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Post by exile on Apr 22, 2007 14:23:44 GMT -5
Daily Insanity Roll:
[dice=20]
A thin cold drizzle fell upon the Hive like countless determined soldiers, battling vaingloriously against the filth and slime that caked the broken lanes and ramshackle tenements. It was a hopeless endeavor of course, were the Hive to fall into the primordial plane of water itself not even the most magnanimous of Godsmen could elevate it beyond the slum that it was.
The grey afternoon was a perfect mirror of Hadrian’s thoughts as he scrambled around the heaps of offal that transformed Ragpicker’s Square into a patchwork of treacherous avenues fraught with missing cobbles and recumbent bubbers. Were Hadrian of a more conceited bent, perhaps one to wear the Gold Dragon of the Signers upon his breast say, he might claim that the Cage was responding to his solemnity in kind. That was all screed of course, the Cage did what it did well just because. If anything it bowed to the will of Her Serenity, and Her alone.
The rain had begun to pool in slowly expanding lakes of brown sludge and unspeakably foul flotsam, making suitable paths even harder to locate. Before him a shabby looking mongrel nosed through the debris in search of something edible, paying little if any heed to the occasional passerby. As he approached the wretch a diminutive and bone-thin hand lanced suddenly out from amid a puddle of amber hue, sending slow ripples across the previously tranquil surface as it groped blindly towards the stray. The surprisingly alert beast narrowly evaded a grim and certain fate, dancing out of reach with a startled yelp. Its hackles rose and a low threatening growl issued from its throat, as the miserable wretch retreated into the discarded waste.
Up ahead the great and menacing dome of the Mortuary rose above the squalor like a greedy-eyed vargouille grown fat on the many dead within. A long line of collectors awaiting remuneration huddled protectively about their daily bounties, crowding the austere walled courtyard before the greater gate so densely that funeral parties could barely pick their way past.
Wordlessly Hadrian attached himself to a party of mourners, winding their way towards the Great Hall. In hushed whispers they alternately cursed the apathetic carters and poured out their grief. Some broke away in pairs and clumps to file through the public memorial, hunting grimly through the impossibly long register of names for loved ones long departed or famous monikers that had shaped the very planes in their time.
Five of the Dead stood watch over the Great Hall itself, composing a varied but imposing guard. Nearest Hadrian stood a dark-skinned being of indeterminate heritage, shorn of scalp with two smoldering coals for eyes. He was almost imposingly tall, yet thin as a rail. For garments he wore the traditional robes of the Dustmen, threadbare and morose. A great and wicked looking falchion rested close at hand, not so subtly implying swift punishment to any berk who dared disturb the grave like peace in the Mortuary.
”I wish to speak with Uathach Blackmantle,” he said.
The guard fixed Hadrian with a dispassionate stare, and wordlessly departed. With nothing more to do but wait, Hadrian turned to regard the grand and joyless chamber with quiet curiosity.[rand=0980848342908018944766890269882564360780219930834305347745924235625]
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Post by Uathach Blackmantle on Apr 23, 2007 15:23:10 GMT -5
Wraith is summoned prematurely from poking at the entrails of yet another nameless Contracted berk. She lifts her head from her pensive contemplations, still elbow deep in the portly human's guts, as the tall ebony Dead approaches, and wordlessly beckons her to follow him. Not so much as the name of her summoner uttered, yet that shouldn't have come as any real suprise; most Dead, particularly the guards, rarely spoke, thus breaking the reverent quiescence of the Mortuary's black, tomb-like halls, unless they absolutely had to.
Still, it is curiosity and obedience that spurs her on, to follow the guard down the spiralling stairwell, and beyond. She passes like the herald of Death Herself with soft, haunting, echoed steps, and the whispered rustle of inky robes, and dull leaden cloak, floating about her with her movements.
The guard leaves her in the Great Hall, returning dutifully to his former position, again observing the subdued crowd of mourners with quiet stoicism.
Wraith's sad amethyst gaze sweeps over the black marble interior, its silence disrupted by echoed footsteps, hushed whispering, and the soft sobbing of widows in mourning. She would join the women in their lamentations of departed loved ones, pouring out all her sorrow and heartache in a deep, keening threnody, if not for the watchful presence of her fellow Dustmen.
She knew they watched her - a cutter named Dynusk in particular - not out of any sympathy or concern, but because in their minds she was at risk of losing herself to the great lie of existence.
Her gaze fell quite unnexpectedly upon Hadrian, the ebony crowned avatar of compassionate depression; a pale, exquisite, living cameo standing in bold relief amidst the drab, funereal crowd, passing aimlessly through the cheerless black hall. His sublime benevolence, angellic beauty, and the ghosts of secrets and mysteries she couldn't quite name, still haunted her from their first meeting, scarcely two days hence. His visage remained locked in her memory, where other faces might fade with the passage of time, testimony to his manifest tenderness and sorrow, in a bleak grey, indifferent world.
"Hadrian?" Wraith echoed in genuine surprise, approaching the Cabalist with slow footsteps, in a forced attempt to conceal her joy at seeing him again.Truth was, she'd grown a little worried from his lengthy absence the previous day, when she was expecting him to return, with the medicine to help her patient recover quicker. "What are you doing here? I very rarely get visitors while I'm busy working."
It's clear that she's been tinkering in the innards of a corpse; her surgical gloves are sheathed in blood, and mottled with traces of squishy pink visceral matter.
A quick cursory glance takes in the observant guards nearby, and Wraith assumes a prefessional tone and posture. It pains her so to behave this way, continuing this charade beneath the watchful shadows of the high-ups, but what choice did she have, when she'd rather avoid their detached scrutiny? More often than not, keeping a low profile meant more to her than being true to herself and her feelings. Her work soothed her thoughts, gave her purpose, and filled the long days made empty and almost completely pointless, in Aerin's abscence. In a reality where life continued to mock and betray her, taking away everything she ever held dear, the ideals of the Dead were her only solace. Not only that, but she needed the jink, and the readily available supply of surgical tools and cadavers, to practice her techniques on.
Without them - without the Dustmen - Wraith knew she'd be out of a job, penniless, and better off truly dead. "If you're here to view an interment, I'm not the cutter you should be speaking to. Now, unless you have other business you wish to discuss - I'm assuming you do - would you excuse me, please..."
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Post by exile on Apr 23, 2007 19:25:13 GMT -5
The Madman stood in the shadows of the great brass doors in silent contemplation, arms clasped absently behind his back. His soulful gaze repetitively traced the massive Dustman’s sigils wrought in striking bas-relief. Whatever hand had once cast those menacing skulls was intimately familiar with death. A Dustman artist was a curious thing; it was a difficult task to craft beauty without passion. But the results - well, few among the living could match such haunting visions. A startled voice which bore the aasimar’s name across the stillness of the antechamber bid him turn. The familiar figure of the speaker gliding softly towards him brought a thin smile to his lips. For all that Wraith might look like she had lost a row with the butcher’s block in her blood stained apron, Hadrian could still spot the fragility which abided in the depths of her amethyst orbs. ”Hello, Wraith,” his tone was warm but low, conscientious of the bereaved who filed ever past him in cheerless lines. "What are you doing here? I very rarely get visitors while I'm busy working."(…) A quick cursory glance takes in the observant guards nearby, and Wraith assumes a prefessional tone and posture. (…) "If you're here to view an interment, I'm not the cutter you should be speaking to. Now, unless you have other business you wish to discuss - I'm assuming you do - would you excuse me, please..." Hadrian’s brow rose in mild surprise at the sudden change in demeanor, but the Madman was astute enough to perceive the telling glance. Hadrian had entered Wraith’s home, and in her home she must conform to her Faction's expectations. Very well. “Forgive me for drawing you away from your work, Mistress Blackmantle, but there is indeed a matter of urgent business I would discuss with you. Is there perhaps someplace more secluded where we might converse? I do not wish to disturb the mourning.” Hadrian had little aptitude or patience for deceptions, but when diplomacy was called for the lash of his silvered tongue could blister a pit fiend’s hide. |
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Post by Uathach Blackmantle on Apr 24, 2007 11:19:27 GMT -5
"Of course." Wraith's dull monotone is soft and reverent. "Would you wait here please, while I reconstitute the cadaver, and clean up." It is not a question, but a polite request. She doesn't expect him to wait all that long - it was a delicate procedure that could take up to half an hour, maybe longer, and that's assuming a Faction-mate or superior didn't hold her up for unknown reasons. Though secretly, she hopes he will.
In the scant hours she'd known Hadrian, she'd learned to trust him as she'd trusted no other.
Wraith turns on her heel and glides away, silently merging with the stoic and the bereaved, like the faded ghost of an enigma that she is.
Some time has passed, half an hour - maybe more, maybe less - although it's difficult to tell in the perpetual, chilling black vaults of the Dead. Here, the passage of time only assumes meaning and measure with the slow shuffling crowd of mourners, and the eternal presence of those scabrous scavengers, the Collectors, dragging in their wake the lost souls of the Hive.
And the tormented Dustman known as Wraith hasn't returned yet.
For a distressing, tense moment it seems like she won't - perhaps she got held up by a superior, or maybe suturing the corpse back together again took longer than expected - before her familiar encumbered form shuffles through the subdued crowd again.
Both sombre black veil and deep, austere cowl conceal her fiendling identity - all but her faint, ash ingrained abbatoir stench - and she carries her leather-bound burden with her, unlike before. The gloves and the apron are gone, yet a few suspicious red stains cling to the hem of her gothick ebon gown.
"This way, Hadrian. It's best not to discuss such things here." She murmurs softly, passing him and leading the way through the solid brass doors from whence he came. She reserves a final wary glance for the disturbing depictions of Death in all Her grim majesty, and hesitates for a moment too long as her eyes linger over the massive symbols of the Dead... the grim representation of the beliefs that defined her, ever since she was born.
Outside, Wraith passes between the gaunt Collectors and their creaky wagons, laden with corpses, many half-rotted, sodden, and crawling with maggots and bloated, black flies. Her demeanor gradually changes the further she moves away from the hunkering, spiderlike vaults of the Mortuary, until she passes through the wrought iron gates, flanked on either side by a picket fence of impaled heads.
Heedless of the rain, she sags against the crumbling wall facing onto Ragpickers Square, and removes her veil. The face beneath is tired and fraught with worry. She doesn't immediately meet Hadrian's lapis gaze, instead closing her eyes and heaving a melancholy sigh. "What did you wish to discuss with me, cutter? Unless you wanted to get out of this damnable rain first..."
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Post by exile on Apr 25, 2007 17:48:51 GMT -5
With a wry smile and demure nod, the Madman fell wordlessly in line behind the departing Dead. Marching back out into the lifeless, washed out light of the early afternoon, it was all Hadrian could do to keep pace with Wraith’s determined stride. She stepped nimbly through the crowded courtyard, setting the hem of her skirt’s dancing like wind-tossed rose petals all in black. The sorrowful aasimar appeared almost ungainly by contrast, stumbling through the narrow spaces left momentarily in her wake.
But as she walked the fierceness ebbed, each step less certain than the one before, until at last she collapsed against the crumbling masonry. The transformation was almost remarkable. How did she maintain the charade within the confines of the Mortuary each and every day? Hadrian felt pity for the poor woman as he quietly came to a rest at her side, peering as best he could into her troubled eyes.
”The rain is of no concern to me so long as you are comfortable,” he began slowly, anxiously hunting for words to explain his absence on the previous day. How did a Bleaker begin to make sense of the overwhelming affliction by which they were shackled to an outsider? The pervasive and consuming blackness, the complete and total surrender of body and soul to utter futility. It was a prison more terrible than Carceri.
”Please forgive me for not seeking you out sooner. I was – not myself last day.” It was hardly sufficient but then nothing could be. Hadrian sighed, disheartened at his inability to convey his deepest thoughts.
”I wish that I could say my visit to the Mortuary was only to call upon a friend. Unfortunately I was not being cunning when I revealed the matter of an issue on which I would seek your input.”
Where to begin?
”Bashers have been disappearing in the Hive.”
Hadrian knew that the statement in and of itself was hardly newsworthy. People were always disappearing in the Hive. But not like this…
”Faces that for years lined up at our soup kitchens have vanished,” he pressed on. ”Cagey bashers who lived their whole lives in the streets. And not just a few mark you. These are the sort of folk who aren’t worth the effort to peel, because a body won’t have anything to show for it at the end of the day.”
Hadrian’s gaze swept out across the filth-ridden square as he pondered his own words.
”My brothers and sisters are starting to whisper. I can’t say for certain how far up the ranks the waves have spread, but I do know there are real grounds for concern.”
A chill breeze whipped at his cloak and set his deep hood billowing, but Hadrian could hardly feel it.
”The last anyone ever sees of the poor sods is as they pass through these gates on the carts of the Collectors. That is why I have come to you seeking answers. I pray you can help me find a piece of this puzzle before more are lost.”
The aasimar fell silent.
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Post by Uathach Blackmantle on May 6, 2007 9:18:46 GMT -5
”The rain is of no concern to me so long as you are comfortable,”.... ”Please forgive me for not seeking you out sooner. I was – not myself last day.” It was hardly sufficient but then nothing could be. Hadrian sighed, disheartened at his inability to convey his deepest thoughts. She mutters at length with a half-hearted shrug, and stares across Ragpicker's Square at nothing in particular. Her gaze is eerie, absent, unblinking; for a moment dead and hollow like the eyes of the Collectors and ebon veiled bereaved, shuffling slowly past them. If she observes Hadrian's distress, she doesn't comment on it. Her thoughts are again drawn inwards by the dark chasm of emptiness, growing, consuming, in Aerin's prolonged absence. She sags against the wall, seeming to sink further within herself, and folds her thin hands over the busk of her old corset. The sigh that follows is soft, and profoundly sad; the wordless lamentation of a mother, pining for her lost child. Contrary to her previous request to move on, and find somewhere less public to talk, with better shelter, she makes no effort to move; merely draws her cowl close against the foul, dank gusts of wind. ”I wish that I could say my visit to the Mortuary was only to call upon a friend. Unfortunately I was not being cunning when I revealed the matter of an issue on which I would seek your input.”Where to begin? ”Bashers have been disappearing in the Hive.” Wraith perks up at once, standing a little straighter, seeming more alert and attentative than she had before. Her head turns, her eyes fixing upon Hadrian's with a depth of understanding seen only in those who know... Or have at least heard something similar before. With her alarmed, yet curious expression, she silently bids the Madman continue with his story, suspecting that there's more to it than what he's already unveiled thus far. ”Faces that for years lined up at our soup kitchens have vanished,” he pressed on. ”Cagey bashers who lived their whole lives in the streets. And not just a few mark you. These are the sort of folk who aren’t worth the effort to peel, because a body won’t have anything to show for it at the end of the day.”............. ”My brothers and sisters are starting to whisper. I can’t say for certain how far up the ranks the waves have spread, but I do know there are real grounds for concern.”............. ”The last anyone ever sees of the poor sods is as they pass through these gates on the carts of the Collectors. That is why I have come to you seeking answers. I pray you can help me find a piece of this puzzle before more are lost.”............ The aasimar fell silent. Wraith frowns thoughtfully, pausing to fiddle with her labret stud. "What could be the beginnings of a plague - a recent outbreak of a rather nasty disease, Abyssal Pertussis - has begun to spread around these parts of the Cage." She hesitates, drawing a slow, shaky breath, no doubt dreading what must be said next: "Not only that, deaders are turning up stuffed with straw... likely killed in the same manner as my son's nursemaid..." Her voice trails off, catching in her throat as a sudden, pained sob, and she releases a heartbroken sigh. Stale air, blown off the mounds of waste and detritus strewn across the square, tugs at the soft folds of her cloak and gown. It whips ebon sapphire strands of hair across her fading, melancholy countenance, lending an almost spectral air to her autumnal beauty. "A week ago, I overheard an interesting story from a cutter named Roenthad; nameless deaders who'd been received and cremated here were turning up alive and well at the other Faction headquarters, seeking to join after the Powers had supposedly given them a second chance.
To complicate matters, the Mercykillers have accused us of harbouring Anarchists within our ranks, and deliberately falsifying records to grant these berks a clean slate, and a new identity." White, wintry puffs of air issue from her mouth as she speaks. Her eyes remain veiled in shadow, cast both by her hood, and the ghosts of deep thought. "I'll... need to find Initiate Dynusk, and have a word with him; see if he can shed any further light on this matter, now that you've brought information of continuing disappearances to my attention." A final pause as she affirms in her mind that this is the best course of action to take; gathering as much chant as possible. "Something needs to be done about this... and soon." |
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Post by exile on May 9, 2007 22:36:01 GMT -5
”Indeed.”
Hadrian found himself near at a loss for words. An infernal plague, deaders stuffed like ghastly scarecrows, and the lost returned by beneficent powers? What manner of mischief was at work in the Hive? And more so, which of these events if any related to the problem he was now trying to solve? It was all too much to grasp.
“I’m glad I chose to come here today,” Hadrian continued after a moment’s pause. ”You’ve given me much to consider. I shall be sure to return with news of any discoveries.”
The aasimar’s eye wandered back across the mortuary’s congested courtyard, picking over the collector’s ramshackle carts. The collectors. Now why hadn’t he thought of that before? If anyone could tell him about a spate of nameless deaders cropping up in the Hive, it would be the collectors. Quietly he resolved to spread about a few coins once matters with Wraith came to a close.
”Who is this Initiate Dynusk you mention?”
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