#unquiet bones

[ohbutwheresyourheart]

52 for Ada if I can? :3 And I have been meaning to ask you about Unquiet Bones stuff, so 54 for the main cast of Unquiet Bones? :'D

Ooooh, these are such good questions, thank you for asking! :D

(also my 'v' key is choosing this moment to fuck up again so if there are any weird typos, including but not limited to 'ergil', that's why lmao)

52. Do they act on their immediate emotions, or do they wait for the facts before acting?

Ada does her best to wait and get a grasp on the full facts before acting. Growing up as a human (albeit one trained in combat and magic) around demons has taught her a lot of caution over the years just to stay alive, so she would prefer to analyse a situation and come up with a strategy before diving in.

On a personal side, having seen the clusterfuck of "for the love of sparda why will you two motherfuckers not just TALK to each other with your WORDS" that was Temen-Ni-Gru, Ada tries not to jump to conclusions about possible misunderstandings with her loved ones. She's a pro at taking a deep breath and counting to ten before replying, even when she's seething inside.

On the downside, sometimes this caution comes across as holding her cards too close to her chest. In my AU where Ada raises Nero with Dante post-DMC 3, Nero and Ada have a fair bit of tension and spark off each other as Nero grows up and figures out there's a lot Ada isn't telling him, especially about his father. It's not meant out of malice, Ada is just trying very hard how to figure out how to talk about Vergil and Sparda without creating another Vergil if she fucks up and plants a seed in Nero's head that he's safer embracing his demonic side.

This is all adult Ada, however; as a teenager, with all those teenage hormones running through her, PLUS the stress of her boyfriend possibly kick-starting an apocalyptic demonic invasion and/or being murdered by Mundus? She... definitely said some things she really regrets to Dante just after DMC 3: blamed Dante for Vergil's death (so they thought at the time), for not going with him to stand by him, and to an extent even for Temen-Ni-Gru as a whole, because why wouldn't Dante just be the bigger person and TALK to his brother???

Dante, filled with self-loathing and guilt, and more than half-convinced she was right, just took it at the time. Eventually he explained, and Ada apologised, and he forgave her, but... it was a deep wound, and it never quite goes away entirely.

Hence why now Ada is much, much more careful about what she says and does.

(Putting the rest under a read more because Unquiet Bones deals with a lot of dark topics, including suicide and child/religious abuse)

54. What’s their instinct in a fight / flight / freeze / fawn situation?

Antanasia/"Tansy" - As a secret necromancer keeping the king alive since they were both young children, Tansy got comfortable with asserting herself early. This was not entirely intentional (the previous king and the High Priestess of Ysa-Munda the goddess of death would have perhaps preferred her more malleable), but when you take a child, tell them they have special powers and the entire fate of the kingdom and possibly the continent rests of their shoulders... Well, in Tansy's case you get someone who learns the meaning of "immovable object" real fast.

King Damian is not exactly happy with the resurrection carousel that is his (un)life, so Tansy often goes toe-to-toe with the king himself to ensure he gets the care he needs (in her opinion... it's highly debatable whether what she's doing is ethical in the slightest). So in most verbal confrontations, Tansy goes cold and stern and tries to assert herself with logic. She does know when to fold 'em, but usually that means just abandoning the head-on approach and finding a more sly solution.

In a physical confrontation, she would probably be more inclined to flee. Tansy is very tall but thin as a reed and has little to no muscle; she'd go down fast and easy in a fight and she knows it.

Lucia - By the time the story opens, a combination of freeze and fawn. Lucia is intentionally coded as autistic in Unquiet Bones, although it's not explicitly called out in the text, and is based off my own experienced as a neurodivergent individual in an academic setting.

Lucia has a defining childhood experience where she was physically and emotionally bullied to the point of exploding (metaphorically and... kind of literally). The backlash she got for reacting as she did, even when it was to protect herself, was so harsh -- from family, friends, and authority figures -- that she became terrified of ever losing control to that extent again. This means that she has trained herself out of a fight reflex, but at the cost of being so afraid of conflict that she either fawns and tries to resolve the situation ASAP, even when she is the wronged party, or just shuts down altogether and waits for the storm to pass.

Damian - Damian vacillates between fight and freeze. As a king, he's simultaneously aware he holds ultimate power and he has a very specific set of behaviours he's supposed to follow for the good of the kingdom. As someone with what is essentially a deteriorating chronic illness, he's also become normalised to docilely allowing people to do things to him that he doesn't want because it's "for his own good".

So his preference is to roar and fight and defend his boundaries as well as he can, but it's also a question of whether he a) has the physical and mental energy to do so, b) is in a situation where he won't damage his own reputation or undermine the strength of his position by setting a boundary, and c) believes that the person/people he's arguing with will even listen to him, or just disregard what he's saying and physically overpower him.

Sometimes it's easier to just let whatever is happening, happen, and pick up the pieces afterwards.

(And that's not even going into the bodily autonomy horror of being a deeply closeted gay man who is married to a woman and expected to get an heir as soon as possible -- in fact, that's the main reason you're being kept alive, so your bloodline doesn't die out with you.)

He also fights (verbally) much more often with people he trusts, at least subconsiously, not to leave him. His wife from a political marriage gets cool, polite interactions. Tansy and Beladon, both of whom he's known intimately since he was a young child, get the brunt of the yelling and harsh words.

Varnius - Varnius was actually the hardest to answer this for! Partly because he's the least developed so far, I think.

Varnius joined the priesthood of Ysa-Munda, Goddess of Death, when he was thirteen. At the time, the Mother Superior of the priesthood took the word of Mother Death very literally, especially concerning that Her devoted worshippers were considered dead to the world when they took their vows. Varnius experienced very harsh conditions in the priesthood during his initiation and throughout his teenage years, leaving him with a profound lack of self-worth, and a conviction that his only reason for existing was to help others.

This means he avoided conflict as much as possible during his younger years. Questions were punished. Failure was punished. Crying because you were tired and cold and hungry and wanted to rest was punished. So he learned not to complain. He learned not to question the will of Ysa-Munda. He learned that he was as good as dead, a vessel who existed only to tend to the dead.

Then one day he met a priest of Xenith, the God of Life. Emil was warm; he was kind; he was patient; and, little by little, he put the shattered pieces of Varnius's psyche back together until he felt like a person again.

The upshot of this was that Varnius started questioning the priesthood again. Started considering if he could maybe one day find a way to leave. Then Emil died, and the resulting mental breakdown of grief that was then swiftly suppressed to fester turned Varnius into a man who looks far, far more mentally stable than he actually is.

Nowadays he still hates conflict and avoids it as much as possible, but he will stand his ground when it's for the benefit of others, especially those under his care at the convalescent home he founded, and where he defends his patients' rights to decide when, how, and if they end their lives.

Beladon - Beladon has been raised to be a chevalier parfait, the epitome of a chivalrous knight. He serves King Damian as a counsellor and close friend, pays the expected level of chivalric adoration to Queen Saveria, excels at the joust, writes heartfelt poetry... etc., etc.

Beladon keeps himself on a very short leash. Self-control is his primary virtue. He identifies the correct way to act in every situation and does not allow himself to deviate from that. His inclination is to fight, and he will throw down with anyone who insults his king and queen, but even that is done very correctly: a verbal warning, a threat of repercussions, and finally a formal challenge to a duel (to someone of his own class), or removing them from his presence (to someone of a lower class who does not merit a duel).

Interpersonally, however, Beladon fawns and fawns hard. He has been Damian's best friend and confidant since they were ten years old, and knows more about Damian than anyone else. He has been in love with Damian for a not inconsiderable number of the years they've known each other, and he cannot bear for Damian to think badly of him. So if he ever senses he's annoyed Damian, he immediately backtracks on whatever he has done or said, trying to please him.

Unfortunately for Beladon, Damian finds this habit infuriating, and would respect Beladon far more if he stuck to his guns and was prepared to have an honest argument from time to time.

[n0isy-gh0st]

A gift for @ohbutwheresyourheart since ae’s been feeling down after some recent life events 🖤🖤 it’s aer lovely OC Antanasia, necromancer extraordinaire!

[bangbangwhoa]

books I’ve read in 2024 📖 no. 038

The Unquiet Bones by Loreth Anne White

“We should not be forced to chase closure. What we need to find are ways to coexist with our complex feelings, and to always remember that our reactions are completely normal. They’re not a sign of personal weakness.”

[lakecountylibrary]

Book Rec: The Unquiet Bones by Loreth Anne White

When bones are discovered in a remote location, a cold case gets new life.

As her own life is in a tailspin, Detective Jane Munro becomes lead in a cold case with numerous suspects. Relying on scientific evidence, new technology, old eyewitness accounts and the victim herself, Munro and her team unravel the secrets held in the dark for decades.

The Unquiet Bones offers a compelling plot while keeping a brisk pace.

Check out The Unquiet Bones

See more of Beth's recs

[feedergoldfish]

'You have begun well already. Now you need but to conclude. A job well begun is near done, so wise men say.' 'I sometimes wish wise men would keep their thoughts to themselves', I muttered.

------

Lord Gilbert presses our protagonist Hugh de Singleton to hurry up and solve the damn murder in the medieval mystery, The Unquiet Bones by Mel Starr.

[vampyrial]

A World For Her Alone | Sisyphus

Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16

cw (chapter specific): child neglect, very vaguely implied forced prostitution, death, abuse, poisoning, suicide, mentions of pregnancy and childbirth, arranged marriage, infidelity

pairing: claude x fem!reader

summary: we take a brief intermission from claude's suffering to examine what the fuck is wrong with reader's family

author's note: me and my husband we're sticking together🎵

Claude lingered around your parents’ manor like a ghost after you died. In the middle of the night, every night, he found his way to your bedroom, standing at the foot of the bed you’d died in, remembering the shape your body formed in the sheets. The room still smelled of your blood and sweat, though the room had been cleaned up by the maids as soon as your body was taken out of the room. Your absence was starker than your presence. After the funeral, Diana expressed that she wanted to go home, heavily implying she would leave if he came with her but Claude was no longer beholden to her wants. He had no reason to care whether she came or went.

He was wielding grief as the knife he held up to cut deeper into himself in hope that if he only suffered enough, his hands would wash clean of your blood. But in the end, he had already decided to live, if only because he could do nothing else. Morbid thoughts plagued him, swirling around his head like unquiet spirits begging him to give in. He thought perhaps he should cause his own ruination and this time, live with it. He thought he should make for certain that both of your houses are set aflame and collapsing on top of the lot of you, to bury and burn your sycophant parents, his helplessly selfish wife and even his own child. He thought that nothing should be spared from complicity. He knew not anymore if he truly believed that it would save you, or if this was what some divine terror was willing him to do even still, but he began to long for punishment. It became catharsis, the thought of being punished.

He roamed through the house you grew up in, searching for any trace of you that survived, as if some inkling of you would help him to save what had already been lost too many times. Even so, it was automatic for him at this point, no longer even really a choice. He had no direction, only frantic need pulling him toward the doomed task. He was trying to get to the dregs of a goblet of wine which never ran dry, he kept drinking until he was sick but never satisfied, never finished.

Your parents’ manor was an eerie place, he’d always thought. Wind blew in from an opened window in the hall and the house seemed to breathe, and its hollow bones creaked softly. Despite her gentle ultimatum, Diana could not actually follow up on it, she must have known that but she believed better of him at the time and thought that everywhere she went, he would follow her like a lovestruck teenager again. There were things to be done at manor that she could not neglect as its lady even if he chose to neglect his own duties. She had come into her own as a marchioness, no longer the shy and unassuming lady that lay in bed sick day in and day out. She would not leave the territory without management though he knew she desperately wanted him to come back home. She seemed dazed to return home without her husband for that purpose, for the lament of a sister she had infinitely more right to grieve so egregiously. Even after all those years, the silly girl was only just beginning to grow aware of the disparity of marriage.

Somehow he felt it was hard for her to reconcile that she wasn’t a precious young lady anymore. Even as he was mired in a pool of half catatonic grief, she dared ask him to leave with her because she truly expected he would do so if she did. Had she not grown out of the habit of expecting to be near worshiped no matter what that her parents instilled her? He remembered how she was after your funeral, when he was sitting in the dark of a guest room. She had come to him, tried to hold him, to kiss him; believing all this would be a comfort and not a further indignity. She’d had arrogance enough to look hurt as he pulled her from him and recoiled from her touch. She must have still believed she was the cure to all ills because she was once more in a house where she was always treated as though she truly were.

He found his way to the library where you’d spent much of your life, if Felix’s word was truth. He brushed his fingers along the spines of the books, looking for the one that he left his missive in, the one Diana read and did not want understand. He searched through the categories of books that contained subjects you three would have studied together as he could not remember which particular book it was, but even after pulling all the books and flipping through the pages, he couldn't find the letter. He wondered if you had ever even set eyes on it once before Diana got to. Had it been your catalyst to run away? Had you read the note and understood that the effort of trying to be happy at his side was a fool’s errand? Was he again the cause of your downfall?

As he gave himself to thought of you, he continued looking through your family’s collection of books. It was all fairly standard and even a bit utilitarian, lacking any of the fanciful novels so beloved by many young nobles. He assumed if there were any, they’d be in Diana’s room because they’d be bought for and read by her alone. But there was something that struck him as he roamed around the shelves, his eyes scanning aimlessly for a book that looked as if it had been perhaps been misshelved. It was subtly tucked into the highest shelf but it still stood out to him eventually among droll guides, needlework books and encyclopedias emblazon with gold lettering. It was hastily bound looking more like a journal and it was worn, unlike the rich and well maintained leather of the other books and it was small, leaving a wide gap between the top of the shelf and the top of the book. Its spine did not read a title.

When he pulled the book, he understood what it was. Its title read “The Princess and The Knight,” signifying it was some common, tawdry romance novella. Still, he began to read it, the absurdity of its place in a house so heavy and serious intriguing him. Could this book have belonged to you? Could it have been an escape for you who was locked firmly out of girlhood when you were only just betrothed? When he’d read the title, his mind flashed with the memory of your face as Felix’s body fell into the dirt in front of you. He remembered how fiercely Felix had protected you even in this life. The rage and grief in his voice when he came for retribution. Though he knew you were ever dutiful and if there was love between you and Felix, it was never more than courtly, maybe you had seen this book and it had reminded you of some place where it could be more.

The story revolved around the love affair of a princess from a bloodline with an affinity for magic fleeing her country at wartime and being assigned a knight from the neighboring kingdom she sought refuge in. The two began a passionate and sanguine love affair in secret, all while living under of the tension of war and the threat of both of them losing everything to their love. But when the war was won, thanks in part to the wits of the two characters, and peace spread over the kingdom, she and her knight were able to be wed and live happily ever after. He had been searching for you in the pages, interpreting the knight and the princess, looking for traces of a love you might have had once. He had been looking for you so closely in every word that he hadn’t realized the grander scale of things until the end; when he flipped over the last page to read the epilogue, on the blank side of the page he saw a sketch. 

The drawing was finely, intricately done in ink and resembled…Diana. The owner of this book had drawn Diana so vividly, yet there were a few differences in the likenesses of the two. This woman had long spools of curly hair spilling over her shoulders and a mole near her gently smiling lips. She was older than Diana must have been when the book was written. She looked like the heroine that had been described in the novel. For some reason, he found himself fixated not in awe or admiration but in mind numbing shock. He could feel the love that went into each stroke of the pen and a knot formed in his stomach the longer he stared. It was uncanny in a house like this, to find anything that should mark vulnerability or simple folly. He recalled an occasion where your father had gifted her a portrait he’d made of her and their daughter. Though two different mediums, the style looked so similar. From what Claude saw, it seemed that your father seldom made art of anyone but Diana. Your father surely had not been so passionate about a throwaway romance that he had ignored his bias and poured so much love into an image of the heroine.

The only one who could be so brazen as to have a romance novel among his books wherein which they lovingly drew an almost intimate image of a woman, worn with the spine slightly bent from being handled so many times— not even properly hidden away, would be your father. Your father who paraded his illegitimate child, born from a mistress. The revelation gave him pause. What did Claude truly know about Diana? He couldn’t remember having ever asked her if she’d known her mother because she so resolutely accepted the countess as her only mother. But this woman sketched onto the page of a well loved romance, was this her mother? She looked as if she could be. Portraits of Diana hung in exposed parts of the house, he did not seem to care that the custom of having an illegitimate child was to have them separate from one’s “official” family, to not love a child born of one’s own lust so openly. Even if one had a particular love of their mistress and child, he would simply put them up in a nice mansion close enough for him to come and go but your father had your mother raising his illegitimate child. He celebrated her birthdays lavishly and even allowed her to go to the academy. He absolutely refused to hide her, to show shame in her. So why was this woman Claude presumed to be Diana’s mother who was clearly beloved by him even now, shut up in the back of a romance novella?

A thought occurred to him then, that perhaps the otherworldly force pulling him into Diana, entangling him in her was not otherworldly at all. Perhaps it had not originated in him alone as some primordial curse formed around him before there even was a him. He thought of just how besotted he was with Diana the first time he met her in each life, how the greater part of him felt foreign. He thought of your mother’s unusually devoted love for a child that wasn’t her’s, a product of her husband’s disloyalty. Something inside him thought that the answer lay at Diana’s feet. In her very blood, he was convinced, was the answer. 

Such a tenderly written romance, signed with a carefully drawn illustration of the woman who could be Diana’s mother. The part of “The Princess and The Knight” which struck him so was the bit about the princess possessing capacity for magic. It was not mentioned much nor utilized greatly in the plot but it made an impression. Magic users had decreased over the years, their powers waning until they were unheard of entirely. To anyone else who read the novella, it must have given the story to a bit of fantasy but to Claude, it was almost uncanny. He could not take it for an unassuming romance. To him, the story hid some truth under its veneer, for it was no coincidence that the princess resembled Diana so and that it ended up under the same roof as her, worn with years of eager hands flipping back over the pages. The princess’ power was never described in detail but if she were based on a real woman, then perhaps she had something to do with his situation.

He might’ve gone to Diana right then for answers but he feared his body might be taken over again at any time. He did not want to see her, did not want to feel the familiar paralysis of affection reaching up through his body. He did not want to see himself bed her again while the memory stood frozen in his eyes. Each time he saw her after he’d been set free, he’d worried that it would happen again. That his body would betray his mind and he’d never find anything of substance to end the cycle of misery the two of you shared. And he was committed to the task of trying, even if he could never succeed. He was ready to succumb to the greater sense of careworn madness he found in you.

He decided to explore the unattended corners of your home further, thinking there would be— must be more. If ever Diana’s mother had lived here, someone left a trace that he intended to find. He might’ve asked your father directly but as much as he was a lickspittle, something told him that your father would be afflicted by the same paralysis of mind that he had when he belonged to Diana. Unable to share the love he held for her but unable to hide it either, culminating in a pathetic sort of half-baked defensiveness. He wasn’t likely to get anything out of that, even you hadn’t been able to get anything out of him when he was like that. Worse still, he might try to cover up all that he kept that ever indicated Diana’s mother had lived there once, that she had a name and a face. And then what?

No, it was better this way. Better to find it all before he got the chance to hide any of it.

Your parents were still in the house, seemingly without intention of asking him when he was going to leave but there was still a bit of anxiety in the air when they entered the room. He could tell that they very much wished for him to return to their daughter and make her happy again as she was destined to be. It was awkward that their son-in-law had a longer bereavement than your sister did. But still being the cowardly sycophants they were, they could not ask him to leave for her sake—only “encourage” him by tossing out little updates on Diana. “Diana and our grandchild miss you very much,” “Diana takes ill so easily when she works so hard, we should hope you’ll be well enough to go back to her soon,” “Diana sends her love and wants you to know she’s there for your sake.”

Claude wouldn’t care if Diana’s life hung by a thread and he was all that could spare her, frankly and he brushed off all responsibility in favor of giving himself to his task. It was shameless, he knew, but he’d given up everything inside of the barren, hollow shell of his self to save you. It was a task that had already and would yet again supersede death, birth and the enveloping void he fell backward into each time his life was ended. He waited until they inevitably visited Diana, likely to calm her worries with lukewarm supplications about his grief, to go searching in the other parts of the house uninhibited. For, even if the servants were to tell their lord and lady, he’d already have looked through every corner he intended before they’d have a chance to move things around to better hide them.

He started with Diana’s old room. When he walked in, he was surprised to find it was left exactly as childish as it had been when she was only a young miss. Just the scent of the air turned his stomach, heavy and cloying with a pungent smell of medicine that was still sitting on her night stand in a small white bottle. He frowned as something fell clumsily into place. It hit him like the stray sour note of a violin. He recognized the bottle. Where did he last see this bottle?

For how preoccupied he was with the revelation taking slow form, he did not realize that Felix had entered the room until he heard the distinctive sound of a sword unsheathed. He did not turn.

“Felix.”

“Lord Claude,” Felix acknowledged, his voice struggling to keep its softness. “I might’ve known you’d be here. You truly cannot help yourself, it’s like a sickness.”

“Yes, it is very much like that,” Claude agreed easily. “But I’m not here for what you imagine I am.”

“I’m not so sure it matters, my lord.” Felix’s voice was flat.

“Nor am I. But I need you to let me live just as long as it takes for me to make sense of this.”

Felix went quiet for a moment but nothing about the situation made Claude think it was because the knight was going to hesitate. On the contrary, he was sure that his sword would swing just as neatly. “Do you know where I found my lady chained up, my lord? There are places, you know, that they bring women who had no other place to turn. You must know. You were at her side every night when we brought her back, you saw what toll it took. You saw what had been done.” Felix took a shallow breath. “You’re asking me to spare you so that you can make sense of whatever it is your farce of a marriage is built on? When my lady was given no such pardon? I know you’re the head of your house now, honored knight of the crown and you must think yourself above your treatment of others but I assure you, this will be the last time you ever assume so.”

Claude held still, his voice firm even as fear raged through his body. It was not fear for his life or of Felix’s wrath, it was the fear of failing, yet again, to make any movement in saving you. “I know how you think of me, Felix. I know that I have failed my wife. I know that I deserve to die here and now but even so, I can’t.”

“That is no problem, I’ll do it for you.”

Claude smiled joylessly to himself at the devout knight’s words. How could you have been judged so harshly in that life for wanting to run away with him when he so clearly had a loyalty akin to love for you? “You don’t understand. You cannot possibly. But answer me this, do you know who Diana’s mother is?”

The question puzzled Felix but he stood resolutely, ready at any moment to fell Claude’s head. “Everyone else in this household has care for Lady Diana. My duty was to serve my lady, I was the only one and I did not ever lapse. You’re asking the wrong person.”

“Felix, I do not ask for my wife’s sake. I know how this will sound but I’m trying to find out just what exactly it is that Diana holds over me and everyone else. I’m trying to figure out what exactly she is. You have seen it, haven’t you? The disparity between how people treat my wife and how they treat your lady. Do you think it natural to love a daughter born from an affair more than one’s own?”

He heard Felix laugh bitterly. “You believe her to be a succubus? Is that your excuse?”

“No. I believe her to be something worse.” Claude laughed as well, though his was more hysterical than anything. “She rules everything, Felix. Even in death. No, especially so in death. I have lived this life many times. I have died and returned back to the day that I first met her at the tea party. And when I do, I am taken over by her. It feels like love at first, it really does. But then intrusion. And then a curse. It is a cycle of death and resurrection, for myself and for the lady.”

Felix was silent and Claude continued on. “In one such life, she ran away with you, you know. It was raining the night we found you two. You were holed up in some abandoned cottage out there in the countryside, the one with the patches of white clover in the yard and a missing shingle on the roof.”

“What are you saying?” Felix’s voice wavered with near disbelief at the picture he painted but he held firm.

“My knights killed you where you stood and took the lady back to my manor. Your betrothed visited her. She had asked to speak to the woman who had been responsible for your death. She told me you two had planned to get married once the lady and I were finally married and settled in. She could not even mourn you properly because you were compelled to run away with the lady and killed.”

It is clear that Felix still thought Claude had lost his mind but what shocked him was the truth seeded into his madness. How could he have known the intimate arrangements of their betrothal and marriage when even their families had not known the cause for delay? This was not knowledge he could send an errand boy to fetch him nor an illusion he couldn’t hope to keep up, this was lived. It was memory.

“What does that have to do with Diana?” Diana was more likely a seductress than a sorceress in Felix’s opinion. Such a thing as a time loop, how could a girl so weak and childish create something like it?

Claude turned slightly, slowly toward him. “I don’t know yet myself. That is what I seek to find out. So that I can perhaps end it, for the lady at least. I don’t need anything Felix, not Diana, not my child, not my house. All I need and want is for the lady to stop suffering. I only beg you not to hinder me. When the time comes, I swear I will die on my own.”

Felix had no idea what to make of it all. Much of what Claude said seemed stilted, frantic and half thought. Yet he could not help but feel there was a certain sincerity to be had even in the worthlessness of Claude’s promise. And in any case, he was not entirely unfamiliar with the concept that Claude explained but all that it implied, he was not ready to believe. He sheathed his sword again finally and Claude turned to face him with the medicine bottle in hand. “Have you any idea why this would be in Diana’s room? It’s medicine that the lady took before.”

Felix’s eyes widened slightly in surprise. “It’s used to treat severe infection. It’s not supposed to be used by just anyone who gets ill. Lady Diana should not have needed that medicine, it would take effect like poison if not administered to someone battling a harsh infection. The doctor sent one of the servants to fetch it in town.”

“Yes, but this bottle is dusty, it’s mostly emptied out and the liquid inside it has congealed. It’s been sitting here for years. The medicine inside is aromatic. It has a distinct smell, doesn’t it? The lady’s room still reeks of it even with the windows opened up. Every time I went into Diana’s room when we were young, I smelled it, I tasted it. That means she was not only taking medicine she did not need but taking it regularly.” Claude said aloud, more to himself than to Felix who had bristled at the way he implied he and Diana were. “Was she…ever even sick?”

“Of course she was. Perhaps madame gave her the wrong medicine. She would not have poisoned herself, far be it from me to defend her but she did not desire to be sick. She seemed to envy the lady for her health, as she saw it.”

“…it was the lady’s mother who administered this medicine?” Claude questioned as new pieces fell together in his mind.

“I only know that the madame came to Lady Diana before bed to give her medicine. I do not know that it was that medicine, I did not see it.” Felix paused. “What is the significance, my lord?” He asked, annoyance creeping into his tone at the extensive talk of Diana.

“I intend to find out.”

He had wished to creep into the madame’s bedroom quickly and easily but the door was locked so they’d needed to fetch the key. Claude was shocked at the amount of sway he had over the servants of a house he was not a part of for the head maid simply handed over the key when he asked for it, albeit hesitantly as though she thought she might be scolded for doing so. When he took in the room, it was tidy and rather plain by aristocracy standards. The room seemed to have a chill about it, there was a draft somewhere that made it feel colder than the other rooms.

He began to pick carefully through her things, looking in every corner of the room for anything hidden. It was all mundane, droll and typical until he reached the last drawer of a dresser that was locked. Sure enough, nine bottles of unopened medicine neatly lined into rows of three. When he tried to pull the drawer out all the way and see what more he could find, it was caught on something that had been pressed against the top. Claude reached in to feel for it and pulled down what looked to be a simple leather bound, worn and yellowing journal.

Immediately he began to read. He was a bit startled at himself when he realized that he was eager to read the contents of his mother-in-law’s mind. He wanted to know how she saw you. How she justified treating you the way she did to uplift a child that was not her’s. A pitiful part of him just wanted there to be reason. He wanted cause for the rift in the relationship. He needed to believe there was a because to your suffering.

But what he read was not as he suspected. In neat, small lettering on the first page, it chronicled her life back to when she had been perhaps 19 years old but it was dated some ten years later. A reflection on her younger self written seemingly less as a journal and more a memoir.

“The princess had always been so gracious a mistress that even her tasks sounded like gifts.

When it was her time to return to her duties in her own kingdom, she resigned to it with great grace. However, she understood that the opposite would be true of her beloved knight. This fragile man only smiled in her company, protected her with wild fervor and once told her that he felt divinely guided to her. That to him, she was the symbol of god’s forgiveness and in serving her, loving her, he saw his life’s purpose. Oh, the princess lamented to me how dark a life her knight had lived, how the blood he shed as a knight haunted him with guilt. How his father had been of a violent sort in his efforts to transform his only living child into a knight of some worth to bring more prestige to their house and in his efforts to vent his own turmoil over his wife taking up with men of far more money, status and legacy than he. Her knight resembled his mother and so became the target of the ire he could not give his wife for the great protection being a mistress to such men afforded her. His mother knew what his father did, she did not care so long as it were not her. My heart came to soften for him too, the more she told me.

He had been a quiet man, shy and quite unknowingly sweet for his reputation as a ruthlessly skilled knight. He opened up to my princess like a flower toward the sun. He loved her so madly that she knew even though it was inevitable, he never intended to be where he could not protect her and stand at her side. The princess feared that their duties as princess and heir to a county respectively would give way to the knight’s devotion. She feared he’d kill himself trying to reunite with her or simply deteriorate under the burden of his own isolation but her own life was dedicated to more than just one person. It was her nation, her home of people waiting to see her return that she could not abandon. So in her stead, she asked me to stay in the kingdom and marry him. To give him a countess and to keep watch of him for anything he might do to interfere in both their duties.

It was a great honor she had given me entrusting someone so precious to me and given me a title higher than that I had been born with, I still feel that way now but I was foolish then and I did not understand the nature of what I was being asked to do. Nor would I until after it was already done.

You see (and it does, still pain me to even write such a silly thing), I did, at the time believe that I would become close to my husband. I viewed it as a matter of course, for I was far from a home I could never return to and he had no one. We were, for each other, the last traces of the princess. Though I could never think to hope for the kind of love that he gave to the princess, I believed that commonality could be nurtured into love or kinship. I wished for someone to turn to as my heart was sinking faster than a stone the longer I spent from my home. I believed it would happen. I believed he would become someone to lean on.

Though the first months of our marriage were cold, I managed to coax him into trying to have children as was our duty. I saw this as progress both in the way of our relationship as well as keeping him from the princess. I viewed even our coldness then as a sign of something beginning. It was only once, afterward, I think he worked very hard so that I would not ask him to do it again. But even so, I found that I was with child soon. I was a stupid girl then, I believed a child was what we needed to grow closer. I brought this news to him with a smile, I must have looked like an idiot.

My husband’s expression, I can never forget it. He was horrified at this revelation. He looked at me as though I’d announced a death. He looked at me as though I had wounded him. Then his beautiful eyes sparkled with unshed tears and his expression reverted to a weak, helpless smile as he said all the right things in his wavering voice.

It was then that I realized he would never love me. He was horrified at having a child with me, it was sheer terror and dread on his face when I told him. Perhaps he thought that I would not become pregnant at all, he would have preferred it that way. I hadn’t the relationship with him to truly comfort him, to know intimately what he feared about my child. I was useless in that way.

Through the following months, my apprehension was near unbearable. I kept feeling my stomach sink in dread, I kept waking up thinking that I would be home. I kept thinking that I had done something irreparable but I could think of nothing which was actually within my control. Therefore, when I finally gave birth, my relief that it was done with was greater than my joy. But that was alright with me because I had intended to deal with things in my own way."

From there, she went on to describe her rigid attention to being a diligent countess for a few droll pages. But at last, Claude came to another thing of significance. Your father had been summoned to court for political matters regarding the civil unrest which had not been quelled with the end of the war. Your mother could not follow him and leave a newborn alone so she had no choice but to simply trust in your father. She would come to regret that.

"My princess appeared like a bolt out of the blue months later. She was dressed as a peasant and had a somewhat bashful smile on her lips. Although I had missed her, all that I could think in seeing her was, "She should not be here."

But we brought her to the study so that presumably, she would tell us why she had returned when she had surely sworn that she could not. She took off her cloak and then I understood without her needing to tell me. I saw a little bump on her otherwise thin body and I was overcome. When my husband had returned to court, he had not been officially permitted to see my princess but they had met anyway and she was now with child. She had waited until she was just about to start beginning to show in order to take leave from court on the pretense of recovering from illness at her villa in the countryside.

I had been given the task of minding him but I had clearly failed. I should have gone with him no matter what. I should have taken the chance and left my child so that I could have prevented this. But my princess looked at me as faultless and took my hands in hers to assure me that she regretted nothing. She comforted my husband who apparently also knew nothing about this pregnancy until then. She knew his fears like the back of her hand, she knew exactly how to soothe them as I hadn't. He did not even have to speak. She simply knew.

Until then, I had not known that my husband dreaded having children for fear they would be cursed and afflicted with the same moral decay that his own parents had; and because he feared that having a child would bring the same thing out of him. Even if I had known, the princess was the perfect one to comfort him. She asked him if he believed a child born of her could be wicked and of course, he said no. She spun such sugary images of their child together for him with her eyes shining with joy. She told him that their child was special, that she did not fear him becoming a parent like his own because their child would change everything about being a father for him. It surely helped that my princess was glowing as she said such things, that the excitement radiating off of her grew stronger with each passing moment. He could not deny her, could not bring himself to contradict her words because he would always believe in her even if he did not believe in himself.

It went unsaid that the princess would be entrusting the child to the both of us. I had much apprehension about taking care of two babies rather than one and the secrets to be kept piling up above me but I could not complain, it had been my job for years to make everything work. I could not stop then when my princess needed me most. In any case, her presence in the manor brought life to a place that had become so eerie to me. She was the only flame in the dark and we were huddled around her, trying to preserve an ounce of warmth within ourselves. She was joyful through her pregnancy, she could not stop talking about the baby she was to have. The more she chattered, the more excited I became too as though I had any right to be. This was true of my husband too, who tentatively felt the kicks of his child and smiled, genuinely smiled as the princess did. I could see that he loved that child.

She slept in the master bedroom with him, after he left each day, I went in to help her get ready for the day. It was though I was still her maid and I suppose I wanted to be, would rather be that than a wife. But I could not bring myself to complain. I was not unlike my husband, I viewed my duties to the princess as somewhat sacred. I was as honored as I was anxious to raise the child.

On the day Diana was born, my husband was at my princess' side the entire time, as though he could protect her as her knight again. I could only marvel at him. When I had given birth, he stood at the foot of the bed stiffly and asked me what I intended to name our daughter, if I was alright and then told me that if I needed anything to have the butler prepare it at once. After Diana was born, my princess was still beautiful, perhaps even more so in her vulnerability. She held the most beautiful baby I had ever seen, close to her chest as my husband looked down at the both of them with sheer joy. It was as though all the happiness in the world existed between those three. My Diana had been born out of love and so it was easy to love her.

I left my own daughter to the maids in favor of caring for Diana when the princess rested. Her little ruby eyes and her head of soft blonde hair captivated me. Each coo or cry had my focus in a fraction of a second.

I had not yet considered the greater implications of her birth until my princess brought it to me. Diana had been born with an inordinate affinity for magic. The princess, as a member of the royal family had the capacity of a mage, it was kept secret through the death of magic that through her bloodline were those capable of miracles. I only knew after years of my proximity to the princess. This child, born in the time of civil unrest, when the queen had not yet been blessed with a child and the civil war had still bitterly divided the houses, was capable of being seen as a potential figurehead that could be used as a pawn in a new round of rebellion.

It was for me and my husband to put her above all things. Above even our own child. That, to me, went without saying for I did love Diana as my own daughter. But the princess knew that anything could happen and she used all of the strength of her magic to cast a spell over her that would be held with Diana's own great magic. My princess nearly expended all her energy to do so. Magic, she had once told me, was seen as a weak form of power because it relied so greatly upon emotion. It was the transformation of want into will. I knew not the details of the spell which bound my mistress' daughter. All my princess said was that her precious Diana would live happily, that for all the odds against her, she still had odds in her favor."

Claude felt numb as he turned the pages. He was in shock, suddenly the environment of the room felt too harsh and stimulating but he was glued to the journal. He could not dare stop reading it no matter what truths arose. So he flipped the page and read every single entry even as his hands trembled.

From then on, it was Diana, Diana, Diana. With each entry, she recorded a measurement which he assumed was the amount of medicine administered and her symptoms. She fretted over whether it was right to give her more or to give her less. She wrote about denying Diana's requests to go outside, to go to the theatre, to do much of anything besides stay in bed. It chilled him to the bone but more than that, perplexed him. He was staring at a page where your mother had seemed to write sloppily, hurried and anxious when he heard a voice.

"Lord Claude?" It was your mother, standing in the doorway.

He looked slowly up at her, at a loss for words and unable to reconcile the cold mother she was to you with her joy at being Diana's proxy mother. Unable, still, to understand why she was poisoning the daughter she loved so much.

"My lord, you should not be in here," she said softly but in her blank expression, it was apparent that she knew what he was there for. "It will look strange to others, for you to do something like this."

"You poisoned Diana," He was keenly aware of how delicately she was trying to dance around this subject but he was unwilling to indulge her.

Your mother did not even blink. "You must understand me, Lord Claude. Please understand."

"What is there to understand? You neglect your own daughter and fawn over your husband's illegitimate daughter only to poison her."

Your mother shook her head slowly as if she could not believe what he was implying. "I love that girl," she said, moving deeper into the room and shutting the door behind her. "Diana is my little princess. She is my only daughter."

A rush of rage ran up his body, carrying an unbearable desire to hurt her. "She's not your daughter at all. She's the daughter of a woman far more beloved than you."

But your mother could only smile helplessly. "Yes, but even so, she is my daughter in heart. You must trust me when I say that Diana was hopeless before."

"Hopeless?" His brow furrowed and a cold feeling creeped up his back, extinguishing his fury and replacing it with a kind of fear for the woman in front of him. "She wasn't hopeless, she was able to wed me, to live happily." He said it not as a defense of her but as an accusation.

"That poor girl. In the first place, she already had a weak constitution, because her magic was stronger than her body but it was the perfect excuse to keep inside and away from the eyes of those who would want to hurt her. But it was my eldest daughter who kept planting false hope in her. She even sent Diana before my husband to beg him to let her go to the academy because she knew very well he could not say no to her." There was venom in her voice, a sneer on her face. Claude rose to stand slowly, not knowing what he was going to do.

"He cannot say no to Diana because he loves her so, no, he loves her mother so," she sighed. "All the other one did was cause troubles. Diana had already given up but she roused such hope in the girl, false hope, cruel hope. If she had not been able to marry you...I do not know how we would have protected her. If my daughter was still alive, everything would be ruined. It was you who saved her, my lord. That is why I beg of you, don't judge me. You know that Diana is special. You must know."

"I did not want to save her, she did not need to be saved."

She remained with that pitiful smile on her face. "My husband is weak to her. He will...he will never forgive what I've done to our- his little princess. He won't understand. He will think that I have killed my princess. You know, he almost sees them as one in the same." She reached onto her desk, picking up a letter opener. "Diana will be hurt if she knows. I ask that you let the girl live her life believing as I told her. She deserves that much. I let her believe what I did because it was in her best interest. Please take care of her."

Before he could react, your mother plunged the sharp end of the letter opener into her throat.

Next

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[caspercryptid]

Dungeon Meshi as Monster Culture

-jeffrey jerome cohen as a framework for dungeon meshi

i. The Monsters Body is a cultural body

Vampires, burial, death: inter the corpse where the road forks...it will haunt that place that leads to many other places, that point of indecision...The monster is born only at this metaphoric crossroads, as an embodiment of a certain cultural moment—of a time, a feeling, and a place

ii. The Monster Always Escapes

We see the damage that the monster wreaks, the material remains...but the monster itself turns immaterial and vanishes, to reappear someplace else.

No monster tastes of death but once... Each time the grave opens and the unquiet slumberer strides forth("come from the dead, / Come back to tell you all"), the message proclaimed is transformed by the air that gives its speaker new life...monstrous interpretation is as much process as epiphany, a work that must content itself with fragments (footprints, bones, talismans, teeth, shadows, obscured glimpses—signifiers of monstrous passing that stand in for the monstrous body itself).

iii. The Monster Is the Harbinger of Category Crisis

The monster always escapes because it refuses easy categorization...they are disturbing hybrids whose externally incoherent bodies resist attempts to include them in any systematic structuration. And so the monster is dangerous, a form suspended between forms that threatens to smash distinctions.

The too-precise laws of nature as set forth by science are gleefully violated in the freakish compilation of the monster's body.

Full of rebuke to traditional methods of organizing knowledge and human experience, the geography of the monster is an imperiling expanse, and therefore always a contested cultural space

iv. The Monster dwells at the gate of difference

The monster is difference made flesh, come to dwell among us... the monster is an incorporation of the Outside, the Beyond—of all those loci that are rhetorically placed as distant and distinct but originate Within.

Representing an anterior culture as monstrous justifies its displacement or extermination by rendering the act heroic..A political figure suddenly out of favor is transformed like an unwilling participant in a science experiment by the appointed historians of the replacement regime: "monstrous history" is rife with sudden, Ovidian metamorphose

History itself becomes a monster: defeaturing, self-deconstructive, always in danger of exposing the sutures that bind its disparate elements into a single, unnatural body.

V: The Monster polices the borders of the possible

From its position at the limits of knowing, the monster stands as a warning against exploration of its uncertain demesnes...curiosity is more often punished than rewarded, that one is better off safely contained within one's own domestic sphere than abroad, away from the watchful eyes of the state

To step outside this official geography is to risk attack by some monstrous border patrol or (worse) to become monstrous oneself.

The horribly fascinating loss of Lycaon's humanity merely reifies his previous moral state; the king's body is rendered all transparence, instantly and insistently readable. The power of the narrative prohibition peaks in the lingering description of the monstrously composite Lycaon, at that median where he is both man and beast, dual natures in a helpless tumult of assertion. The fable concludes when Lycaon can no longer speak, only signify.

Whereas monsters born of political expedience and self-justifying nationalism function as living invitations to action, usually military (invasions, usurpations, colonizations), the monster of prohibition polices the borders of the possible, interdicting through its grotesque body some behaviors and actions, envaluing others.

victims are devoured, engulfed, made to vanish from the public gaze: cannibalism as incorporation into the wrong cultural body.

vi: Fear of the monster is really a kind of desire

The monster is continually linked to forbidden practices, in order to normalize and to enforce. The monster also attracts. The same creatures who terrify and interdict can evoke potent escapist fantasies; the linking of monstrosity with the forbidden makes the monster all the more appealing as a temporary egress from constraint

Escapist delight gives way to horror only when the monster threatens to overstep these boundaries, to destroy or deconstruct the thin walls of category and culture. When contained by geographic, generic, or epistemic marginalization, the monster can function as an alter ego, as an alluring projection of (an Other) self. The monster awakens one to the pleasures of the body, to the simple and fleeting joys of being frightened, or frightening—to the experience of mortality and corporality

The habitations of the monsters ...are more than dark regions of uncertain danger: they are also realms of happy fantasy, horizons of liberation.

the scapegoated monster is perhaps ritually destroyed in the course of some official narrative, purging the community by eliminating its sins. The monster's eradication functions as an exorcism and, when retold and promulgated, as a catechism

vii: The monster stands at the threshold of becoming

Monsters are our children. They can be pushed to the farthest margins of geography and discourse, hidden away at the edges of the world and in the forbidden recesses of our mind, but they always return.

And when they come back, they bring not just a fuller knowledge of our place in history and the history of knowing our place, but they bear self-knowledge, human knowledge—and a discourse all the more sacred as it arises from the Outside. These monsters ask us how we perceive the world, and how we have misrepresented what we have attempted to place.

They ask us to reevaluate our cultural assumptions about race, gender, sexuality, our perception of difference, our tolerance toward its expression.

They ask us why we have created them

[whisperthatruns]

Look---here he comes, his bones are willow & he sings in birds. He rises in marsh, slips forwards by ripple & shiver. Between his tree-ribs birds flutter, then swoop ahead to settle, sing, quiver. His head is a raven’s, his eyes are wrens’ nests. By day from his throat fly finch & fire-crest & in anger he speaks only in swifts.

Look---here she comes, her skin is lichen & her flesh is moss & her bones are fungi, she breathes in spores & she moves by hyphae. She is a rock-breaker, a tree-speaker, a place-shaper, a world-maker.

Robert Macfarlane and Stanley Donwood, from Ness, Ghostways: Two Journeys in Unquiet Places (W. W. Norton & Company, 2020; orig. pub. 2018)

[senualothbrok]

Hello friend!! I have been thinking about undiagnosed sorcerer Gale a lot lately, so I am making it your problem too.

You only gradually become aware of it, and once you are you wonder how you hadn't noticed. Maybe it's the passage of time, each day one step away from the nautiloid and the Netherbrain and all of it--each day that much more distance from Gale's last audience with Mystra. The burden of the Orb hadn't been yours, but it had been heavy enough that you felt lighter when you saw his face as he stepped out that portal. Maybe, like the wounds you both bring back with you to Waterdeep, your mind needed the chance to heal before it could process even more.

More in this case is living with Gale. It had been one thing being on the road, chased from danger to danger; all you'd been able to think those nights you'd collapsed into his tent with him was we made it, with a fervent hope he'd be next to you when you woke and still next to you the night following. Now, you lie down with him night after night and wake up to him morning after morning, and as you let yourself accept that this is how things will be, you start to notice.

The tower is suffused with magic.

It's not only the spells and wards that Gale has woven into the very heart of it, or the numerous enchantments he's created to make life easier, or the artifacts and books you've brought home with you. It's Gale himself.

Surrounded by magic and slow to shed the exhaustion that's clung to you since Baldur's Gate, you need some time to sense the difference, but once you do it's there, a touch on your sleeve or a whisper to catch your attention. When you search for it you can't see it, there's no breeze to stir the curtains or the profusion of flowers Gale brings home day after day. You don't smell that dreaded rosewater or taste cloying honey-sweetness on your tongue. It's a sense that goes beyond sense, speaking to the parts of you that lie under your bones and between your nerves--it's something that escapes your words just as you think you've found the ones to describe it. The sense of him wraps around you like a comforting memory, smoothing its unfelt fingers across your unquiet spirit; the happiness you feel, the life that suffuses you, doesn't compel you but invites you just to be.

It's different when you're in bed together, like tonight, when Gale is salting your skin with kisses. Tonight he's all around you, flowing into and filling every part of you like water, Gale himself spilling over at the edges. He's not glowing but you feel alight with him, woven into him, his threads twisting around yours to draw you close. You're not in one of his illusions--the world around you is very real, if hazy and distant, and Gale's body is hungry, solid flesh and bone against yours. The sensation doesn't vanish even when Gale pauses to ask you what's wrong and you realize you're staring at him.

"I can feel you," you say awkwardly.

"I'd hope so," Gale says laughingly, though he notices your uncertainty and sits up, bracing himself back on his haunches. "What is it?"

You explain as best you can, though every word out of your mouth sounds more foolish and inaccurate than the last. You find yourself tangled in a thicket of your own making and are just about to panic your way out of it when Gale says, faintly embarrassed, "Oh. That--that hasn't happened in quite some time. Years."

I'm so sorry, friend, that it's taken me so long to reply to your once again beautiful piece. I feel like my writing is pretty awful at the moment so I do apologise. I just wanted to get it out though (despite being in a weird creative space and putting off writing a little bit!)

Thank you so much, as always, for your exquisite work <3 ---

You do not need to ask. There is an intuition that exists between you, so that you often know his intentions before he speaks, and he senses your desire before you tell him. You know that part of this comes from the joining of your souls, sealed by your love. But you suspect the other part comes from something altogether different, that sensation that you cannot yet name.

“Admittedly, it wasn’t as innocuous as what you’ve described, back then.”

He pulls you closer, as if he needs your skin on his, even though you feel his being like a flame inside you.

“By all accounts, there was more force to it. It was more of an explosion, if you would.”

You arch an eyebrow. He flashes you that languid half smirk that drives you wild. You wonder if he feels your arousal as his own, like two rivers flowing into each other. He watches you with dancing eyes, savouring your reaction.

“Not that kind of explosion.”

You laugh a little. His lips are smooth and warm as they graze the tips of your fingers. For a while, you fumble for words to explain, ever grateful for his patience.

“It feels like a spell,” you manage eventually. “Even when you’re not casting. Like I’m floating in the Weave, except that you’re the Weave. You’re all around me, inside me, everywhere.”

He gazes at you, fingering this chin absently. And then he nods. There is a kind of solemnity in the gesture, the slight gathering of Gale’s brow. You wonder how long Gale has hidden this part of his nature, or shied away from examining it too closely.

“When I was a child, I learned to control it. But with you…”

He buries his head into the crook of your neck, the heat of his sigh blazing like your pulse. There is a force to it, then, an ache to his longing. You feel it like a flood.

“I want all of you,” he rasps. “And I want to give you all of me. Perhaps that’s why.”

Your open mouth finds his, wet and desperate. His breaths are ragged, swirling into yours like a clouds swallowing clouds. He is a warm bath, lapping at every inch of you. You are about to drown yourself in him when he draws back, so abruptly you feel bereft.

“Does it disturb you?”

The wavering in his eyes almost makes you wince. Traces of his uncertainty, the measure against which he still judges himself. You shake your head sharply, immediately.

“No.” You press yourself against him, swelling with tenderness and desire. “The more I find out about you, the more I love you. Nothing could make me love you less.”

He hesitates for a moment. You feel, as well as see, the last of his doubt fading. His smile is a ripple of light through you, a pleasure almost as intense as pain.

“That’s a relief,” he whispers, as his fingers flutter downwards, and his taste becomes your own.

[torchflies]

I was cleaning out my drafts and found this tiny thing about vampires. For you, my beloved 💜 (ahem, middle-aged Val Kilmer).

Tomek Kazansky wakes from a dead sleep when a pair of hands close tightly around his ears, smothering the distant knell of a bell.

His blue eyes fly open to the sight of his ojciec chrzestny — his godfather — bent over him stiffly, stinking of nalewki, with an ax from the barn looped through his belt. 

The old man’s eyes are cold, assessing, as he drinks in the sight of a five-year-old Tomek, the bastard son of a Polish nun who never named a father. His warm skin clings to its golden color, even when winter traps them in their homes and away from the sun. He is ruddy and strong, his little round face always upturned towards the sky and seeking out parts unknown. He is Polish and he holds their secrets in the clicking of his young bones, in the caul he was born with — just like his mother, his Mama. 

“Come, Tomek.” His godfather, Piotr Czajkowski, says. “We must cut off her head by sunrise.”

His Mama’s grave is unquiet, that’s what his godfather says as they walk through the moonlit night and Tomek struggles beneath the weight of the heavy shovel handed to him. She has only been buried a day, dying before she could take The Sacrament.

“She is a vjesci now, lost to us.” His godfather growls — a vampire, as they unearth the pinewood box that houses her now. 

Tomek has heard stories of becoming a vjesci for all his life. Babies born the way he was, the way his Mama was, born en caul — inside their sacs — are destined to wake from death as a vjesci. The only way to prevent the change is to eat the dried remains of the sac on the eve of the seventh year of life. His Mama never did. Tomek knows the rules, the way all the children in his village do, on how to prevent his vjesci mother from rising out of her unquiet grave and killing him. That is the first task of any vjesci, to slaughter their friends and family — ringing the church bell to signify their deaths and harbinging many others. 

His Mama looks like she’s sleeping when they pry open her coffin, her cheeks still ruddy red and her hands flexible when his godfather lifts them: signs of life. 

There are six holes in her white dress, as if she had been eating the fabric away. 

That is the only proof his godfather needs before he — reaches a hand inside and lets her fingers coil around his.

She blinks open eyes of sanguine red and her lips curl in a bloody smile as she looks right at Tomek, her mouthful of sharp fangs reflecting off the light of the moon.

“Hello, Tomek.” She coos, “It’s almost time, little one. You will come home to us.” 

His godfather flashes a mouthful of similar fangs, and Tomek remembers — his godfather died last summer in the barn, his ax slipped while he was splitting wood. 

Tomek’s eyes grow wide and terrified, backing up to nearly trip into an open grave.

Come home, Tomek…

—

Come home, Tomek…

On the final night of Tom Kazansky’s life — he’s tired. His body is older than it should be, ravaged by a disease more nefarious than any of the monsters that haunted his childhood. Nightmares, dreams long forgotten, half-truths buried by a child who moved to America and left Poland behind to rot — not realizing how the tendrils of that life are woven into his very being, holding him fast. 

He dies in his sleep, a peaceful death, his tracheostomy grows clogged with secretions as he sleeps and he passes without a struggle.

The man he loves is miles away, protecting their child, as Tom Kazansky breathes his last. 

He just never expected to wake up again — or to wake up hungry. 

—

[ghoulnextdoor]

Blackened Canvas, Blooming Bone: The Art Of Dylan Garrett Smith – Unquiet Things

[ohbutwheresyourheart]

maybe if I outline the story AGAIN, in a slightly different way, that will give me the strength to actually write it

[honourablejester]

Starfinder Character Concept: A Luminous Skeletal Priest

Okay. So. Reading the Ports of Call setting book presented me with the fabulous concept of the Last Call, a colony ship turned mobile funerary barge:

“Space is a minefield of fatal disasters, and the undead can arise from those who die gruesomely or without last rites. Knowing this, a Pharasmin sect called the Cemeterians repurposed a colony ship as their flying temple and set out to provide funerary services across the galaxy. Having now operated for over 50 years, the starship is known as Last Call is easily recognized by its sign reading “Let the End be an Ending” painted above its docking bay. The ship periodically jumps across the galaxy, serving as a trading post, morgue, and neutral ground for all but the unrepentant undead.”

This is enchanting to me. Combined with all the space undead you get in Starfinder, like my beloved Marooned Ones. Just the idea of a ship that is going out to find the wrecks, the dead stations, the lost colonies, in order to grant the dead their last rites and to lay the unquiet dead to rest. Or to just provide services for ships or stations that don’t have their own priests. I so want a character who at least spent time on her as part of their background.

And then, while I was thinking about deathly space priests and their funeral ship, I remembered a Starfinder race that I have loved since I first read about them: the Shatori. I noticed them because of the image firstly, Shatori are 7ft tall translucent immortals with glowing bones. They have a glowing skeleton that shines through their semi-transparent flesh. It’s amazing.

They accidentally set off an invasion of their world by daemons of Abaddon while looking for alternate power sources way back when, and created a spell to keep some of them alive in stasis until the invasion was over, but messed it up and wound up hibernating for centuries in a pocket dimension next to the Boneyard, the deathly energies of which gradually converted the sleeping Shatori into living but sterile immortals. They can’t give birth, can’t create more Shatori, so the survivors in that stasis dimension are the only Shatori’s that are ever going to exist anymore, and each death among them is an irrevocable loss. So they are, as a people, incredibly conscious of death, and seek to preserve their knowledge against their loss. As well as live full lives, in honour of all the Shatori that will never get to live.

Which. Combined with the Last Call.

Now. Shatori do not generally have truck with religion. They’re essentially immortal space Vulcans, they believe in impartiality and rational self-interest. And Pharasma, in particular, is complicated for them, on account of her Boneyard being the thing that … well, did the thing.

But they believe that each death is an irrevocable loss. They believe in preserving the knowledge and actions of those who have died. They believe in ensuring that those who are lost are not forgotten. So maybe one of them might be willing to crew a ship and find the lost dead and ensure that their names, their deeds, their knowledge, and the nature of their deaths, is recorded and not lost to time and the vast emptiness of space.

Also. Imagery-wise. A 7ft tall luminescent death priest, aboard a flying funeral ship. I’m just saying.

I do think I want an investigative sort of Cemetarian here. Not just last rites. They’re Shatori, they want to know the hows and whys and what-is-lefts. Recovery and preservation of knowledge, so that those who have died did not die wholly in vain. In which case, they might actually be in favour of the survival of intelligent undead, as it preserves the person and the knowledge, which might have maybe driven a little bit of a wedge between them and more zealous Cemetarians (and Pharasmins in general). So they might have been politely asked to leave the Last Call at some point. But they’re interested in continuing the calling regardless. In finding the dead of space, and laying them properly to rest, and recording the nature and circumstances of their deaths, and retrieving as much of who they were and what they knew as possible.

A mystic, almost certainly. Not a direct devotee of Pharasma, though they masked that well for a long time, more a simple chronicler of the dead. I think the Akashic connection? Knowledge, the preservation of knowledge. I like that Shatori already get detect magic, grave words, and stabilise as spell-like abilities. They lean towards deathly investigation from a standing start. We’ll likely build their spell repertoire to match that.

For background … I don’t think I’d go priest. I suspect they may not still be a member of Pharasma’s flock, on account of not actually being that religious or opposed to undeath on a philosophical level. I think I’m going to go with Void Nomad instead. Touched by the isolation and death of the vast cold reaches of space. We’re going to be a philosophical sort of Shatori on an evolving journey of discovery regarding death, that thing which is the horror and inevitable end of our entire species. By studying and honouring and embracing those who have perished to the void, we are slowly learning to accept our own inevitable end.

So. A quiet, contemplative lady, a shining skeletal Shatori on a journey of discovery, death and acceptance.

For a name … I deeply love the names of the planets in the Shatori’s home system of Disaj: Perdane, the world they lost to Abaddon, Perdure, the world on which they enacted their desperate and doomed attempt to escape death, and Prevail, a world relatively unscathed by past mistakes. There’s a theme there that I like. So. She’s going to have renamed herself out in the void, to remind herself of home and to keep the knowledge alive.

Durance Vail. An ex-Cemetarian of the Last Call. A Shatori void nomad akashic mystic. Heh.

(Or, put another way, and still to my giddy delight, a 7ft glowing skeleton lady who would like to go exploring spooky shipwrecks and speak with dead people for broadly altruistic purposes).

(Also, yes, space undead and nautical horror will never not be themes for me. I like spooky ships).

[l-carlyle]

Lockwood & Co. feature on the January 2023 Issue of the SFX Magazine

I'll put the text under the break if anyone can't access the photos :-)

"JOE CORNISH IS HAUNTED. NOT BY ANY BONE chilling apparition or plate-flinging poltergeist but by a time. A vanished age, of strange torments and diabolical dread.

“This is a world of draughty houses and windows that don’t quite close properly and creaky floorboards and clicking pipes,” he tells SFX, smiling over a Zoom connection. “The world I remember from my childhood, before double-glazing and insulation!”

Welcome to the phantom-infested Britain of Lockwood & Co. It’s a little like the 1970s, only even weirder. Adapted from the popular series of books by Jonathan Stroud, this new Netflix offering pits swashbuckling teens against the unquiet dead in a London spilling over with paranormal activity. Even the local A-Z, you strongly suspect, drips with ectoplasm.

ANATOMY OF A GHOST “I love supernatural stories,” says Cornish, who serves as lead writer and director on the eight-part series, “and it’s unusual to find a story where the science of ghosts has been so thoughtfully defined. There’s a broad set of rules for ghosts that most stories adhere to, but there’s not really an almost Darwinesque analysis of different types of ghosts, different species, different behaviours, a taxonomy.

“The idea that they can kill you by touching you completely changes the dynamic of a ghost story, brings it into the action-adventure realm. So you get everything great about a ghost story but these other genre elements really take it into a new place. “On top of that you’ve got terrific worldbuilding. This takes place 50 years into a ghost epidemic, and the world has really changed because of it. Different economics and different social structures have emerged. Because young people are more sensitive to the supernatural, which is a classic trope in ghost stories, it’s extrapolated into this world where young people are employed by massive adult-run agencies to detect and fight ghosts. “So it’s a pretty amazing bit of thinking, based on a very attractive set of genre ideas that have been around for ages but have never really been reinvented in such a clever way.”

It’s a more analogue world, where technological progress stuttered. And that’s a premise that appeals to Cornish, who made his name with the hand-tooled, micro-budget joys of The Adam And Joe Show – a pioneering ’90s celebration of geek culture, knocked together from toys, love and cardboard – before promotion to the big screen as director of Attack The Block in 2011.

“The world changed tack when the problem started, because everything that would be regarded as pseudo-science became real science,” he explains. “So the world stopped at the time of Amstrad word processors! “It became a more industrial world, because iron and salt and water can repel ghosts, so suddenly these almost Victorian industries are revived. Also, in a weird parallel way, old things are suddenly scary. Anything with an ancient history is potentially lethal, because it might be the source of a ghost.

“For me it felt like the early ’80s, when I was a teenager, because that was kind of pre-digital. It was a world that still had analogue media and you could buy records and fanzines. There was a world of printed youth culture that existed in a social way, that wasn’t on telephones and computers. You communicated in a much more person-to-person way back then. So that was pleasing for me as well – the series has this kind of retro-contemporary feel to it that’s half modern and half 50 years ago.” The spectral aesthetic in Lockwood & Co also takes inspiration from the past. “We started by looking at Victorian spirit photography. Because photography is pre-digital, it’s chemical, the ghosts feel very different, like a real physical presence. They feel as if they exist in the world of natural physics – we can’t really get away with hiding them.

“In other movies or TV shows you might glimpse a ghost as a jump scare and then it’s gone. Our ghosts are really present, and our characters fight with them, so we had to come up with a design that you could really train the camera on, and involve in an action sequence, and would be able to leap around and dive and swoop and bolt into a corner.

“They’re all made out of smoke, they’re all made out of something ethereal. There are lots of different types in the series, lots of colours and densities and shapes. We tried to get away from super-digital ghosts and make them feel like they could really exist in a science experiment.”

Lockwood & Co looses its phantoms in some genuinely creepy abodes. What’s the secret of bringing a legitimately goosefleshing haunted house to the screen?

“We worked really hard on lighting, and light levels, making sure stuff was legible enough but that you’re also slightly peering into the shadows. I think sound is hugely important, and also silence. A lot of modern media is frightened of silence and when nothing happens that’s often the most interesting moment. We tried not to do too many jump scares. We do one or two, but we try and create an atmosphere of creeping fear rather than give people heart attacks.”

Stroud’s five-novel Lockwood series launched with The Screaming Staircase in 2013 (the TV version adapts this tale but also goes beyond it, Cornish reveals). Its young ghostbusters are Lucy Carlyle, gifted with psychic powers, and Anthony Lockwood, the dashing and enigmatic founder of the only agency to operate without adult supervision. The show captures the dashing spirit of the books, quippy heroes slicing at wraiths with rapiers, but plays things commendably straight.

“It’s a very sincere endeavour,” acknowledges Cornish. “We believe in the characters and we believe in the world. Stuff like this only works if you really commit to it and decide that it’s real. I don’t love shows where the characters are winking at the camera, or there are meta jokes. I want the world to be completely absorbing and credible.

“One of the most important and compelling things for people who love these books is the relationship between Lockwood and Lucy. It’s a relationship that has an enormous fandom – there’s an amazing amount of fan art out there. It’s a sort of unrequited will-they-won’t they relationship. This is a world where young people shoulder an incredibly grave burden, at a time in their life when they shouldn’t be thinking about death, or mortality, all the things that older people have to think about, and yet here they are, armed with weapons, having to fight things that could kill them.

“But then another brilliant thing about the novels is that if you get too depressed you get more vulnerable, so the ghosts can get you if you feel too bleak. So they have to cheer each other up and make quips and jokes, for safety purposes. We just approached the whole thing as if it was completely real.”

Given the rabid fandom, getting the casting of the leads right was crucial. Bridgerton’s Ruby Stokes ultimately won the role of Lucy. “She’s the centre of the story,” Cornish tells SFX. “She’s vulnerable, damaged, kind of abused and exploited as a child, comes from a broken home, has lost her father, yet has incredible gumption and ambition and a very strong sense of self-preservation. “She has this gift that she really doesn’t want, and she packs her bags, runs away from home and sets out to London with no qualifications, nowhere to stay the night. Her powers are an expression of her emotional sensitivity. In the book it’s like teenage emotions are being made into a supernatural power.

“So we just had to find an incredible young actor who felt like she could do it, and who you believed had that inner emotional life. Before I did this I always wondered how castings worked, whether there was some super complicated methodology. But a person just walks into the room and you go, ‘Do I believe that she’s Lucy?’ Ruby was actually one of the first people we saw, and we all just went, ‘Oh, there she is! There’s Lucy Carlyle!’”

Newcomer Cameron Chapman bagged the title role. “Lockwood was much harder, actually,” shares Cornish. “We saw hundreds and hundreds of actors, and Cameron came in pretty late in the day, at the eleventh hour. And that’s equally hard, because he’s got to be sort of handsome and cool and yet really vulnerable and haunted. He’s got to have swagger and braggadocio but also be a bit of a bullshit artist. He’s like a sort of teen entrepreneur. In the ’80s everybody wanted to be a teen entrepreneur, and he’s that made flesh. But he’s also wounded and secretive and has sort of a death wish.

“Cameron had all that. Weirdly, he looks very like the illustrations on the book covers, and he wears that long coat really well. He does the charisma, he does the vulnerability, he’s a bit of a dick – not in real life, in terms of acting! – and then he can be very romantic and swoony. It’s a heck of a part for a young actor.

Out of the three main actors [Ali Hadji-Heshmati plays George, Lockwood’s second-in-command] he’s the guy who really hadn’t been on camera before, but he does an exceptional job.” But while fan approval is vital, even more key is winning the heart and mind of the man who dreamed up Lucy, Lockwood and their spook-riddled world in the first place.

“Jonathan has been very involved from the start,” says Cornish. “I formed a relationship with him in order to get him to give us the rights to the book, and then we’ve let him read every draft of the scripts. He’s come to visit the set, he’s sat down with the actors. He’s really into it and he’s been extraordinarily supportive, but sensibly he said to us, ‘Look, you go and do your thing. I understand this is a different beast, between the page and the screen.’

“But I hope, and I trust, that he has been surprised by how much we’ve just stuck to what he’s done. Because it’s really, really good. He’s provided pretty incredible material.”

Lockwood & Co is on Netflix from 27 January.

[falmerbrook]

Updating my ESO base game zone list (from roughly most to least favorite), adding the EP zones I'm done with (up through Deshaan), and elaborating on my thoughts for each zone and on the writing overall because I like yapping. Moving on to DLC now.

TLDR:

Grahtwood

Rivenspire

Coldharbor

Auridon

Glenumbra

Stros M'kai

Malabal Tor

Alik'r Desert

Betnik

Reaper's March

Greenshade

Stonefalls

Bangkorai

Bleakrock Isle and Bal Foyen

Khenarthi's Roost

Stormhaven

Deshaan

More detailed thoughts below (spoiler warning for these 10 year old quests):

1) Grahtwood - I would say Grahtwood and Rivenspire are tied for my favorites, with Grahtwood being all over strong while Rivenspire has a particularly strong environment and main quest. While for me most other zones maybe had a few standout quests if any, the side quests in Grahtwood were very consistently getting me invested and were fun/interesting (stand outs include: The Grip of Madness, Bosmer Insight, Keeper of Bones, The Wakening Dark, and The Unquiet Dead). The environment is just stunning too. It's one of the few base game zones where things truly feel grand and huge. I love the giant trees in this game and Grahtwood is full of them. The Bosmer towns are really cool too, and Gil-Var-Delle was very cool. I appreciate all the Bosmer lore and culture fleshed out by all the Valenwood zones, and it feels very unique compared to the other cultures fleshed out (in the base game at least).

2) Rivenspire - I love the main quest for this zone so much. The characters are more memorable, the story doesn't feel as forced (and the player's inclusion feels less forced) compared to the other zones, and the twists and emotional connection to the events are stronger. I love all the Ravenwatch characters. Verandis alone boosts my opinion of this zone. The scenery of this zone is probably one of the strongest in the base game too. Entering the zone to see the Doomcrag (A+ name btw) with the red lightning in the distance immediately got me excited for what the zone had in store (especially after the bore that was Stormhaven) and the way it sorta hangs over everything on that side of the map makes it such a strong set piece. Even beyond it, I love the gloomy and lightly gothic vibes of the zone and the Main Quest. The main reason I put it below Grahtwood is that I really didn't get invested in any of the side quests I did.

3) Coldharbor - I actually didn't realize this was going to be an entire zone, so when I first got to it I was a little put off, especially because my experience with planes of Oblivion in past games was mostly annoyance (the Deadlands and Aprocrypha), but I ended up really liking it! I liked how pretty much everything in it related to the main quest, so it made for a nice focused change of pace, and every quest relating to the same goal made me more invested in them. A lot of the quests felt more unique than the rest of the base games ones too. The scenery was really grand and cool and impressive, and the environment paired with the sound design really made the place feel uneasy and unsafe to explore (even if it wasn't really that much more dangerous than the other zones)! I also found a lot of the characters fun and likeable. Some stand out quests for me were Vanus Unleashed, The Endless War (and its follow-up quests), Special Blend, and The Soul-Meld Mage.

4) Auridon - I ended up spending a ton of time in this zone so I became pretty familiar and fond of it. The environment is so pretty and picturesque. I also liked how a lot of the side quests either related to/built on the main conflict with the Veiled Heritance or helped to elaborate on the current context of the Aldmeri Dominion. It helped the whole zone feel more cohesive. I certainly remember the quests of this zone better than most others. Razum-dar and Ayrenn are absolute treats as well!

5) Glenumbra - (bumping up) I might be a little biased in liking this zone more because it was one of my first, but I'm also pretty fond of Glenumbra. The biggest negative of it for me is that I barely followed the main quest storyline at all. It felt kinda all over the place and like different parts of it barely connected to others. However, the vibes and aesthetic are great. I love all the marshes and fog and general moodiness, which really fits a lot of the quests in ghost towns and cemeteries. I enjoy going back to Glenumbra for events and antiquities because I just like running around it (although it really suffers from having enemies on every square inch of the map, but that's an issue I've noticed to a lesser extent everywhere with the game so far). The environment is just very pretty, and a cool touch is the huge moving vines everywhere. Also, gotta say, I hate Daggerfall's layout. It's a really cool looking city and it feels more like a large city than most others in the base game, but it sucks for doing daily crafting. Overall I just had fun here.

6) Stros M'kai - So given this was the first zone I ever experienced, and I had just started Redguard right before earnestly starting ESO so it was fun going "like the one in Redguard!", I might have a bit of bias on how much I like this zone. But I am very fond of it! I found the characters of the main quest endearing and memorable (even if they and their story wasn't relevant almost at all to the rest of the DC) and the player's inclusion in the story didn't feel forced. I like the aesthetics of Port Hunding, and the desert around it just felt warm and big despite how small the map actually is.

7) Malabal Tor (after thinking about it more I'm bumping this one up a little) - I didn't really care for this one while doing it, but in hindsight, it's grown on me. I really like the lore and development of the Silvenar and Green Lady that they do in this zone, and I like how so many of the side quests help to flesh out those lore concepts and backstory beyond the main quest. It makes the storyline of the main quest for this zone feel more developed and worth getting invested in. However, I didn't really get invested in anything else very much. The scenery was pretty beautiful too.

8) Alik'r Desert - I was surprised how beautiful I found this zone given that it is a desert, but I really loved the scenery! I also liked the quests here fine enough. They weren't my favorite, but I didn't necessarily dislike them either. I liked the old Redguard temples you got to explore, and the way they implemented and introduced the Yokudan religion/gods. It was fun to engage with. This was a perfectly middle zone.

9) Betnik - I like the setting of Betnik. The rocky and foggy beaches are pretty. The history of the island is pretty interesting. in hindsight having done the first zones for the other alliances as well, I now appreciate that the characters from the Stros M'Kai main quest are here and the story is continuing with them, it feel more natural for why my character is invovled. However, I barely remember anything else from this zone, and in hindsight the environment isn't as pretty or as impressive as later zones, so I don't care too much more for it.

10) Reaper's March - This zone was very hit or miss for me. The scenery was nice, and the music stood out to me and I really liked it, but the quests and character writing was either something I really liked or something I really didn't. I loved Shazah and Khali, and while the whole concept of of the Moon Hallowed felt super contrived, I like that it gave us an opportunity to really get to know them and get invested in them. They were both charming and likeable, but it is for that reason that I was not a fan of how the main quest in this zone ended. I was looking forward to how they would handle which twin would be the Mane (or maybe push against tradition and make them both Mane or some other compromise...), but one ultimately dying felt like a stupid way to solve that issue. They could've been so much more creative with it. This feeling of enjoying parts of a questline and disliking others from some reason continued through the quests of this zone.

11) Greenshade - I wasn't a fan of the scenery in this one. Not only was it just not as cool to me, but I think I've developed a bit of a pet peeve over how everyone kept refers to it as a forest when it was clearly some kind of savanna woodland. Sorry Bosmer, that is not a forest to me. Anyway, the story and side quests for this zone didn't stick out to me at all with the exception of a few MVP characters. I liked the Wilderking quest, in part because the idea of the Wilderking is interesting (in theory, it's ok in execution) but mostly because I really liked Aranias and the story we see with her (I think it's kinda weird that the original Wilderking and her are Altmer, especially in the context of the politics around the formation of the Aldmeri Dominion, but besides that I enjoy the idea). I was got a little emotional over the very sweet short quest, The Flower of Youth, and it has really stuck out in my mind. And finally, I liked Indaenir. I found him very charming. To the extent that I was sad at his sacrifice at the end of the main quest and hyped for him when he becomes the Silvenar. Mid zone with some stand out moments.

12) Stonefalls - The story for this one baffled me a bit too much, in the sense that there were several moments where I feel like I didn't get enough explanations as to why what was happening was happening. I was truly just along for the ride. There weren't really any characters that stood out to me either. Like, I recognized them and remembered them as the kept popping up, but I wasn't invested enough in them, which is a shame, because I think the last few quests of the main zone quest would've been a lot stronger if I actually liked or felt endeared by Tanval, Garyn, and their relationship. The second half of the main quest felt drawn out and I think the writing was just kinda bad for this zone tbh (more than usual). Now, saying that, the scenery and environment for this zone was gorgeous, and the music stood out and really accentuated the mood! One of my favorites so far environment-wise. I think it felt very Morrowind-y, and I loved the mountains and the volcanoes and the land coral and the ash effects. I also love the look of the Dunmer architecture in this game, and I think it fits them well. I took so so many screenshots in this zone. I genuinely enjoyed just wandering through it.

13) Bangkorai - Nothing about this zone really caught my attention. I didn't care for the main quest, I didn't get invested in any side quests, and for me this zone feels more frustrating to navigate with how many areas as controlled entirely by enemies. It also does nothing new or interesting with the Reachmen, unfortunately. The scenery is pretty, but it is similar to everything else we've seen in the Daggerfall Covenant, so by the time I got to it it wasn't anything special. My opinion on this zone was also probably colored by the fact that at this point I just wanted to get further in the main quest. I also want to highlight this one quest, Freedom's Chains, which has a super interesting basic idea and hypothetical choice at the end, but is so horribly buggy and terribly written that it is one of 2 quests I've done so far in this game that made me angry.

14) Bleakrock Isle and Bal Foyen - I did the entirety of these in a little over an hour each, and really nothing stuck out to me. Not the characters, not the setting, not the quests, nothing. The only thing of note is that I was running around Bal Foyen at sunrise and it was very pretty, and there was a guar in Bal Foyen named Rollie.

15) Khenarthi's Roost* (I did it slowly over a few months while my hands were in pain and nothing about it stood out to me) - So there is an important context to this one, which is that I started this zone in January after the New Life Festival, but soon took a break from the game because my hand pain was really bad and I couldn't play. I attempted to play every few weeks (in this zone) and every time my hands hurt really bad, and I had forgotten what was going on. It took me months to finish this teeny zone, and I just don't have a great association with it. Outside of that bias, I just wasn't invested in the plot or characters (outside of Raz, of course), and I feel like the Maomer were uninteresting and a waste of potential. The aesthetics of the island were pretty nice, but I didn't find it as cool or pretty as most of the other zones.

16) Stormhaven My dislike of this zone was mostly circumstantial when I first played it, but in hindsight having gone back to it for other random things, I continue to dislike it. The wayshrine placement sucks. Somehow by the time I got to this zone I was already a little burnt out on all the Daedric prince involvement, and the involvement of Vaermina and her cult did nothing new or interesting. I could not bring myself to care about pretty much any quest in this zone, with the notable exception of the part at the end where you enter Emeric's dream and talk him off the ledge. I like Emeric, and I feel like this detail made it make more sense for why he can trust you so much. But other than that, it was a very mid zone. The scenery was Glenumbra but less cool in every way.

17) Deshaan - This is only below Stormhaven because of that one quest with Emeric (and maybe I'm a bit jaded right now). In a game where it feels like the Daedric Princes are invovled in every other quest, you're telling me that a questline focusing on an organization creating a plague had nothing to do with Peryite? Justice for Peryite! Speaking of, the main quest for this zone was so... what? The writing for this alliance so far has been really weak imo and this quest really exemplifies it. It's just antagonist doing miscellaneous antagonist things without a solid connection between their actions. Despite building up to the main antagonist's backstory throughout the zone, I still don't understand her motivation for just about anything she did until the last 3rd of the story, and the kinda interesting conflict of her backstory was written in the least interesting way it could be. None of the other quests stood out to me, and the environment, while fine, didn't catch my attention either. I did like that Mournhold felt larger than most of the cities in the game, and I loved how the temple looked and loomed over everything.

-

Daggerfall Covenant Overall Thoughts:

These zones were my starting zones so I was learning how the game works and doing the big main quest while going through them. I straight up can't remember whatever the overarching plot of these zones was, but I remember each zone as its own individual thing better. At the time I felt sorta meh towards it, but having done the other alliances it has grown on me because of the characters and pacing. The way you get invovled with the leader in this faction feels more natural and less contrived than the other two (and the build up to getting to that point is longer and more developed) since you have to prove yourself and work your way up the High Rock leadership to finally impress Emeric and get him to entrust you with things. You don't just do him one favor and he goes "ok I trust you with alliance secrets now", but compared to the AD it felt like the over arching story of the alliance is much much weaker and less developed. it feels more like each zone has its own story only loosely tied together with "WAR IS HAPPENING" (EP is sorta the same). The antagonists weren't memorable, but the side characters like Emeric, Darien, Gabrielle, Skordo, the gang on Stros M'Kai, Lady Laurent and Stibbons, etc. were fun! I read on Reddit that the team that made the DC also made Coldharbor, which is why so many DC characters feature in it, which definitely helped me feel connected to them more. Overall, not the most striking alliance, but I liked the characters and am probably more fond of it because it was my first one

Aldmeri Dominion Overall Thoughts:

I appreciate that there are overarching storylines between the zones (beyond just "[other alliance] is attacking!") between the Veiled Heritance, the death of and new Silvenar and Green Lady, etc. The other two factions' zones can sometimes feel too disjointed from each other or the way they are connected feels contrived, so the reoccurring characters feel more random (like, why are you here too??) or there are way less of them, while in the AD you meet a lot of the reoccurring characters in the first two zones and then it makes sense why you keep running into them. It makes the relationships you build with them feel more genuine, and there were a number of stand out characters for me. I think for this reason, having one small starting zone as opposed to 2 might've helped with that feeling. On the other hand, I feel like the build up to how you get invovled with the alliance leadership was way more rushed (in a bad way) compared to the other two zones. Like, you happen to be picked out as competent and trustworthy by one of the right hand men of the queen (no offense to you, Raz, you are one of the highlights of this alliance) and then you save the queen from an assassination attempt in the first story point of the next zone and she just trusts you immediately (once again, no offense to you Ayrenn, you are also a highlight). But once we're into the main storyline, I enjoyed it and followed it a lot better than the other two zones. I also appreciated how the antagonists had motivations that felt like they actually informed their decisions and related to the political and interpersonal dramas going on. It made them more memorable. I felt in general that the side quests were a little stronger here as well.

Ebonheart Pack Overall Thoughts (so far)

I've only done Bleakrock Isle, Bal Foyen, Stonefalls, and Deshaan, and hopefully I'll come back to do the rest later, but I'm a little sick of the base game and would like to move on to DLCs. With that disclaimer out of the way, I've found it so far lack luster compared to the other two. So far the zone stories aren't that connected (although that may change), and there seems to be less reoccurring characters. The one that I do know for sure shows up repeatedly, Naryu, didn't actually make her first appearance until Deshaan (not a fan of her so far tbh... why does she neg me so much??). Altogether, none of the characters so far stood out to me, and they've been overall less endearing and less memorable (so far). None of the quests have either. Generally in this series, but particularly in this game, and even more so in this alliance for some reason, the player's involvement in a quest or situation feels really contrived. The one positive for this alliance for me is that I think the environments are consistently pretty strong (so far). Finally, the antagonists have been weak in the sense that they aren't memorable or interesting (similarly to the DC). These ones frustrate me a bit more because they feel much more like wasted opportunities. So far there's a theme of family or parent-child relationships going on, but it's really shallow and I'm not sure it's purposeful. Like I said, maybe I'm just jaded with the base game zones because they are pretty same-y (and it makes sense why tbh), but this alliance has been my least favorite so far and I don't feel bad about skipping the rest of it for now.

[send-up-my-heart-to-you]

dark artifices spoilers!! do not read if you haven’t finished lord of shadows (i’m looking at u tina)

Ty,

I've thought so many times about what I would say to you if you reappeared suddenly. If I was walking along the street and you popped out of thin air, walking along beside me like you always used to, with your hands in your pockets and your head tilted back.

Mom used to say you walked celestially, looking up at the sky as if you were scanning the clouds for angels. Do you remember that?

In your world I am ashes, I am ancestors, my memories and hopes and dreams have gone to build the City of Bones. In your world, I am lucky, because I do not have to live in a world without you. But in this world, I am you. I am the twinless twin. So I can tell you this:

When your twin leaves the earth you live on, it never turns the same way again: the weight of their soul is gone, and everything is off balance. The world rocks under your feet like an unquiet sea. I can't tell you it gets easier. But it does get steadier; you learn how to live with the new rocking of the new earth, the way sailors gain sea legs. You learn. I promise.

I know you're not exactly the Ty I had in this world, my brilliant, beautiful brother. But I know from Julian that you are beautiful and brilliant too. I know that you are loved. I hope that you are happy. Please be happy. You deserve it so much.

I want to ask if you remember the way we used to whisper words to each other in the dark: star, twin, glass. But I'll never know your answer. So I'll whisper to myself as I fold this letter up and slide it into the envelope, hoping against hope it will somehow reach you. I whisper your name, Ty. I whisper the most important thing:

I love you. I love you. I love you.

Livvy