ᴛʜᴇ ᴇᴍᴘᴇʀᴏʀ ᴜɴᴅʏɪɴɢ (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
necrolord) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
deercountry2021-09-03 09:19 am
necrolord) wrote in deercountry2021-09-03 09:19 am
o1 . like an old enemy
Who: necrolord and you!
What: A necromancer comes to town.
When: Early September.
Where: The docks, Gaze, and anywhere.
Content Warnings: Undead, implied murder of NPCs, and all the usual warnings of this character.
(1) ghost ship.
Maybe, in your wandering, you've come to the harbor. There are fishing boats and trading vessels here among the dark, choppy waves.
One of them looks like astonishingly bad news.
If at any point you got dredged up by pirates, you will recognize it immediately. The hull is dark and oily; the sails are tattered and grim; the crew are all horribly corrupted. They are scaled and tentacled and barely-human. But they seem to have lost all aggression: they move in rote, mechanical ways, taking no notice of their surroundings.
Only one man stands out from them. He looks remarkably average: dark clothes, dark hair, dressed in a captain's coat of black and gold. What might stop you, though, are his eyes. They are black from edge to edge, sclera and all, with an oily shimmer that feels wrong to look upon.
"What do you think," says the captain, to whoever has stopped to stare. "Corpses or skeletons? Skeletons are a classic, but I do hate to get rid of the tentacles; loses the novelty."
(2) weak and weary.
Gaze is absolutely drenched in ravens. Dripping ravens. He's pretty sure ravens don't flock, typically, unless they are scavenging the dead on a battlefield; so that's promising. Regardless: there is a man before you trying to coax one of the ravens onto his wrist.
It perches there, and he looks briefly, utterly delighted. He reaches out a few fingers to stroke its feathery breast, and the raven lets him. His voice drops low, soft, somber:
"Is there balm in Gilead?" he murmurs. "Tell me; tell me, I implore."
The raven considers this. It cocks its dark little head towards him. It leans forward, the shaggy feathers of its throat bristling, to speak.
FUCK OFF, croaks the raven. It pecks the Emperor Undying on the forehead, takes a shit, and smacks him with a wing on its way out.
The man, left in the wreckage of this situation, does something vaguely impressed with his eyebrows. He chews his lip. He says, "Welp."
Then he turns to you, the poor sap who witnessed this, and spreads his hands in defeat.
"Worth a shot," he says. "Did you know the collective term is an unkindness of ravens? I see why."
(3) wildcard.
[ Happy to match formatting! ]
necrolord and you!What: A necromancer comes to town.
When: Early September.
Where: The docks, Gaze, and anywhere.
Content Warnings: Undead, implied murder of NPCs, and all the usual warnings of this character.
(1) ghost ship.
Maybe, in your wandering, you've come to the harbor. There are fishing boats and trading vessels here among the dark, choppy waves.
One of them looks like astonishingly bad news.
If at any point you got dredged up by pirates, you will recognize it immediately. The hull is dark and oily; the sails are tattered and grim; the crew are all horribly corrupted. They are scaled and tentacled and barely-human. But they seem to have lost all aggression: they move in rote, mechanical ways, taking no notice of their surroundings.
Only one man stands out from them. He looks remarkably average: dark clothes, dark hair, dressed in a captain's coat of black and gold. What might stop you, though, are his eyes. They are black from edge to edge, sclera and all, with an oily shimmer that feels wrong to look upon.
"What do you think," says the captain, to whoever has stopped to stare. "Corpses or skeletons? Skeletons are a classic, but I do hate to get rid of the tentacles; loses the novelty."
(2) weak and weary.
Gaze is absolutely drenched in ravens. Dripping ravens. He's pretty sure ravens don't flock, typically, unless they are scavenging the dead on a battlefield; so that's promising. Regardless: there is a man before you trying to coax one of the ravens onto his wrist.
It perches there, and he looks briefly, utterly delighted. He reaches out a few fingers to stroke its feathery breast, and the raven lets him. His voice drops low, soft, somber:
"Is there balm in Gilead?" he murmurs. "Tell me; tell me, I implore."
The raven considers this. It cocks its dark little head towards him. It leans forward, the shaggy feathers of its throat bristling, to speak.
FUCK OFF, croaks the raven. It pecks the Emperor Undying on the forehead, takes a shit, and smacks him with a wing on its way out.
The man, left in the wreckage of this situation, does something vaguely impressed with his eyebrows. He chews his lip. He says, "Welp."
Then he turns to you, the poor sap who witnessed this, and spreads his hands in defeat.
"Worth a shot," he says. "Did you know the collective term is an unkindness of ravens? I see why."
(3) wildcard.
[ Happy to match formatting! ]
no subject
Of course, she doesn't have another perspective to confirm that, and for now, it seems best to err on the side of caution. Still, she is curious.
"Can you be a little more specific about where the line gets drawn where you're from?"
no subject
"Where I'm from," he echoes, "there is no magic but necromancy. There are those who work more with thalergy— that is the energy of life— than with thanergy, the energy of death. There are still others who work directly with the spirit. All these areas of focus still fall under the umbrella of necromancy.
"Very little is outlawed," he muses. "I've always taken the hands-off approach when it comes to ruling. But some forms of necromancy are plainly more dangerous than others, to the adept or to their subject."
no subject
"I guess that explains a lot," she says thoughtfully. She looks up at him. "At home - well, what was home before here - necromancy was a branch of magic as opposed to being the only magic. But yeah, it makes sense that some types would be more dangerous than others. So it is a lot different from what you're talking about."
no subject
"I'd be interested to see your work, sometime," he says mildly. "Perhaps we can compare notes."
no subject
"Yeah - yeah, I guess that would be okay," she can't help sounding a little surprised, but she supposes she probably shouldn't be. Why wouldn't he take an interest in something very different from what he's used to?
no subject
He steps away, in the direction of the Archives, as though set to take her advice.
"And I suppose you can let me know if you have any better luck with the ravens."
no subject
She turns to leave as well, and stops. "Oh, hey. About the Archives? It's kind of hard to find what you're looking for - it's pretty much a maze of shelves and other things, and the books don't seem to be shelved in any kind of particular order. You'll just know what you're looking for when you see it."
no subject
"Sounds like I have a long day ahead of me," he says, vaguely amused. "Maybe I'll find a bit of poetry the ravens do enjoy."
Patience is a virtue; he'll push for a demonstration of her magic another day. In the meantime, he may yet dig up something that can tell him what to expect. There are sources of power here he's never even imagined, and she has access to only one of them.
The Emperor takes his leave.