is left of him, he loathes that too.

And then, of course, he gives up, runs into the nearest flying arrow, and dies.

TL;DR: Tom Riddle’s is a miserable existence that ended in a miserable if unintentionally hilarious manner

#ask #anon #tom riddle #voldemort

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steps-to-parnassus · 3 years

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dead men tell no tales reimagined as horror-action

thinking again about how dead men tell no tales had so much wasted potential to be a fantastic horror-action film. instead of focusing on j*hnny d*pp and his stale, washed-out-drunk “comedy” or trying to shoehorn in yet another love story to replace will and elizabeth, the writers/producers/directors should have taken a look at the absolutely phenomenal make-up, costuming, digital effects, and actors’ performances that they had on their hands for the crew of the Silent Mary, and at how the original script written by Ted and Terry heavily played up the horror element.

a horror-focused film would have been a breath of fresh air for the series and could have even made several other elements of the film (lieutenant scarfield, shansa, etc) work better. it would have made the idea of a “final adventure” ring much more true, and most of all, it would have harkened back to the horror elements prevalent in curse of the black pearl and ESPECIALLY dead man’s chest, which worked very strongly in those films’ favour.

just think about the possibilities (quite long, so i’ll put it under a cut):

ghostly hands coming out of the walls of the Monarch like in the trailer, but the viewer never sees what happens next. all we get are flashes of the massacre and Henry’s perspective, trapped in the brig with no light as he struggles to see and hears screams of terror and demonic shrieks of glee.

we don’t see the ghosts coming into the brig due to the darkness; all we see are golden pinpricks in the dark, noises of shuffling and agonized breaths and the sense that something is terribly wrong. they only appear to the audience as one of them brings a torch down into the brig for Henry’s benefit, and suddenly the Mary’s crew is revealed in all their terrifying glory to both Henry and us.

they stare and leer at him, and crewmembers in the background have red blood around their mouths. the audience gets the sense that they very much don’t want to let Henry go.

when we next see Henry in Saint Martin, he’s raving. he still meets Carina, still speaks with her, still agrees to help her, but he is terrified by what he has seen. he tells her about the corpses and the pools of blood he had to walk through to get to the Monarch’s longboat. he tells her how the demons watched him go with hungry eyes. he tells her that he can still hear the screams.

Scarfield does not seek to kill Henry just because he is a traitor - Scarfield sees him with Carina, whom he lusts after. Henry might help her off the island, might protect her. Scarfield wants him out of the way so that he might possess. he has heard plenty of the ghostly crew and cares not that they are attacking british ships - every officer not himself that dies is a greater chance Scarfield will be promoted in the seniority-obsessed ranking system.

Jack is doing well when we first see him, the cunning fast-talker we’ve always known him to be. it is only after the rumours of a ghostly crew with a captain calling himself Salazar spread like wildfire around Saint Martin that he starts trying to drown himself in liquor to assuage the bone-deep terror.

when Salazar and his crew are freed, they don’t have a mild little cheer. no, they tear their hair and howl like madmen. they have been storing all their pain and hate against pirates and empires for decades - they are going to bathe the oceans in blood.

when we first see Shansa, she is hooded and cloaked, somehow able to track the movements of the dead. she takes her robe off and we see why: she is covered in scars from blades and fingernails and teeth, wounds left her when she was the “one man left alive” from a voyage into the Triangle many years ago, back when the Mary��s crew could not control their bloodlust as well as they can now. and that is terrifying to us - what they did on the Monarch was their version of being restrained.

we see the news of the dead crew spreading as they attack pirates and british ships alike. churches are overflowing with terrified citizens; people bar their doors and hold fast their rosaries and guns at night.

Jack’s crew were loyal to him up until they heard of the dead - now they must be paid off by Henry to rescue Jack, because every pirate in the Caribbean knows who Salazar is; and now that he is the undead, they daren’t let him find them. the rumours are coming back from men left alive that the crew of the Mary sing and laugh as they butcher without remorse, that the evil curse they lay under forces them to feast on human flesh just to keep going, just to feel anything. Jack’s crew do not mutiny later because he suggests it - they mutiny out of sheer terror.

the scene with Salazar and Barbossa’s first encounter is one of the few in the film where the horror element is quite prominent (the other being Salazar’s intro, and it isn’t a coincidence that these are two of the film’s strongest and most compelling scenes). very little about this would need to be changed to work, save for one thing: Salazar does not tap his sword five times at the end. instead he simply says, “you can take what’s left of them,” and nods to his lieutenant and his men, who all begin to smile as they turn to the crew. when we see them next, Barbossa’s crew are down to less than half. we never find out what happens to them.

when Salazar tells his story and we see the past, we are stunned. here is the crew of the Mary, working together, smiling, laughing at their victory. we see and hear them talking about how finally civilians will be safe; about how they can retire, go back to their wives and children and parents and siblings. we see them as normal men with a noble goal.

we see them awake and scream in pain and terror, and it is on their agonized screaming at the start of their decades-long imprisonment that we cut back to the present. now we can understand, at least a little, how once-good men became monsters.

Carina, Henry, and Jack would have far more dramatic reactions to the Mary’s crew on the beach. for Henry, these are the demons that slaughtered an entire crew as he sat in the brig, trapped and helpless and terrified that his horrific end was imminent. for Jack, these are men whom he’s seen before as humans, and whose hatred and bloodlust is directed at him. for Carina, who has never seen ghosts before, she is struck dumb. these men have horrific injuries, and they are looking at her with detached curiosity and bloodlust that seems a thousand times more horrifying than the looks Scarfield gave her. she can almost see what they would have done to her had they caught her.

there is no ridiculous wedding scene on at hangman’s bay. instead, the locals saw the giant ghost ship sailing into their waters. they know who it is the demons want, but are not aware that the Mary’s crew cannot set foot on land. they intend to give Jack up to the ghosts in exchange for their own lives.

Salazar still executes Barbossa’s men in the name of the king. he is completely mad, but some part of him still thinks himself a righteous naval officer.

Scarfield wants the trident, but more than that, he wants to use it and Shansa’s knowledge to control these dead men. he remembers the reign of terror Beckett wrought with the Dutchman. he would see it repeated for his own personal gain.

in the ship-to-ship battle, Henry initially tries to defend Carina until he realizes that the ghosts aren’t attacking her. they want her to lead them to the trident so that they can seize it for themselves. our heroes do not yet know that they want to end their curse. in fact, the crew of the Mary don’t really know that themselves - they’d much rather have the pirates surrounding them dead to rights, and then free themselves.

every time one of the Mary’s crew is dissipated due to contact with land, the others react. they scream and howl and gnash their teeth and their eyes flare gold. the viewer can feel how much they would like to crush the heroes’ bones into pulp.

when Henry is captured, the officers of the Mary cannot take their eyes off of him. he is terrified for his life, shaking the whole time. when Lesaro mentions that they have tried possession before, the other officers mourn their comrades who became trapped in human bodies and slowly died of thirst, still unable to leave the Triangle, all because they wanted to see the sun again. the viewer is conflicted - are we supposed to pity these monsters? there are flashes beneath the madness that suggests that deep down, they just want to be human again.

when the crew’s curse is broken, we see more of it. we see limbs regrow, bodies knit together again. we see the bloodthirsty monsters we have come to fear laughing and weeping with joy, embracing each other. we hear their terrified screams for help as Salazar finally demonstrates that his own bloodlust was decidedly not the byproduct of a curse as was the case for his crew and pursues Jack.

Barbossa climbs down the chain to kill Salazar, but the former spanish officer deals a mortal blow. just as he is about to kill Barbossa, Jack himself decides to muster up his courage and sacrifice to save those dear to him, which throughout the films, he has always done. he falls from the anchor, and together with his rival-turned-best-friend, he plummets to his death with one last jaunty sweep of his tricorne hat.

there are many dead from the battle. Barbossa’s pirate empire is in ruins, and british power in the caribbean has taken a massive hit. people everywhere are terrified. Henry, however, finds that his terror has stopped and resolves to be a braver man after witnessing what Barbossa and Jack have done. Carina pledges to honour her father and never again to disbelieve in ghost stories. she decides to become a pirate.

in this bittersweet ending, a glimmer of hope: the Dutchman surfaces, with two new crewmembers. Will hangs up his hat to Jack, with Barbossa as his first mate, and Jack is finally reunited with Bill, who has made amends with Barbossa. the old captain-versus-captain dynamic is back - and destined to play out forever. with uncharacteristic solemnity, Jack vows to ferry Salazar’s crew to the other side so that they can finally rest.

Will climbs aboard the Black Pearl, where the crew has elected Carina Barbossa captain. he asks if she might sail him to Singapore - his wife is the pirate king and lord of the south china sea, and that is where she holds court. Henry and Carina, true pirates, share a kiss as the sun rises and our heroes head off to find new adventure. the nightmare is finally over.

#potc #potc dmtnt #dead men tell no tales #jack sparrow #henry turner #carina smyth #hector barbossa #captain salazar #potc meta #boy this got long #anyway disney just hire me next time ok pls i have ideas listen i just wanna tal

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babybatscreationsv2 · 3 years

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if you’re taking prompts;

so; tony is the devil. Or hades? Although hades isn’t technically “evil” so idk. And peter’s very literally made a deal with the devil. Only he couldn’t keep up with his end of the deal and now his soul he belongs to tony. aND THEN, tony kinda likes pities him and it turns into a beauty and the beast sorta thing where tony has his undead servants make feasts n all that sorta stuff so peter feels comfortable. And then they fall in love. And then they screw 😌

Thank you for this because I've been looking for an excuse to write a Hades and Persephone story. This ended up so tender and romantic that you can't call it smut. These beeches be making love. Also this ended up full fic sized so here's the details.

Eat the Fruit

Summary: When Peter's lover dies in an accident, he offers his soul to the God of the Underworld to save him, but when he is unable to fulfill his end of the deal he finds himself in the Underworld. Now Peter is left tending to the pomegranate grove where the only balm for his loneliness is Hades (aka Tony), a god with a prickly edge.

Rating: Explicit

"Oh, thank you, my lord!" The soul sobbed with gratitude. They bowed low again and again. One of Tony's soldiers came to lead her away so the line could continue.

You must love him to offer your soul to me this way.

Please, you are lord of the dead. If anyone has this power, it's you.

I am not cruel, Peter. I will restore your lover's soul. In return, you must stay with him in life until he dies a natural death.

I promise.

So be it.

----------

The agony of heartbreak still echoed in his mind. His mind replayed the moment as Harry told him goodbye and turned away, closing the door as he went. He wished he could try again. Despite how he had pleaded with Harry not to leave, had promised him whatever he wished, he felt that maybe there was something he could have done. Harry did not love him anymore. He left him.

And so Peter fainted... and he awoke in a vast orchard.

He sat up in the grass and looked around at the low trees each baring heavy red fruit. Pomegranates. They looked beautiful, delicious. Peter stood and brushed himself off. He looked around feeling unsure how he had gotten here. Then he remembered and a sob escaped him. Not only had he lost the love of his life, he had broken his deal with Hades. This beautiful grove must have been a part of the Underworld.

"So soon," said a voice. Peter turned to catch sight of a man. He was handsome, a bit older than Peter, with wrinkles around his eyes, yet those eyes shined with livelihood. When he last saw Hades it had been a shadow of his true form, something massive and hulking and terrible. He seemed almost kind now. He had been kind enough to him then.

"Please, Lord Hades, send me back. Let me try again."

The god plucked a fruit from a tree and examined it. "Sorry, kid. That was a one time offer. No take backs." He looked Peter over, then he placed the pomegranate in his hands. He walked past him and Peter followed along, afraid to be left alone in such a place.

"Please. I'll give you anything. Lord Hades-"

The god huffed and turned on the spot. He held up a finger. "First of all, there's no need to call me that. Hades is more of a title and I'm over it. Call me Tony."

"Tony?"

"Yeah, Tony. Now, listen up because I've got a short temper." Tony looked him in the eye. His hand held Peter's chin. "You will never leave the Underworld. Do you understand? Your soul belongs to me. You belong to me. This is where you will stay. Forever."

"Forever," Peter repeated. Not a question, but a realization. He had given everything for Harry. Everything.

The god took hold of his arm and turned him to look across the orchard. "Do you see the river there? You are never to attempt to cross it. If you try, its current will drag you under and you will drown in its waters until I see fit to retrieve you. The river Styx will not allow a soul to leave so easily."

Tony patted his shoulder. "Got it?"

Peter nodded. "I get it. Don't cross the river." It sure didn't sound fun to drown in a river until this oddly blase god decided to have mercy on him. "What happens now?"

Tony shrugged. "Tend the orchard or something. What do I care?"

Peter looked at him like he had grown a second head, which maybe he did have two heads, this probably wasn't his true form. "You let me sell my soul to you so I could just hang out?"

Tony's face shifted and Peter shrank back. His sudden anger was sharp and cold like a dagger made of ice. He encroached on Peter's space and with a clenched jaw he tried not to back away further. "Listen up, kid. You made the deal you wanted to make. You wanted to sacrifice yourself for what your heart desired and I gave you the opportunity. Life isn't the fairy tale you thought it was. Now, tend the trees and keep out of my hair."

Peter watched him go. He stared off in the direction that he went a while longer. Then cold began to seep into his bones. He sat down under a pomegranate tree. He wrapped his arms around his legs. Then he cried, wet tears staining the clothes he had died in. It could have been a lifetime that he cried, but when he finally got up he was numb.

Harry was gone and his life was over, but there was no going back. Peter turned in a circle, looking at the orchard. It was beautiful. If he had to spend the rest of eternity here it certainly wasn't the worst place to be. Sometimes when a breeze kicked up, he thought he heard screaming off in the direction he had decided to call south. There were certainly worse places to be even in the Underworld.

Peter walked to the edge of the pomegranate grove. Several feet from the edge, the ground began to slope down until it reached the edge of the Styx. A boat floated along the water. A man with a scraggly goatee and messy, curly, hair rowed along while a woman with red rimmed eyes sat in the seat. When she looked up, she looked right through him as if he were glass. A chill went through him. Once the feeling passed, he tried to wave at her, but she didn't respond. Was she in shock? Did she know yet that she was dead? Where was she being taken, he wondered. He hoped it was somewhere nice like his pomegranate grove and not the place where the screaming came from.

He kept walking, following the tree line, never passing the trees on the very edge. The orchard was vast, but not endless. On one side was the river Styx. On the next, the river Lethe. Or he assumed it was as the mist that came off of it made his head feel hazy. When he reached the third side is when the screaming grew louder. He walked faster until it grew distant again.

The fourth edge of the orchard stretched on into a garden. Peter stopped himself at the edge of the trees. He wasn't sure if he was allowed to leave the orchard or not. He hadn't been explicitly told not to. So he did.

He followed along low hedges and passed through clusters of hydrangea. Then the ground began to change from grass and plant life to cold gray stone. Peter looked back at the garden and the orchard beyond it. Was this allowed? He couldn't tend the trees without any tools. He'd need baskets if he were to collect the fruit and if they got sick he'd need medicines. He wasn't sure what else one could possibly do for trees. Perhaps Tony could tell him.

He found the god in question sitting a top a throne of slate. He looked far larger than he had before, but he still took the same form. He seemed bored, or perhaps indifferent was the word, as souls lined up at his feet. One soul grovelled on his knees.

"Please, my lord. I am meant for Elysium. I was a good man in life. An excellent one. I always gave to charity, I swear!"

Hades, for that's what he was a top this throne, waved his hand. "That does not make you special nor important by any means. You are not exceptional by any measure. To the fields with you." He snapped his fingers and two souls, each with hollow, black eyes and wrists wrapped in cuffs of slate, came forward and dragged the pleading soul away.

Another stepped forward and their plea was the same. They wished for Elysium and Hades waved them off.

"Won't you even listen to their stories?" Peter asked.

The god looked down at him. "Shouldn't you be working?"

"I wasn't sure exactly what I was meant to do."

"The trees will tell you when they need," he said, but Peter noticed that he did not wave him away as he did the pleading soul so he assumed he was allowed to stay.

The next soul pleaded not for Elysium, but for their lover. They begged to be reunited with them in Asphodel.

"It is not my job to see that lovers unite. If you are soul mates you will find one another," Tony said with a terribly bored voice.

"Please, my lord. I has been a hundred years-"

"Be grateful I do not drop you in the River Lethe before you are returned!" he snapped. "Be gone with you."

"You are too harsh," Peter said as the soul was dragged away

Tony glared down at him. "You don't have to listen to the same nonsense for eternity."

"You are a god. You should be grateful for that."

"You should be grateful I don't sick my hound on you," Tony growled. "Now go."

Peter hesitated, not wishing to be alone again, but the look on Tony's face was far from kind. With a deep frown, Peter turned and walked back to the orchard.

The trees weren't much for company. Peter walked through the boughs, lonely and with too much time to reflect. He thought about the life he had lost and all of the things he had given up. He thought about Harry. Did he regret leaving him now that he was dead? Did he miss him? He wondered if Harry would go to his funeral and if he would ever bring flowers. After a long while of wandering, he couldn't take it any longer. He made his way back to the place where the grass died and became stone.

There were no souls there now, only a massive dog which sat at the foot of the throne. It opened one big eye as Peter came near. When he didn't stop it raised its head only for Peter to realize that it had not one, but three. A growl rumbled in its throat.

"Sorry to bother you, big guy. I was just looking for the other big guy." Peter reached out a hand inviting the dog to smell it. It lowered its heads suspiciously. Then it sniffed.

"It's okay. I'm not up to any mischief, I promise. I was just lonely. You look like you might be lonely, too."

Peter smiled as the dog allowed him to pet his hairy nose. It watched him curiously as he came closer so he could scratch behind his ears.

"You're sweet aren't you?" Peter cooed. "Sweet boy."

"Peter?" Tony's voice called. He turned his head to see him coming up the path. "I wouldn't bother him if I were you."

"He seems to like me," Peter shrugged. "I was just looking for some company."

Tony stopped and looked at them both. He tucked his hands behind his back, watching silently while Peter pet the happy dog. His giant tail wagged into the gray dirt.

"You were lonely?" Tony finally asked.

"Trees aren't the best company as it turns out. I'm not used to be alone. Harry and I..." Peter took a breath. Just mentioning his name made his chest burn. "Well, we were always together."

"I see..." Tony stared off toward the orchard. "Come and see me tonight."

"Tonight?"

"Yes. It doesn't always get dark here, but night will fall in a few hours. Come back here then, but not before."

Peter looked at the man, but he didn't seem likely to divulge what he was up to. "Alright... I will see you then."

He gave the dog, Cerberus, one last pet. Then he turned away and walked back to the orchard.

As promised the sky above began to darken. Peter watched it with fascination for a moment. There were no stars in the Underworld. The sky was a deep navy, almost black. Yet, Peter could see perfectly fine. He walked back through the trees to where the ground became stone and there he found a grand table set with candles and silver platters.

"Peter, glad you could join me," Tony greeted. The look on his face was almost a smile.

"What is all this?"

"You said you were lonely so I thought we could share a meal together. If you'd like."

Peter smiled. "Of course! That sounds great."

Tony looked relived. He pulled out a chair for him. "I don't know what you like, but I had nearly everything I could think of prepared."

Peter sat down, offering his thanks as Tony pushed his seat up. He sat down on Peter's right. He flinched as Tony's dead soldiers melted from the shadows and began to serve him from the many plates and platters. When his plate and cup were full, they took a step back waiting to serve him again.

"This all looks amazing. I thought you couldn't eat the food in the Underworld."

Tony picked up his glass, the only thing in front of him. "If it is grown here, then it is true. Eating food grown in the Underworld can have undesired effects." He stared into his wine. Then he looked up and gave Peter a smile. "Eat," he said.

Every bite was divine. Sitting together with Tony helped chase the loneliness away. They talked about Peter's happy memories in life, his time in college, holidays with his Aunt May, being Uncle Peter to Gwen's twins. Harry wasn't there for most of the good parts. Peter couldn't help but find that strange. Harry had felt like such a big part of his life, but had he? Maybe the Underworld was making him forgetful.

After dinner, they stood together and watched the light return. Tony's odd little soldiers cleared everything away.

"Thank you, Peter," Tony said. He gave him a smile. Peter admired the way it made his eyes shine.

"No, thank you. That was a lovely dinner. I'm feeling a lot better, too."

"I'm glad." He paused for a moment and they stood simply looking at each other as the sky changed above them. "You're welcome to return here whenever you please."

Peter's smile widened. "Are you saying you enjoyed my company as well?"

Tony shrugged. "It's wasn't the worst dinner I've been to."

Peter rolled his eyes as he walked away. He returned to the orchard where the boughs were heavy with fruit. He spent hours, maybe days, picking the fruit and collecting it into baskets that he couldn't recalling seeing before. There was a pail and some tools as well.

He stuck to picking fruit for now. That is until his arms grew tired from reaching and legs grew tried from carrying him. He left the orchard to return to the throne. There was Hades, sat atop, looking terribly bored as he dealt with the unending line of souls.

"Please, Lord Hades-"

"Shoo," the god wave the soul away and they were dragged off. Peter went and took a seat, cross legged on the ground beside him. Tony spared him a glance.

"Come to watch the show?"

"I like being with you."

Tony stiffened, but said nothing in answer. Another soul stepped forward. A sort of gray tone clouded not only their skin, but their clothes as well. Peter wondered why he wasn't the same way. Was it because he Tony's soul, belonging to the orchard, while this soul belonged somewhere else? The souls from the Fields were all a bit gray.

"Please, Lord Hades, it has been one hundred and fifty years since my death. I wish to be united with my daughter. I walk the Fields endlessly and never find her," the soul pleaded.

Tony sighed. "Fine," he said. Peter blinked, sitting more upright. "When you return to the Fields, your daughter will await you at the gate."

"Oh, thank you, my lord!" The soul sobbed wjth gratitude. They bowed low again and again. One of Tony's soldiers came to lead her away so the line could continue.

"That was kind of you," Peter said.

Tony huffed in response, but he continued this way. Whenever a soul made, what seemed to Peter, a reasonable request Tony honored it. Souls were united with family, friends, and lovers so long as they walked the fields together. And when it was done, Tony walked with Peter back to the orchard.

They walked beneath the trees, the smell of pomegranate in the air.

"What changed your mind about the souls?"

Tony stood and examined one of the trees. He ignored Peter's question. "They seem happy with you here," he said.

"You were right. They do tell me what they need."

Tony smiled. "Of course I was." He turned and took Peter's hand. His heart fluttered. They kept walking until the Styx came into view. They watched the river pass by in silence. Then after a long while Tony said, "I have to go." Then he disappeared.

Peter turned in a circle, but the god was truly gone. He smiled to himself and turned back to watch the river pass. Tony left him feeling warm. He missed his company already, but he was glad to have had it in the first place.

He went back to his trees, tending them with a smile. Time as usual, without measure other than a weariness in his legs from standing. Then the trees began to ask for water.

It made sense. It never seemed to rain in the Underworld. Certainly trees would need water. He had a pail he could collect it in, but where would he get it from? The only water source nearby was the Styx. He looked around for Tony, but the god was not nearby. So he took it upon himself to get the water.

Peter carried his pail down to the riverside. He placed his feet carefully to keep from slipping into the water. Then he leaned out and scooped some water up with the pail. He set the full pail up on the bank, but its weight unbalanced him. His feet slid in the rocks and he was pulled under the water's surface.

While the Styx looked steady and calm, there was a current beneath its surface. It claimed him easy, dragging him under and pulling him far far away from the orchard. Peter tried to swim up, sometimes his hands breached the surface, but never his head. His lungs burned with lack of air, then with water. Then he was drowning. Drowning without dying.

There was never any telling how much time passed in the Underworld. But finally, finally... he was pulled from the river.

He vomited what felt like gallons of water, coughing the rest from his lungs. The pain faded quickly. Peter laid on his back and blinked wet eyes at the man standing over him. He was a shadow, blocking out the light above.

"Tony?" he rasped. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to fall in. The trees needed water and I slipped."

Tony knelt beside him. "I know. I saw the water pail by the river." He scooped Peter up and pulled him to his chest. Instantly, he was dry. "You're safe now."

"Thank you." Peter's body shook in fear and relief. "That was horrible."

Tony pet his hair and held him close. "Come and get me next time the trees need water. I will call the rain to water them."

Tony helped him stand. With slow steps they walked back together to the orchard. Tony seemed far more quiet than usual. Peter couldn't place just what was wrong. He'd been warned not to try to cross the river. Was he not allowed to go near it at all? Or did Tony think he had tried to leave. Why would it bother him so much if he did?

They passed under the first branches of the orchard. Without thinking, Peter plucked the first pomegranate he saw. He stopped and admired the round, red, fruit in his hands. Tony stopped and turned, looking back at him.

"I've never tasted one of these." Peter laughed softly. "All this time picking them and caring for them, but I never eat them."

"If you eat the fruit in the Underworld, you can never leave," Tony reminded him.

"You wouldn't let me leave anyway."

"Maybe I would." There was a vulnerable honesty there in his eyes. He was right, wasn't he? This time he was right. Harry had never loved him. He had been young and foolish and naive. Tony didn't just show him desire and adoration in the way that Harry had, no. From Tony he received respect, admiration, trust. Because Tony loved him, truly.

"You thought, even if it was only for a moment, that I had tried to cross the river. Were you relieved when you realized it was an accident?" Peter looked at his face. He said nothing, gave nothing away with his expression.

Peter looked at the fruit in his hand. He dug his thumbs into the skin and pulled it apart. It bled pink onto his skin. Tony watched him in silence, seeming to hold his breath. Peter examined his face searching for one last reassure that he was truly wanted. Then he brought the fruit to his lips and bit into its seeds.

It was perfectly sweet. The taste of it coated his tongue. Juice dripped down his chin. When he swallowed, it was heavy in his stomach. He dropped the fruit and looked at the god.

His gaze was adoring, worshipful.

"Allow me a taste," Tony said. He reached for him, pulling him in. Their lips met and Peter moaned at a taste that was far sweeter than the fruit.

His hands held Tony's face, staining his cheeks pink. Strong hands held his back, guiding him to press in closer until they were flush. Peter moaned as a tongue slipped over his own, exploring and claiming his mouth. He felt high on him, willing and receptive to any of Tony's desires.

They stopped, only for a moment, and gazed at each other's faces. Then Tony took him and laid him back in the soft grass beneath the trees.

Tony stripped away his clothes. Each article was removed with gentle care and hot kisses pressed to his newly exposed skin. Every inch of him felt sensitive to the softness of his lips and the scratch of his beard. When he was naked, Tony returned above him to kiss his lips again. Peter let his hands roam over his chest and found that his clothes were gone, revealing a muscular and scarred chest. Tony caught his hand, holding it above his heart.

"Do you mind?" he said. His eyes shined.

Peter shook his head. "You're beautiful, Tony," he said. Tony caught his mouth in a kiss that was ripe with need.

Peter spread his legs apart and Tony settled between them. His kiss were soft and tender as he pushed slowly inside him. His mouth captured the high pitch whined that escaped Peter's lips. Slowly he was filled until Tony was fully inside him. His hands clung to Tony's shoulders and he stared up into gleaming brown eyes.

He dragged his fingers over his skin to cup his face in both hands. "I love you," Peter whispered.

Tony's smile was joyous. "I love you, Peter."

Peter gasped, head falling back into the grass as Tony moved inside him. The friction felt so intense that he could form words but that didn't stop him from whining and babbling. Tony kissed his lips, his bared neck, his chest. His lips sucked his nipples, tongue flicking and teasing over them. Peter's nails dug into Tony's shoulders. All he could do was hold on as his cock dragged over his prostate and Tony fucked him fast and deep. Frantic, like he was starving. When his mouth returned to Peter's, he held him tight, kissing his lips as if they dripped ambrosia. He refused to let, kissing him deeply and desperately until he could hold on no longer. His nails cut scratches into Tony's back as his body ached and shivered beneath him. His cum splattered, sticky and warm on his skin.

He panted hard, looking up at Tony again with nothing but adoration and love. He held Tony's beautiful face.

"Cum in me, please," Peter begged.

"Anything you want is yours," Tony pledged.

He moved him again, cock deep inside, body screaming with sensitivity. A tear rolled down Peter's cheek and he whimpered painfully, but he was euphoric. Tony kissed away his tears. Peter tasted the salt on his lips. Then Tony moaned, holding him tight. Peter covered his face in kisses. He felt him cum, making him sticky and wet inside.

Tony's cheeks were red and his smile was bright. Peter couldn't help but smile, too, and pulled him down into a deep unending kiss.

#marvel #starker #prompt fill #hades and persephone #fluff #romance #nff

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inkandpen22 · 3 years

Text

Beautiful Angel of Darkness (2/?)

Pairing: Spike x Female! Reader

Warnings: Swearing, violence, angst, mentions of death

Word Count: 2k

Part Summary: Y/N considers Spike’s offer, but for obvious reasons she’s hesitant. However, she can’t deny the pull feels toward him.

Masterlist

“Forever is an awfully long time,” I state quietly, torn between the options of life or living forever.

“Um yeah, that’s sort of the whole point,” the stranger retorts as he pulls out a cigarette for himself.

“aw yes, that’s the way to get a girl’s permission to bite her,” I remark sarcastically. “Sass her to death!”

“I don’t need your permission, Pet,” he so ominously reminds me.

“I suppose not, but you prefer my compliance. Am I wrong?” I challenge.

He glares at me while lighting his cigarette. “You’re such a tease, you know that?” He mumbles bitterly.

“And you’re a hard ass,” I fire back, unfazed. He stares at me with raised brows. “Oh I’m sorry, are you the only one who can name call?”

His eyes roll dramatically with a huff of annoyance. “I couldn’t pick a mute girl to be interested in.”

“I imagine she’d bore you,” I predict, crossing my arms over my chest.

He shrugs, “you’re probably right.” Casually, he hops up onto one of the nearby headstones and sits down.

“Get used to saying that sentence frequently,” I snicker, moving to sit on the headstone across from his.

“So, you want to be vamped out?” He waves me along, growing impatient.

“Oh, so I do have a choice?” I tease, pretending to be surprised.

“Not if you keep talking,” he grumbles, taking a hit of his cigarette.

“I have family and friends I have to consider,” I state matter-of-factly.

It’s true, I have a mother, my siblings, friends from school, all of whom will wonder what happened to me. I can’t just let that go.

“They won’t be a thought once you’re mine,” he claims, smirking at me mischievously.

“Why the sudden interest?” I inquire, genuinely curious. I imagine he could have anyone in the world, why me? Why now?

“I lost someone,” he answers, avoiding my gaze as he focuses on tapping his cigarette against the tombstone. “My girl, Druscilla.”

“So I’m the rebound,” I clarify, nodding in understanding.

His head snaps up, meeting my eyes directly. Apparently, I’ve hit a trigger point. He hops down from his tombstone and rushes over to me. The man pries my legs apart and stands between them. He cups my face in his hands, making me stare into his emerald eyes. “You will be far more,” he assures me with such certainty in his voice I can’t help but believe it. “You will be my reason for existing.”

My chest rises and falls at a rapid rate as I process it all. The longer I stare into his marble-like eyes, the more convinced I become. How could I ever deny him? “Okay,” I finally grant him my answer.

An amazing glimmer appears across his features and he steps closer. “Okay, what?” He repeats as if he isn’t sure he heard me correctly.

I place my hands over his that caress my cheeks. “Make me like you, but under one condition.”

He rolls his eyes, “should’ve known this was coming,” he grumbles. “What is it?”

“Tell me your name,” I request simply.

“Spike,” he answers without hesitation.

“What’s your real name?” I clarify, almost certain that ‘Spike’ couldn’t be it. “And not just your first name either, I want to know the whole thing.”

He frowns, evidently growing frustrated with the subject. “Why does it matter?”

“Because it does!” I argue.

“But why? It’s stupid,” he dismisses sharply, removing his hands from me, but remains between my legs.

“Because if we’re going to spend forever together I’d like to know your real fucking name so just say it!” I snap at him, earning a look of surprise.

Visibly, there’s a strong debate occurring in his mind. He sighs, shaking his head as he glances around the cemetery then back at me. “William, alright? My name is William Pratt, happy now?”

“Over the moon,” I joke with a giggle, reaching up and holding his cheek in my hand. “It’s nice to meet you, Will.”

“Yeah, yeah, nice to meet you too,” he pretends to be hard and disinterested in the charm of it all, but I can tell by the way he subtly leaned into my touch that he truly longs for it.

____________________________________________

Becoming a vampire is by the far the most freeing experience of my life or should I say undead life? Either way, Spike has broken me free of all torments and has opened the gates to the world. There is nothing we can’t do together. The entire world belongs to us. All we have to do is reach out and take what we want. Each night, I wake up with a strong urge to destroy and devour. I’ve never felt more powerful and entrancing.

I’ve been a vampire for a few days now, but Spike has kept me confined to the crypt for safety reasons. He claims I’m fragile in the early days until I become used to my new status. To build my strength, he brings me humans to feed on and is teaching me how to defend myself. I’m still learning how to fight in case I ever run into the Slayer or her team of misfits. Her very existence is annoying, such an inconvenience. According to him, I’ve been adjusting rather well, better than usual actually. So, to celebrate my growing strength and swift adaptions, Spike is taking me to The Bronze tonight. It’ll be the first time I’ve been outside the crypt in a week! There’ll be so many people to feed on and every opportunity to terrorize, I’m so excited!

Spike grips my hand protectively as we travel through the crowd of the club. I rarely had enough time to visit this place when I was human. Taking care of my mom and siblings all while balancing school consumed most of my days.

“Oh great,” Spike grumbles, tossing his head back.

I grip his forearm and squeeze his hand worriedly. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

“The Slayer and her clan of party killers are over there,” he growls, his eyes directed sharply at a nearby table.

I purr, watching the table of oblivious teenagers hungrily. I spot the blonde Slayer as she chats with her friends naively happily. So, that’s the infamous Buffy Summers. Spike has described her to me frequently. Apparently, we go to the same high school, different grades. I never really branched out of my grade or friend group for that matter. Immersed in the idea of snapping the Slayer’s neck for myself, I move to approach her. Imagine what her friends would do if I killed her right here and now.

“Hey, hey, hey,” Spike repeats quietly in my ear, wrapping his arms around my waist to stop me. “Not here, Love. Wouldn’t want to cause a scene.”

“But I thought you loved the dramatics, Darling,” I mutter, keeping my eyes on Buffy with a pout.

“I do, but we mustn’t yet.” He brushes my hair away from my neck slowly, planting a pattern of kisses on my neck. “Let’s go dance.”

I smile, spinning in his arms to face him. Spike takes my hand, leading me to the dance floor. We pass the table of goody-goodies and chatter ensues amongst them. I whip my head around and find the Slayer. Her eyes narrow at me, a confused expression across her features. I turn my attention back to Spike right as he stops in the middle of the dance floor. He brings his hands to my waist, pulling me in closer. I drape my arms over his shoulder loosely and meet his exquisite emerald eyes. God, he’s gorgeous.

Seductively, Spike and I dance as though we’re alone in the building. I see no one else but him. He stares into my eyes so deeply that I can feel it in my soulless body. I would wreck the world for him. I would do anything if it brought him pleasure. Spike is now my purpose in this undead life. My purpose is to make him happy. If we were to ever be parted, I don’t think I’d survive it.

“Get away from her, Spike,” a voice interrupts us.

Our heads whip to our side in unison. The little blonde Slayer stands with her arms crossed. A serious expression plaguing her face. Aw, why the frown Buffy?

Spike snickers, tossing his head back mockingly. “Won’t even wait five minutes, will you?”

“Get out of here,” she commands sharply to him. Then, Buffy turns to me with softness in her eyes. She grips my forearm pleadingly, “he’s not who he says he is.”

Oh, this is funny, she thinks I’m human. She assumes I’m an innocent defenseless victim. Okay, I could work with this. This may be the opportunity Spike and I was looking for, the perfect charade.

My eyes go wide and I step back from Spike anxiously, “what... what do you mean?” I move to stand beside Buffy.

Spike frowns at me as though I’ve lost my marbles.

The Slayer takes my hand, ready to pull me away, “he’s-”

“Must we cause such a scene?” Spike rips me away from Buffy, grabbing my wrist roughly. “Come on, Y/N, let’s go,” he instructs, wrapping an arm around my waist and escorting me to the door. I interlock my hands instead of leaning into him as I usually would keep up the act. Once we’re out of hearing range of the Slayer and her team, he whispers to me harshly. “What the bloody hell was that?”

I suppress a snicker, “you’re far too simple-minded sometimes, Baby. Buffy is going to follow us and I need you to just go with it.”

As he opens the door for me leading out into the alley, he glances at me in amazement. Finally, the pieces are coming together. “You’re trying to pull one on her.”

“Precisely,” I confirm with an evil grin.

Alone in the dimly lit alley, Spike squeezes my waist and tugs me into his chest. He bites down on my lip, peering down at me with a pleased smirk. “You are by far the most miraculous woman I’ve ever met.” Eagerly, he leans down and smashes his lips to mine. My fingers comb through the back of his hair and grip the edges in a fist. He growls against my lips and it only drives me crazier. Will, it ever subside, the wanting him?

The metal door to The Bronze squeezes and I instantly shove Spike off of me with a scream. He stumbles back, still in a daze from our kiss. “Help!” I scream, “someone helps me, please!” I pretend to be distraught and soon Buffy is by my side, ushering me behind her safely.

“I’m not going to let you take her!” She yells at Spike bitterly.

“Well that’s really up to her, isn’t it?” Spike mocks with a cheeky grin on his lips.

“She’s human, Spike! She doesn’t know what you are,” she argues, acting as the big-bad defender of man.

“What is he?” I squeak, sounding all poor pitiful. Honestly, it’s kind of annoying playing the victim. I sound like such a cry baby. Plus, if I were human, I definitely wouldn’t follow a strange man into an empty alley. I’d be asking to get murdered. No, I just talk to them in empty cemeteries in the middle of the night.

Buffy turns to me urgently, doing everything she can to keep me safe, how sweet. She grips both of my forearms, leading me away from spike. “Look, Spike isn’t a good guy, okay? He’ll hurt you or worse! You need to run!” She urges, gesturing down the alley to the road.

“But-” I stutter, glancing at Spike. Then, in one swift motion, I yank my arms free of Buffy’s hold and leg sweep her. She falls to the pavement with a smack. I tower over her with a giggle. “You know, grabbing people without their permission isn’t nice. Where are your manners?”

Spike jogs over and pulls me into his chest. I rest my arms over him around my waist and he places his chin on my shoulder with a cheeky grin. “Beautifully done, My Love.”

Buffy pants, staring up at us in confusion, “what the-”

“Surprise! Didn’t see that one coming, did you?” I laugh wickedly, steadily approaching her like a snake going in for the kill.

______________________________________

Masterlist

Tags: @currently-obsesed-with-spike

#spikexreader #spike x buffy #spike x reader #spike fanfic #spike #spuffy #buffy #buffy summers #buffy the vampire slayer #buffy the vampire slayer imagine #fanfic #imagine

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crownshattered-a · 3 years

Text

|| ALRIGHT TIME FOR A COA VERSE MASTERPOST!!!!! (using emily as a banner since im starting with her first uwu)

Emily:

First off, I hardly know anything about the ACTUAL lore for COA I except for the fact that they’re pirates and ig their ship sank. So my sisters and I (each of us write emily, emma, and freddy when put together) decided to MAKE a story for this verse.

For starters, Emma is the captain of the ship. Her father WAS the captain, but he accidentally got corrupted by the abyss bc of Emma. He was turned into a sea monster and ran away in order to protect his daughter and his crew from himself. Emily is the doctor on the ship. She isn’t a qualified doctor in the slightest, but she is EXCELLENT--especially since she has a healing ability. She’s also a master of poisons and makes the brig her own “clinic”.

Emma wears an eyepatch bc she was born with an “Evil Eye”. If anyone sees this eye, they will be corrupted by the abyss, like Leo was. Freddy was partially corrupted, given his weird undead look, but Emily saved him. Emma has powers because of the eye, but she doesn’t understand them and can’t control them, so she doesn’t use them.

I headcanon that in COA, some people are born with natural powers. Emily is one of them. She can heal people and actually can also remove the erosion from someone, like she did for Freddy. However, she most likely won’t do this for anyone other than her crew.

Emily acts ENTIRELY different from usual. She is no longer mild-mannered and calm, but instead she’s harsh, brutal, and fearsome. Emma is techinically the captain, but Emily is the unnofficial captain of the crew (not in a mutiny sense, but rather she just looks after Emma and the crew)

The “ending” of the story is that someone (maybe Netherwalker?) hunts down Emma for the eye. There’s this huge battle and Leo comes back as a sea monster to DEFEND his crew and daughter. In the end, the rest of the crew manages to escape on a small boat, while Emily sacrifices herself to distract the attacker. She goes down with their ship.

I’ll be willing to write any of the characters on the ship for any threads~ just know emily is a priority!!

Kira:

Kira is part of COA III. I have her skin design, “Spiderlily”, drawn out, so just ask me to see it. She has platinum blond hair now with a black and red color scheme. She has a black mask upon her face and her right eye is covered by a a few red spider lilies.

When I made this verse, I HEAVILY based it off of Meg from Hercules. Kira was in love with a man who found an abyss treasure and was corrupted by it. He was dying, and Kira would do anything to save him. So she found the Netherwalker and begged for him to save her love. In return, she agreed that he could have her soul (which the Auctioneer collected, will explain more below).

Once he was saved, it didn’t take long for the man to leave Kira for another woman. So she was sucked into the Netherwalker’s followers and now is just another pawn of his. She doesn’t agree with him and what he does, but she has no room to speak. He owns her, after all.

Kira’s ability is that she can create a red mist that she can use to attack with. It has many purposes, like being able to teleport herself (sometimes others, but thats really hard on her) places, create a fog too hard to see through, and of course being able to condense the fog into items that she can use (mostly used to fight, like swords, daggers, and throwing knives). She’s been eroded but passed the erosion onto someone else, just like everyone else has.

Mostly interacts with Auctioneer, as he’s her warden of sorts.

Norton:

So Patchwork is dying XDD A little while ago, he became greedy and obsessed with collecting abyss treasures. Of course, this caused him to be affected by the erosion. Once he realized the true nature of these “treasures”, he joined the Bureau in order to help them. He knows he’ll die soon enough, but he wants to use the remainder of his life to fight against the Abyss.

Norton doesn’t actually have a power, unlike the rest of my COA muses. Instead, his magnets are an abyss treasure that Trickster lets him use and protects him against.

He gets REALLY bad nightmares of the abyss and often just refuses to sleep. The further into the story you get, the closer he is to death. By the time the rest of the bureau is going against the Netherwalker (like seen in the music video), he’s on his deathbed. Probably dies before they come back.

However, there IS a side verse where he DOESNT die and instead goes on into COA IV. Teleoperator found a way to save him and remove the corruption from him, but in doing so he had to basically become an entirely different person and thus lose his memories. She does this, and a few years later he can be found as a racer in the Great Race. Highway Cavalier is a LOT nicer and happier than Patchwork. He’s happy with his friends but gets harder and colder as they keep losing the race, and they keep losing their lives. Sometimes he has weird dreams about people he can’t remember but feels fond of...but he doesn’t think much into it.

Joseph:

Auctioneer is probably the most loyal out of all the Netherwalker’s followers. He collects Abyss Treasures, especially ones made by the Pickman himself, and will sometimes auction them off at his auctions. The only person who comes close to matching his collection of Abyss Treasures is Trickster, who is his equal and rival (i wouldnt mind writing trickster in threads uwu i have a lot of lore for him and would love to write him but aesop isnt a muse of mine so i dont XDD)

Joseph has an ability that is amplified by his own specially made abyss treasure, a camera. When he takes a picture of someone (it has to be voluntary, tho), he can capture their soul inside the photograph that is created. He can’t CONTROL people with the photograph, but he can watch what they’re doing and talk to them telepathically. Also, if any damage comes to the photograph, the person will feel it and go through TERRIBLE pain. If he so much as tears the photograph in half, the person will die immediately (he has a photograph of Kira that he uses actively). He uses this primarily in deals, and not many people know about this power of his.

#(THIS IS A WHOLE LOT............)#verse tbt #fandom: identity v #~ᵐᶦʳʳᵒʳ ʷʰᵃᵗ’ˢ ᵗʰᶦˢ ᵗʰᶦⁿᵍ ᶦ ˢᵉᵉˀ ʷʰᵒ ᶦˢ ˢᵗᵃʳᶦⁿᵍ ᵇᵃᶜᵏ ᵃᵗ ᵐᵉˀ~ [emily dyer]#~ʸᵒᵘ ᵐᵃᵈᵉ ᵐᵉ ᵃ ᵇᵉˡᶦᵉᵛᵉʳ~ [kira black]#~ᶦ ᵈᵒ ᶦᵗ ᶠᵒʳ ᵗʰᵉ ᵍˡᵒʳʸ~ [norton campbell]#~ⁿᵒ ʷᵒⁿᵈᵉʳ ʷʰʸ ᵐʸ ʰᵉᵃʳᵗ ᶠᵉᵉˡˢ ᵈᵉᵃᵈ ᶦⁿˢᶦᵈᵉ; ᶦᵗ’ˢ ᶜᵒˡᵈ ᵃⁿᵈ ʰᵃʳᵈ ᵃⁿᵈ ᵖᵉᵗʳᶦᶠᶦᵉᵈ~ [joseph desaulniers]

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thanksjro · 3 years

Text

Dark Cybertron Chapter 11: The Word “Logic” Doesn’t Even Mean Anything Anymore

Our issue opens up with a flashback to establish some things. 

Because despite the six literal issues of prelude, and all the ham-fisted exposition we’ve gotten throughout the “Dark Cybertron” event, we still don’t have all the information we need to understand what the hell’s happening.

I have a feeling this won’t quite cut the mustard, either.

Anyway, back during the events of MTMTE #1, when Rodimus was making his call to action to his fellow Cybertronians (and by “Cybertronians” I, of course, mean “Autobots”, because prejudice is a hard habit to kick, even for the best of us) Brainstorm was doing science on Hardhead. He was doing this science to make sure that the Dead Universe hadn’t killed him without him realizing. This is a very common issue in the world of IDW2005 Transformers, considering that zombies are a part of canon, so it’s just best to be sure. Nova Prime’s lifeless body sits in the corner like the world’s worst coffee table book.

This will take some explaining, because this is Phase One related.

In Spotlight: Sideswipe, Nova Prime beefed it, except he didn’t, because his “essence” returned to the Dead Universe. This is because he was chosen by the Dead Universe to enact its will on the other, much cooler, Not-Dead Universe. In short, he’s a weird robot zombie-ghost with a save point in the Dead Universe.

Brainstorm has his corpse in his lab to make sure this bastard is true and proper dead, or that the body he left behind is at least. That, in combination with Hardhead proving to be very much alive, means that today can be counted as a win for everyone! The “Alive-People-Counter” machine proves it!

…This is why we can’t have nice things.

Brainstorm being undead does have some precedence within the narrative, given what happened in MTMTE #3.

Though I can’t help but wonder what the guy’s been doing for the last year and a half, that he didn’t notice being dead, when his soul is a large, glowing orb with physical presence. I dunno, he just seems like the sort of guy to keep up to date on that sort of thing, if only for scientific purposes.

In the present day, in the beautiful city of Iacon, everything’s gone to shit, and Whirl’s gotten hot for some reason, as billions of Ammonites fall out of the sky.

Who friggin’ drew this-

I should’ve known.

Up on the Lost Light, Ultra Magnus is breaking out the fancy swears, as a… tornado, I guess, of Ammonites hits the underside of the ship. Bumblebee wants to evacuate the friggin’ planet- which, I don’t know if you know this, would be a little difficult to do, even with a ship the size of NYC. Unfortunately, that’s not gonna fly, however, because all the stars in the sky are blue-shifting.

Wikipedia tells me that this is probably a bad thing, and Perceptor agrees, calling it “the end of everything.”

Over in Shockwave’s Lair of Villainy and Magical Bullshit, everyone’s favorite purple science gremlin has stabbed a “time drive” into his chest. Galvatron is laying dead on the floor in the foreground, but this isn’t about him. Shockwave orders Jhiaxus to activate the time drive, I guess because he doesn’t have long enough arms to do it himself. Jhiaxus warns Shockwave to be mindful, lest he lose himself in time, and then we get a return to a Roberts writing staple that we haven’t seen in quite a while.

Waxing poetic on the nature of time- this time, in a visual medium!

Awful lot of fixating on your ritualistic amputations there, Shocky-boy. I suppose this is ONE way to try to cope with a lack of control in your life.

Of course, to those on the outside of Shockwave’s brain, this doesn’t look nearly as impressive- it actually just looks like him screaming really loud at the ceiling. Bludgeon isn’t sure that this course of action is a healthy one to take, but Jhiaxus is too busy being sapiosexual to worry about that.

I-

Sure. I’m not even going to bother trying to understand this anymore.

Jhiaxus orders Monstructor to go keep the Autobots away from Shockwave.

Also, Galvatron isn’t dead. Good for him, I guess.

Over inside Metroplex, Windblade’s face seems to be stuck in the generic “I am a nice, nonthreatening female character who is also pretty” position, as Ultra Magnus tells her that the universe is ending. Chromia watches in the background as this happens, likely wondering if being relevant in modern media again is worth this bullshit.

Hearing that Bumblebee plans to take the fight to Shockwave is enough to get Metroplex back on his feet, which is good, because I don’t think we have a lot of time to convince the guy to do anything- this event ends next issue.

As Metroplex windmills his arms through swarms of Ammonites, the Lost Light lands, and Bumblebee, Megatron, and all their experts disembark. Bumblebee makes an unsolicited comment about Megatron’s body. They go to meet Soundwave, who isn’t terribly thrilled with Megatron having become all buddy-buddy with Bumblebee. Megatron mentions that the Decepticons are going to have to rethink their strategy once this is all over, with the implication being that they’re going to- gasp- work together with the Autobots.

Then Starscream shows up with Metalhawk, Skywarp, Rattrap, Waspinator, and Scoop for some fucking reason, in tow. Skywarp is going to teleport everyone into Shockwave’s Bastardization of the Concept of Science House, even though he pretty clearly isn’t feeling too well. What a guy.

Starscream and Megatron have a bit of banter that won’t set your hair on end with how awful they are to one another, Metalhawk tries to apologize for attempting to kill Bumblebee, and we really don’t have time for this shit right now. The narrative knows this, because it shifts to focus on Prowl and the Constructicons. Things are looking real rough just about everywhere, and it’s coming down to the wire, so they gotta do the thing.

The thing Prowl really doesn’t want to do.

The thing he said that he wouldn’t do again.

So anyway, they form Devastator.

As Monstructor gets ready to get punched in the face by a bunch of construction workers and a cop, everyone down below is firing off laser blasts and gearing up for a teleporting adventure. However, there’s a small problem- there are too many people to teleport! Oh no! The only solution is for Soundwave and his cassettes, Scoop, Getaway and-

Excuse me, Hook?

Hook, my dude? What the fuck do you think you’re doing? You’re supposed to be a leg right now, motherfucker, why are you here? GO HOME, HOOK.

Anyway, I’m really glad we wasted the time establishing that Soundwave and his band of merry little men were coming along on this trip, only for them to not come along after all. Love that shit.

I don’t actually love that shit. I’m sorry for lying.

With the load lightened, Skywarp teleports the rest of the gang to where they need to be, and Waspinator is immediately stabbed with a massive raging poisoning sword of doom. Bludgeon’s here to greet everyone, and Metalhawk is gonna try his damnedest to get the guy to come around to their side.

You remember when Metalhawk did things like connive, and scheme, and actually had more depth than a sidewalk puddle? Because I remember. Now he’s just... Beast Wars Silverbolt, but he’s not even attempting to be charming. I bet he wouldn’t even call his evil girlfriend “my soul’s delight.” Lame.

Bumblebee, Megatron, and friends book it for Shockwave, while Magnus and Skids get ready to kick some ass. Brainstorm isn’t feeling so hot, but this isn’t about him.

Starscream is having a minor crisis over the fact that Scoop stayed behind in a literal war zone for Starscream’s sake. I dunno that he did it specifically for Starscream, but Starscream seems pretty convinced that he did, and who am I to argue with the leader of a whole friggin’ planet?

The gang makes it to Jhiaxus’ ship, where they find-

I swear to god, if there’s not a fucking explanation for what the shit is happening right here I’m going to scream.

…So anyway, Metalhawk and Jhiaxus start beating each other up, Starscream gets bent out of shape by Jhiaxus’ trash talk, and we get an explanation for his new look.

Which, y’know, thank fucking god.

Jhiaxus has new reactive armor, which takes anything thrown at him and adapts it to his own body for personal use, which feels like some Grade-A Kids Playing Pretend bullshit, but WHATEVER.

While this is going on, Megatron and Bumblebee have run into the center of Shockwave’s Laboratory of Morally-Abhorrent Mystical Buffoonery Masquerading as the Scientific Method. Dreadwing tries to make a case for self-defense of his property, but unfortunately he doesn’t understand how property rights work, and gets blasted for his troubles. Galvatron reveals himself to be alive to Megatron, who immediately grabs the dude by the throat.

Galvatron’s feeling pretty down about having inadvertently helped end the universe, and is throwing himself a little pity party. Megatron’s not having it, however, tossing the man into the ground and revving up to fusion-cannon him to death. Bumblebee stops him, for some reason, and then starts rambling, I guess STILL trying to be Optimus Prime 2.0.

Bumblebee, you put bombs in people’s heads to make them fall into line. You don’t get to talk to Captain Warlord about moral nuance. And weren’t you also berating Metalhawk for trying this same thing not five minutes ago?

Bumblebee’s words reach Megatron, and instead of annihilating Galvatron, he offers the dude a hand up.

Then Bumblebee gets shot and dies, while Shockwave just… stares menacingly, I guess.

Cool.

The death of his very best friend in the whole wide world sends Megatron into a rage, and he punches Shockwave in the face. This doesn’t really faze him much though, as he bats Megatron across the fucking room like he’s made of papier-mâché and dreams, going on about how the universe will save Cybertron by being its power source “in an endless forever.”

Shockwave, you’re a man of science. You ought to know that “forever” as a concept, doesn’t fucking WORK scientifically. It’s nonsense. You’re nonsense, and I hate you.

Back with the Bludgeon Ass-Kicking Squad, Brainstorm’s having a bad time, while everyone else sort of awkwardly poses. Skids gets stabbed. Skids falls down. Brainstorm falls down. Ultra Magnus is concerned, but he’s too busy not being stabbed to help anyone.

Brainstorm’s in a lot of pain, and then a hand bursts out of his chest and-

GODDAMMIT JAMES.

Fucking- Team -Imus burst out of the Dead Universe from Brainstorm, who I will remind you, is undead thanks to Dead Universe lightning bullshit, making him a link between it and the much cooler Not-Dead Universe. Everyone is posing, even Cyclonus, who absolutely should think that sort of thing is beneath him, but whatever.

That’s the end of the issue. Go home.

#transformers #jro #jro punches me in the face #dark cybertron #issue 11 #rid #exrid #issue 27 #maccadam #Hannzreads #overthinking about robots #incoming analysis #text post #long post #comic script writing

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lairofsentinel · 4 years

Text

Mystra

I'm so new in the Forgotten Realms lore that everything I read needs always further research. So far, what got me between disbelief and mistrust was Mystra stuff meddling with humans to such deep level. Because, really... what the fuck these Gods? I always have problems with Gods in fantasy worlds. I don't like them when they are like Greek mythology entities. I prefer them when they are a mere illusion of mortals.

However, here, in the Forgotten Realms, we got them as entities like Zeus... so they can have mortal fun. UPDATE April 2021: What it’s said in this post about shadow weave and shadow weave magic and shadow magic are incorrect. In 5e, shadow weave is not mentioned, apparently a non used concept anymore. In 4e it was collapsed with the destruction of the Weave, and Shar attempted to recreated it, failing at it because she never “was” the Shadow Weave. Shar always rejected that level of commitment. However, according to bg3 [Ethel’s words] shadow magic currently is the same as netherese magic, described by Gale/Narator also as “Primal weave” or “blackest weave”. No book from 5e says a word about shadow weave anymore.

According to what I've read, Mystra was, in fact, a young peasant girl with non-trained skills in magic, but somehow, she became the Goddess of Magic when Netheril fell. [I need to read a lot of Netheril because apparently everything bad comes from there. It's the Tevinter of the Forgotten Realms. I honestly don't understand how you just become a goddess out of the blue. One day a mediocre mage, the next one, Goddess of the Magic itself. What a gap there.]

As a Goddess, she has a system to determine who is her “Chosen One” (hence why Gale explicitly said that word, it was not by chance). The Chosen Ones have unique access to the Weave and therefore they cast powerful magic. Among their responsibilities, they need to research new magic, wander the Realms fighting the evil (and/or doing research), and to stop the abuses of magic and the imbalances of the Weave. This makes Shar followers an easy target for them to strike so far I understand, since Shar crafted an alternative Weave (Shadow Weave) from where she drags the power that infuse into her followers. However, it's a mirror Weave, extremely dependable of the normal Weave. Like Gale explained, when Mystryl died, the Weave stopped existing, and with it, the Shadow Weave fell apart too. It seems that Shadow Weave is an aberration, an imbalance of the Weave itself. [So, Shadowheart and Gale may have strong discussions on the matter.]

The man who was Mystra’s first Chosen One was a lesser god called Azuth (we found some books of this guy in BG3). The man was his devotee (despite being a low rank deity as well), his servant, his chosen one, and later, his lover (when Mystra was still Mystryl). It seems he shifted his role to a more fatherly one when Mystra was reborn [Oook]. He also was in love with another Mystra's chosen, so... divinity polyamory we have here.

Then she proceeded to accomplish a strange plan [details of this atrocity here]: to have seven immortal Chosen. So she possessed a sorceress who conceived seven immortal women with her husband [thanks god it was with her husband and not with a random man that Mystra fancied]. These women are known as the Seven Sisters, all of them are “chosen ones” of Mystra, and in a sense, they are also her daughters. [oh, boy. Greek Gods-like stuff.]

She also named Chosen One a necromancer called Sammaster who was doing research related to metamagic and dragons. The story says that Mystra appeared before him and they “spent 10 days together”, turning him into his Chosen One for a while. She apparently had a whim to choose him because soon a previous chosen one was going to die in battle, so she wanted to sort this out sooner than later. The story also says that this encounter made the necromancer feel as though they were in love. [I see the pattern now....] What it's worth highlighting: this man went into deep undead research all his life showing that Mystra has a weird moral sense of what is good from evil, which makes sense, since (magical) knowledge by itself has no alignment. Magical knowledge is never good or evil, it depends on the use you give to it (It’s also worth noting that the previous Mystra was True Neutral while the one reborn in Midnight was Neutral Good. There are two different Mystras in history.). But returning to the necromancer, the guy, in the end, manipulated by a priest of Bane, abused of his powers of Chosen and Mystra removed them. He concluded that most of his problems have been caused by accepting Mystra's role as Chosen One. Soon after that Sammaster became evil and succumbed to madness.

In short, Mystra is a goddess who loves to play favourites, and encourages research in a competitive way using a certain degree of seduction for that. So that, the Arts and the arcane knowledge will be always expanding via competition [she has such a neoliberal-magic ideas]. So, being her Chosen One seems to bring a lot of responsibility and troubles. However, it also grants you fancy benefits:

Casting more spells with less effort.

Natural detection of magic (maybe some residual effect of this ability is what makes Gale able to sense shadow magic in Shadowheart or in the Main Character if they are a user of magic. Hence his “that gust of weave”. Gale also presents sensitivity to detect magic via smell (mirror) and taste)

Development of magical immunities, and sometimes even poison and disease immunities.

The chosen ones become harder to kill, kind of tank-wizards. [Which feels like an oxymoron, lol.]

And the most important blessing: silver-fire [this is the fire Gale speaks about when his spell failed] Which is an overpowered ability in the Forgotten Realms. It can destroy any barrier and does massive damage. It can be cast once each hour, which is... wow. It can destroy “dead magic zones”, which are zones disconnected from the Weave and therefore, places where no common magic can be cast. With Silver-fire, such zones are reconnected to the Weave and become part of Mystra's influence once more. And finally, it allows precise teleportation once a day.

What we can infer now from this info and Gale, is that... when he got Mystra’s attention, it was not just because he was a prodigy alone. It had to be whether he was doing some research that interested her (probably not) or his fate was going to lead him to unknown knowledge in a future. Considering what he did with the netheril orb, one would say that maybe Mystra saw that event in a future, and considered it interesting enough to choose Gale as the one dealing with that bit of hidden and dangerous knowledge. Because so far I read, it’s clear she can see future or potential in a certain degree, and determine who replace her chosen ones. We also saw she favours those who explore the unknown without moral issues, and she has no reserves to exploit that by seductive ways.

Now, unlike Sammaster, why did Gale stop being his Chosen one if his fate was to retrieve that netheril orb? I believe she removed his title of chosen one when Gale got that orb stuck in his chest, not because his action was an aberration before her eyes (we remember she is quite flexible in her morals) but because the artefact was dangerous to herself. That orb looks to me like something that imbalances the Weave in great escale; it’s basically a necrotic black hole which feeds on Weave. Maybe she removed her favour on Gale because now the man had a power that could consume her. Remember the Chosen Ones are constantly in “touch with her body/weave” [lol, horny gods these gods], and considering that thing sucks all Weave... it seems obvious that could eat her up. So, maybe, all this stuff of Gale being Chosen One was just another of her plans to access to the knowledge of that tiny bit of primal Weave, completely hidden from her, and she is expecting for Gale to resolve it in order to recover his benefits as Chosen one.

She certainly is a super smart goddess, basically a mastermind, who doesn’t care to whom she uses and discards in order to obtain knowledge. So, using Gale this way, without explanations.... it could be one of her plans. Turn into her lover a young man that would be desperate enough to risk reaching dangerous spaces to offer her precious unknown knowledge. The plan became too dangerous to Mystra, so she severed the deep link between them out of preservation, and now she is waiting for him to solve it, offering her the knowledge obtained from the process. Absolutely possible.

But we’ll see. So far, I know a little bit more of Mystra.

Update of several days after writing this: The more I think about all this info, the more I wonder if Mystra’s Chosen One system splits her champions into two different groups: The “valuable” Chosen Ones, where Elminster and her seven daughter fall; they are the embodiment of the good use of magic in favour of neutral or good uses. And then, you have the “disposable” Chosen Ones, who seem to be more like victims of a certain degree of manipulation of the Goddess. In this category falls the necromancer Sammaster (and potentially Gale?). They can have more grey morals, but as long as they provide new knowledge and advance in the Arts, she favours them anyways. I mean… so far I read, Elminster was never “in love” with Mystra, and all that crappy dynamics between Goddess and mortal was never part of his relationship with her. His lover, though, was one of the Seven Sisters, so maybe that’s why Mystra controlled herself. I don’t know xD [These horny gods]. But when it comes to the necromancer’s story… it feels as though she encourages this seduction so the wizard will take all the necessary risks to go beyond the limits of knowledge to get her attention and favour. There is something manipulative there.

More content of bg3 in general [here]

#mystra #bg3 #baldurs gate 3 #forgotten realms #forgotten realms lore #a bit of spoilers of Gale #gale

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sharpen-jadescythe · 3 years

Text

A Himbo Man and his... Wolf? Wolves? Himwolves?

Sharpen reflects on a hunt gone wrong and the true nature of his very kindred wolf pet Cuda.

Sharpen unbuttoned his plaid shirt and spread out on the couch. What a long day. Cuda, his wolf, had found some humanoid bones up in the mountains. A hike turned into a sort of investigation, which turned into a sudden panicked pitch-battle with a man-eating yeti.

The burly Night Elf man had tried to stop his wolf from taking it too far—the bones were older. But then they came across some boot tracks that were fresh and much too close to the den for whoever it was to be safe.

Flashes of what had happened made him inhale a sharp breath now. The red of blood, the flash of fangs, his own furious shouts competing with that. Everything, his steel knife, his voice, all clashing against the stone walls. And at the time, what Sharpen feared could have been—this fight exploding out of his control at any minute. A routine hike through the woods with his wolf turning savage, evil, a claw cutting too deep, or cutting into his neck, slashing open his belly. Dragging him back through the snowy woods of Winterspring, freezing and covered in his own blood. Never making it. Every wild encounter was like that. Death was always at the brink of things.

But control the fight, engage the monster directly and control it, win, and you’ll live.

Sharpen remembered feeling foolish and then getting angrier than he had been in a while. This nightmare wretch was taking and killing men. Going out of his way to hunt mortals like him. The damned yeti knew better, this dominant male was big enough and so old enough to have seen plenty of encounters just like this one, with something that wasn’t meant to be prey suddenly using a gun, a sword, a shield, anything against him and fighting for their lives. But this was cruel on the yeti’s behalf. The way the big male sat quietly and let the tamed wolf wander into his territory, only attacking when the mortal man, the wolf’s master followed. In moments, Sharpen and Cuda had become the prey.

Sharpen had been slammed against cold rock wall. He remembered seeing black, wondering if he’d knocked his head and cracked it open. If he was bleeding inside his skull, then he was done, whether he got a lethal strike on the creature or not. The yeti, its shoulders far above him, came down like a thunderhead then. That yeti gave a roar that could rattle bones, and they did clatter all around the dark cave. Sharpen had a knife, only a knife. The beast had snapped his hunting bow in half.

Sharpen remembered his gaze racing up and down the yeti’s torso, trying to judge the logical spot to stick the knife in. He knew that same hand was shaking and it was down to making a single, perfect strike to end this. Or, his best hope was to at least mortally wound the creature, bring him enough pain to get around him and get the hell out of there.

That was when the wolf Sharpen called Cuda showed his stripes. Out of nowhere it felt, because the only heat in that deadly moment was between the two warm bodies, one about to end the other, the yeti and Sharpen the man, suddenly something even more terrible, without scent, without heat, without breath itself, sifted between them. The only warning Sharpen or the yeti had was that shifting of the air itself, that warping of the plane of life and light that men and beasts existed upon. For, before either of their brains could rationalize or justify what they were seeing, the wolf who was flesh and blood was suddenly a ghost, a pure wolf spirit between them, and Cuda had decided to pounce as vengeance incarnate. Twisting in a space that no lupine creature could ever fit or wedge themselves, the ghost wolf suddenly swifted up through the air, more of a wind, and then was suddenly a big head, glowing eyes and fangs that sank into the yeti’s neck. And the translucent gray wolf who could have just been a mere shadow, it held on and held on, impossible to dislodge as the yeti staggered back, then lost its footing and fell.

A wolf shouldn’t have been a real challenge to an alpha yeti, so Sharpen was still at the edge of his nerves, ready for Cuda to fail in his attempt to rescue him. And then Sharpen knew he would have to make the terrible decision to leave his wolf friend to whatever his fate might be and save his own life. But the real Cuda, his flesh and blood self that projected this strange wolf shadow ever since Sharpen first found him in the Western Plaguelands, that crazed wolf was on the other side, savaging the back of the beast’s neck. Both of them, wolf and his shadow, were working like a pack of two to finish off the one who had attacked their master.

Sharpen had guessed Cuda could do that, but this was the first time he was actually seeing it, and able to finally believe in it.

Now, Sharpen was home. One flesh and blood wolf wandered into the living room to sniff his hand and check on him. The other, the ghost wolf, was relaxing before the fire, back to the flames and ethereal eyes watching Sharpen in this eternal way. As if Cuda’s ghost shadow was not watching Sharpen the man, but his spirit.

Sharpen let out another anxious breath and scratched his mane of wild green hair.

He’d tried asking a shaman about it once, but they didn’t believe him, that such a thing was possible. To have befriended the wolf as well as his undead shadow. Sharpen admitted that he didn’t fully understand the Plague or the Scourge and what they did to raise the dead in an unholy way. A part of him was afraid to ask too many questions and risk some paladin of the Silver Hand informing him that they needed to exorcise his wolf.

Cuda just seemed… fine the way he was. Eerie, but fine. After a time, the spirit would fade and rejoin its body. But for now, Cuda seemed to want to be a pack to watch over his master.

“You wanted to fix that, didn’t you? You wanted to end that yeti for your own reasons.”

Because Sharpen was sure as hell too chicken to go and take that bloodthirsty monster out by himself with a knife and a bow that wasn’t even one of his best.

He spoke to Cuda again, blinking rapidly in disblief. “But there is no way we could have done that alone, not normally. You just charged in, you totally barged in there without another thought, Cuda. You didn’t see that?”

Cuda couldn’t really understand him, like any pet. Sharpen knew he was just venting his frustrations. But it would surely be the last time he was going hiking without something good enough to protect man and beast from, yes, an actual monster that wasn’t supposed to be along a simple hiking trail.

Cuda and his shadow both looked at Sharpen in that unraveling way for a long time.

Sharpen felt himself starting to sweat. He was an animal trainer but this was starting to ruin his own instincts about what to do with beasts in intense situations like this one. Cuda was a deeply unsettled animal and who knew what was simmering inside of his lupine mind now.

“Alright! Who wants din-din!”

Both wolves leapt up at once and started wagging their tails like mad, whining that they would love an early dinner.

Sharpen, eyes wide at how that actually worked, got up slowly, then went to the kitchen.

Sharpen put his hand on the bag of high-protein kibble he used for his canine pets, then hefted it up onto the kitchen counter, his biceps more than able to take the strain. These were high quality pellets, not fresh meat, but Cuda seemed not to mind it. Cuda didn’t seem to mind a lot of compromises a normal wolf would never put up with in a million years. And Cuda was prone to acting like a silly dog, getting stuck in long sessions chasing his tail or staring at boring walls, and all that.

“Well. Maybe we are well-suited after all, Cuda. Though, a spirit animal with your sort of powers should probably be off doing something way more important than din-din and slumming it with me, right? Like, shouldn’t you be in Ardenweald serving the queen or somethin?”

“Wait, Cuda. Does that mean… Are we both himbos?”

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badassindistress · 4 years

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The Melancholy Remembrances of Emily St Aubert (9th letter)

My dear Maud,

I hope this letter finds you well and not in the evil clutches of that dreadful man. I finally have a moment to sit and think and write to you about the awful and wonderful things that have happened to me.

I have found myself once more in a dilapidated castle, but for once I am relieved because of it. My friends and I have survived a fierce battle in an odious swamp and the halls of Argynvastholt are a very welcome safety. It is funny to say that, as this castle is filled with undead revenant knights. Or it was, before we managed to release them from their oaths of vengeance.

One thing I can tell you. There is but one evil count in this land and he has no interest in making me marry him, which is a pleasant change from the usual. Alas, he would not be an evil count if he did not violently pursue at least one innocent maiden, but he at least seems to treat poor Ireena with respect. His evil magic either does not work on her or he has decided not to try it, as her experiences are very different from those others who have fallen under his spell. I myself am one of them. It seems that even when we are not pursued for our matrimonial prospects, we are still not safe. I know I can write this to you, without seeming proud of catching attention or callous that I deny all suits. You have been pursued by villains even more than I have, so I know you understand.

It frightens me, the amount of power the Count has over our minds. I looked him in the eye with defiance and for a full day he made me believe he was a pleasant and trustworthy gentleman. He could have asked me anything and I would have been eager to assist him. And it seems the Count is not the only one with that power. My poor friend Everard has only just realised he was lured in as well. I tried to tell him what Mme Augustin told Alicia when her Ambrose turned his magicks on her, but I think he still blamed himself greatly. And truth be told, I blame myself as well. I did think it strange, that Everard accepted the invitation to dine with Vasili von Holt so readily and that their conversation had such an affectionate bent. Everard is generally ready to make friends in any company, but we had just found out that he found a soulmate in one of the Count’s consorts. The Count, you must understand, has three wives and a husband and is looking to add Ireena to their number. Everard seemed to recognise in Escher a kindred spirit and Escher secretly gave him a ring of great worth on their first meeting.

Now, you must know that I am no longer as naïve as I was in boarding school and I know full well that some people have room in their heart for more than one true love. Spending several years daydreaming next to Fiona ought to teach me that. But the connection between Everard and Escher seemed so immediate and profound and I really ought to have noticed. But I presumed that I was being overly nice and did not comment on the matter further. And now we have found out that Vasili von Holt drugged Everard’s wine and enchanted his mind. We can only be grateful that Everard is otherwise unharmed. Von Holt only made him divulge our secrets, speak at length about our party’s strengths and intentions. This alone would be a grave matter, of course, but we fear that Von Holt immediately communicated all he found out to the Count Strahd. At least, that is the only conclusion we can draw, seeing as that very night the Count paid me a night-time visit. Oh Maud, I have never been so scared. I was peacefully asleep in my bed when suddenly there came a knocking at my window. For a moment I thought it must be a raven, since the inn is owned by a wereraven and I was sleeping on the second floor. But it was the Count, smiling as if he was paying an afternoon call. Of course I immediately tried to make myself decent, with all kinds of horrors running through my mind. I remember you told me how villains once tried to steal you from your bed, for which purpose you assured me one always ought to sleep with a dagger under their pillow. Unfortunately, a dagger does not scare a vampire.

I can count myself lucky the count was apparently not intending to harm me or my friends. He merely called to ask me to return the journal I found, which he wrote early in his undeath. It very much shows the tribulations of a tormented soul and I understand he might want it back. He really ought to have called at a more reasonable hour, I can only imagine how his spouses must feel, knowing their husband visits unmarried ladies en deshabille. I’m afraid I’ve attached myself to the side of Raisa and Clara since that incident, afraid to wander alone. Now we know Everard is being likewise pursued, we have decided not to let him out of our sights either. I do not know whether the Count is more likely to kill Everard for his connection to Escher, or whether he would seek to add Everard to his household. Were this any other situation, I would think Everard might be offered a carte blanche. Poor Everard, he must be so confused. I did try to tell him being ensorcelled did not injue his virtue in our eyes, but I do not think he understood me. Muriel seemed to fare a little better, but he remained certain that he ought to have resisted Von Holt’s charm. When I think of it, I feel a hopelessness drag at my limbs, but I do not lose faith. Today I have seen something so wonderful, I know that we are on the right path and that my father is smiling down on me.

Maud, today I have wept tears of sadness while feeling for once a most incandescent happiness. We caused light to shed upon this hopeless place and reunited true love. Imagine finding the one your soul loves, only to still be allowed to remain beside him after your death. Imagine the both of you trapped by a desire for vengeance for so long your beloved forgets your face, your name, everything but the fact that he once loved. And then, after 400 years, to be released from your oath of vengeance, to be reunited, to be in one another's arms once more. It was the most beautiful sight I have ever beheld. Everard and I will make sure their story will be spoken for another 400 years. Everyone should know of the Silver Commander and his Beloved. Their tale is proof that true love exists and will brings happiness forever.

I must leave off her, we need rest before we are to attempt to find the Amber Temple. I hope Mr Owen has learned his lesson after his last regrettable and unavoidable accident and has ceased to bother you. I hope (fruitlessly, I’m sure) that your sister isn’t being too much of a bother at school. Perhaps when we are all free, I’ll introduce her to Calliope. I think Calliope’s calm kindness might do Felicity a world of good. If not, she’ll at least think the Blood Spear is cool.

Do write to me of your adventures, I miss talking the night away with you.

Your devoted friend,

Emily St Aubert

Tagging the party: @aporeticelenchus @pioup-pioup @guineamaina @ratheralark @m-siecle @somuchbetterthanthat

#Emily's Melancholy Adventures #the melancholy remembrances of Emily St Aubert #talia writes #dnd #curse of strahd spoilers #no vampires allowed

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tabletoptrinketsbyjj · 5 years

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Trinkets, Books, 5: An eclectic library of dusty tomes, fictional textbooks, pocketbooks, paperbacks, hardcovers, booklets, leaflets and magical manuals. Paper leaves and the binding surrounding them can help define a character, kick off a subplot, fuel a fetch quest or simply serve as a generic macguffin. Commonly seen in video games such as Baldur’s Gate, Neverwinter Nights, World of Warcraft and Skyrim, book items are a way to subtly world build while still handing out sellable loot. A wizard has a spellbook, a cleric has a holy text and now you have a trinket list.

An autobiography entitled “My Life As A Gnome Bodyguard”. According to the author, most hostile beings belittled or overlooked her right up until she loosed a gauntleted haymaker into their crotch. This technique along with common sense and basic bodyguarding strategies (Which are described in detail) allowed her to protect her charges for decades.

A sacred hymnal dedicated to a God of a Random Domain, bound in oiled leather.

An autobiography entitled “From Urchin to Merchin”, one man's account of how he rose in prominence from a orphaned street rat with nothing but the rags on his back, to becoming the most successful and widely respected merchant and businessman in three realms. The book is bound in fine leather with gemstones embedded in the spine and contains little useful advice on how to become successful. Insightful PC's will deduce that the book is little more than a way of bragging about his success and advertising his businesses while simultaneously making more money from book sales.

An informational textbook entitled “The Arts Alchemical: A Primer”. The book is mostly unreadable as its center has been deliberately hollowed and contains a Random Sealed Glass Vial.

The Hellbound Path: A dread tome penned by the foul Daemonologist Adel Alsden of Wolfenburg some 200 years ago, this book exudes raw malevolence. The cover is a strange red leather covered in coarse, black hair that feels warm to the touch and almost seems to pulse. The pages are made from human skin, and the words are written in a perverse mixture of human blood and dust made from ground demon’s bones. In the reader’s peripheral vision, the text sometimes appear to writhe on the pages. The object is an instructional manual on the many ways to guide pure souls to hell by corrupting humans through rhetoric, sinful indulgences and logical justifications for immorality. According to the text, any living creature can be set on the path to the warm embraces of the demons of hell if they are attended to by a devout adherent of the inferno.

A tome of forgotten love ballads written by a legendary bard.

Great Book of the Lawgivers: A convoluted lexicon that boasts of over 1,000 pages of text written in the tightly packed and precise dwarf style that outlines the entire dwarven legal code as well as all instances of case law and legal precedent ranging back thousands of years. Difficult enough for dwarfs to understand, even those experienced with the laws of other lands can rarely decipher the true meaning of the dwarf statutes.

An 11 step formula for business success, entitled “The Art of the Deal.” authored by Don Aldus Drumpf. Knowledgeable PC's will know that the book was infamously ghostwritten and the named author was never a good businessman and was given “small loan” of a million gold by his father and was able to capitalize on it.

A large brown book with an unknown demonic symbol of an upside down pentagram and skull on the cover. It's pages are blackened by its evil and knowledgeable PC's will recognize this as a warlock's grimoire. It contains a list of evil spells and foul rituals written in the language of demons and even a casual perusal of the tome seems to taint the reader's soul.

A traveler's journal, embossed with an abdomen of a large arachnid, with a clasp sealing the book. The clasp is actually the head of the spider, its jaws bite around a telson upon its rear.

—Keep reading for 90 more trinkets.

—Click Here for additional Book Descriptions to give these objects even more personality.

—Note: The previous 10 items are repeated for easier rolling on a d100.

A sacred hymnal dedicated to a God of a Random Domain, bound in oiled leather.

An informational textbook entitled “The Arts Alchemical: A Primer”. The book is mostly unreadable as its center has been deliberately hollowed and contains a Random Sealed Glass Vial.

A tome of forgotten love ballads written by a legendary bard.

A traveler's journal, embossed with an abdomen of a large arachnid, with a clasp sealing the book. The clasp is actually the head of the spider, its jaws bite around a telson upon its rear.

A thick volume bound in a dark hide etched with elaborate silver symbols. The stretched-skin pages and tightly scrawled writing are bathed in shadow, even under the brightest light.

Power Beyond The Grave, Using Undead As Workforce: A book that describes the best uses and most efficient application of undead labor. The book's tag line written in bold bright red letters reads; “They Don't Tire, They Don't Complain, And They're Low Maintenance! (Banned In Three Kingdoms)”.

A leather bound travel journal with a tree design on its front that produces a slight blue glow from between the pages.

The Call to Avelier: A collection of stories of many countless failed explorers' journeys to the mythical holy city of Aveleer, lost somewhere within the serpent-ridden plain known as the Long Grass. A veritable sea, where green stalks quaver as three-meter waves midst ungulates like roaming, tree-topped islands of fur and thew. A collection of wonders, but mostly of disappointment and fear. In the end, it is a cautionary tale. To a rare and foolish few, though, it is an invitation.

A large heavy tome entitled “How To Spot An Assassin: A Critical Analysis”. The book does give helpful advice but quickly gets cut off as towards its middle there is a hollowed out section. In this hiding place the reader will find a razor sharp dagger made purely of black ceramic.

A leatherworking manual entitled “The Art of the Quickdraw: How to Strike First and Ask Questions Later”. The book explains in great detail how to create, modify and maintain all manner of sheaths, quivers, braces and holsters in order to be able to minimize the time and energy required to draw a weapon. The book shows the many different areas to keep a sheath weighs the pros and cons of the locations and their ergonomic potential based on where the bearer typically keeps their hands. An example from the book mentions that boot knives are a nightmare to unsheathe in combat but are among the last to be found during a casual search and it is possible to draw them even while tied up, crouched down or both.

A small travel handbook filled with dozens of dichotomous keys of poisonous and edible plants in rarely traveled parts of the world.

Leaves of Stone: An impressively heavy “book” bound in stone slabs with the titles carved into the front. The object is more of a door stop, though the author would likely protests to its use as such. Its stone pages are bound by think iron rings and engraved with the musings of the great dwarven poet Wilk Whetstone.

A Treatise on Tortoises: A religious text whose first twenty pages feature a selection of drawings, essays, and descriptions on and of the large saltwater tortoises that were once prolific around the subtropical islands of the south. The thin folio's following pages, however, seem to be written by a different hand, and while at first they follow the same structure, cryptic notes in the margins begin to overtake the text and illustrations, until they make up the entirety of the pages near the end of the book. The meaning of the notes (Which largely consist of long strings of seemingly nonsense words) has been rigorously debated within the scholarly community, but at least four disparate religions and cults have been founded based on various interpretations of the text. Notably, all agree that the last page (Which is naught but a tangle of scribbled, barely legible mass of ink) depicts the same thing; the face of a long dead God.

The Compendium of Magical Treasures from the Third Kingdom of Lundor Compiled by Sir Davrick Ostagar: An old tome chronicling dozens of long-forgotten magical relics, ranging from the mundane to the fantastic. The description of a ring meant to imbue the element of fire to the bearer seems to stand out as the page has been dog-eared and seems quite worn. Another remarkable find is near the end of the book. It's a plain bone wand that is described as having "Petty and amateurish effects of prestidigitation and minor illusions," but off to the side, written in what seems to be a hastily scrawled ink, is the phrase "Death conquers all."

A Sibylline Tome; Collection of Past Events: A book containing an extremely detailed description of the events the party of PC's has gone through in the past, filled with insights and facts that nobody but them could possibly know, and even ones they didn't. ---Note: A DM can feel free to poke fun at things the party misinterpreted/failed to realize during the campaign. Also encourage your players to come up with things the tome says about them before they joined the party themselves.

A pocket book of stage magic entitled “1001 Simple Legerdemaine Tricks to Amaze Your Friends” authored by the wondrous bard, Longfingers.

A pocket notebook with cryptic phrases scrawled haphazardly on most of the pages.

A bound collection of pressed plants from all over the realm, with notes scribbled in druidic runes.

A battered leather-bound book written in a long forgotten language.

A leather bound volume of great age, the writing mostly worn away and the covers falling apart.

A monster hunter’s journal edited for publication entitled “Squishy Bits: A Catalog of Vital Organs and Where to Find Them” by Victor 'Pokes' Mackenzie.

A large compendium simply titled “The Big Book Of Cons”. The inside cover promises a myriad of money making strategies including but not limited to: Pyramid schemes, letters from Chultan princes who need your gold pieces to send you back their fortune and vials of cure-all elixirs made from water, cheap herbs and a dash of color.

A cheap primer entitled “You Are A Thief, Now What?”, an entry-level instructional handbook for beginner thieves and those who are interested in thievery.

Conversations with a Dead Magician: A book thought to be untrue, despite its pretensions otherwise, the publisher will not reveal which is the case. Conversations with a Dead Magician tells of the author's time spent researching and conversing with a magical incunable, reportedly among the last of its kind to be created, found buried in an estate auction. It tells first of his original fascination with the blood-fed tome, his time spent recovering it from its unused ages of madness by hours of conversation. Only later does it describe how he eventually came to hate the stodgy and quarrelsome mind within the book, how he dearly wished to shut it forever. How he would, if not for some sense of responsibility to that captured mind, a responsibility he'd not dare share with any other reader. Despite its unverifiable nature, the book contains usefully-true notes on the nature and use of sorcerous incunabula.

Crust and Crumb. A traditional baker's guide, the copy is thin, bound in white linen, and found with copious jam stains. Contains recipes, primarily for breads of a common variety, but also for biscuits, scones, and cakes.

Culto Delle Fate Nel Nord: An obscure druidic text, published only in that tongue, which provides an analysis of the superstitions or "fey-worship" of the northern folk. It describes their offerings, their year-walking, and their establishment of apparent familial links with the fairies of a given land for purposes of mutual peace and protection.

Death's Head: An anthrobotanist's consideration of the mandrake, that motile and aurally-deadly creeper in the night. A tuber of deadly wont, fond of planting itself in the skulls of dead men. The writer finds it a fascinating study, spends near two hundred pages detailing its ways, its intellect, and the difficulties of its cultivation for medical purposes.

Half Again Around: A memoir of an elite guard within an infamous spy organization. His station: the remote, freezing Keep at Doorneagle; a great, circular wall built about the lip of a sinkhole of seemingly-bottomless depth. He recounts his days spent endlessly walking that round walk, staring and wondering down at the black he and comrades were told to watch. Never were they told what was within. Never did they find out. The book does not say, either. What it does describe is the ways of folk left in weird solitude. Their behaviors and rituals, seemingly mad to outsiders, made up and practiced on shifts long as 48 hours. Strange walking patterns round the walls, mainly. Half around, a quarter around, all the way about and back again: All in increments like a clock. Rituals enacted to stave off the compulsions of paranoia and sleeplessness, bloomed like the cold wind from that unknowable sinkhole.

Wulgarn's Yum Yums: A simple notebook bound in scrappy leather with yellowed pages. The writing is surprisingly easy to understand considering that it was written by an Orc. The book contains 20 basic campfire recipes for the every day adventurer or traveler (Though vegetarians will have almost nothing to gain from the book). The recipes are simple enough to make and all of the ingredients are easy to identify and use.

Hostelpoft the Wanderer: A work by noted Lothrheimer novelist Grestle Seiderberg. It described the journeys of the eponymous Hostelpoft, an awakened mouse traveler renowned for his thick dialect and red bindle, who journeyed all across the kingdom in search of fortune. He found not riches, in the end, but knowledge and friends along the way. The book describes major landmarks, cities, and, most notably, pubs and hostels visited by Hostelpoft in exceedingly clear detail.

Ironclad: A bound collection of field-memoirs by a knight under service to the Crown. A Ser Estle of Kernow, attached with her retinue of keepers to a heavy infantry battalion on the Northern Moors. Ironclad features, among musing about poetry, patriotism, and the meaning of service, enlightening details about the ways of glutted goblins, many of whom fell neath Estle's titanic blade. It also provides insight into the ways and tactics of Northern knights.

See Dad Forge: A Dwarven children's book perfect for teaching children to read. Includes pictures, and provides information such as basic mining tools, what gems are valuable, what stones are best for building, the legend of the first Dwarven city, and, of course, the difference between beer and ale.

La Nome, il Nome, the Name: A recent catalogue of kingdom names, taken from censuses, military rosters, and interviews collected in three countries. All are listed by commonality, meaning, and popularity. Merely a linguist's textbook, to be certain, but a useful one.

Leifson's Fairytales. A recent collation of traditional Northern fairy stories by Leifson, a scholar of applied folklore. Including Askel and the Knockers, Wee Tom fiddle, and The Serpent's Bow, this tome recalls the tales in all their terror and odd power. Curiously illustrated with depictions of fairies deemed scandalously frightening for children, and filled with ancient proverbs and superstitious, the books contents are disturbing, fascinating, and strangely applicable in their lessons.

Lorn's Peerage, Baronetage & Knightage: A genealogical record of the kingdom. It concerns and lists the ancestry and heraldry of the peerage, baronetage, knightage and landed gentry of the capital city and all its associated lands. Alphabetized and recorded by family name. Any important personage to have lived in the last century will have his or her name in Lorn's most recent edition.

A Sibylline Tome; Collection of Current Events: A book containing an extremely detailed description of the events the party currently find themselves intertwined in, filled with insights and facts that nobody but them could possibly know, and even ones they didn't. ---Note: A DM can feel free to ruminate on the possible options and their pros and cons and what you think the might choose to do as a DM here. Also encourage your players to come up with things the tome says about their characters thoughts and feelings about current events that they haven't shared yet.

Matches: A popular book amongst adventurers, Matches describes how to catch nearly anything on fire, given a light and enough tinder. Many a chilly adventuring team has thanked this thin folio for its tips on how to start a blaze in rain, wind, or meager lands. Many an arsonist has, as well.

Advanced Spellcraft: A mage's tome that explains advanced spellcasting techniques written by Evanora Graceeris. It is extremely dull, boring and takes a lot of concentration or persistence to get through. It explains the fundamentals of warding and magical circles expanding upon them to cover protection wards and shields.

Magic and the Weave: A tattered leather journal containing a full breakdown of gnomish scholar Flit Hipwits studies on magic and the weave and his findings into the subject. The book is mostly nonsensical and illegible ramblings on the weave of magic, bragging about how he managed to persuade a group of mages to work for free for over six months and of his favorite taverns and inns through the land but does have some useful insights to the subject.

Mease, Yeast, and Culture: A tome containing the complex biological wisdom of a baker, brewer, and spore-magister, all of whom contribute fascinatingly to form a treatise both historical and practical on fungus' use and role in society. Describes with minute measures the required procedure for producing loaves, mease porridge, and beers alike

My Liege: A novel that is the most popular and the most reviled entry in the budding genre of romance to have ever been sold in the kingdom. My Liege describes the hidden, scandal-worthy affair lead by two queens; characters modeled none-too-subtly on actual, popular young royals of two different nearby kingdoms. It is pulpy, nigh-unbelievable, and uncommonly popular despite having no redeeming value save entertainment.

The Argentine Manual Of Arms For Noble Gentlemen: A handsome volume, bound in decorated leather, with an inlaid picture of two men in court dress dueling with thin rapiers. The book details a complete fencing style specifically for court duels. It is lavishly decorated with beautiful illustrations of the positions and techniques of the Argentine style. It is not particularly suited to warfare or dungeon delving, but will allow you to avenge insults to a lady's honor while retaining your courtly poise.

My Sister Wears Hobnails: A slice-of-life account by a mundane florist of his elder sister: An experienced and ceaselessly-cheery, despite the nature of her profession, adventurer. My Sister Wears Hobnails, is, above all, an entertainment piece, more full of tales of amusingly awkward returns by the scarred adventurer to family dinners and weddings than real accounts of the horrors of adventuring. Many blame claim this book as a foul influence, as the reason for many a son or daughter's foolish travel to frontier towns in search of fame and fortune. Few know the sister in question went missing in action mere months after the book's publication, disappeared on a raid sent to clear a lich’s tomb. No truthful impressions of adventuring may be found within.

On Salt and Welfare: An old medical text, still well-read, known for being both the first and most comprehensively sourced analysis multiple types of alchemical salt and their effects on and use in human physiology and medicine. Widely accepted for its well-reasoned, regular prescriptions of salt for many purposes, such as wound cleansing, plague prevention, and fertility management.

Great Musicians of the Modern Period: A leather bound encyclopedia of famous bards that is a veritable "who's who" of modern musicians, almost all of whom are still alive and trying to make a living today. Although thoroughly researched, the book suspiciously goes on at great length about one Aloysius Fernangeles Compodius VII, describing his musical style in flattering, flowery language. Also suspiciously, one of the most popular musicians in the region is consistently referred to as "The Drunk," and his musical style described as "crude fare for the masses."

Partizan: A popular, recent release written by a soldier active in and injured on the frontlines of a kingdom border conflict. It provides an unparalleled look at the novel and terrible thing that is modern war. Descriptions of crossbow fusillades, magic used to pulverizing effect, and the tactical advent that the sniper are given in horridly fascinating detail. Due to its release so early in the war, the book is supposed by some to be at least partially fiction; padded on all corners by make believe. Despite, its view of modern conflict remains unparalleled in its clarity.

Piedmont's Guide to Monsters: A premiere guide to monstrosity, beast, and fiend, collated by none other than its most esteemed explorer and cartographer: Professor Wallace Piedmont. Though now sadly out of date and no longer updated in its editions, due to the Professor's disappearance, the book contains unrivaled descriptions, both verbal and visual, of the ways, habitats, and omens of monsters large and small.

Untitled Poems of the Kywirk Gurr: An oversized, fur-bound tome of 14 goatskin pages, contains the only known example of Yeti poetry, from a highly socialized band on the leeward side of the Bittersnap Mountains. Its topics include seasonal shifts, territorial disputes among bands, and prime hunting grounds. The language is idiosyncratic and pictographic in nature.

Prince, Poisoner, Pariah: A biography of Price Alvon the Terrible, of Adaleutia, an utterly mad monarch, twisted in form and mind by centuries of royal inbreeding, who cleverly executed his entire court by tricking them into kissing poisoned rings. For this, the mad Prince was sent to exile, later found himself a mere murderer-oddity, a refugee, in the kingdom Court.

Pseodomonarchaea Daemonum: A book of unknown authorship that is currently banned in all Southern coastal countries. It depicts, with dubious accuracy, the power structure and supposed hierarchies of the viral entities known as hemorae, or, as the Southerners know them, demons.

Ruislip the Whistler: An old biography of Ruislip of Lissp, a minstrel of yore who delivered coded messages by the notes of his penny whistle and bagpipes. Ruislip played in courts kingdom wide and was never once caught in his dispensation and collection of secrets to and from embedded spies. Only in his final days, preceding retirement, did Ruislip submit an expose to all those he'd betrayed as performer and as a double or even triple agent. The book contains examples of his coded song, and the fingerings required to transmit it.

Unshameful Names for Your Child, A Parenting Book: A heavy tome bound in stone with thick iron rings holding it together. After learning that his traditional Dwarven name is highly embarrassing to those who speak only Common, Shi'Teater Stunck sought to ensure that no other child would suffer the same public ridicule as him. This book is the culmination of that work.

Searess: A biography of Amile Firense Opal Clereau, the Emperoussin engineer notable for refining original crossbow blueprints into more reliable, deadly irons of war under the instruction of armsmith Eventine Munitions. Both a scholar of armaments and a philosopher of life, Clereau was continually wracked by conscientious premonitions of what her developments would wreak upon humankind. The engineer predicted that in the decade following the release of her crossbow designs, several specific instances of sectarian violence, including strikes by the Holy Inquisition, would flare, Coast-wide. She predicted each, and watched as each, aided by her product, enacted fresh violence over long-stirring tensions. The book provides, along with its miserable supposition, the original, true notes Clereau made in her improvement of the crossbow.

Sparrow's End. A novel, which depicts in detail both painful and sensuous the life and demise of Elivabet Ellimere Adele Sidova, a duelist and renowned lover also known by a flighty nickname: The Sparrow. The bastard child of a high priced courtesan and noble lord, she led a violent, lustful, and sensationally short life in all the high aristospheres before meeting an excessively ugly end orchestrated by a union of her enemies.

State of Exurgency. A much-derided treatise by scholar Leelander of Sortz on observations of the Fey’s expansion in realms abandoned by mankind. Extensive, but unclear and mainly ridiculous, as Leelander was a noted laudanum addict; apt to dream an encounter with fey more often than actually observe one. Still, the book inadvertently serves as a handy guide to the maintenance of an opium addiction for as long as one may before going utterly mad.

The Love Poetry of Dryads: A bark-bound book that is a little rough in the reader's hands, and according to verse #163, that's how the dryads like it. However, verse #77 suggests a gentle rustle through her leaves will set her desire ablaze. It's all more complicated than peasant girls, so be careful when trying to make a move on a prickly lady friend. This version is a new edition of an old book of poems, chock full of translations from ancient and modern Sylvan. This edition has a new forward written by the celebrated elvish bard Lorendel Woodswhisper.

The Abattoir at Ilkreat: A horror novel based on true events. Namely, on the discovery of chilling graves under the slaughterhouse on the isle of Ilkreat, a remote and rocky place used to raise hordes of swine for consumption. Neath that bloody place were discovered dozens, scores of twisted skeletons: young, human frames with the rotted heads of swine. What occurred at Ilkreat, in reality, was never discovered. This novel puts a twist of supposition on the evidence, spins a tale of modern sorcery and horrid pigmen.

The Black Handbook. A regulation guidebook carried by most licensed medical practitioners, coroners and plague doctors. Advises how to address and medicate any given situation involving corpses, plague, or zombies. Civilian versions are usually available at slightly marked-up prices.

A Sibylline Tome; Collection of Future Prophecies: A book containing a vast number of prophecies about future events that the party might find themselves in. Offering suggestions as to how they might overcome these events and insights into how they might be caused or avoided. ---Note: A DM should feel free to utilize a mix of things that you have already prepared for and vague hints that could mean anything that you can link back to later after the fact. Also encourage your players to come up with things that the tome say about their future themselves.

The Cant of the Errant Brickman: An expensively assembled collection of woodcuts and definitions describing the system of marks left by traveling bricklayers, itinerant laborers, in communication with each other. These marks denote such concepts as danger, direction, or the generosity of nearby folk to wanderers.

The Casque of Life: A now-debunked phrenological guide. Once, used by crackpots in an attempt to attest the mental and spiritual faculties of a given being by the shape of their skull. Now, an adventure’s oddity. The book is useful now only for the identification of skulls to glean additional information from skeletal remains, such as species, sex and approximate age.

The Mapping of Portents, Vol. II: A single, thinner tome, bound in leather, with its name in silver gilt on the spine only. The swirled, deep blues and blacks on the cover are only broken up by a scattering of reflective dust, appearing as stars in the night sky. After a brief foreword, where Prof. Ensarai Dorough graciously accepts the praise from her first volume, and then outlines the need for a second volume, covering the most recent era gone past. This entire volume provides hand-drawn positioning of stars and bodies in the heavens, juxtaposed against the occurrence of certain, major events and upheavals in recorded history. Though in her acknowledgements, she admits these connections could be entirely spurious and unfounded, the professor also points out even savage warlords pay attention to the omens the stars foretell.

Two Centuries of Tragedy: A curated folio of two hundred years’ worth of the greatest works of famous playwrights whose calamitous tales have ever graced a stage. Beginning with the metrical tragedians of antique vogue, and ending with the very-real horror which befell the Royal Opera. Read entirely, this great brick of a book provides a comprehensive standard to the critique of grim theater, as well as an impending, melancholy sense of doom.

What I Saw on the HMS Learbatton: A tale of a journalist attached to the eponymous Learbatton, a battleship which went missing for three weeks midst the misty Trackless Isles: A sea of rocks, looming mountain isles, and grabbing sargasso feared and rarely escaped. Only by the luck of a rite called the Dorndallow method did the ship return at all to port. When she did, she came to rest in Belvirine, a half-Coast away from her port of exit. When arrived, her crew learned she'd been away six months, not the three weeks they'd perceived. This recounting is the most modern of tales to dare speak of what occurs in the vast and trackless sea.

What Lies Below: A true novelization of an alcoholic adventure’s time in Elastor Bay: A wet and shallow inlet-town littered with sea cave-mouths and palls of endless fog. It describes his signing with a band of specialized delvers under the seal of Lagão Treasury, of his ventures with them into the pelagic reaches of sea caves. Sea caves, littered with riches untouched, save by the squelching caress of zombies and other, worse pelagic nightmares.

A small travel book full of delicately preserved wings from butterflies and other small insects.

A journal by a young lass from a hundred years ago. The entries are positive, optimistic, romantic. Somewhere in the her late teens she falls in love for a fellow and at the same time she’s visited by nightmares, headaches and visions. Strangely the visions darkly warn her that her lover is dangerous, something she refuses to believe even when other things she sees in them come to pass. She writes that she plans to run away with him before the journal abruptly ends. Knowledgeable PC’s will recognize that the symptoms she describes are signs of a changeling coming into her power on the path to becoming a hag.

A book with an interlocking pattern of gears on the front and back. The gears lock together, stopping the book from being opened unless the opener can puzzle out the correct way to spin each gear to unlock the book. Once opened, the book appears to be a detailed technical treatise of the legendary flying city of Serraine, supposedly built by gnomes after the gnomish diaspora in an attempt to create a homeland for their race. Extensive focus is given to the crafting of the airships in their "Top Ballista" air force.

The Rise of Magical Species: A thin book bound in animal hide written by a ranger, it provides a straightforwards examination of the way strong magical fields can alter animal evolution to create magical species, such as giant-sized animals or oozes. The knowledge in it can be used to help gain insight into any creature that is either descended or created from mundane beasts.

Thoughts and Speculations: A grey book with a plain looking cover, although a small dark stain on the back cover looks suspiciously like dried out blood. It is the diary of the early days of the dark lord Vecna, a powerful wizard who eventually became a lich (And whom some say later became a god). The book is helpful in understanding all type of undead. However, the things described in this book are both terrible and maddening and it is to be read at one's own risk.

238 Dwarf Bar Jokes and More: A sturdy book whose cover was made from an old tavern sign and bonded by scrap chain mail, it smells like the bar the cover is made out of. It has a bounty of bad jokes, mostly witty insults and lengthy puns.

Order and Chaos, a study into Mechanus and Limbo: A heavy tome bound with the hide of an ancient beast, locked with heavy brass locks, the book contains all the findings, experiments and secrets of Aldizar Vermont about the planes of Mechanus and Limbo. Written in a thick and heavy jargon, with some words and terms being invented by Aldizar as he progresses his research and scribbled down in a minute handwriting, it is an immensely hard book to read, but it contains a treasure of information for those wishing to read it thoroughly. Knowledgeable PC's will know that it is said Aldizar grew mad after he resided on the perfect order of Mechanus and then went into the Chaos of Limbo. Contained within the book is some of this madness, upon being read for too long, it has a chance to funnel some of Limbo's energies around the reader......

Kalar's Odyssey: A massive scroll inscribed on dragon skin, written by the ancient hero Kalar, the tale is an accounting of his travels and heroics. It's an autobiography of epic proportions spanning all his years delving in the Underdark, scaling mountain peaks, and sailing vast oceans. There are detailed notes on the nature of a variety of beasts, the locations of ancient artifacts, and the political and mythological origins of kingdoms (some of them long dead).

Ancestors of the Gods: A massive tome, bound in leather and written in a shaky hand, it tells the story of what existed before the gods created the universe out of formless chaos. It is written by a former cleric who was hunting a leader among the aboleths and conveys his descent into madness and finally the loss of his faith as he learned far too much for his fragile mind to handle. The tome contains a lot of information about aberrations of all kinds, but it is hard to unravel due to the author's fragmenting grasp on reality.

The Waters of Life: A book bound in shark skin that appears to have been written by a cultist who worshiped "Ol' Hydra, Queen Of The Waves." It recounts her travels on the Elemental Plane of Water as she traveled the islands there searching for a mythical "fountain of youth," only to discover that it was actually a metaphorical fountain that had been inside her all along.

The Abyssal Gourmet: An impressively large book, bound in fine embossed leather, lettered with exquisitely beautiful calligraphy, but written, possibly, in blood. This unique book details several elaborate recipes using rare ingredients and arcane methods by the infamous 'demon chef.' It is unclear if the author was a literal demon or if the moniker is merely a nickname. Some of the less mundane ingredients come from different planes of existence, but never fear, the demon chef provided an index of each ingredient and where to find them.

The Art of Musketry: A medium sized book written by dwarves (In Dwarvish) has two thin stone slabs as the front and back cover. It describes the art of crafting firearms such as flintlock pistols or muskets, although it also goes into detail about other types of weapons, both mundane and magical. ---Note: If firearms aren't common or don't exist in your campaign treat this book as a form of extremely theoretical and dangerously volatile alchemy.

Escapades of the Royal Household: A small set of papers, coverless and bound by small iron rings, it details the escapades of the court, written from the perspective of a (Since beheaded) servant to the king. The volume talks about the rumors surrounding the families methods on "keeping the bloodline pure" and other equally disturbing, but highly entertaining facts and gossip. The reader gains insight in the goings on of the court and may pick up some hidden details written between the lines.

Book of the Civilized Man by Daniel of Beccles: A "book of courtesy," or etiquette guide, this short book contains all the information needed by the "new man" who is rising in society. Studying this book allows the reader to fit into upper class society more easily. It is written in three parts: The first explains the social hierarchy and how to behave around those of lower or higher station, beginning "Reader, if you wish to be adorned with good manners, if you wish to be respected and lead a civilized life as a noble householder..." The second deals with self-control, especially in speaking and eating: "Be careful to whom, what, why and when you speak." The third deals with sexual morality, giving not only advice on seeking out a prostitute, but on choosing a wife.

The Cloud of Unknowing: A book of mysticism that does not provide answers to questions. Rather, it urges the reader to abandon consideration of the divine's particular activities and attributes, and be courageous enough to surrender one's mind and ego to the realm of "unknowing", at which point one may begin to glimpse the nature of the divine.

Beasts and Bindings: A thick leather tome with pages made from the hide of a beast, Beasts and Bindings details various mundane creatures and techniques to tame them. It's written by the practiced animal tamer Norvan Darkdraft, who, unfortunately, was eaten by a tiger.

The search for Crimson, by Jankin Swiftstep: A book bound by crimson leather, sides of the pages covered in hastily written notes and ideas. The book contains the investigation notes and commentary of Jankin Swiftstep, a Halfling archaeologist trying to locate the Crimson Seekers, a group of adventurers that saved his town from a vampire threat years back. The book contains clues and last-known-location of the group's magical equipment, tales of epic fights, and an author's closing words disappointed that he couldn't find out what happened to his childhood heroes.

The Lullaby: A black covered book with relaxing mellow colors swirling over it in hypnotizing patterns. It contains the recipes of potions of sleep and spells of sleep of varying strength. But, the book is hard to read because it's fairly complexly written.

The Enchiridion of Nundecrum Vol. 1: A brown leather-bound journal with the title precisely burnt into the cover and along the spine. It appears weathered, some of the pages have gotten wet, making it difficult to decipher the entire volume. The journal of Nundecrum begins with a statement of motive: to uncover the nature of other-worldly beings not readily described by standard biologists and monster hunters, which he believed were responsible for a great deal of tragedy throughout history. It is a bestiary focusing on Aberrations and Fiends, including geographic occurrence, detailed sketches, physiology, as well as weaknesses of such beings.

Introduction to Evocatiodynamics by David J. Gryphon: A book bound by blue leather, with a glowing title that contains an introductory course to the workings of the weave applied to the School of Evocation. The writing is friendly to novices, explaining common rune notations and concepts, good for self-study. The author explains step by step the process of complicated incantations, as opposed to more convoluted texts like Jackson's Classical Evocationdynamics. This novice-friendliness comes at a cost, however, and some advance concepts and workings of the weave are given as mantras instead of rigorous demonstrations.

Flowers of the Elven Courts of Farithiandor: A book bound in grey leather decorated with dark blue flower patterns etched into the cover. This is a "fictional" story of the forbidden romance between a young human man and an older noble elven woman during the third age. If true the information in this book could disprove the noble lineage of the Silverleaf family. If not, its just a trashy elven love novel.

A Halfling Rum Runners Diary: A diary with a nondescript brown leather cover that details the accounts of Billion Sweetfoot, a famous halfling smuggler. Billion was best known for smuggling his home made rum into kingdoms throughout the world during the great alcohol ban of the second age. With proper study the reader can reproduce the famous Sweetfoot Rum recipe.

Johannes Grishamm; The Puffin Tort: A novel printed on cheap papyrus with a drawing of a puffin giving testimony on the front cover. On the back there is a small portrait of Grishamm. From the acclaimed scribe Johannes Grishamm, author of The Traffic Summons, and the Albatross Sub-Peona, comes another riveting tale of legal derring-do. Jeff Briefcase is a young halfling lawyer who’s just gotten a job with the law offices of Vlagnar, Stonecrunch, and James, Esq, and it seems like everything’s going his way. But what happens when it turns out that the firm he’s working for is...EVIL? And will he ever make partner? Aside from being a crackling good read, this tome also equips its readers with a thorough understanding of the legal system, as protagonist Briefcase moves through a fanciful world of filings, depositions, and court dates. The story is chock full of tips and tricks for dealing with judges, sheriffs, jailers, lawyers, and the other components of the legal system.

Eleddin And The Lamp: A book bound in a speckled blue material with gilded pages. The story is an autobiography of Eladdin, an Elvan scholar that befriended a Djinn and accompanied him to the Elemental plan of air. The handwriting is fine and flows beautifully telling the story of his journey through the plane including detailed descriptions of the Djinn, the locations he visited on the plane as well as the dangers one might face.

Book of Unspeakable Horrors: A book bound in the skin of an otherworldly, eldritch being. Inside is a truly terrible romance novel.

A slim, leather-bound journal. A fine-pointed stick of something like charcoal is tucked into its spine.

A red and gold pattern decorates the lacquered cover of this heavy book, its corners protected by bronze. “The Book of Incense: Recipes from My Travels.”

A heavy warlock’s grimoire bound in leather and brass with a binding encrusted with fragments of human skull.

Introvert's Boon: A lightweight, leather bound traveller's book lacking both a title and the author's name. The book's writing changes whenever held, always becoming an interesting novel that the bearer hasn't read yet.

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michelles-garden-of-evil · 4 years

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Episode 29 Review: The Missing Cyanide

{ YouTube: 1 | 2 }

{ Full Synopses/Recaps: Debby Graham | Bryan Gruszka }

{ Screencaps }

Welcome back to the isle of Maljardin, whose lush foliage and majestic château mask a deadly evil, one who has grown deadlier with the acquisition of a bottle of cyanide. SIx episodes ago, Jean Paul Desmond removed the bottle from the medicine poison cabinet in the former laboratory of the late Dr. Menkin, only for Jean Paul’s ancestor Jacques Eloi des Mondes to spirit it away shortly after and hide it the-Devil-knows-where. Now the inhabitants and detained guests of the island search for the bottle before its contents can spell their death.

We open with Alison searching for the vial of cyanide in the aforementioned poison cabinet. (Speaking of which, the fact that Dr. Menkin had a whole cabinet full of bottles labeled “POISON” makes him appear just as suspicious as Jean Paul. What kinds of experiments might he have performed that required the use of poison?) For those of you who love to make fun of YouTube’s automatic captions (I hope it’s not just yours truly), the opening scene is a treat, with a whole 30 seconds of subtitled background music:

The YouTube caption bots have officially gone mad.

She sees Quito and asks him if he has seen the bottle, even drawing a picture of it to make sure he knows which one she’s referring to. He tries to tell her using various gestures, but she doesn’t understand the meaning, and neither Raxl nor Jean Paul is around to interpret. During his first two attempts, he touches his head and then sweeps a hand either outward or upward: “Jacques possessed Jean Paul and swiped it,” perhaps? For his third attempt, he points at himself, then towards the doorway, then makes a “chatterbox” motion with his hand, then points below. I think that means, “I’m going to tell Raxl” (or “I,” “go,” “talk,” “down below”) if only because he goes to fetch her to interpret next.

THE DEVIL JACQUES ELOI DES MONDES, here playing the role of the Greek chorus. Colin Fox doesn’t appear in this episode[1], but he did record a voice-over for Jacques’ portrait in advance. Jacques is also looking especially rosy in this shot--very cute.

Back in the lab, Raxl interprets Quito’s signs, and it turns out I was close with my guess on the meaning of the first combination. According to Raxl, touching the forehead followed by the swiping motion means “the master took it.” Alison asks when he took the bottle, Quito signs some more, and Raxl translates: “Two days ago.” She adds that she doesn’t believe that Jean Paul intentionally took it, but that “I fear that he was under a spell of that accursed Jacques Eloi des Mondes.”

After Alison says that the bottle contained enough cyanide to kill everyone on the island, Raxl makes the Sign of the Great Serpent for the first time, albeit with only one hand instead of both.

This brings up the issue of who killed Dr. Menkin (obviously Jacques) and Erica (true cause of death still unknown), and is reminiscent of the mystery of where the conjure doll and silver pin was hidden. Alison begs her to search everywhere including Jean Paul’s room--which is normally off-limits to her--for the doll and pin, even though that will end her erotic dreams about dashing chevalier Jacques. I suppose we all need to make sacrifices.

In the Great Hall, Raxl tells Quito that she is going to contact the Conjure Woman aka Vangie Abbott. Quito shakes his head and grabs her as though pleading for her not to do it. This is reminiscent of the scene in Episode 13 when Quito freaked out over Raxl’s mention of Vangie’s father, the Conjure Man, and also begged her not to. Kurt Schiegl did an excellent job conveying Quito’s thoughts and feelings without speaking. He could have gone into silent films, if they were still a thing in the sixties.

Quito is undead. Does he even still have a heartbeat?

She descends to the crypt and then waits for Quito to join her before entering the Not-So-Hidden Temple (good, atmospheric scene).

Some favorite shots from the scene.

Meanwhile, Matt finds Alison calling for her in the Great Hall:

OK, Captain Obvious.

She tells him about the cyanide and convinces him to help her find it, but won’t tell him who she believes has it.

Meanwhile, Raxl lays out some Tarot cards in the Not-So-Hidden Temple. “The Tarot is as Evangeline Abbott said. Now with the help of the Great Serpent, I shall summon her.” She begins a ritual, bidding Quito beat the drums as she calls for the Conjure Woman to join her.

We cut back to the Great Hall and learn that Matt now considers Raxl’s beliefs superstition, because she believes in Jacques’ ghost and he does not. He doesn’t believe in witchcraft or possession either. Remember, this is a man who said nineteen episodes ago, “The Tarot is the soul’s way to God. Any path that leads to God should have a minister’s approval.” He’s far from anti-superstition when it comes to the Tarot--and besides, the Bible mentions witchcraft and possession, as Alison points out. But Matt denies that those two things exist and dismisses them as ancient, outdated beliefs. You know that his denial is making Jacques absolutely giddy and that somewhere in Hell (or wherever he goes when he’s not inside Jean Paul’s body) he is sitting on his throne grinning from ear to ear and polishing his ring.

Jacques, upon hearing that Reverend Dawson doesn’t believe in possession.

In the temple, Raxl lays some Tarot cards onto the altar. I have no idea if these cards were deliberately chosen to predict future events on Maljardin or if Cosette Lee just drew ten random cards, but I like writing these Tarot analyses, so I’m going to assume it’s the former. First, a photo of the cards, cropped, lightened, sharpened, flipped to show from Raxl’s perspective, and with the card names marked:

Because both the King of Swords and the Queen of Cups appear twice, these cards must be from two decks combined. (Normally, there is only one of each card in a Tarot deck, but some people choose to use multiple decks when doing readings. That's what I gather from a Googling "using multiple decks in tarot," anyway.)

Using the meanings given to certain cards in previous episodes and the established interpretations on Tarot.com and The Tarot Guide for the others, here is my brief card-by-card interpretation:

Strikingly, two of these cards, the Ace of Swords and the World, have very positive meanings. The Ace of Swords can be about force (in the sense meaning power, not the sense of being forced to do things) or it can foretell a new beginning or the start of a new project, according to The Tarot Guide. The World denotes success and the fulfillment of dreams; some interpretations such as that on Tarot.com consider it to always be a positive card, even when reversed (although The Tarot Guide argues in favor of a negative interpretation of The World RX). The Tarot Guide says that the Four of Coins/Pentacles can mean "possessiveness,” but I'm thinking that it, if this spread of cards was intentional, Ian Martin may have meant for it to mean "possession" instead. I included both Elizabeth and Holly as posible Queens of Cups in my interpretation, because, although I am inclined to believe Raxl’s and Vangie’s interpretation of the Queen of Cups over Matt’s, either one may be correct.

When examined together, these cards suggest a “new beginning” for Jean Paul, Elizabeth and/or Holly, and Dan. Jacques will either possess them or have them become possessed, and this scheme of his will be a success. We know that Jacques foreshadows Elizabeth’s eventual possession (in his original outline for the plot) as early as Episode 12, and we also know from Episodes 6 and 19, respectively, that Dan and Holly both had counterparts on 17th century Maljardin. If Martin had been allowed to stick to his original outline, would Dan have ended up being possessed by d’Anton and Holly by the blonde girl in her dream? Was that his original intention?

But I digress. The Tarot is less significant to this scene than the fact that Raxl is trying to summon Vangie again to the island. Quito pounds on the ritual drum, Raxl prays in a trance while kneeling before the altar. Unbeknownst to them, the Reverend Matt Dawson sneaks into the temple to search for both the cyanide and Erica’s notes.

Raxl and Quito in the Temple of the Serpent.

Raxl: “COME, CONJURE WOMAN, TAKE YOUR PLACE ON THE ALTAR OF THE GREAT SERPENT...CONJURE WOMAN, TAKE WHAT STRENGTH IS LEFT FROM THE SOUL OF YOUR FATHER AND USE IT! USE HIS STRENGTH! USE HIM!”

Matt discovers that he’s not strong enough to force the door open and so gives up. “What doors are closed to me I suppose I have no right to open,” he tells Alison cryptically as the “sad Jean Paul” music plays in the background. (That’s what I call the cue at least, because it mostly plays during sad Jean Paul scenes.)

Raxl: “COME, CONJURE WOMAN!”

Vangie: “When I die, it will be here on Maljardin. Why did you call me?”

Vangie protests that “[she] must be brought [to Maljardin] some other way” instead of summoning, which is pretty pointless, because Raxl’s ability to summon her to Maljardin eliminates the need for an invite from Jean Paul or Jacques (or, in Holly’s case, skill with sneaking onto ships). She ends this episode with a cryptic line that could refer to one of several female characters on this show: “When the master of the house is no longer the master of his soul, the house needs a mistress."

Overall, a good but not very eventful episode--but then, at this point, you can’t really do much unless Jean Paul and Jacques are around to stir things up. They’re not the only interesting characters--I would be more than happy to watch this, too, if it were The Raxl Show--but Jean Paul and Jacques are the catalysts, the “movers and shakers” if you will. Fortunately, the handsome devil and his 20th-century descendant will be back next episode

Coming up next: Vangie tries to convince Jean Paul to bring her to Maljardin by boat and we try to determine if the Lost Episode summary for Episode 30 was truly for a lost episode.

{ <- Previous: Episode 28 || Next: Episode 30 -> }

Notes

[1] Steve (leafshimmer) sent me an article recently with behind-the-scenes information on the show, including the reason why Fox is absent from roughly one episode per week:

Last year [i. e. 1968], Fox broke his neck while taping the Stratford Festival company's Three Musketeers for CBC. Although he doesn't have to wear a neck brace all the time, he still suffers pain. "Most of the early problems were cleared up, but it's much too exhausting doing this--working 12 hours a day," he said. "My doctor has given me a letter which insists I get one working day off a week. I have less than 48 hours off, with rehearsals every night, including Sunday."

(Source: Sid Adilman, “TV’s Colin Fox and his Strange Paradise,” Toronto Telegram (Nov. 29 1969).)

#strange paradise #soap opera #ian martin #week 6 #episode 29 #review #analysis #foxless episodes #the not so hidden voodoo temple #scenery chewing #sign of the great serpent #sp and religion #speculation on ian martin's original story #tarot #youtube automatic captions

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robbyrobinson · 4 years

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Stephen King Villains: Most Evil to Least Evil

Stephen King is considered the master of horror best known for his prolific writing career that in itself takes place in a multiverse of sorts. Besides monsters and supernatural beings, there are also very, very evil humans that also antagonize the protagonists.

Most Evil

Most Evil would go to Randall Flagg. He is probably the closest thing to the Devil that exists in King's works, though Nyarlathotep is also said to be one of his many titles. He appears in several of King's novels sowing chaos wherever possible. He was apart of many violent tragedies such as race riots, lynchings, you name them. In The Stand, he sets himself up as some sort of god for those who also had penchants for violence. In The Dark Tower series, he works alongside the Crimson King and gets into even more acts like destroying a city and driving a woman insane by having a dead man recount to her what he had seen in the afterlife. Ultimately, his plan is to topple the Dark Tower itself which would spell destruction for the multiverse.

Bronze goes to It. An ancient, primordial evil, It was originally from the Macroverse before crash landing to the area that would eventually become Derry, Maine where it establishes a cycle of awakening every 27 years to kill and devour Derry's children even though it is implicated that It doesn't need to consume the flesh of its prey as it could live off their fear alone. But it is their fear that makes their meat tastier to It. It is an egotistical, narcissistic being who views itself as being superior above humans and its archenemy Maturin the Turtle. It is first defeated by the Losers Club back in the 1950s after it had killed the young brother of Bill Denbrough only to return 27 years later to settle the score.

Silver...it's a tough one, but I ultimately decided that William Wharton from The Green Mile earns this spot. He is not the most powerful being in the books nor is he anywhere close to the first two's level. Simply put, he is a disgusting piece of human garbage that should've gotten fried to death in the electric chair for what he had done. He is first taken to the Mile after killing two people, one of which was a pregnant woman. When he arrives, he pretends to be in a near-drunken state only to then attempt to strangle one of the wardens. That in itself is bad, but what pushes him further is the fact that he was the one who raped and killed those two girls that John Coffey is being sentenced to death over. He used the sisters' love for each other to coerce them not to scream lest he kill one of them before leading them out of their house.

Patrick Hockstetter. A pure solipsistic psychopath, Patrick was a member of Henry Bowers's gang but he was especially nasty. He took perverse delight at killing animals but that is not his main claim to infamy. As a solipsist, he believes that no one exists aside from himself...essentially the world revolved around him. When he learned that his mother had given birth, Patrick felt threatened. So much so, he smothered the baby to death with a pillow.

Norman Daniels, the main antagonist of Rose Madder. A corrupt cop, he domestically abuses his wife Rose and in one instance sexually assaulted her and later caused her to suffer a miscarriage. When she leaves him, Norman pursues her, murdering and torturing those in his way his preferred method being biting them to death.

Leland Gaunt of Needful Things sets up a novelty shop in Castle Rock where he has his victim's greatest desires in stock, but they had to pay a sum and additionally stage a prank. A magical charm that drives the residents to madness one instance being when two women killed themselves in a madness-inducing stupor leading to a young boy killing himself.

Rose the Hat. A little lower on the list. A True Knot (quasi-immortal vampiric beings), she feeds on steam, as in the dying breath of children who have "the Shining." This is of course done through torturing children to death. Despite committing serial murders, plausibly in the hundreds depending on how long she and her clan were operating, she nevertheless greatly cares for her fellow True Knots and becomes increasingly incensed by Danny Torrance and Abra Stone killing them.

Going to King's first novel Carrie, we have several trash. Chris Hargensen bullies Carrie White relentlessly climaxing in her staging a terrible prank where she drops a bucket full of pig's blood on Carrie's head at the prom after forging fake votes for Carrie. Following her is Margaret White , Carrie's mother. An insane religious zealot, she emotionally and psychologically abuses her daughter as she saw it as her fault that Carrie received telekinetic powers because of her perceived mistake. After the massacre, Margaret attempts to kill Carrie.

The Overlook Hotel. At first it seems odd that I would include what is basically an inanimate object. But in the book The Shining, it is made apparent that the hotel is alive and is greatly evil. It drives those who visit it to madness ultimately resulting in them killing their families and then themselves. Once it completely possesses Jack Torrance, it fully has its malevolent intentions out in the open.

The Shawshank Redemption. Kind of more leaning towards the film adaptation, but here goes: Samuel Norton is the warden of the Shawshank prison. Initially coming off as a kind man with that rich Southern Christian rhetoric, Norton is truly a greedy man ruling Shawshank with an iron fist allowing rapes and other evils to happen on his grounds. He uses the prisoners for cheap labor in a money laundering scheme which he forces Andy to assist him with. Unlike in the book, when Tommy has information proving Andy's innocence, Norton sends for Captain Byron T. Hadley to kill Tommy.

Next would be Bogs Diamond. The leader of a group of men called The Sisters, he enjoys violently raping his victims one of his favorite being Andy. But it isn't because he's gay, but more because he derives disgusting glee from raping them when they were at their lowest state.

Henry Bowers, the secondary antagonist of It, is a racist, Anti-Semitic, misogynistic, fat-shaming lunatic who graduates to murdering his own father before deciding to go to kill the Losers Club when they enter the sewer system to face off against It/Pennywise. But it is shown that his father was abusive and he likely learned a lot of his prejudices from him. But he also stands as a trope of King's where you have insane bullies.

Lastly, we get to Percy Wetmore the secondary antagonist of The Green Mile. Somehow coming off as more reprehensible than the real villain of the book, Wetmore is a low-functioning sociopath who primarily came to the Cold Mountain Penitentiary to watch the death row inmates die.

Especially despising Delacroix, he kills Mr. Jingles by stepping on him out of spite, and he later deliberately leaves the sponge dry leading to Delacroix's excruciatingly botched, prolonged execution where he literally cooks in Old Sparky. He's kind of lower on the list mostly because of his film counterpart looking horrified. Something tells me that he probably was only thinking that by not wetting the sponge it would give Delacroix a little more pain, but he wasn't anticipating for the events to ensue the way they did. Though him being forced to watch is cathartic as was what became of him in the ending.

Least Evil

Cujo takes the first spot. All he wanted was to be a good boy, but all that changed when he was bitten by a rabid bat. Now he kills those that he miscontrues as being responsible for his pain.

Carrie White was the protagonist of Stephen King's first book. Born with telekinetic powers, Carrie was bullied by her peers; mistreated by her fundamentalist mother...ultimately she was driven insane when that horrible prank at the prom befell her. She committed horrible acts, but ultimately, it is understandable. It was only a matter of time for her to snap.

Jack Torrance: While he tries to kill his wife and son, part of it largely falls on the Overlook corrupting him. He was abused by his father ultimately becoming an alcoholic who unwittingly dislocated Danny's arm. At the least before the Overlook's destruction he had a moment of clarity.

Christine: A sapient possessed 1958 Plymouth Fury vintage vehicle who acts like a envious girlfriend when it comes to its owners. Worse, it is fully able of numping people off if need be.

The Wendigo: In Pet Sematary, it is a wendigo that is responsible for the cursed grounds that whatever was buried in its soils, an evil, undead version arises. This happens to Church the cat and especially to Gage. However, the Wendigo is presented more as a force of nature than truly evil.

Annie Wilkes: After saving Paul, it seems at first Annie was a kind woman...at least until she found out that Paul killed off her favorite character and becomes hellbent on forcing him to rewrite the ending where she was alive again. She holds him hostage and even breaks his legs as punishment (though it's much worse in the novel). Worse, it is revealed that Annie is a serial killer with a body count in potentially the 70s with multiple infants dying under mysterious circumstances while under her care. More patients end up dying but they were mostly ignored as the patients were already deathly sick prior. But with all that being said, Annie does have severe mental issues to the point where she is unable to discern reality from fiction.

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[SIZE=1][b]Name:[/b] Jess. [b]Age:[/b] An imaginary number! [b]What happened?:[/b] GH, she’s evil...and I like his hair.

[b]Name:[/b] Hunter Burnett. [b]Nicknames & Aliases:[/b][LIST]Uncle Jordon. Jordan Burnett. Hunter Jordan. [/LIST][b]Age:[/b] 286 [b]Date of Birth:[/b] June 4th, 1725. [b]Age at Death:[/b] 28. [b]Gender:[/b] Male. [b]Sexual Orientation:[/b] Questionable. [b]Occupation:[/b] Jack of all trades.

[b]Bloodline:[/b] Beast Master. [b]Power Level:[/b] Adult [s]Kiss[/s]. [b]Mind-Set:[/b] Both. [b]Animal to Call:[/b] None. [b]Powers:[/b] [LIST] [*] Heightened senses, reflexes, healing and strength. [*] Bite...If he enters the persons mind when feeding, he can make it less painful and more enjoyable. He doesn’t most of the time. [*] Empathy, he can smell some strong emotions like fear, rage, anger, lust. Since he’s of Padma’s bloodline, he’s also got a slight empathy to all animals. [*]Enthralling/rolling, he can only get this right with weaker shifters and normal humans. Anything stronger can break free. [*] Glamour, he can switch small things about him. Make his hair darker, eyes brighter, on will. [/LIST][b]Rank:[/b] Rogue. He can be tempted by the Kiss though.

[b]Face Claim:[/b] Gerard Way. [b]Description:[/b] [IMG]http://i325.photobucket.com/albums/k361/Mychemicalromance55_photos/mychem313.jpg[/IMG] [i]Height:[/i] 5’10 [i]Weight:[/i] 151lbs [i]Eyes:[/i] Hazel brown. [i]Hair:[/i] He’s a dyer. Naturally, it’s [URL=http://img.buzznet.com/assets/imgx/7/5/3/9/1/6/1/orig-7539161.jpg]black, he’s [/URL] gone [URL=http://quizilla.teennick.com/user_images/A/AM/AMU/AMUANDIKUTO4EVA/1264970042_5386_full.jpeg]blonde[/URL] in the past, but he’s currently sporting [URL=http://images4.fanpop.com/image/photos/19400000/Gerard-way-my-chemical-romance-19400197-467-700.jpg]red.[/URL] [i]Build:[/i] Average and lean. [i]Visible marks:[/i] He has a Crucifix burn mark on his left shoulder. [i]Style:[/i] Hunter likes to be comfortable. Since he travels a lot, he’s ditched the formal wear that he used to love and taken to jeans, t-shirts, a nice pair of boots. You name it, he’ll wear it. That doesn’t mean he won’t go back to formal(ish) wear.

[b]Special Skills:[/b][LIST] [*] Can speak pretty decent Spanish and French, well enough to get him by. [*] Not so much a fighter, more of a scrapper when it comes to combat. [*] Good with a knife or any type of blade, if being armed is what's needed. [/LIST][b]Personality:[/b][LIST]Hunter isn’t as complicated as most people would think. He’s a fairly easy going guy that likes to have a laugh and being a vampire nearly 300 years old hasn’t changed that, and why should it? Just because he’s dead doesn’t mean he has to be a mopey Annie, he enjoys his unlife. He doesn’t judge people right off the bat and he’s willing to give them a choice to show their true colours before passing judgement and moving on with his life. He just understands that not everyone choses to be who they’ve become, or what they’ve become. Caring and nurturing – it comes with raising a boisterous were-puppy -, he’s got the patience of a saint at times and it’s hard to push him into snapping but not impossible.

Other vampires, more to the point the older kind, scare him and because of that he respects them a hell of a lot. He’s fine with anyone younger but the older ones make the hair on the back of his neck crawl. He knows he’s got to play it careful with the elders of his kind, they could easily shred him a new one if they wanted and to top that off he’s trespassing on an occupied territory. In some places that would have ended with his heart and head removed. Shape shifters are awesome; he’d rather run with someone that was furry inclined then spend time around his own kind. Maybe it’s because of his bloodline, he’s never worked it out, but if Hunter comes across a shape shifter in need, he’ll lend a hand. Humans are the same, as long as they’re not trying to stick a bullet or stake into him, he’s dandy.

He’s extremely protective of Grey, and has bled for his “nephew”, to the point that he has killed for him. Hunter would walk over broken glass if he had to, to make sure that Grey was comfortable, and he’d go without clothes on his back to make sure that Grey had what he needs. Does he love him? Yes. He’s been there since day one, and while it may seem a little odd to some but that’s just the way it is and the hand that Hunter’s been dealt. They’re not related by blood after all so it’s nothing incestuous despite the fact that he regularly refers to Grey as his “nephew” outside of the few people that Hunter can call friend. There blames himself for the death of his “family”, and he believes that he failed his friend from all those years ago, and it gnaws at him at times when he’s not really paying attention to what’s going on around him. [/LIST][b]Likes:[/b][LIST] [*] Being alive...Well, undead and alive. You get the picture. [*] His [URL=http://www.musclecarclub.com/musclecars/pontiac-firebird/images/pontiac-firebird-1968c.jpg]car[/URL]...Well, technically it's Grey's car now. [*] Living under the radar. [*] Keeping Grey safe, even if Grey doesn't always know it. [*] Wandering the coast at night. [*] When it's not to hot or to cold. [*] Playing games on his phone when he's bored. [*] Watching people. [/LIST][b]Dislikes:[/b] [LIST] [*] Following other people’s rules. [*] Wearing suits. Though he does it occasionally. [*] Being hunted like a dog. [*] Seeing Grey struggle with something. [*] Driving in the rain. [*] Seeing animals abused. (This includes shifters, as well.) [*] Pushing to get what he wants. [*] Being dragged into the spotlight, so to speak. [/LIST][b]Strengths:[/b][LIST] [*] Strong willed. [*] High pain tolerance. [*] Won't hesitate to get things done. [*] Grey. [*] Somehow manages to keep Grey calm when he's all worked up. [/LIST][b]Weaknesses:[/b][LIST] [*] Can't enter a person’s house without permission from the owner. Has killed because of this. [*] Normal vampire restrictions and weaknesses. Fire, sunlight, Holy items. [*] Grey! He failed his adopted family, he won't fail Grey. [*] Doesn't always feed right. A little taste here and there, just to hold him over. [*]Stubbornly persistent at times. It’s been known to get him into trouble. [/LIST][b]History:[/b]

When former British Naval officer turned pirate William Morgan found out that the tavern wench, Carmella, that he visited regularly was pregnant with his supposed spawn, he up rooted the poor woman and dragged her all the way from her home in Maracaibo to his home city of London, and in the early summer of 1725, Hunter was pushed screaming into the world and was welcomed with somewhat open arms. Carmella died from a fever and child birth complicates according to the back street midwife that William had paid to help deliver his son, and she wasn’t mourned. William wanted a son, not a wife or a real family, and he already had plenty of mistresses across many main trade routes waiting for him so one whore dead was no skin off his nose to see her buried in an unmarked grave just outside of the city.

For Hunter though, it meant something different. Since William didn’t haul the boy out to sea with him, he was left from the moment he could walk with William’s sister, Cassandra. She was nice enough, and made sure that her brother’s son was fed and looked after, but that was it. There wasn’t a maternal bone in the woman’s body, and Hunter grew to know this very well, especially when he got hurt and all she did was pour boiling hot salt water over his cuts and scrapes and scolded him for being irresponsible before always telling him the same story about how his father would be so disappointed and when he came back from his trip then she would tell him of all the bad things that Hunter had done. If anything that was what made him wish for his father’s return all the more, simply so he could meet the man even if he was to be scolded for being a typical boy. He was nine when William came back to London, and upon first meeting him, Hunter was scared. Worse yet, Cassandra lied through her back teeth to get Hunter out of her house and William had no choice but to agree after giving the boy a beating for causing his beloved sister so much trouble. Fear turned to twisted joy, and the following day he was dragged out of one life and into something...better. He’d always wanted to see new places, meet new people and have an adventure. He wasn’t disappointed either, so he waved good bye to England and followed his father like a loyal little puppy.

By the time Hunter twenty one years old, he returned to London under an assumed name of Jordan Hunter. William had died in a raid on a tavern in Panama nearly two years previous and it was that loss that had him seeking something else. It was his father that had taught him everything that he had known, and without him, well, Hunter saw no point in staying on as a pirate and that was a bit cowardly in itself and went against everything in him for the most part. Besides, piracy had been a dying art for years before his father had taken him away from Cassandra at the age of nine, but it was well and truly dead by the time he returned those thirteen years later with more knowledge of the world and with more than a few secrets and tricks up his sleeves. No doubt there was a noose waiting for him somewhere as well. A few weeks upon his return, he found out that Cassandra had moved to the country because of her health, and instead of tracking her down, Hunter decided to stay in the city and it took a year of roughing it out, but eventually he found his feet so to speak in a classy tavern come whore house in South London. He was to look after the working girls, make sure that they were treated somewhat correctly and if a John thought he could get away with something that the Lady of the house didn’t like, and then he was to deal with it and make sure that it wouldn’t happen again. Simple, really. Right? Right! It was something he could do with little to no trouble, because half the time the punters abided by the rules and Hunter became somewhat of a ghost, only appearing when trouble kicked off over the next few years.

Twenty six, almost twenty seven years old, and surprised that he’d lasted that long in anyone one job, Hunter made the mistake of stepping in to stop some high Lord from doing some serious damage to a girl named Mary, a new addition to the household. She was a sweet lass that was a little ditzy in Hunt’s opinion but she didn’t deserve the ever living Hell kicked out of her because someone had shot his ... pistol ... too early and in the wrong place. Mary was only eighteen at the time. Not liking it, the gentleman turned on Hunter in a rage but the Mistress of the house stepped in before it got too out of hand and warned the male away with the threat that he’d no longer be welcome in any brothel in the city if he didn’t leave. Luckily, the gentleman had some sense and left. That night, after a talk with the Mistress, Hunter became the unofficial career for some of the younger girls and that suited him fine. The ‘business’ was changing after all; he’d seen it rise up from a tavern where anyone could get what they wanted to something more refined. The year following, Hunter got close to Mary and as unwise as it was, he wouldn’t have changed it for the world. They just clicked. However, the good times weren’t something that just wasn’t meant to be. Lord Jennings came back on evening with his friends and they flashed a lot of money around. The Mistress, Emily as she was known, had no choice but to serve the ingrates, but she warned Hunter to be on the lookout for trouble as well as the more senior girls and staff. Mary was one of the unlucky girls that were called on to serve the gentlemen and while Hunter didn’t particularly like it, he had no choice but to let it happen. It wasn’t until later that night that Jennings changed from a rich snob to something else, something from the pits of Hell itself when the Mistress refused him personal service. For poor Hunter, it was like some of the stories he’d heard on his ‘travel’ made real.

The Mistress and Jennings tore into each other with fangs, two of Jennings friends turned into monstrous wolf like beasts that lunged for the closest living body that was near them, another turned into a snake-man. If that wasn’t bad enough, some of the girls turned to. Great cats attacked the wolf men, and those that didn’t transform tore into them with fangs. It seemed that Hunter was the only human amidst the nightmare, and after a moment’s hesitation he was spurred into action by something that he considered even worse. Mary had been cornered by a rabid creature, some kind of man-dog thing and Hunter didn’t hesitate in trying to defend her. One almighty smack across the back of his head sent him flying into the path of another monstrosity. Jennings. The vampire male had split from the Mistress and left her bleeding and broken on the floor and took after the disorientated Hunter, and the last thing that Hunter saw before the world went black was Jennings fangs.

He woke up three nights later, chained at the wrists and ankles in the houses cellar with no idea what had happened to him or the others. He’d never been to the lower levels of the house before, hadn’t wanted to, but the coffins lining the wall made him tremble. If it hadn’t been for the Mistress Emily who was in a similar position to him and trying to calm him down, Hunter would have found a way to raise unholy hell. The hunger he felt would have driven him to doing it anyway, but from what he was being told there was just something distracting about it. Jennings had turned him to spite the Mistress, who was in fact Jennings own wife and his former fledgling. Talk about having your mind blown open. Hunter had worked for Mistress Emily for nearly a decade and he’d never once thought of her as someone’s wife. He certainly hadn’t thought of her as a vampire either! The nightly sightings had been written off as being selective with her cliental but that was it, especially since she had more than enough people working for her to get whatever was needed during the day done. It was so crazy that it actually made sense to him. Hunter just didn't accept it fully until Jennings finally gave both of his 'toys' an audience and by then it was too late for him and Mistress Emily as they both listened to the Master vampire rage about how he hadn't wanted to take over Emily's life again, but the insults that he got because of her reputation had been too much for him as it had started to affect his business dealings in the city. It was time to bring his wife to heel! Back to her place at his side, even if he had to destroy everything that she had built during their ‘separation’ as he called it.

After Emily was beaten into submission verbally by her husband, Jennings turned on Hunter, simply because he’d stood up for one of Emily’s girls. As a lesson to his new fledgling, Jennings tore the throat out of one of the girls that Hunter had promised to look after in front of both of his ‘children’. The scent of blood drove Hunter wild, pushed him past being human to a place where only the blood mattered. Jennings let him loose and the only thing that Hunter cared about was the blood that was draining from the girl’s throat and he fell on her, feeding on what was left. Emily tried to bring him back to her, back to being human, back to being Hunter, and she almost succeeded by sheer force of will but at the end of the day, Jennings had his claws in Hunter and he also had Emily right where he wanted her and it was like that for nearly twenty years before anything changed. He didn’t go around as Jennings ‘servant’, he became Hunter again, all because he found out that Mary – who had because Emily’s maid more than a prostitute – had become pregnant with a child to one of Jennings shape shifter friends, a weredog, just like she was. What made Hunter more surprised than suspicious was that Mary claimed she was in love with the male, and there hadn’t been any force involved. He had no option but to agree when he saw what she was like around him. If only he knew how Jennings would react ahead of time, maybe he’d have been able to stop his sire for doing something stupid.

The birth was complicated. Mistress Emily had taken over the proceedings as midwife while Lord Archibald paced in the hallway waiting to see if he had a son or a daughter. Hunter did as he was told, fetched water and towels and was the perfect little man servant. It was on his second trip up from the kitchens that he found Master Jennings had returned early from a business trip – much to everyone’s surprise – and had found out what was happening. He flew into a rage unlike Hunter had ever seen before, and turned on the vulnerable Mary screaming and cursing that she was ruining the bed. Archibald and Emily lunged to keep him away from the woman and Hunter was the one that had to finish delivering the baby and even though he had no idea what he was doing and there was a battle raging behind him, between him and Mary, the young shapeshifter was brought into the world kicking and screaming. It should’ve been a happy moment, and it was, in a way, but one moment Hunter was on his feet and the next he was collapsing and clutching at his chest. He didn’t know that Emily had taken Jennings head clean off his shoulders, leaving Archibald to deal with the rest. A life for a life, the baby was alive and Hunter was dying for a second time. It was a good exchange in Hunters eyes. However it wasn't in Emily's. She blood oathed him to herself in a last ditch attempt to save his life and she almost lost him. Almost. To them, Jennings had never returned home that day and the never mentioned him again.

Excitement over, the vampires became unspoken godparents to the child that had been named Thomas, and they watched as he grew up and his parents passed on seventy years later. Hunter was barely past his first century of un-life and could have done anything or gone anywhere, but a bond of friendship kept him there. Even after Emily finally grew bored with watching out for her friend’s children and their children’s children and moved on, Hunter stuck around keeping tabs on the closest thing that he had to a family. He became an unspoken Uncle. Sure, he was sad to see Emily go but he just couldn’t do it, and wouldn’t do it for all the tea in China. The only problem was that since his Mistress had left to find something else to occupy her, Hunter had to be careful. It wasn’t right for a “rogue” vampire to wander into Kiss’ territories unannounced, and feeding in a territory that was controlled by a Master vampire was even more dangerous for him. So he crept around the territory lines, nibbled rather than fed, and vanished when there was any sign of trouble headed his way. It wasn’t a perfect life, but it was his to do with as he wished.

He travelled a bit even though he kept in contact since some of the weredog’s that came and went didn’t seem to like him being close to them or their kin. He dropped out of contact for sixty years at one point because he’d been focused on getting a job and getting some money put away in case he ever needed it, and he did get a bit put away for a rainy day. When he finally came back into contact with the dogs and a lot had changed, Hunter was only glad that he could come back in time to see Grey born and could be in the kids life from the start rather than coming in later and getting growled at by someone. He wouldn’t admit it, but Hunter had been growing tired of everything, those sixty years before Grey’s birth had been tiresome and Hunter hadn’t been able to see the point in trying anymore, but things were oddly different now. So he became Uncle Hunter to Grey and for the first year and a half everything was grand, there wasn’t any trouble that they couldn’t get passed. He should’ve known that it would change though, one night hunters tracked down the family of weredogs and slaughtered them all. Hunter had been out feeding in the main town, rather than staying at the family home that night. He got there too late to save anyone, but he did find Grey stashed away in the cupboard under the stairs. After leaving an anonymous 999 call, Hunter left with Grey; the only thing on his mind was how it would look if the police turned up and found him standing amongst the bodies of his family. It would’ve looked liked he’d done it rather than a roving gang of murderers that pretended to be on a mission from God to destroy monsters

So, they travelled for a bit together. Scotland, Ireland, the States, you name it. It was a bit tricky for Hunter, having to explain why Grey wasn’t in school and what not, but he passed it off as him being in private education. People tended to leave them alone once they heard that, but Hunter – who was going as Jordon at the time – dealt with it and made sure Grey wasn’t affected much. Around about the time that Grey hit fifteen years of age, the kid went through his first shape shift. Hunter was glad of this, even though Grey pretty much freaked out over the fact it was a dog form rather than something fancy like a wolf or bear, but that pretty much sorted itself out when Hunter told him that he turned into a [i]big[/i] dog. Since Hunter had pretty much dragged Grey to the states to make sure no one found out that he was a weredog and could connect him to the family tragedy, it was time to come back home to the UK but not before Hunter paid a few of his old Mistress’s ‘friends’ to find out what had happened all those years before. What was turned up was just a little disturbing to say the least. A rogue sect of Human against Vampires had killed Hunters family all that time ago because of him, and it tore him up inside to learn this.

Four years later, the nightmare came back to finish what was started. Grey was nineteen and Hunter was, well, typical dorky Hunter over a movie night when their little rented house was raided. Hunter told Grey to run as he took one of the humans out before swiftly following. It was only later when they met up on the outside of town to watch their house go up in flames that Hunter realized just how important Grey was to him. It was little too late though, the hunters found them and Hunter threw himself at the lot of them so Grey could runaway and that he’d catch up with him later. What Hunter didn’t want Grey to see was him tearing into the crew of slayers with a rage he didn’t even know existed until he saw their leering grins. Throats game out between fangs, silver bullets hit home weakening him more and more until eventually he was left broken on the floor. Rather than kill him out right like anyone sane would do, they hauled his mangled body to a lock up, told him that he was going to be used as an example for monsters in the area.

Now a vampire can take a lot of damage, they beat him, starved him, and threatened to burn his face off with holy water, you name it, and Hunter dealt with it. He even got a pretty cross shaped scar for mouthing off to a chick that obviously wasn’t getting any at home. It wasn’t until two weeks into this Hell that things got interesting. They started bringing in animals for him to feed off, dogs, cats, rats, hell even some idiot brought him a goat. Rather than feed though, he manipulated the animals even though it cost him. A dog would bite here; a cat would take a swipe at someone’s face. It was worth it because one of the punks came close enough for Hunter to snag him by the throat and tore into it, draining the life from the slayer. All he wanted was the blood at first, but the keys to the pretty jeep and his chains were a bonus. Using the animals as a diversion, Hunter got out of the waterside warehouse and the hell out of dodge. Even though it took him a couple of more weeks to track Grey down, he wasn’t in any state to confront the young weredog. He did however stick close to Grey, more a silent uncle that was heard rather than seen. While he was healing up and Grey was getting on with life, Hunter found out that HAV had found Grey in London. Seeing red, he went straight to Grey’s flat and broke in, he wasn’t going to beat around the bush and told Grey everything that he knew before dragging him out of there and telling Grey’s neighbours that there were trouble makers on the way and that they should call the police because there would be guns! Well, as you can imagine it wasn’t the best reunion and Hunter would’ve done anything to make it better except he couldn’t. All he could do was point Grey in the direction of Jackford with a promise that he’d follow him after he gave the slayers some new tails to chase, and he did.[/SIZE]

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