Author Topic: Joie de Vivre, Beauté de Mortalité  (Read 611 times)

MoonCrower

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Joie de Vivre, Beauté de Mortalité
« on: July 22, 2021, 08:20:55 PM »
Of Pity and Tragedy

As Pierce rested his head gently against the straw pillow, a testament to the inn swallowed by the poverty-stricken slums outside, his mind drifted back to the events and thoughts shared tonight. He sat up suddenly in the bed he rented for the night, it creaking and scuffing the grizzled veteran beneath its legs. In a few moments he had a quill, its blackened feather emitting a sheen from the candlelight, an inkwell, and a blank book he had recent purchased. "I do not wish to forget these thoughts…" he whispered to himself, as if the walls might be prying over his shoulders to see what it is he was writing.

He writes "I spoke of death and undeath at length tonight though in such a disconnected manner."  Pierce nibbles at the tip of the blackened feather as he considers how the topic sprung up. His eyes suddenly glint as he recalls Nill, though he had not asked for her name. He continues writing. "The short mademoiselle, short with reddish hair, and I met on the road from Krofburg. I had found the Southern Forest particularly peaceful this last evening, but the mademoiselle seemed genuinely unconvinced. I asked her why she disagreed, and her response was one I believe many share… a story of clinging to the fine threads of life as they unravel before you and the tree you are hiding behind. The land of mists has much to offer as far as horrors are concerned, afterall. She spoke of her early days of being "newly misted" as the outlander phrase goes, hiding behind trees as the wolves prowled the forest after nightfall."

He plunges the quill back into the inkwell but does not retrieve it; his eyes shut slowly as he considers the rest of the night's events. Ah yes, that's right! Snatching the quill back, he fervently records his thoughts of his discussion with Khalida and Aeric, the clergyman of Kelmevor.

He continues writing. "I was awaiting dawn with my pack ox in the outskirts when I overheard Aeric and another figure speaking of how she was fooled by a vampire with a vendetta against Barovians. This flew me down a deep well of thoughts regarding not only this particular vampire but others as well…

What led them to the moment they were turned? Did they willingly choose undeath? If so, what drove them to that point? Was it grief, despair, tragedy, or hatred? What unfortunate event brought them to undeath if it wasn't willingness?

...so many questions stampeded my mind in such a fleeting time that I cannot even recall them all. It is these unanswered questions, however, that led me to admit I find them to be the most tragic of the undead beings here. From my encounters they are sentient and calculating and not just mindless hunters. I believe I used the phrase 'not just bones and flesh scraping the floors of old crypts' or some such. Aeric seemed to disagree with me, thinking vampires have the choice to step into sunlight to end their cursed existence. I had recalled a disease that wracked the Village of Barovia years ago and armed my next rebuttal with such. I asked him whether he would hand a knife to a victim of such a disease and suggest they end their life before spreading the disease further. That point was made clear, and he backed away from his hard stance. Concerned though that my words may be misunderstood, I made it clear that I have no love for the undead. The sentient live miserably cursed lives and feaster pain amongst the living."


Once again, Pierce slides the quill back into the inkwell and closes his eyes. There was something more that had his mind reeling: Something he could not yet reconcile with. He, once more, sets quill to paper.

"My home, this world, is full of death gods. The Voodan, people of my home, pay appeasement to a loa named The Lord of the Dead. Some clergy of Gundark worshipped (and I wager some still do) a death god named Nerull. It is not often one hears of a death god whose edicts demand its clergy to destroy undead. The undead are tools to most, I believe. If it were not so, then why would the Akiri people not rid their temples of the undead that so often infest them? I have seen the inside of those temples. No… the undead here are tools, but it is not so for this Kelmevor, this deity of another realm worshipped by Aeric. I shall have to learn more, in time, of what makes this one so different from the rest."

At last he dries his quill with a wipe on a dark cloth, seals his inkwell tightly, and slides his book to the middle of a small table to allow the ink to dry. As he lays, his head nestled into the straw pillow, strange and haunting dreams, some as memories of his own past, creep nearer. Before sleep sequesters him from reality, he speaks a final thought aloud…

"Death is beautiful and yet tragic. It makes my heart flutter and weep all at once. I do not und- un-..."
« Last Edit: July 26, 2021, 09:34:12 PM by MoonCrower »
Active Characters:
Inan De'Rethke
Atrayix
Pierce d'Leroux
Sarkith Darskard
Envel'Wyld Tar'Talon

MoonCrower

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Re: Joie de Vivre, Beauté de Mortalité
« Reply #1 on: July 29, 2021, 09:50:38 PM »
Some Humanity Remains

The Lady's Rest was Pierce's resting place on this night... somewhere close and needless of effort from him. As he slammed the room door behind him, turning the jade-hued key in the lock, a soreness overcame him; a soreness overcame him the resonated not only in his bones but near his spirit. He slumped into the hard, unforgiving wooden chair. Retrieving his journal from a bag, he half-heartedly tossed it onto the table in front of him. Oddly enough, or perhaps it was chance beckoning him, the next blank page was revealed. He sat there for minutes, perhaps an hour just staring at the blank page. A sneer grew upon his features like a sickness; contempt welled from him threatening to boil over. He snatched his inkwell and quill from the bag, messily plunging the tip into the well.

As he moves to begin writing, he smears blood across the page... his blood where it had pooled on his wrist. Grumbling he moves to tear that page from the binding but stops short. "No, no...," he thought. "This is fitting." He began writing, words flowing from his quill in anger, contempt, and frustration all at once.

He writes “Where do I even begin? I traveled with a group of to a cabin in the woods. The cabin itself was a cesspool of filth and rot; lives cut short with flesh being eaten dead or alive. You can almost hear the screams, the horrific screams full of raw fear and anguish as life slips through their hands like sand. There was a peculiar little thing that traveled with us with personal decorum of bones. Her teeth were blackened and filed to points. Anyways… long story short we reached the ghoul horde and a particular Palantír was of interest to me. I made the mistake of allowing myself to become angered when she took it without so much as regarding my spoken interest in it. I sauntered off in frustration and met an ambush; sudden pain, grogginess, then darkness… I cannot imagine the dread of never being able to do more. It is a haunting feeling, to be certain. I will speak no more of it.”

Pierce snapped the book closed, dried the quill, and sealed the inkwell. With an ache both in his bones and his soul, he slides into bed to meet a fitful, restless slumber filled with regret.
« Last Edit: July 29, 2021, 10:18:25 PM by MoonCrower »
Active Characters:
Inan De'Rethke
Atrayix
Pierce d'Leroux
Sarkith Darskard
Envel'Wyld Tar'Talon

MoonCrower

  • Outlander
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  • Posts: 83
Re: Joie de Vivre, Beauté de Mortalité
« Reply #2 on: July 29, 2021, 10:17:20 PM »
Almost Made It

He was late. Exhaustion from his numerous deliveries up and down Mt. Baratak had caught him finally; to complicate things further, his exhaustion was also of the mind. A day filled with fighting a stubborn ox along rickety bridges and treacherous mountain paths was strangling his mind and senses. As he approached the beekeeper, well after nightfall, he thought that nothing would keep him from a warm and cozy-enough bed somewhere in Vallaki. Oh how wrong he would soon discover he was! Ten paces from the Beekeepers doorway, Pierce’s senses halted his steps as he caught something in the corner of his eye; this something, just outside of the direct light of his hefted axe was lying unmoving and silent in the road to Vallaki’s southern gate. He slowly approached, the humming axe resting easily on his shoulder illuminating more and more. It was a body without effects… no weapon nor coin purse to be seen, he discovered, as he knelt next to it. “Perhaps it was the wolves prowling about that caught you cornered outside of a locked, city gate,” he mused aloud, glancing nervously over his shoulders. “Or perhaps you were forcefully robbed and left with your life slowly draining from your veins into the ground below you,” he muttered in a hushed tone. “Best not tarry,” he explained to the lifeless corpse. Using his axe for stability, Pierce lofted the lifeless half-elf onto his shoulders. Instead of turning West into the forest, Pierce does the exact opposite: Turns East and pads off into the nearby grove next to the farmstead.

Inside the grove, Pierce props the less-than argumentative half-elf against a tree, head tilted skyward so the unseeing eyes might gaze upon the beautiful, night sky. With a grunt, his body screaming with contempt, Pierce follows suit against another nearby tree. “Mmm…,” Pierce muses, producing a bottle of cheap, Barovian wine and two mugs. “Not fit for kings, mind you, but I wear no crown upon my head,” he chuckled, pouring two mugs of wine and fitting one into the stiffening hands of the male half-elf. “To life and to making our exit from the stage of life, remarkable or… otherwise,” he toasts, half-smirking towards his unresponsive drinking partner. Sipping from the wine, he closes his eyes.

For nearly two hours Pierce sat conversing with the deceased half-elf, but perhaps it was more that Pierce was conversing with himself; perhaps the dead half-elf was merely a conduit for him to search deeper into his own mind. When the bottle of wine ran dry, at last, Pierce hastily delivered the half-elf to the Morninglord temple for Lizuca or another of the clergy to take care of; taking one last glance at the body whose frontside was covered in a mixture of dried blood and cheap wine, Pierce departs the temple to find respite.
Pulling a chair up to his bedside table in his room at the Lady’s Rest, he sat quill to his book… but he wrote nothing at first.

His night ended with a single sentence written and a peaceful night sleep in a warm bed. His journal, left open on the table, read, “Perhaps it best to keep tonight unwritten.”
« Last Edit: July 29, 2021, 11:27:14 PM by MoonCrower »
Active Characters:
Inan De'Rethke
Atrayix
Pierce d'Leroux
Sarkith Darskard
Envel'Wyld Tar'Talon