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
But maybe he should have expected as much, upon discovering tentacle-faced pirates. This is not his home system; this is, by all insistence and evidence, not his home universe. Why not have red-eyed demonic men who seem to think he's the weird one?
But it's impolite to stare, so he doesn't. The Emperor regards his undead thoughtfully and nods like this a wholly normal conversation to have.
"Unsettling might not be a negative, on a necromantic pirate ship," he notes. "It might be worth leaning in to 'unsettling.' But you do have a point; there is something very tidy about skeletons. I've always been a fan."
no subject
Gods he really wishes someone else from the Nein was here, because it would be great having someone also a little thrown by the surreal quality of this entire interaction with him. But alas.
"Oh, if you're leaning into a theme, then," Molly says, a little sardonic. "I think it'd be a bit messy, though. They'd be dripping bits of themselves all over the place, not to mention the smell."
no subject
"I'm not going to let them decompose," he says, eyebrows quirking up as though taken aback by the concept. "That would be horrific. Not in a useful way, either; you're entirely right about the smell."
He drums his fingers together in thought, then nods as though he's hit upon an idea.
"Perhaps we'll keep tentacles on a chosen few," he says. "To really make them pop. Those with scaled and barnacled bits may not make the cut."
no subject
Still. All these undead make him feel all squirmy inside.
"Why not decorate the ship with tentacles?" he asks instead. "If you're trying to creep people out. Just—twist tentacles over the railings and the mast."
A pause.
"Why the walking corpses, anyway?" he blurts. Yep, it's out there now. "It's not as if you can't hire sailors in town, and they're better company than the undead at any rate."
no subject
He treats the blurted question like an entirely reasonable one; he nods as though Molly has put forward an expected observation.
"I'll need both, if we're to be genuinely seaworthy. My sailing skills are not up to par. But a boat like this takes a lot of hands to run, and there are no workers more reliable than the dead."