Of Lead and Steel: The Story and Life of Alix Sinclair Martineau

[BraveSirRobin]

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O f    L e a d    a n d    S t e e l

T h e    S t o r y    a n d    L i f e    o f    A l i x    S i n c l a i r    M a r t i n e a u

An Autobiography

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[BraveSirRobin]

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F o r e w o r d

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D e a r    r e a d e r ,
   
It    is    entirely    possible    that    you    may    be    the    very    first    to    lay     eyes    upon    this    book    other    than    myself.    As    it   is   the   compilation   of    my    life    adventures    and    story,    the    record    can     never    truly    become    a    finished    product    until   I    have    passed    away.    Whether    that    death    be    premature    or    timely,    only    Ezra    and    the    Grand    Scheme   can    truly   know    and    predict.    I    shall,    however,    endeavor    to    strive    to     succeed    at    the    latter    and    write    with    possibility    of    the    former    in    mind.

Y o u r s    f a i t h f u l l y ,
A l i x    S i n c l a i r    M a r t i n e a u

Page I

[BraveSirRobin]

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P r o l o g u e

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My    story    begins    in    the    South    of    Dementlieu,    in    a    lesser    known    City    called,    "Chateaunoir."    I    was    born    to    parents    of    common    birth,    and    into    poverty.    My    Father's    birth    name    is    Jacques-Pierre    Martineau,    and    my    Mother's    Atoinette    Lacereaux.    They    became    wed    in    753,    the    exact    date    of    which    I    am    uncertain.    My    Mother    then    became    Antoinette    Martineau    née    Lacereaux,    and    suspiciously    soon    thereafter,    approximately    nine    months    later,    I    was    born    754.    I    was    told    that    my    Father    and    Mother    remained    married    for    about    a    year    and    a    half    before    he    up    and    left    without    a    single    word.    My    Mother    was    reluctant    to    ever    talk    much    about    him,    other    than    the    fact    that    he    was    worthless    for    leaving    me    entirely    in    her    care    without    even    leaving    a     single   Solar    behind.    A    guilt    that    would    follow    me    all    the    way    until    I    was    a    teenage    girl.
   
My    formative     years    are    rather    unremarkable.    Mostly    spent    at    home    or    out    on    the    streets    playing    with    neighborhood    boys    and    girls.    My    Mother    told    me    that   a    number    of    "Uncles"    would    come    over    to    visit.    It    would    not    be    until    I    was    much    older    that    I    would    learn    what    that    actually    mean't.    When    I    became    old    enough    to    hold    a    violin    I    would    drive    my    mother    mad    by    playing    it    like    a    dying    cat    at    home.    Once    I    had    learned    how    to    play    it     well    enough    to    hold    a    tune,    I    took    to    the    streets    to    play    where    I    would    not    disturb    my     Mother,    or    her    "Uncles."    A    young    boy,    perhaps    a    few    years    older    than    me    took    notice,    and    taught    me    what    he    knew.    He    could    perhaps    see    that    I     was     hungry,     and     that    while    his     playing    netted    him    enough    Solars    to    feed    himself,    my     own    was    almost   entirely    overlooked.     His    name,    I    think,    was    Guillaume.    Once    my    playing    improved,    my    Mother    was    proud   of   my    advancement    and   hoped   that    I    could    get   accepted    into   a   prestigious    troupe    somewhere.    In    truth,    I    felt    as    though    I    did    with   my    voice    what    she    did    with    her    body.    Whoring    out    what    should    be    reserved    for    something    more    special    than    random    bystanders.     I     felt    that    my    talents    could   perhaps    lend    to    me    a    brighter    future,    however    at    the    moment    it    served    to    help    my     Mother     take    care    of    herself    and    myself.

Culturally,    I    grew    up    surrounded    by   the   fervor    of    insurrection    and    Citizen's    Rights.    Universal    Suffrage,    among    other    things,    were    on    the    lips    of    many.    Thus    far    to    the    date,    insurrection    was    a    deathly    concept.    Lord-Governor    Marcel    Guignol    managed    to    keep    the   peace    well   enough,    but   every   now   and    then,    there    was   a    small    protest,    or    a    riot.    In    767,    I    was    Thirteen,    and    word    of    a    failed    insurrection    and    the   looming    advance    of     Falkovnia    on   our   internal    strife    was   abundant.    Around    this    time,    in    the    worker's    district    of    Chateaunoir,    pro-République    music    was    very    popular,    but    one    word    whispered    on    the   lips   of    many.


  Révolution.

Page II

[BraveSirRobin]

Prologue

Two    short    years    later,    the    Lord-Governor    Marcel    Guignol    was    assassinated.    Most    of    the    Dementlieuse    Révolution    ----    also    known    as,    "The    Troubles,"    took    place    in    Port-a-Lucine.    The    few    brave   souls    whose   initial   vision   was    presented    turned    what    was    the    end    of    tyrant    Nobility,    self-aggrandizing    cads    who    had    long    since    forgotten    the    concept    of    Noblesse    Oblige    that    Léon    the    Great    entrusted    the    Nobility    to    know    and    live    by    ----    into    tyranny     as    vile     as     the   Nobility's.     Hundreds,    if    not    Thousands    of    Nobles    were    summarily    executed    by     the     Grand     Assembly's    decree    for     Counter-Revolutionary    activity.    The    streets    of    the    City    of    Lights    ran    red    with    blood    colored    blue,    and    the    backbone    of    our    nation    cared    not     for    it's    unified    defense.    The    People's    National    Army    fought,    and    lost    against    Vlad    Drakov's    Regime,    saved    only    by    fate    itself    that    an    insurrection    took    place    at    home,    in    Falkovnia.    Marking    the    first    true   defeat    of    the    Dementlieuse    against    the    vile   forces    of    Falkovnia.     Hubris    of    common-born    Citizens    such    as    me,   in   myopic    vengeance   against    their    betters   lead   to    a    shame    many    have    not    forgotten,    even    to    this    day.


However,    when    the   Révolution    ended,    all   was    not    lost,    and    several    prominent    Nobles    and    their   Houses    conceded    to    the   conditions   the    common    people    suffered    in.    They    permitted    us    the    right    to    choose    our    rulers,    and     choose    our    destiny.     A    culture    of    Citizen    Civics   surrounded     Chateaunoir,    then,    and    suddenly,    as     poor    and    destitute    as    I    was,    I    was    a    Citizen.    I    was     Dementlieuse.    I     was    something.    I   began    to    write    pro-Revolutionary    music,    and    when    the   Civil   War   started   in   772,    I    was    distinctly    against    the    agenda    of    the    Duc    d'Ameranthe,    Marius    de    Mortigny    and    his    attempt    to    oppose   our    civil    rights.    It     was    around    this    time    that    I    began    to    travel    and    play,    as     far    as   Aquitaine,    and    Port-a-Lucine,     of     the    Heroics     of     the    Company    of    the    Fox,    of    Sieur    Jerome   de   La   Salle,    Chevalier   de   Seimarie    ----    Of    the    Vicomte   de    Roissy    leading   gallant    charges    of    men    with    pikes    and   spears.     Even    Sieur    Remi    Rousseau,    Chevalier   de   Seimarie.    It    was    a    time    of    epics   and   chronicles    that    could   never    truly    be    captured    but    in    the    eyes    of    the    men    and    women   who    were    there.    It    was    a    time   of   glory    and    sacrifice.    Or    so    my    young    and    easily   influenced    mind   thought.


The    Duc    and    his    forces   succeeded   in   taking   the    capital.    My     Mother    passed    away   from    Syphilis.    Suddenly,    I    was    less,    and   a    silly    young   girl   filled   with   the   notions    of    hopeless   romanticism    and   a   future    taken   from   my    hands,    and    a    war    I    was    too   afraid   to    fight    in.    The    men    the   Free-République    venerated   were    little    more    than   criminals   given   station    and    rank.    The     Noblesse    Oblige    that    I    thought    they    represented,    was    false.    They    were   little    more   than   cats   of   a    different   coat.    Though    I    had    briefly    left    the    République    before,    while    the    Civil    War    raged   in    full    gallop.    I    felt    as    though   I   could    no    longer   understand   what    I   should   believe.


My    Mother    did    not    own    land,    she    rented   a   small    space    in    a    local    tenements    building.    She    left    me    just    enough    to    see   her   buried,    and    then    I    had    nothing.    There    was    little    hope,    and    no   future   in    busking    the    streets    with    a    fiddle    and    a    sweet   voice.    I     set    foot   beyond   Chateaunoir,    and    used    the    last    of    my    savings    to    afford   a    carriage   to    the   Mordentish   border.    From    there,    I     travelled,    through   Richemulot    and    Borca.


To Barovia.

Page III

[BraveSirRobin]

Prologue

I    arrived    in    Barovia    after    journeying    through   the    city-scape    of    Richemulot    and    the    Countryside    of    Borca.    It    was    an    interesting    journey,    all    hindrances    considered.    A    Bard    never    finds    herself    without    good    company    across    many    a    tavern    and    her    wages    paid    in    song    and    tale.    I    traveled    through    the    Barovian    Gate    at    Old    Svalich    Pass    and    entered    into    a    tavern    known    as,    "Midway's Haven,"    by    the    locals.    It    is    a    well-equipped    stop    favored    by    a    colorful    cast    of    characters    whom    reside    within.    I    stayed    at    one    of    the    rooms,    and    took    to    the    public    baths    when    no-one    else    was    around,    the    concept    of    public    bathing    being    a    faux-pas    to    the    conservative    Dementlieuse.    It    was    around    this    time    I    overheard    from    a    traveler    coming    from    the    Village    of    Barovia    stating    that    the    Count    had    closed    the    gates    at    Old    Svalich    Pass    once    again,    hindering    any    Eastbound    travel    until    he    deems    it    appropriate    to    resume.    It    seemed    strange    to    me    that    no-one    took    an    upset    to    such    beyond    the    chilling     stares    shared    with    one-another    across    the    tables    as    they    imbibed    a    curious    mixture    of    local    swill    and    exotic    imports    from    along    the    trade    route.    I    found    it    even    stranger    that    the    Count    would    close    the    most    prominent     artery    of    his    nation    seemingly    at    a    whim    and    without    explanation;    This    sort    of    thing    would    have    caused    a    rather    noisy    buzz    back    in    the    République.    I    elected    not    to    linger    on    the    matter    further    and    the    following    morning    I    gathered    my    lute,    my    violin,    and    my    scarce    few    possessions    before    heading    further    Westward    along    Old    Svalich    towards    the    Municipality    of    Vallaki,    having    overheard    the    widespread    rumors    of    an    unusual    melding    pot    of    adventurers    and 
  outlanders    taking    residence    in    the    area.    I    reasoned    to    myself    that    if    any    place    would    be    as    good    as    any    to    lay    low    throughout    the    devastation    of    the    raging    Civil    War    back    at    home,    this    Vallaki    must    be    the    place.


I    reached    for    an    old    brass    timepiece    my    Mother    had    received    as    a    gift    from    one    of    her    clients,    one    I    held    on    to    for    the    sole    sake    of    knowing    the    hour.    It    was    nearing    five    or    six    in    the    evening,    and    the    sun    began    to    crest    the    horizon    at    my    back.    I    had    arrived    at    Vallaki,    a    place    I    had    soon    learned    from    the    locals    was    nick-named,    "The Grey City."    Upon    arriving,    I    found    the   
 accommodations    to    be    as    spartan    as    any    Barovian    tavern,    a    creaky    bed    lined    with    hay    and    rough,    coarse    linen    sheets.    Though    the    poor    lived    in    refuse    in    Chateaunoir    and    to    a    greater    extent,    the    lower    districts    of    Port-a-Lucine,    basic    textiles    and    colorful    clothing    were    in    shorter    supply    among    the    citizenry    or    --    should    I    say,    peasantry,    here    in    Barovia.    The    Count    did    not    appear    to    be    particularly    concerned    with    this    facet    of    his    subjects    and    through    the    signage    I    read    at    every    street    corner,    I    can    only    say    that    the    man    must    not    be    crossed    if    at    all.    His    law    is    a    harsh    one.


At    this    juncture,    I    was    far    from    home    and    without    any    common    Dementlieuse    company,    and    when    I    had    arrived    at    a    quaint    tavern    called,    "The Lady's Rest,"    I    was    fortunate    enough    to    have    come    across    several    of    my    Countrymen,    those    of    an    elevated    status.    Charles,    Majorie,    and    Alphonse    Magnier,    three    siblings    of    a    destitute    Household    situated    out    of    Aquitaine    who    have    traveled    across    the    Western    Core    to    locate    wayward    kin    of    theirs,    a    young    woman    whose    name    has    since    escaped    my    memory    and    whose    Mother    worried    dearly    for    her    safety    in    such    an    uncivilized    backwater.    I    could    sympathize    with    their    plight,    and    I    agreed    to    aid    them    in    finding    their    kin.    A    woman    by    the    name    of    Blanche    l'Destine    had    joined    the    Magniers    and    their    esteemed    company,    seeming    to    initially     sway    the    favor    and    heart    of    young    Alphonse    Magnier,    an    Anchorite    of    the    Third    Revelation    who    had    traveled    with    his    brothers.    Though    soon    after,    I    found    that    Blanche    and    Charles    had    been    bedding    one-another    in    secret    and    to    the    dismay    of    Alphonse,    who    had    been    smitten    by    the    young    woman's    allure.    I    suppose    you    can    change    the    scenery    into    a    more    humble    one,    but    Aristocrats    will    continue    as    treacherous    as    always.    There    were    bigger    issues    to    be    dealt    with    at    hand    other    than    a    young    common    girl    seeking    the    embrace    of    a    noble,    regardless.


Travelling    along    the    roads    of    Richemulot    and    Borca,    I    was    fortunate    to    have    avoided    any    unusual    encounters    --    though     I    had    traveled    often    with    wayfarers    and    strangers    with    arms    and    experience    who     enjoyed    the    company    of    my    song    on    the    road.    In    Barovia,    my    company    had    become    that    of    Aristocrats,    whom    by    their    nature    have    been    left    ignorant    to    the    true    dangers    that    lurk    in    the    shadows    of    Old    Night.    Much    the    same    as    I    was,    in    Chateaunoir.


The    stories    were    true,    all    along.    We    were    none    the    wiser.

Page IV

[BraveSirRobin]

Prologue

At home in Chateaunoir, the young girls and boys were all told stories of blood-sucking Vampires and Werewolves that lurked in the night. Cautionary tales that were regarded as little more than fiction designed to bring us all into line and not linger out past curfew for the young, and to entice and amuse the adults with thrilling tales of gore and gothic horror. When I set foot for Barovia, this odd melding pot in the Southern part of the Core, I never expected for these tales to ring more true here than any other land I'd encountered.


Every night was spent in terror and in vigilance as woefully ill-equipped aristocrats and their retainers found little sleep. I remained wide-awake and in fear for the most part, ravaged by night-terrors and left to little more than a stammer and a head-nod in most conversations. I had brought a shoddy cuirass and a rapier, neither of which seemed very effective against these preternatural creatures, and to make matters worse a Vampire by the name of Macerak, self-styled as, "Macerack the Mighty," had taken a special interest in the Grey City as a staging ground to launch a coup against Count Strahd von Zarovich. Every night was spent in terror, barely able to cross the street from The Lady's Rest Inn to the small temple erected by a local cult dedicated to the worship of the sun -- a thing I found most peculiar upon arrival, but now I see is just the natural result of men and women who are so repressed by the terrors that lurk in the night here. The natural evolution of religion, to worship that of which absolves your greatest fears the most. When the sun rises, these creatures cannot roam among men, and so, the sun is what clearly banishes them to these backwards people. I will never forget the moment I realized that this was the predominant religion in Barovia.


Macerak had absconded with the flame of Charles Magnier, who was ostensibly the head of his family and took to managing the affairs of his two siblings, Alphonse and Majorie. A daring raid was conducted by the Magnier Family and their retainers, in which the Vampire was ousted from a cave located in the southern forests of the Municipality and Blanche was recovered with minor injuries. Macerak proved to be beyond the means of our small party, and though we had recruited from the local stock a handful of new retainers -- most notably a thuggish brute that was known only as, "Grizzle," an Arcanist by the name of, "Jadis Kendara," and a wandering Samurai from Rokushima Taiyoo who was close to the aforementioned two, but whose name has escaped me due to its foreign nature. Grizzle appeared capable of handling Macerak, the most of any of us, but incapable of doing little more than standing his ground with the creature before it would flee by shifting its flesh into mist and escaping. Several sorties were fought with the beast over the course of a week, one of which resulted in my capture by the creature. Though unlike Blanche l'Destine who had been stripped into rags and chained to a stalagmite in a cave, I had been captured and the unliving beast had decided he found me to a comely creature. He had initially set upon taking my virtue, though I had managed to use a silver tongue to ease him from such base pursuits, instead, offering him a resource more precious than unwilling flesh in a world so rife with it. A companion to speak with, for the night, and to hear the true story of, "Macerak the Mighty," and his apparent rebellion against Count Strahd von Zarovich.


It was during this, that I had learned that Macerak was in league with another Vampire -- a Sorcereress -- which by Dementlieuse sensibilities should explain the situation well enough. Vile things that only cause damage with their raw, untamed power. This Sorcereress performed a ritual with a heart that he had ingested which provided him with power and knowledge, suggesting that the Count Strahd von Zarovich was just like him, and that this Sorcereess desired to overthrow him. Macerak was a tribal warrior from a far-away land called, "Toril," of a tribe called the, 'Uthgardt." He merely wished to topple the tribal leader of this place, and found that the Count was the most worthy opponent. I could see the beast in Macerak eyeing my neck, and desiring to drink from me, but a flicker of his humanity shone through and perhaps some small essence of nobility and he allowed me to leave without a scratch on my body when the dawn rose.


Jadis Kendara, I later came to learn, spent her time pursuing the knowledge of this pact and the heart, and instead performed some sort of counter-ritual to set off what I can only describe as the magical equivalent of a flare that the Count would be able to see. This ritual was performed with Charles Magnier and his coterie of retainers at a far-off site, a ruin previously belonging to the ancient Tergs which roamed Barovia. I was with Alphonse Magnier, whom I had broken the news of Blanche and Charles's dalliance with, and he found himself wounded in face of the sleight by his brother. The two had feuded over the matter, and I fear had never reconciled since -- however, Macerak had struck at the height of Alphonse's melancholy and his melancholy quickly shifted to choler and recklessness. It is at this point I should mention that we had found their wayward kin and it turns out she took a lover from the same tribe that Macerak hails from, but one that had not turned to the Legions of the Night for succor. This man, whose name I have likewise forgotten with time, took up arms against Macerak with myself and Alphonse Magnier in the pivotal moment of my journey to Barovia.


Macerak had ambushed us, and Alphonse took to his choler and engaged him with suicidal, zealous and intent to become a martyr in his pain. I joined the fray alongside him, and this Uthgardt Tribesman. We engaged him, and without much surprise, had all but been defeated. I had fallen to the ground, my precious lifeblood ebbing from my wounds before I heard an unusual voice from the darkness.


"I am the Ancient. I am the Land. You dare attempt to usurp ME?!"


I felt hands gripping my shoulders, and the pain-neutralizing sensation of curative magic wash over me. I came to my wits, to witness the Count Strahd von Zarovich and Macerak engaged in a duel. The Count's blade burned with a red, Vorpal energy unlike anything I had ever witnessed. His sylvan features were grey and sickly, and his eyes red and without much clue as to the location of his iris. He dressed like a Dementlieuse aristocrat of two centuries ago, with a long flowing cape of black lined with red beneath and a large, gauche gold-rimmed amulet with a ruby resting as the dominating feature. Macerak was a formidable foe, even for the Count as the Count was wounded severely in the exchange. Much like Macerak, I had learned through the Count's maneuvers that they shared the same lineage, and that what Macerak had been told was true. They were both creatures belonging to the Night, and suddenly the despondent Hell that Barovia was, locked in stagnation and oppressed in time became wholly logical. The people here feared this man, because he was no man. He was not a Devil, either, but that is neither here nor there. He may as well be to these people, because he was a Vampire.

Macerak had err'd, and the Count Strahd von Zarovich had impaled a wooden stake through his ribcage, into his heart. Macerak fell, paralyzed onto the dirt as Charles Magnier and his coterie of retainers arrived to the scene, perhaps expecting this as the result of their actions in the Terg ruins. All of us erected a picket surrounding the fallen man, and the Count Strahd von Zarovich intructed us to watch the man until dawn, when the sun would take him and he would no longer trouble us, who through a force in his voice I was unfamiliar with, stated in no uncertain terms, that we were his Subjects, and we were under HIS protection. It was unusually gallant, for a Vampire, and I never thought I'd meet one that seemed so concerned with the affairs of foreign commoners in his domain to slay a minor rebel in personal combat. But perhaps that's just his flair. I'll never know, I suppose.


Macerak was reduced to ash come dawn, and soon thereafter the Count Strahd von Zarovich opened the Old Svalich Pass and thoroughfare returned as normal. Barovia had become a place of nightmare for me, and a place I'd rather never return to if I could help such. I remained for a time, and learned the local tongue. I met a few people, a Borcan by the name of Luca Barbarigo, a Garda by the name of Teresca Mitrea, who would later become the former's Wife, and my first love, a Templar by the name of Leomont Friont. Though my time in brief had been pleasant, if difficult dealing with the Church's outlook in Barovia, I feared that it my paths with my lover were not aligned. I could only suffer the regressed, illiterate backwater of Barovia for so long, even if some of the characters I had met here were extraordinary against the backdrop. The Civil War had ended, and the papers say that the rebels won, lead by the Duc d'Ameranthe Marius de Mortigny but rumors of a Falkovnian incursion were spreading like wildfire, even to Barovia. It seemed as apt a time as ever to return back, a journey that took me some time to achieve. Leomont and myself went separate ways, though I shall always remember him fondly, I fret he shall not the same as I, for I broke his heart.


Back home, to Dementlieu.


Editor's Note: Due to erosion on my previous typecast impression plate, I have been forced to acquire a new one. Due to my current political situation within the République de Dementlieu at the time of this writing, I am forced to acquire one of a different make than that I had brought from home. As a result, this page, and all following entries will be in a tighter, less ornate format. Ezra-willing, I will be able to reprint this in more appropriate spacing if I should survive my impending deployment.

Page V

[BraveSirRobin]

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C h a p t e r  O n e:  V i v e  l a  R é p u b l i q u e

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After a lengthy journey from Barovia, back through Borca and Richemulot, across the Mordentish border and into Dementlieu, I returned to Chateaunoir first. I tried to set down roots again, and I began to strum my lute and play my violin on the street corners but found that in wake of the Civil War's devastation, Chateaunoir was humbled and few had the Solars to spare on a Bard performing on the streets. Many of the boys and girls I grew up with had perished in the fighting and many of the families I once called neighbors had either left Chateaunoir or had perished in the resulting famines. I soon began to grow hungry as my resources dwindled and I lead back Westward through the Countryside, finding burned out villages and soft-dirt mounds where mass burials had taken place for the fallen. The stench of blood and death was high on the winds and rumors were abound of roving bands of looters numbering in the hundreds taking lesser fortified settlements by storm.


The République had been shattered and many of our more civilized citizens had been reverted to base animals, searching to fulfill their basic requirements for survival. In my travels, I was fortunate to have crossed the path of an ex-Gendarme who had resigned after the war and returned back to Chateaunoir to see his family, only to find them dead. He was despondent and resigned, but skilled with his rapier. He went by the name, "Guillaume l'Antoine," and served to the rank of Caporal in the final days of the conflict, loyal to the Council, rather than the Covenant -- a thing he shared with me only after I'd begun playing a tune on the roads that was reminiscent of the uprising of '69. When we made it to Port-a-Lucine, we parted ways. I never saw Monsieur l'Antoine again, but our shared talks and stories on the road were ones that left an indelible mark upon me, and brought me to some shame for my cowardice when I fled Chateaunoir to avoid the war, rather than enlisting. A detail I avoided mentioning for fear of his response.


Upon my arrival, I found myself immediately welcomed by a local celebrity by the name of Verinne van Haute, a Maitresse whom had been given the Honorific by the Regent, the Duc d'Ameranthe himself, for her works. She was invasive, and even offered to shelter me in her Theatre to avoid the draft for the war with Falkovnia, but I found myself bristling at the notion of a second act of cowardice. However that may be, Verinne had become a friend over time, and I welcome her as such. She was forlorn when I told her that I would be joining the Gendarmerie Nationale de Dementlieu to pursue a better place for myself in society, but she was ultimately supportive and seemed to favor the Gendarmerie greatly following a close friendship she nurtured with a Caporal in the service who had perished on patrol following the Civil War's end.


I wasn't entirely certain how I would handle the military life. I didn't see myself as disciplined, or willing to deal with it. I was a coward, and I couldn't stand the stench of blood. All the same, I proceeded to find a Gendarme on patrol by the name of Yvette Sallembier, a veteran of the Civil War and an ex-Compagnie du Renard member -- Company of the Fox, in the trade tongue -- who took me to her office to perform an interview.


Service, Honor, and Duty.

Page VI

[BraveSirRobin]

Vive la République

My meeting with the recruiter took place at the crack of dawn, roughly six-thirty in the morning. Yvette Sallembier was a young woman, a few inches shorter than myself with a musket slung over her shoulder and queerly blue painted lipstick which seemed to mute the blue of her eyes as a consequence. Her blue coat, and blue cloak, and blue cavalier along with her blue duty book seemed to set the tone for this meeting. The Gendarmerie Nationale was very, "blue," and it would become a thing I would taste, smell, and see in my sleep for the months to come. The interview went rather naturally, an ongoing discourse regarding my motives for joining and my skills I bring to the table. How many languages, where was I born, was I known criminal, so on and so forth.


Once it had all concluded, she showed herself rather eager to have me in the service. A woman by the name of Agnès Gauthier, an Anchorite of Ezra and former Toret of Ste. Mere-des-Larmes had risen to the provisional rank of Caporal-Chaplain within the service, though my application was personally approved by the Lieutenant of the divison, a woman I would come later to both fear, yet call friend, Natasha Messier, the Comtesse d'Seimarie. I was issued the standard kit of a Gendarme, which included a blue cavalier, a coat with silvered buttons, ornate white-braided epaulettes, a rapier with a solid-dome cup, white cavalry breeches, leather cavalry boots and for the women, a blue sash. I was given a bunk in the barracks and told to attend my first training with Gendarme Yvette Sallembier come the morning, where I would learn to handle a firearm and follow commands.


I went to bed exhausted, and arose even earlier the next morning. A loud, blaring signal whistle was sounded in my ear by my instructor Gendarme Yvette Sallembier at five in the morning, far earlier than I had expected. My hair was a mess, and I didn't even have time to braid it before I was told to get my equipment from the lockers and join her in the basement firing range of the facility. I arrived thereafter with a Gearling Model No. 04 Service Pistol and loose bit of powder and shot, where I was walked through the process of loading and firing a firearm at a target. I was instantly caught off-guard as the young woman began shouting commands and instructions at me in a tone of voice far beyond civil discourse, and being the young, stupid girl that I was, immediately turned around and admonished her for shouting in my ears at five in the morning.


I then proceeded to push myself off of the fine tiled floors of the training room nearly twenty times, before I was immediately ordered to perform the same process with my now noodle-like appendages numbed. I attempted to do so, however, and took aimed, and thank Ezra for the thick, white gloves that they issue us Gendarmes, because the pistol belched a burst of hellfire upon my hand in a misfire, the powder load touching off back through the touch-hole of the firing pan rather than maintaining pressure. I dropped the pistol and clutched my hand as I realized this was going to be the first of many, many failed attempts to manage this sport correctly. But it was one I intended to master with all due patience.


Once the matter of musketry had been handled, my now wounded hand wrapped in bandaging and aloe salve to ease the burn wounds, I was sat down in the main library of the Gendarmerie as my instructor proceeded to inundate me with the history of half a dozen Noble households I was likely to encounter on patrol, the recent history of engagements in the Dementlieuse Civil War, matters of internal military decorum when handling addressing superiors who also hold titles of Nobility or Honorifics. Then, the matter of ensuring I understood how to handle speaking to titled Nobility in the streets. Several hours later, my first day had finished in training and I was sound asleep, but this same ritual would repeat for upwards of a month, before I finally graduated as a Gendarme over a month later with the blessing of Lieutenant la Comtesse de Seimarie and Caporal-Chaplain Agnès Gauthier. I was finally a full Gendarme, and it was one of the proudest moments of my life. I felt like I had power to help people, and protect my friends and family from the ravages of the barbaric looters that roamed the Countryside, or to help my community. For the first time in my life, I was a woman with power to control my own fate, and with something that felt close to a family in the fraternity of the Gendarmerie.


Then within my first week of being a Gendarme, Maitresse Verinne van Haute was murdered.

Page VII

[BraveSirRobin]

Vive la République

The Grand Scheme works in mysterious ways, and this has never been more clear to me than when I found a number of Ezrites belonging to the Western Barovian Congregation in the Capital, in Port-a-Lucine, and whom of which were indicted in the murder of Maitresse Verinne van Haute. Caporal-Chapelain Agnès Gauthier had murdered her in the basement of the Theatre de la Cathedrale, and by all accounts had cornered her and impeded her escape before convincing her under what I would call duress to allow a, "Rite of Redemption," to be performed. The Maitresse Verinne van Haute's lover had been present, and forbidden by her to interfere, before Verinne had lowered her head, fearful of recourse from the Government as this matter appeared to be sanctioned by it. The Caporal-Chapelain decapitated her, then, and later that evening I arrested her and placed in her in a cell.


The facts surrounding the case were slowly gathered, and melancholy filled the air of a city previously celebrating the end of the war, as one of the prominent figures of the city's entertainment had perished under such harrowing circumstances. I was given the case personally, and I had compiled it to a painful degree of detail. I joined this service to do just this thing, and while I couldn't save Verinne, I had made it my solemn goal to avenge her death through the system. Her case, however, was one more rare and one I never thought I'd see the courts entertaining.


The Caporal-Chapelain had allegedly received orders from the Comtesse d'Azerac Michelle de Froissart directly to see Verinne van Haute either sent to the Chateaufaux Sanitarium if she were willing, or to be illegally extradited to the Barovian Zarcroft Asylum if she refused. She had been a Wererat, or a Therianthrope if you're of the scientific bent. Though she was good-natured, and she sought a cure for herself, she was not a friend of the Church as in previous days she had entered into open banter with Ste. Mere-des-Larmes, at which point Toret Armand Pineau had publicly beseeched the Provisional Government to take action against her. The Provisional Government was widely religious, moreso than the proto-industrial and largely irreligious former Council had ever been, and so the slow overlap of Church and State began as the Comtesse d'Azerac quietly and without further sanction proceeded to send Gendarmes to illegally imprison or extradite a Dementlieuse Citizen. Now, it should be said likewise that the Caporal-Chapelain was a very close friend of the Maitresse, and I do not think the Maitresse ever saw this sort of betrayal coming towards her. Once, it was written publicly prior to this that the Caporal-Chapelain was a tool of the Covenant, and would do any immoral act for them at the Duc's beck and call. This was written in a publication by a member of the Society d'Erudites, named, "Compagnon d'Erudits." The Maitresse wrote the Compagnon d'Erudits to issue a retort to the anonymous entry they posted slandering the Caporal-Chapelain, under the nom-de-plume, "Arnaude Lafayette," condemning such baseless accusations and labeling them a coward. The irony of the foreshadowing of her fate was never lost on me.


The matter was taken to trial, but the trial was a farce by any stretch of the imagination. The three accomplices to the matter were Toret Luca Barbarigo, Acolyte Teresca Barbarigo, his Wife, and one Templar Zivon de'Scusa, a Borcan locked into an iron mask since his youth. The latter two were present at the scene, and held some duplicity in Gauthier's actions, but the Husband, wasn't even there. If he was an accomplice by any measure, I could not see it, and I made a motion to have his charges dismissed. His Wife and the Templar, however, were banished for five years for their part in the murder. Agnès Gauthier was stripped of all rank, and further stripped of all ecclesiastical rank and defrocked by Toret Armand Pineau, through his authority as acting Bastion, and presumably a favor pulled with the Praesidius in Levkarest to see her made a Pariah in all congregations. She was no longer permitted to wear the colors of the faith, nor act in its name. She was sentenced to a mere three years in the Isle d'Orlean, a conviction that wouldn't even take effect until the end of the Falkovnian Incursion in the East. In the interim, she was to serve as medical aid for the war effort. In the process, it was learned she was the Duc's fiancée and the soon-to-be Duchesse d'Ameranthe. Suddenly, the sham trial made a lot more sense to me, that someone had gotten to her in the cells. There was a gap in her transfer from two cells, and her demeanor changed entirely after. During the trial, she forsook her fiancée's cause and espoused Universal Suffrage and claimed that an end needed to come to the Provisional Government. It took months for me to figure that one out.


But I failed, and I think in that moment I stopped having so much faith in the Provisional Government, when I stopped caring so much about how they claimed they were going to bring us all out of the dark and bring order and peace back to the République. The courts were allegedly purged, but the corruption was still apparent. During the sentencing, the Magistrate had issued some of the blame of the Comtesse d'Azerac, Michelle de Froissart, who was acted in steed of the Regent and the entire Council of Brilliance. One woman with so much power. Later that night, the Magistrate was dragged from his home and murdered, the matter was never even looked into my the Gendarmerie, and it was above my paygrade as a Gendarme to investigate on my own. All of this settled poorly in my stomach, a festering feeling of betrayal and disappointment that influenced my career as a Gendarme in ways I couldn't foresee at the time.


Several months later, the National Militia was re-activated.

Page VIII

[BraveSirRobin]

Vive la République

The majority of the earliest days of my career were relatively uneventful and isolated. After Agnès Gauthier, Lieutenant la Comtesse de Seimarie was hesitant to further promote from within. A few months passed by and I was left largely unsupervised beyond my patrol logs. I erected checkpoints and for all intents and purposes acted as an autonomous unit that received occasional oversight from the brass. I did my duty alongside my recruiting Gendarme, Yvette Sallembier, and often with a taste for glory that I could never find in the Capital. Following the Civil War, it fell largely silent other than interloping foreigners who had no interest in obeying our laws. I developed a friendship with the Red Vardo Traders, an Agent of Sithican Elven blood by the name of Cyren Silvanos who he himself had an ambitious streak that eventually saw him to Captain. He became a fast friend and close ally, and when I found myself short of the aid of Gendarmes, he and his closest Vardo Agents would aid me in enforcing the law. He often claimed it was simple quid-pro-quo, but I believed in many ways, the Sithican found my company welcome and perhaps had eyes for me. Ones I could never stomach to return, being unaccustomed to the presence of Elves, and far less ones with his kinds of scars.


Cyren Silvanos aided me in acquiring my equipment I needed. He taught me to spy, and avoid using my uniform for when I wanted real information, and he taught me how to kill -- Though I must confess, I never was a killer. I hated shedding blood, it was something of the squeamish little girl in me that was never exorcised in the crucible of Gendarme training I endured. If I had to, if I must, I would. However it was often a thing of reflex, rather than premeditated action. This would come to be a fatal flaw of mine, that when I thought about it, I could never pull the Ezra-damned trigger. Even my public executions, I had another Gendarme pull the lever in all but one case -- and that one, I had taken personally.


The moment this friendship shined the brightest, was during a checkpoint incident where two outlaws had refused to identify themselves. I was unable to identify them on sight alone, and when pressed they attacked my patrol. The only back-up I had was pelted by the acid rain of a foreign cultist, brought from dark clouds summoned by alien magic. I blew my whistle, and I used the limited knowledge of the arcane I possessed to return fire and I held the ground, engaging both of them whilst maintaining my distance. However, I hadn't brought more than thirty shot for the day's patrol, and soon I had run out. In that moment, from the shadows, three Red Vardo Agents revealed themselves and began to engage the outlaws and forced them to flee immediately. Captain Cyren Silvanos had come with his people, and from that point forward, I knew I had friends in the shadows, if not the light.


Cyren Silvanos offered me luxury with the Red Vardo Traders, and bought scavenged items from me at prices he didn't even pay his own people. I soon found myself well-equipped, and with over a million Solars sitting in the bank. I had made friends with aristocrats and loved and lost. Eventually, I had began to grow discontent with the Gendarmerie, feeling I was not recognized for my efforts and took to exploring other options. I decided I would begin to expand a budding merchant empire on the side, for that if my efforts as a Gendarme do not speak, surely my swelling bank account shall. To this end, I purchased a heavily damaged Carrack by the name of, "La Grace de Damon," and proceeded to invest my entire life savings into it. I repaired it, and I armed it. I hired a crew, and I found unique men to aid me in leading it. I took a lover that was a woman, by the name of Clara Estier, whom I would later come to despise, and I made her my First Officer. I met a foreign man by the name of Norman Jacob Smith, and made him a Marine, and soon, the Sergeant of the Marines of my vessel. Though my friendship with Estier would fade away into obscurity, my friendship with Norman budded into something akin to family and my closest friend in the République. Even when I was a poor one to him.


By now, seven months had elapsed since my enlistment and I had risen from rags to riches, and then invested in property and commerce. Just as my plans began to bear fruits, Capitaine Alphonse DuPré had brought me into his office to discuss a recent development in the East. The National Militia was being re-activated, and in lieu of any capable officer, I was to be promoted to Caporal, and made to raise and train a regiment to go East.


My first commission.

Page IX

[BraveSirRobin]

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C h a p t e r  T w o:  C h a s s e i g n e  D e f i a n t

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Adjusting to life as an Officer was difficult, at first. I was accustomed to being utterly irrelevant and invisible to the general public whilst simultaneously hating the fact and desiring to change it. Once I had achieved my own center-stage before the aristocratic crowds, I found myself hating the fact and desiring to go back to obscurity. It was a vexing paradox that to this date I still contend with.


I had brought many of my crewmen from La Grace de Damon into the National Militia including the foreigner Norman Jacob Smith, who was an Englishman displaced by the Mists and found the culture of the Dementlieuse to be a comfortable simulacrum to his home of London, England. He did everything that we Dementlieuse wish all foreigners would do, and he welcomed our culture into his heart openly and with a burning patriotism for the République. He learned our tongue, adopted our fashions, and espoused our ideals of enlightenment and the arts. Among Militiamen, he was the finest. Several aristocratics of a patriotic bent, including one Anchorite by the name of Jacinth de la Rochenoire had likewise enlisted within the National Militia to perform their duties to the State, and after a month of training my men were sent with me on a special operation to defend what was designated as a supply depot by my superiors.


Intelligence indicated that elite companies of Falkovnian Talons were performing raids on critical military infrastructure necessary to supply Ameranthe during the siege, and the supply depot known as, "Chasseigne," was a target due within the day. Civilian laborers were reported to have been evacuated at the time of my briefing, and we were sent to lay a trap for the Falkovnian Talons, to bloody their beaks and break their morale as they clearly intended to do to ours. A smuggler was hired to take us to Chasseigne, who owned a ship of a shallow draft and knew the rivers well enough to avoid detection. Upon arrival, however, nothing was as it should have been.


Grotesque effigies of carnage and destruction were erected along the shoreline of the docks of Chasseigne. The civilian population had quite clearly not been evacuated, and carnage and destruction was left in its wake. Men and women were impaled through large, vertical stakes and spread-eagled upon them, exposing their internal organs to the air as their lungs lay upon their shoulders. The expressions frozen upon their faces in death tell us that they suffered through all of it. One woman was left alive, left gibbering next to an old abandoned home. The supply depot as we were told appeared to be a fishing village with only a few homes, and everyone within it was dead. My keen ears listened to the tree lines, and it was clear that we had an observer in the woods, one keen to keep his distance. The Falkovnians had already come and the stage had been set. Our ship wouldn't return until dawn, and I sometimes wonder if they knew that. During the day, I instructed my Militiamen to begin entrenching the area. Cheval-de-Frise were erected, and traps were set for the inevitable approach.


As the sun waned, and dusk came, at midnight the cries of Falkovnian Talons filled the air as they charged our ranks. The first wave nearly overwhelmed us entirely, the full brunt of their numbers hitting us at once. Fifty or sixty of the bastards, all in ranks, against a dozen of loosely trained Militia, and only two Gendarmes. We took heavy losses, and critical injuries on more than one number. I was rendered unconscious for a short time, before a number of patriotic Citizens still surviving the attack took arms and distracted the Falkovnians. A Citizen gave me their last bit of medicine, a curative tonic, before stating that one of our Militia had sacrificed themselves to divert the Falkovnians. Our numbers dwindled slowly as time went on, and with the touch of the Arcane I managed to fortify myself against their blades.


I wouldn't die in Chasseigne, I told myself. Even if it seemed I was sent here to die.

Page X

[BraveSirRobin]

Chasseigne Defiant

The first two hours were the most harrowing of the engagment. Our traps set for the Falkovnian Talons were done so with myopia, as they had used their captured slaves and prisoners from this village or the surrounding ones to drive through our sapper's work and sacrificed them as chaff. Those who weren't sacrificed as chaff were gunned down by our musket line, save for half a dozen or so survivors I managed to save through holding our fire when I couldn't stand the sight any further. We put them off onto the edge of the pier and formed a defensive parameter keep the Talons away from them as wave after wave of armored, Zweihänder-toting soldiers cleaved through our fortifications and laid low several more of our Militia. At this point, only half of our original force was still in a condition to fight and the night had only half passed. Members of the Radiant Tower, an institution belonging to the Falkvonian Ministry of Magic began to appear in the ranks of the enemy lines as they rushed after us. At first, the Radiant Tower's Mages would halt time and prepare the Talons to break our lines, but eventually they began to use their magic to blast apart our entrenched defenses and any subsequent attempts of sapping with traps as they had run out of civilian chattel to throw at our lines. I was the most capable of my men, skilled with rapier and pistol and blessed to have been born with arcane talents as I weaved a song of Steel and Lead into the Falkovnian ranks.


Of the fifty or sixty Talons that were deployed, and the dozen or so members of the Radiant Tower, I counted close to twenty or thirty dead by my hand, and half a dozen or more of the Radiant Tower by the shot of my pistol. The sun soon rose, and our ship had arrived. Every civilian we attempted to save had perished in the fighting -- the ones we had secured at the docks lost their wits and tried to run directly into the Falkovnian lines to escape, slaughtered to the man. The gibbering survivor from when we first arrived, despite our best attempts to keep her safe inside of the small house we took defense near, had bitten her own tongue clean off and bled out in the basement. We came out here to become Heroes, but we didn't much feel like that. We felt scarred by the ravages of war, the flickering images of the effigies erected by the Falkovnians burned into our retinas as if we stared into the sun itself and couldn't escaped the distorted after-glare in our eyes when we closed them. We were told that our efforts in Chasseigne heavily damaged Falkovnian morale, and subsequent raids in the area were sparse. I returned home to a secret lover that tried to talk me into leaving the Gendarmerie and hated everything about my duty to my country, and soon later the scars of Chasseigne drove us apart as a crippling drug addiction overtook her. Our differences became irreconcilable, and our friendship forever destroyed with our love.


I was promoted for my gallantry, however, and awarded a red sash to wear about my waist. I was a Sargent, to many a Hero, and widely respected within the Gendarmerie Nationale itself for my patriotism. I found myself being given access to more closed-door meetings about the war effort and local politics than I ever imagined a Gendarme should be. An old friend, Raymonde Tremblay had come back into town, and I began to court a Nobleman by the name of Jean-Claude Alphonse de la Rochenoire. Raymonde Tremblay arrived in the Capital to try to find some sort of financial solution for her family, her brother, Vencelas Tremblay, and the Tremblay Family name as a whole. Tragedy had afflicted them just as much as myself, and on account of being an old friend of mine, I felt opportunity on the horizon for both myself, and her. Tremblay Family Sugar-Cane without a ship to transport it, and the recently established Martineau Maritime Acquisitions & Shipping Concern without a current shipping contract.


The Grand Scheme works in mysterious ways, though it seems to have a sweet tooth.

Page XI

[BraveSirRobin]

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C h a p t e r  T h r e e:  W e i r  L i g h t s  o f  S o u r a g n e

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Raymonde Tremblay was the sort of character you'd have to meet to truly appreciate the influence of her charisma. The first time I met her was during the d'Orsine-Travere wedding, when my old friend, Espen d'Orsine was to be wed to Danielle Travere. She arrived as an unusual figure for certain by any local Dementlieuse sensibilities. She was dark-skinned, but lighter than ethnic Souragniens that I had met. Stunning blue eyes of azure and full, red lips that hid behind them impeccably white teeth. She wore a tanned dress that was utterly without color, but somehow played better off her skin tone than any native Dementlieuse could hope to achieve. At her side was a Borcan swordsman whose name I have forgotten but as I understand serves these days as a member of the Gendarmerie Nationale, a man she had hoped to bring into her service as a retainer.


That was when our friendship started, and what was to become the anchor of our future business partnership. She had returned to the Capital with more grounded intentions of setting up roost and finding the contacts and resources she needed to overcome her brother's ineptitude at managing her Household affairs. House Tremblay would soon become bankrupt if she did not find a solution, and the first which had come to her mind was that of holding a debutante ball. At this time, I had been with Jean-Claude Alphonse de la Rochenoire for just under a month, and whilst I found his company charming, I cannot lie that the easy path to nobility did not strike me as attractive as well. Though, it left me utterly powerless should he prove to be a poor Husband, and I felt that it tying my destiny to someone else's status and riding their coat-tails was beneath me. After-all, I was Alix Sinclair Martineau, a self-made woman of financial prosperity and a Gendarme of no insignificant rank. I was destined for greatness, and it was something that I think Raymonde Tremblay saw in me in many ways.


I talked her out of that line of pursuit, and instead offered her a business proposition and revealed that it I owned a shipping concern. House Tremblay had made its wealth off of the importing of Souragnien Sugar-Cane, and the Maillard Family Plantation in Souragne yielded several hundred tonnes of the crop every season. However, the family lost both the founder of its dynasty, Leopold Tremblay, and his sole vessel during the Civil War. Basile Dupuis-Maillard, Raymonde's Uncle, currently managed the plantation and sailed over from Souragne on a passenger ship to meet with her regarding the matter and was staying in the Governor's Hotel, only a few doors down from my own extravagant suite on the third floor. As if to show him the capability of my crew, I tasked my bosun, Monsieur Crebin of the House Couvreur -- A family of navigators and shipmasters that found themselves in decline after the Civil War -- to sail to the Lamordian Coast and bring back the finest export of Lamordian Rum for this year. He returned with the Lemonvine Distillery's label for the year, 775 B.C., and to our delight, he was impressed. I later donated every cask of the stuff we acquired to the Theatre de la Cathedrale, which Raymonde had become the assistant-manager of beneath Francette de la Rochenoire.


The Tremblay Family had decided to give us a contract to ship the sugar-cane, and it seemed to be the beginning of a beautiful partnership.

Page XII

[BraveSirRobin]

Weir Lights of Souragne

At this juncture in my life, I began to feel the first tears at my personal interests being tested against that of my duties to the République. Capitaine Alphonse DuPré pulled me into his office and began to question the nature of my business and how it may effect my duties. A number of my marines had been about the city in their armor and their uniforms, sporting the crew's colors and holding some pride. As it turns out, the aristocratic circles I had been serving and meeting with so frequently began to bristle at my success and how upstart I appeared. Now I had effectively retainers in the streets wearing colors belonging in theory to a company, but ultimately, I was the poor man's aristocrat in their eyes. I will never forget the words he spoke to me. That although Nobles have done what I am doing, and Nobles often veer from their duties to pursue their personal desires, I am not a Noble. I am wearing the uniform with the ranking insignia that is often worn, by Nobles. I cannot show weakness or fault before these people, I have to be better than them. I have to be without fault, or they will eat me alive because people like me threaten their status and place in the world, born with a silver spoon in their mouths. For centuries, common men of wealth have had men in liveries guarding their doors under the guise of merchants and for centuries, the aristocracy has despised their wealth and influence without title and social status.


After this, I was forced to forbid my men from wearing their colors in casual day-to-day life in the Capital unless strictly on duty, and reinforcing that they must identify themselves as part of Martineau Maritime Acquisitions & Shipping Concern, rather than simple, "Martineau's men," lest I draw their ire. Further complicating matters, the journey to Souragne was put off for several months due to the pressing nature of the Falkovnian Incursion and my inability to leave my post to oversee the journey. Raymonde Tremblay did not take kindly to the delays and began to fret that by the time the commerce was able to take place, House Tremblay would already be in ruins.


My courtship with Jean-Claude Alphonse de la Rochenoire came to an end as we appeared to have drifted entirely apart. After several months of him remaining away from the Capital, and without returning my letters, I moved on. Though what I never expected was to move on again to another woman, and another courtship held in a coveted secret from the public eye. Raymonde and I grew close, and we fell madly in love with one another. It was a beautiful thing to us, and a secret closely kept that we had fortunately avoided scandal with. Few were aware of it, other than my superiors who kept the matter quiet out of respect for me and I found that to be the most humbling aspect of the fraternity that Gendarmes shared. Though perhaps it was simply because the one who knew had no benefit to gain out of ousting me.


As time went on, an incident transpired that threatened the security of operations in the Eastern Front. A Gendarme had stolen sensitive documentation pertaining to Dementlieuse troop movements in the East and was ransoming it back to the République for half a million Solars. Rumors had it that he was somewhere out in Souragne, which given the current problem of my own personal and business pursuits in Souragne, I found to be exceedingly convenient. With a bit of persuasion, I convinced the Capitaine to assign me to the role and issue me a small Gendarme taskforce to supplement my crew, and I would take my own vessel to Souragne to hunt the traitor. Upon receiving the news, Raymonde's eyes lit up like the stars in the night sky, and I began to feel like DuPré's warnings about mixing my business with my duty weren't so harrowing after-all. It just requires more discretion, lies, and nuance than I had initially expected.


Within a few short days, La Grace de Damon had been loaded down for the journey and my Gendarmes and crew were brought onboard, along with Raymonde Tremblay to act as a translator with the locals who speak predominantly Souragnien, a tongue I'd not yet learned.

Page XIII

[BraveSirRobin]

Weir Lights of Souragne

In preparation for the journey, Raymonde had returned to Choissy and gathered a few of the old nautical charts used by her father during his initial voyages to Souragne. Marked within these were the straits of corsairs to avoid and the appropriate routes to take to find the Mistway that would lead us to Souragne. This would be my first voyage at sea, and I would come to rely heavily on the expertise of Monsieur Couvreur to safely navigate the Mists themselves by instrument alone.


In Souragne, the laws are curious. In the Souragnien Voodan Pantheon, the Lord of the Dead is the Chief Loa, and serves to administrate Souragne directly. The laws of men vary greatly from province to province, and the sight of two lovers of the same sex was not unheard of or admonished among them, for the worship of Madris Orundi,  The Dancer, a loa that pertained to matters of love, cared little for the shape or form love took place in. As such, and with the deeply superstitious populus, they would not deign to make a law to contradict the loa themselves. However, it is the law regarding the practice of the arcane sciences that is the strangest to me. In direct contradiction to Dementlieuse values, the only form of arcane magic permitted is that of Necromancy, and all else is banished. Having witnessed the Lord of the Dead with my own eyes alongside Raymonde during a Voodan Ritual, I had the full belief that he would directly respond to my violation of their sacred laws should I utilize the arcane, and Raymonde to her credit warned me greatly of such.


The journey to Souragne was largely uneventful. Many of my new crewmen were finding their sea legs. Raymonde, to her misfortune, had not the stomach for the sea and found herself ill for the first leg of the journey. When we arrive at Port d'Elhour in Souragne, we left the vessel with a number of of retainers and marines to search the local areas. Raymonde was to acquire the sugar-cane of her Uncle to load onto the vessel with her retainer, whilst I took to searching for my elusive target in Port d'Elhour -- A Gendarme by the name of Botha.


After some inquiries at the local tavern, we had met the local bouncer who promised to have information regarding where Gendarme Botha had set his camp in the swamps. Myself, First Officer and Gendarme Norman Jacob Smith, Gendarme Yvette Sallembier and one of my Marines, Alexandre Robespierre, set foot into the swamps in search for the man. I had shed my coat and left my bard's flairs on, for the sweltering heat and humidity of Souragne was too much for my furs and justaucorps coat worn through the comparatively cool Dementlieuse summers. This bouncer took us to an abandoned camp, before escaping deeper into the swamps. As it turns out, he was Gendarme Botha in disguise, and had laid a number of traps for us in his wake. Fortunately for me, Norman was a sapper, the same I fought alongside of in Chasseigne and managed to disarm most if not all of the traps that Gendarme Botha set for us.


Our search into the swamps lasted for the majority of the day. Odd, alien structures were sunken into the swamps and an abandoned, eroded keep was the centerpiece of our environment. Mosquitos and swarms of botflies and other insects buzzed into the air to the point a droning hymnal of the swamps was all that filled our ears. For every dozen or so paces we took, a Souragnien Alligator leapt from the swamps the size of a horse and tried to take one of our legs. The environment was fighting us just as much as Gendarme Botha was, and to this date, I wonder how he managed to adapt to this strange land so quickly.


Our search eventually lead us to a watch tower, having checked every structure in the locality thoroughly. Upon walking up it, rapier and pistol in hand, Gendarme Botha rushed out and tackled me, before moving past me. He caught me off-guard, and I nearly fell off to my death. Norman, to my surprise and shock, ran Gendarme Botha through the heart and killed him for betraying the République, and for nearly killing me. I would have taken Botha alive as a prisoner to face the Magistrate, but I fret I was unable to succeed in this task. I admonished Norman for his myopia, for we knew not if Botha held the documents in question on his person. Yet, I'm certain there's a Souragnien loa out there somewhere for luck, and that day it shined upon us. The documents were within the interior coat pocket of the rogue Gendarme, and we recovered them safely, the seal left in-tact. Which raised further the question if he even knew the significance of the documents he took, or if he reforged them with the Capitaine's seal somehow. Either way, it was irrelevant now, and we had to look towards returning home.


The sun was setting low in the sky and the journey back would have lead us through the swamps and in the open as dusk approached. Raymonde had warned me that the dead dance at night in Souragne's swamps, and much like Barovia, I trusted that the night would bring naught but suffering. We were hardly in much of a position to take up a mobile resistance against these things, and so I ordered my men to fortify a small ruin not far from the watch tower and hunker down for the inevitable. We arrived, and set our muskets and stood watch. Without failure, the dead began to rise from the swamp and suddenly the paradox of Souragne became all too clear to me. It was an unholy melding pot, festering with an excess of life in every form, the buzzing of flies, the swarming of maggots and the reptilian predators in the marsh. The water thick with scum and parasites. Every inch of this land was teeming with life and unlife in a harmony that could only exist here. It was repulsive.


The dead began to rise from the marshes and mires of Souragne's swamplands. Unlike the gaunt, dried, or even mummified zombies you would experience in the crypts and barrows of Barovia and more rarely, Dementlieu, these zombies were bloated and festering, moist and pestilent. They reeked of decay and death that carried over the dense, humid air in such a way that you could taste them as they came into sight and a million burrowing maggots and flies swarmed about them in a miasma-like cloud. It was somehow worse than anything I'd ever experienced, even the Count Strahd von Zarovich himself.


I ordered my men to open fire, there were only the four of us, but we were all trained and expert pistoleers. Each shot came in but half a dozen seconds, but none of us could call upon the arcane for aid. We were forced to throw incendiary devices to scorch the earth, and volleys of lead that seemed to find no particular purchase in their distended forms. Puss and ichor oozed out of every hole, and I thought in that moment that this would be where I would die as they began to crawl over the barriers and charged us into the melee. Rapiers were drawn and they found little purchase but the vigor and determination of my coterie were without parallel. Several fell wounded, and a deep, pestilent gash was struck across my abdomen. Eventually, they fell, and were abated by lead and steel in equal measure. We waited for more of them, but they never came. The persistent noise of the swamps, so loud and droning, fell a deathly silence as the buzzing of flies and the noise of the unliving fell to the sides, farther, and farther away from us. It was as if the Lord of the Dead had decided us worthy, and opened the way to us to return to Port d'Elhour after our trials. I wasn't going to question fate, as I knew we'd not survive another wave. We pressed onward then and to my surprise the journey returning to Port d'Elhour was without incident, further leading me to believe some manner of intervention from the loa occurred.


My stomach had since began to ooze a sickening puss and ichor onto my hand, and the flesh surrounding was an sickly pink. I had contracted something, though I knew not what.

Page XIV

[BraveSirRobin]

Weir Lights of Souragne

Upon my return, I was pleased to find that Raymonde had secured the sugar-cane shipment and merely required my authorization to see it loaded onto La Grace de Damon. After First Officer Smith gave the contents a cursory inspection to search for any smuggled goods, I gave my consent and the deckhands and Maillard plantation workers began to load two hundred tonnes of bagged, processed and refined white sugar and brown sugar onto the ship. Raymonde's retainer had aided a local worker with a cart full of tobacco reset a broken wheel with the aid of her retainer, and managed to gain the ear of the man's employer, a tobacco plantation owner by the name of Gabin Maisonnat. He inspected our vessel, though I fear with the state of my injuries I was unable to do much but smile and attempt to hide the oozing puss escaping my stomach. Once he was satisfied, I sent La Grace de Damon underway and retreated to my quarters on the vessel, where I fell into a fever for most of the return trip. I was delirious, though Raymonde had remained by my bedside and tended to my wounds and used what sparse medical supplies she had to stem the worst and treat my wound. First Officer Smith and Bosun Couvreur maintained command of the vessel in my steed.


Once we arrived to Port-a-Lucine once more, we debriefed with Capitaine Alphonse DuPré and received commendations for our service. My personal pursuits on the side were overlooked for my success, an outcome I suspect would have been the opposite and the end of my career had it been a failure. I later learned that Yvette Sallembier, a Gendarme who was a member of the taskforce sent with me, had contracted some sort of disease from the mosquito bites she suffered in the swamps. The touch of the Halans, nor the Toret seemed able to heal it. As far as I am aware, she contends with it to this day.


Raymonde Tremblay took the majority of the proceeds from our endeavor and sold them to a local bulk trader and stashed away a quarter of her share of the cargo to start up a new business she called, "Tremblay Confections,"  a subsidiary of Tremblay Industries, wholly held to her name. She started a candy company, and for once in her life felt the self-made bravado that I felt which lead me to my independence and satisfaction without pursuing the traditional routes of a woman in Dementlieu. She became widely popular with many travelers for her sweets, but as always faced a certain amount of scrutiny from the older blood of the aristocracy. She was half-foreign and an upstart by their standards, and for all intents and purposes, we were two upstarts causing ripples and they weren't keen on it.


But for now, calamity had been avoided with her Household, and Martineau Maritime Acquisitions & Shipping Concern had filled its coffers with Solars and the men were happy. My life was only going up from here, or so I thought.

Page XV

[BraveSirRobin]

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C h a p t e r  F o u r:  T h e  C h o i c e  a t  C h o i s y

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A period of relative peace and prosperity followed my most recent endeavors with the Tremblay Family and my own successful career as an Officer within the Gendarmerie Nationale de Dementlieu. Raymonde and I struggled as all lovers do to adjust to the strange nature of our relationship, and though I had an insufferable inferiority complex, she held my hand through every step of holding the public lie and leading potential courtships on to keep the public guise. Most notable among these was one Anatole de la Rochenoire, the fraternal twin brother of Jacinth de la Rochenoire, a member of the National Militia who had enlisted beneath me. Anatole was a kind and gentle man, whose charms would make any woman feel like a shining diamond in the jeweler's case. He was well-spoken and enlightened to modern Dementlieuse values and most certainly the slayer of young Mademosielles hearts everywhere. So thus it was that when young Anatole de la Rochenoire took a liking to my lover and my insecurities being riddled with anxiety, I struggled to believe that the place of a woman in another woman's heart was anything but myth and fairy tale.


Raymonde had at a point, lost my trust following some maneuvers she took to politically undermine me. She was ambitious as she was beautiful, and I cannot hold a grudge against her for taking opportunity as she saw it. Though even though her tongue had betrayed me, her actions never quite did as she wouldn't actively betray me. I found out, and we drifted apart and fought for some time, but it was the crucible that was her courtship with young Anatole that drove us ever-closer together. There was a time we had entertained the notion that she would marry Anatole and perhaps I would find some other aristocratic suitor who would allow us to see eachother, but I fear my conservative values struggled to handle the poly-amorous nature of the proposal. Eventually, Raymonde chose me and gently let down young Anatole, but I never forgot how kind he was to her.


Some time passed, about a month and some change before Raymonde desired to hold a soirée at the Tremblay Family Estate in the Barony of Choisy, to show the slow revival of her Family's name and power. She promised me that I would meet her brother, and her young nephew Aubin whom she dearly cared for. I was excited for the opportunity, but disparaged to learn that her family held an irrational dislike of the Gendarmerie Nationale for the actions of one Capitaine Felix Charbonnier of the Gendarmerie de Chateaufaux in the unlawful war-time execution of Raymonde's father, Leopold Tremblay, whom had taken issue to the loyalist Council of Brilliance for their commandeering of their family ship. The Battle of Point-Sable was a pivotal battle in the Dementlieuse Civil War, wherein the vessels belonging to several prominent nobles ranging from the Baron de Choisy to the Baron de Beauviéres were seized by the Council out of desperation and their crews press-ganged into a last-ditch effort to see the Duc's blockade lifted from the then-starving Port-a-Lucine. At this battle, Leopold Tremblay's ship was lost, along with every loyal vessel to the Council of Brilliance, leaving only the shore batteries of the City of Lights to defend the mouth of the Baie de Parnault. Raymonde's father approached Capitaine Charbonnier to see renumeration for the loss of his vessel, as it was the lifeblood of his family, and Charbonnier saw him summarily executed for his purported insolence. A sleight the family has never forgotten.


None-the-less, when the time came, I arrived with my Gendarmes to the party in dress uniforms, and eventually changed into a personal dress as I noticed the plainly evident discomfort of Raymonde's brother, Vencelas Tremblay. It was, however, a tragically ironic thing to do as a scream was heard from the upper-floor of the Estate. I ran upstairs with my Gendarmes in civilian dress attire to see the sight. Young Aubin Tremblay had been kidnapped, and his care-taker, bludgeoned to death with a crowbar. Nearest the scene lay a random note, still stained with the deceased's blood.


Three and a half million solars by the next moon-tide, or Aubin Tremblay dies.

Page XVI

[BraveSirRobin]

The Choice at Choisy

As with all scandals at a prestigious soirée, nearly every attendant in the main ball room rushed upstairs to the quarters of young Aubin Tremblay to see the commotion. Cordoning the crime scene was nearly impossible and it was difficult to prevent the guests from getting nosy and looking around the area themselves. The Tremblay Family held a small Voodan shrine in one of their rooms, and one of the guests briefly searched the room. Out of respect for Raymonde and her family, I cordoned access to the secondary room, even from some of my Gendarmes, as I felt it was an unnecessary part to our investigation. Their religion is their own business, not the public's.


After some time, we had managed to get the guests back into the main ballroom where Vencelas Tremblay, the Baron de Choisy and brother to Raymonde Tremblay was dripping with sweat that you could almost taste on the air. His own azure eyes, mirroring that of Raymonde's, shifted wearily about the crowd. Worst yet, I couldn't get the man to listen to me directly for a moment despite the harrowing news of his sole heir's disappearance. His disdain for the Gendarmerie and his anxiety before the crowd left him locked solid and I had to divert my attentions to elsewhere in the building to find my clues. I interviewed everyone present and found that it the tobacco plantation owner, Gabin Maisonnat, had been late to the party, however after further investigations it turned out he was simply making small talk with one of the Tremblay Family retainers outside of the Estate whom he'd seen in Souragne during our initial voyage.


Raymonde was falling apart infront of the crowd and her own megalomania, a trait she held that I would define as her fatal flaw, took hold strongly. My expertise as a Gendarme was second to her personal desire to find her lost nephew, and through an extensive search, we determined that the assailant was aided by an arcane construct known as an Elemental, and had used this to hollow out a series of tunnels beneath the Estate to escape through and which was also used to fill them in seamlessly, preventing us from ever knowing which direction the criminals had gone, and losing all trail. A man by the name of Charles-Eduoard de Bauhin was strangely absent from the soirée, whom had been a regular attendee and a potential match for Raymonde once upon a time, but at the time, none of us thought anything of it. The only thing we could deduce was that Aubin was missing, and a lot of coin was needed to bring him home. Coin that a Baron did not have at the time, much less myself.


We traveled to Port-a-Lucine, and began the slow trek of finding the criminal. I requested several documents from the Palais Dirigeant using my authority as a Sargent to receive details of high-ranking aristocrats who were absent at the time of the soirée, a request which through the numbing bureaucracy of the State took nearly over a month. In the meantime, Raymonde's brother had taken drastic measures to see renumeration to the abductors, and arranged a wedding without her consent. Suddenly, the security I felt in balancing my professional and personal life had been shattered outright. Raymonde Tremblay was to be wed to Jacinth de la Rochenoire in one week's time. My time frame to acquire the coin suddenly became very short, and to make matters worse, Raymonde and her brother did not trust the Gendamerie Nationale to look into the matter of the family heir's abductors. For all of my glory in Chasseigne and my experience as a Gendarme, I felt useless and bereft of purpose as the majority of the investigation was handed off to private investigators and cultivated underworld contacts.


My inferiority complex had never been worse in my life than it was during the next trialing week that would follow.

Page XVII