- Joined
- Nov 4, 2019
- Messages
- 210
- Reaction score
- 1,116
- Points
- 318
Cartography Stock Art © Derek Ruiz / Elven Tower Cartography and Strixin / Forgotten Adventures
A noticeboard has been commandeered. Advertisements and job offerings have been stripped from the wood and replaced one by one with stories, letters that were never received, torn journal pages, and scraps upon scraps of papers bearing accounts from a grieving population. The board, tended to by a single figure bearing a blue cap, grows until overflowing, heartfelt words overlapping hateful grudges. It's their hands that hammer every message home when the sender's shakes too much. It is they, eyes squinted and hands fisted around papers thrust in their hand, that reads out words so that all who can't read can know what is said. And it is they, if prodded and pushed, that provides extra papers and pieces of charcoal pulled from stained clothes to write with or give away.
Should you decide to add your story to the board's worn, wooden face the attendant can surely find a spot for it.
A Word From the Rejected Reject
A traitor on one side and an unwelcome guest on another. I had a unique experience. I started as what most would view as, well, a terrorist. I was not a good person, and I was following what I thought was my dream. For sanguine to rule. But that was not my dream, it never was. It was my mother's. I decided for once I would try and be good, try and take a chance at redemption.
I never thought trying to be good would be so hard. I helped people escape from Greygate, had faked sanguine bites, and even fought a superior within the sanguine ranks. All for no thanks and no safety offered due to the past. A glance at the red eyes and it was enough for what I had done to be rejected. A whisper about my past and whatever I did no longer counted. If the world almost ending taught me anything it is that no matter what you try and do, your past will always haunt you. You take your life into your own hands, and what happens? A terrible thing, no one to blame.
Those in power do not want the help of the rejects. They want cannon fodder. They want their bodies as shields and their deeds to be taken so they can have the credit. The win of this revolution was made on the blood of the innocent and the rejected. Those who will never get credit.
Those like the bards I fought beside as I got food. Or the bartenders trying to protect their business. The unsung heroes of this crisis. The everyday men. Those are who I see as the heroes in this. Not the nobility or guards as they always threatened to shoot me down when all I wished for was food. I had to gather the rejects and forge my own home and extend a hand to those who did not have one either.
I feel as though everyone realizes through this that change is an unstoppable force. This has changed us all, for better or for worse. This may not be a happily ever after, but that is not the point of life. It is not to live happily ever after. It is to live.
A Cahal's Perspective
More than anything, what I remember of the occupation is the pressure. Everybody was afraid, no matter who you were, but being a Cahal, there was an impending pressure, a drive to uphold an ancient task. All the while there was the constant, looming threat of Demetrius, and the fact that at any moment we could've all been obliterated had it not been for intervention from those forces that sought to stand with us. We were lucky as much as we were blessed, and our fight was as much one of survival as it was of duty.
I spent many nights thinking about my own life during that time. I wasn't sure if the city would be standing afterwards, or even if I would be there. I spent a lot of time fearing the 'what next' too, because I knew that things would never be normal for a long time. I'm not sure if it was fear I felt, or just a conscious surrender that what came next, for me, would hurt as much as what had been going on. The injustice, the fighting, the friends lost and the friends I've made on the sides I now faced—all of it was painful. But still I fought, hoping to scrub away the lines that had been drawn and make a way for 'better,' whatever that meant.
I will not miss those days. I will mourn for the world we've lost since Demetrius blackened the skies, and all the lives gone along the way, but I choose to look forward now. I know that if I look away from the dawn, I'll stay forever in lamentation. So I breathe, and I move on, hoping to heal and fix the scars of a world faced by tragedy. There is nobody that escaped from those months without being hurt, no matter which side you fought on. We all stood to lose, and we're lucky that now we are given the chance to make amends and start anew.
The Lost Son's Condolence (Original Post)
This letter, this script or even if you desire to call it an obituary is to the late Mirabella Wymarc. To many of the Sanguine, she was a leader and a figure to be seen and respected with th eutmost power behind her. And yet, to myself, she was more than merely someone to seek the guidance or respect of. She was my own blood mother, not in the Blessed Blood that is shared among all vampires... but of the blood found in mother to the child upon being born to such a family. This letter is to her, a talk that I had not been able to bring myself to speak with her about for so long that I had forgotten the want.
And yet now, upon the day of her death had reached my ears... my heart pangs and thrums with the notes of loss and despair. I cannot say she was my mother through my life, no, she was a mother that departed from myself and my poor excuse of a father when I was still a boy. And yet, my hatred for such an action died away after finding her once more and seeing what she had made in what was normally seen in a dark and putrid corner of the Sewers. A community of Sanguine that all desired to live among one another. This is where I found myself complete, in my own strange way... as if Nirualla had blessed me with a life that found its purpose.
Even so, with such blessing come the hidden futures that await all. Months later, I found turmoil among Kin again and again... fueled by the incessant reasons until it finally happened. The Blessing en Masse of Regalia's folk. All done by the power of the Arken of Pride in a random act of boredom. By then, I had chosen to depart the city in hopes of finding a place to settle my own plants in the wilderness. Weeks passed until I heard rumors of death... and soon came back to Regalia to find my own mother was slain at the hands of her offspring...
As late as I am to say this... I am truly sorry for all the transgressions between us, Mother. And I truly wish there was time to bring them to peace before your end, and how lonely such an end it had been. I love you, and will always remember your lessons, no matter what age I become.
Return to Sender
[The following is written in Katharic. Parts of the letter are illegible owing to grime and smudging.]
My dear, I am writing you from a place of uncertainty. I currently sit atop the wall of Calvonth castle after a raid, a jester messenger being the one who gives me this opportunity to speak. I miss you terribly. I wish to see ██████ █████ ██████████ ██████████. I can't believe I'm saying this, but I miss the slow days of the Nook. I miss the days of complete mundaneness, where I could stretch out in my house in shorts, where I could dress up finely for no other occasion than I want to.
Do not worry about me. I have handled myself fine and well—I shot ███ ███ ███ ██████████ in the chest, which caused him to explode both literally and in anger. I hope this ends soon.
I love you so, so much.
Daughter o' Mine
It bad here. So meny groups dat its confusin, I gat infected in da end. But I am vamp hatin leech bloodline. Rakhal or some tin. I am glad u are safe my baber. My mind is fuzzy, glad u didnt gat. Sorry 2 shove u, wunted to make sure ye aint bitten. I made sure ta gat chu dis. Please stay safe my baber, I wuv ya.
Be Safe
[A drawing depicting what appears to be a Maz-Allar and Feka Asha, captioned with the words "Be Safe." Maybe the sender hadn't learned all their letters?]
From a Bard
Hatred is a burning yearning for an equal other
The one to complete your aching soul and smother
Quell useless anger and forge it anew
Direct it in competition and something else too
The feeling is as searing as skin smoldering in flames
But the satisfaction brought on puts an end to all games
Missed with intention and glimpsed at not at all
Nary a night goes by without an action unnoticed
Ignorance is the key to a barren, empty hall
Never too Late to Say Sorry
I can't help but think that people are going to hate me for the stuff I did, and I'm scared to think maybe I enjoyed it. Nobody ever talks about what it's like to just stop being and start being something else, and I don't know where I'd be if I hadn't been pulled out of it quick like. I was me, but I wasn't me, and I feel all sorts of jittery trying to wrap my head around being stuck between worlds forever. It doesn't sit right with me. It makes me sick just thinking about it, but I've got to take every day one step at a time.
I'm sorry for what I did, and I never wanted to hurt anyone, but right then in the moment? You couldn't have convinced me there were other options. Before I got shoved in the sacrosankt there were no other options, and now I have to live with being looked sideways for something I never asked for. The guards find me an question me I'm toast. If somebody recognizes my face it's all over too, and I'm starting to think that's the way folks want it to be. Nobody ever wants to forget and let live, or forgive and try to help their fellow man. All anybody's got in their heart is hate, but I guess I deserve every last bit of it.
An Unlikely Culprit
With all this over, people are starting to forget too quick that they aren't the only ones to have lost, and if they've not lost a thing they're quicker still to start saying we need to do this or that and the other. I've lived here my whole life, and there's never been anything like this. We've got war and calamity out the ass, secret snakes slithering around and doing Everwatcher knows what, and I think that's the root of it. Not them Vampires or the Cahal, the scaly dragon people doing whosit and whatsit. The Slizzar, probably running around orchestrating all the disasters we've been hit with yearly and not a soul is talking or thinking about it. That's one of their tricks too, making you forget things and hate your mother, compelling folks to be foul and do the unthinkable.
I don't need to know much about magic and cracks in the world to know the most insidious of monsters are living and drinking with us right now, and nobody is the wiser. The government needs to start doing something about those things running around and they need to do it before they go back to having their little soirees and parties while people are out here fighting and throwing themselves at the wall. It's despicable that I have to come out here and take pen to paper because the hoity-toities are sitting around when they're not shoving people down adding on to our problems.
Given what's been going on I have every right to be mad, and I'm not afraid to say there's been some missteps and mishandlings even before the insurrection, and they're sure not gonna stop because we've got over this one hump. The whole damn road is full of holes and there's no good way forward.
People Before the Disease
My opinion is not new, I will not pretend it is new, and I am sure someone will take fault with this open letter o' mine in particular. Persecuting the afflicted is a fool's errand. That is not to say they deserve rights or to run around freely, or that I fantasize about having my neck bitten by the next unwashed rogue that crosses my path. What I am saying is that the problem we are facing is worsened by brutish actions. Treating diseases requires a delicate touch, not throwing the afflicted in a basin to scream and be forgotten about for hours, then tossed on the street without any supports. As evidenced by His Imperial Holiness' pardoning the peerage for actions done while out of their good minds, the precedence is there, and it will still be there even if the legislation goes back and forth like a ball at every private state meeting.
Should the state invest in healers, doctors, and anyone and everyone capable of providing alms and good health to the citizens it is nominally supposed to protect, we may find ourselves with lower rates of recidivism and afflicted alike. Of course, this goes against what most would consider to be correct. Surely if one browbeats enough people and turns them into pulp behind bars they will repent, or come to pray for forgiveness given enough time, but I find these measures do nothing but build resentment. The Empire makes its own enemies, and for every body beaten there are several more standing in line waiting to throw themselves on the pike, or perhaps the bone pit in the center of Greygate.
As the intelligentsia have gathered, what the Empire needs is unity, and we will find none of spitting on the poor or less fortunate because we are so well off. It is the poor and unfortunate who are prone to silly things like rebellion, or attempted assassination, or tacking up poorly worded letters in public spaces. It is also the poor and less fortunate who are more susceptible to the things so oft legislated against, leading to cycles of poverty and crime that will not correct themselves without sufficient foresight and action. That action being recognizing disease and illness for what they are, and not criminalizing either. The afflicted could instead be cured and sent to institutions where they may recuperate and be reformed into productive citizens of this Good Empire.
Proofreading is for nerds!
Last edited:
