Mayerling November Catchall

[whowillmourn]

who: Mayerling & others
what: Various November happenings
when: All month
where: Outpost, Staging Point, Archaic Archives, Around Trench

content warnings: see individual starters

Comments

Days in Gaze | Archaic Archives [Open]

[whowillmourn]

CW: references to bloodlust/addiction themes

The temperamental architecture—specific, it seemed, to sleepers—in Trench meant factoring in a greater amount of time for transit. Sometimes transit took no more time than a brisk walk, but other times could trap one outdoors. In the early hours when the sun grasped at the structures in Trench to haul itself sluggishly into the sky, someone on poor terms with daylight's bright must shrink back into whatever shadowy recesses they could find.

Lover of books and artifacts and philosophy, Mayerling more than once found himself weighing the odds of returning toward the dwelling where he stayed as D's guest against what cursed wonders might happen, for once one's feet crossed the threshold, should the world twist and bend upon itself, the way back would be barred. A death sentence. At worst, he could find some dark recess forgotten to time built by an arcane scholar long past and sleep. Sleep, however, was an uneasy concept in a public setting, even one so twisted. Someone else could follow their gut instinct toward the vulnerable vampire dead to the world.

Deep in the folds of the archives, far from any of the windows, Mayerling continues to read all he can about Trench, about the Tower, about the Pthumerians, and about the dangers that have set up ecosystems within their wakes. Alone in this part of the archives, he could almost feel at home. The scent of blood is everywhere, Mayerling's mouth occasionally twitches but no fangs flash in his mouth. That, at least, is under control.

[aetherweaver]

Nara'a spends a lot of time curled up at the Archives, reading about different worlds and different solutions to their problems. Sure, no other world he's seen has aether like his own, but there still might be ideas. Maybe some of these are fantasy, but they still have valid ideas.

He turns a corner and spots a man he hasn't seen before. He stops and waits for him to see a natural pause in his reading before raising a hand in greeting. "Ah, hello there. Are you new?" Sure, there's still people he hasn't met in Trench, but he still recognizes a fair few more than he doesn't. "I'm Nara'a. It's nice to meet you."

[whowillmourn]

Mayerling considers the person before him with some curiosity. Though he is not so rude as to stare, he cannot help but notice the uncommon feline shape to the person's ears. Compared to the Barbarois it's hardly worth noting (except that in this new place where such clues may signify something greater than the shape of one's ears, Mayerling notes what details he can).

In a smooth movement, Mayerling stands, book still in hand, and sweeps into a polite if shallow bow that sends his cloak out in a flourish behind him in the windless archive. Returning to standing, Mayerling says, "I am Mayerling. A pleasure." Manners dictate the introduction comes first since this is a civilized conversation.

"I have recently washed upon these shores, yes," he answers. New, what a concept after all these years. Yet he still reads to learn his history, where before he lived it.

[aetherweaver]

His tail wiggles in interest. There's some kind of scent to him, but he can't quite tell what it is. Where has he smelled that before...

He puts the thought from his mind and focuses on the person in front of him. He is... quite big. Wide shoulders... he almost reminds Nara'a of a Garlean royal, but he's definitely not one. His ears flick to the side for a moment before returning to standing at attention atop his head.

"I see. I've been here a few months, though there's many people who have been here longer. I can try to answer some questions if you still have any."

[whowillmourn]

Time has not felt so pressing, so particular in its shortness, since the terrible chase across the Frontier. Each hurdling moment shortlived and eternal. They live on and on in his mind. As with learning anything, one starts new and unstudied, inexperienced, and foreign.

Mayerling motions toward the armchair near where he had been sitting. "Please, let us sit to converse," Mayerling suggests. The bipedal shape still suggests sitting is in this man's repertoire. "I still seek to understand the basics, how this world came to its current state and the history that informs what happens today."

Crisis came to his world thousands of years before he was born, but they continue to shape it, the first and all those that came after it.

[aetherweaver]

He sits down and gets comfy, settling in a little bit and scratching his chin a little bit. "Well, let's see. I did read a book about it - I know they have a copy at Sanctuary, but from what I can recall..."

How to explain it? "The people here believe that the Pthumerians were the first race capable of emotion and reason. When people finally started existing, they were admired and the Pthumerians tried to blend in with people. One of their Queens brought some of them to a planet called Earth, and her granddaughter was born a hybrid between the two species. Her name was Sodder. She could dream many things, including a connection between many realities known as The Great Sleep."

"Those she pulled through from other realities inter her dreams were known as Sleepers. But her powers were wild, and she infected the world around her, twisting it into what's known now as The Waking World. But now the Great Sleep brings people here, instead of to her dreams. I know there are some here who were in her dreams, and they could answer things better than I. But that's how this world came to be, as far as I'm aware."

[whowillmourn]

His time in this place is early yet, and Trench, this whole world, is rich in lore. The archives not only capture information about this world but speaks of others—some of them as real, some of them as fiction. Surely some of them are real and some are fiction, but the accounts may not entirely align. A healthy dose of skepticism along with an open mind must be held in balance. Where is the point of balance? Mayerling cannot entirely say.

His first reaction to the idea of the Pthumerians, not the Sacred Ancestor, as the first capable of emotion and reason is that of the close minded and unchallenged, comfortable in what they know (surely that is not the case). His second reaction wonders how similar the Pthumerians are to the Sacred Ancestor (a merging of the two easier on the mind). The third... the third wonders how related they can even be and what the relations of time across dimensions truly are (what is 'the first'?).

A brief summary it is, and Mayerling should like to read the book for himself. "Thank you," Mayerling says, "Surely we all ask many similar questions when we first arrive,. Like teachers with each new class of pupils, the answers must be shared time and again, changing perhaps as we learn more." We. Sleepers. That includes him.

Sodder is easy enough to accept, seeing what dhampirs are like, D in particular. Why should some similar measure from some other ancient and sacred... personages be so odd?

Mayerling exhales. "We are changed but much the same," he says. Unlike those who walk in daylight without second thought, Mayerling cannot leave this building without suffering terrible burns and potentially death. "We gain new blood, new abilities with them. Should you forgive the personal nature of the question, what of those you already had? Have they changed?" Each person may have a different answer.

[entreats]

Ange spends plenty of time in the archives. It helps that it feels like there's always something fresh to read there. Though she has been in Trench for such a long time now, well over a year, there are enough books here that she isn't even close to having read everything - and the way the books seem to move around, never quite found twice in the same place, helps with the sense that she might never finish consuming all the knowledge hidden in this place.

Though that's fine with her. It gives her something to spend some time on.

But the frequency of her visits to the archives also make it pretty clear to her when there's something odd - or different, at least. Ange has memorized the faces of most people who also spend a lot of time here, but the one she's spotting here now in the very back.. this one is new. She wouldn't be able to immediately pick out new people on the street, doesn't have the social network for it, but in a more controlled setting like this-- it stands out to her more.

And since the other does just seem to be calmly studying the texts here rather than being all obnoxious and loud about it, Ange also doesn't mind speaking up when she sits down at the same big table he's at with a book of her own.

"I haven't seen you around here before." Her face is a true pokerface, and even her voice doesn't betray any particular emotion - so flat that it seems devoid of them at all.

[whowillmourn]

Though Mayerling has not lived among so many people in more years than he troubles himself to count, Trench is very much a small town for all that, small enough that he seems to stand out for his newness when doing nothing to stand out at all, nothing beyond mere existence in a new location. He appreciates that when people notice it in Trench, the reaction range across a broader range of emotions—not oscillating between fear and hatred.

Without the eager rush of a young animal nor the self-important wait of those who deign to respond but not interrupt their own activities, Mayerling finishes a paragraph and looks up at the person whose presence he heard and smelled even as he read. The person is young, reaching adulthood within the last few years, with the comfort of someone who belongs where they are.

Mayerling inclines his head slightly. "Nor I you," he replies, with mild humor, for they both know who has come here longer, "What is your affiliation with this august institution?" He finds himself fond of it and all it holds.

[entreats]

The girl shrugs.

"I read here."

.. not exactly the most elegant way of putting it, and even more so in the face of the way the other speaks, but it's not like it's exactly untrue either. Ange just comes here to read. Out of necessity, sometimes, but also just to relax. Not having to deal with overly social people, and instead just dealing with books and people who are calm and reasonable enough to appreciate them? Sounds like a great way of spending her time to her.

"It's really the only way to learn about this place that doesn't involve experience." There's a faint pause, and Ange makes a slight hand gesture as she adds: "And you usually don't want to have to learn through experience here."

Because it's Trench - which means that said experience is often bad, if not outright deadly. Ange would prefer to stay ahead of the curve and know what she's dealing with before she's already dealing with it.

[whowillmourn]

The difference in speaking styles, the casual way she speaks, reminds Mayerling that he's not dealing with vampire civilization. That's incredible, even in a small interaction.

"Hmmm," Mayerling ponders the statement. His introduction to Trench has come with multiple near death encounters, even his arrival. It is certainly a dangerous place.

"The store of records is enormous," Mayerling says, "How have you developed, are you developing, a program of learning that proves useful when experience inevitably comes?" Because he doubts anyone has avoided it altogether. If it were that easy and doable, more people would study in this place, even those not entirely fond of books.

[entreats]

"When something seems off during any given month, I usually try to get here as quickly as possible to try and look up stuff that could be relevant to it."

.. emphasis on try there. Maybe not in her tone, but in the way she means it - since it's not always easy to find what you're looking for in this place, and sometimes you just have to get lucky. Or exchange information with other people who are trying to do the same thing.

"And when there's nothing in particular I'm trying to look up.." Ange pauses for a moment, and then the girl moves to pick up another book that's laying open on the table next to the archives book she was reading. It's pretty clear that book doesn't belong to the archives - if not just because there's a sticker of some.. sort of.. dolphin.. on the front. Very elegant. "I try to take notes here of all the important stuff I come across while reading through this stuff. You never know when you'll need some piece of obscure knowledge in a place like this, after all."

[whowillmourn]

Mayerling nods, thoughtful of his own focused reading. It's good generally, more broadly, yes, but some sort of harvest, of what he broadly suspects will be people, comes. They need to know more, and the obvious questions, the most obvious questions, haven't led to the answers he's looking for. That's why he's trying a different approach.

"In advance of the blood zealots' harvest, I seek to learn more about corruption and beasthood," Mayerling shares in a whisper, though they are not immediately surrounded by company, "I seek to understand how they tolerate such corruption without beasthood, how the mechanics they use work, and how that ties into all that they do."

He looks at the woman intensely, hoping that she is not somehow one of them, "Have you experience with or knowledge of how they work?" he asks.

Cannot Catch a Break [Closed to Ekko]

[whowillmourn]

CW: Nightmares, Bloodlust, NPC dream loss of autonomy, Blood, Wounds that won't close

With the return of sleep, Mayerling hoped that his days, when he slept, at least might be his own, a small rest from the blood saturated environment of Trench, a variant of personal hell few truly understand. Alone, laying on his back like the dead, within a massive cushioned coffin, he closes his eyes and leaves the fast moving world of daylight behind.

He dreams.

Though he starts in the Frontier, his old life bleeds away, blood soaking into the ground and the buildings and the sea until it transforms into Trench. No matter where he turns, everything smells like blood. People phase into the scene, previously an unpopulated wasteland. In this place, this dream, Mayerling knows with the sinking surety of dreams that if he stays near these people, it will end in tragedy.

He turns around for the way he came to find himself in the middle of Trench. Music sounds in his ears, the sounds of beating hearts creating a chorus around him. Desperate he turns down an alley. Like the waking world, it gains impossible geometries. He ascends stairs only to end up where he started. A woman with a pale throat and long sheets of hair like water passes, and his mouth shudders as the feeding fangs descend. In an echo of a movement completed thousands of times, Mayerling turns his head away and throws himself against the wall of a building.

Adrenaline spikes. He needs out. He needs away. If he stays—

It's not his safety he fears for.

I am so sorry for the lateness here, RL was kind of a mess this month

[ekkoeffect]

He doesn't know what happened. He was fine, he'd gone to sleep. He couldn't even remember dreaming.

And then here he was, in this world like Trench but somehow wrong feeling things that he's struggling to tell the difference between whether it's his own feelings or someone else's. It's happened a couple times before now, but never like this. Usually it's some Trenchie having a nightmare or who had a really rough day dozing off. It freaked him out when it first happened, but he hadn't learned how to stop it from happening yet. Hadn't told anyone about it either.

This is the first time the emotions have wrapped him up like this. He focuses on the sounds, trying to find out where the core of the dream is. Whose dream he has found himself in.

There are stairs. The stairs do not help at all.

He walks the streets listening, hearing the sound of something heavy colliding with...brick? Stone? He's not sure, but at least it's something. He tries to follow it through the twisting and widing streets and alleys only to feel like he's tripped back into the same place. A sense of desperation starts to build in him and he needs to go...

Only turn a corner and almost end up being crushed by someone slammed into a wall.

"Shit," he freezes, body tense and alert, ready for a fight. Couldn't help that reaction. "You okay?"

#2022

[whowillmourn]

Someone else approaches. They're so close that Mayerling hears not only the heartbeat as a whole but the components of the symphony, the way valves open and close, pushing blood from chamber to chamber around the body. He feels the flow of blood through veins, the pressure and the speed, the livelihood contained within. His mouth opens, but with all his strength, Mayerling manages to cower against the wall. His nails dig into the material to hold themselves captive.

"Stay away," Mayerling warns. "Please. I do not want to hurt you."

He shuts his eyes, but he still can feel the boy, so young and so—

Mayerling scrambles backward, as though the concerned passerby is the threat, the fear, the thing to be wary of. It is only from concern about himself. Mayerling doesn't know a way out. Even as his cloak shifts to the shape of wings, the buildings lean closer to each other and block out the light of the moon. He's trapped, and all of these people are trapped with him. He's no dhampir, no one to go on a spree, but the tragedy even a single bite can bring to whole towns...

preach

[ekkoeffect]

There it is again. The fear, desperation, desire to escape. It's like his heart could burst out of his chest the emotions are so strong.

It's kind of terrifying in a way he hasn't felt in a long time, but at least he can tell now they aren't his feelings and who they do belong to. Whoever this guy is, he's definitely going through something here. The dream--he's still pretty sure this is another of the dreams--is doing everything it can to trap him.

Ekko puts his hands up, cautious. He's still tense, but he's trying to not look threatening to the guy who is trying to fly away and looks like he rips throats out with his teeth.

"Hey, chill," he says. "No one is hurting anyone right now."

[whowillmourn]

Few in this town appreciate the danger a vampire like him—or a dhampir like D—is to them. The excessive spillage of blood, a necessity to survival in Trench, is a siren song he has resisted thus far. The temptation is always only a few steps away. In the dream, it feels even less. Like he could breath and break the fragile skin covering the blood vessels he smells. Like he wouldn't need to because someone two blocks away spills their blood freely, and Mayerling moves in that direction before he even recognizes it, halting abruptly a few steps closer to the boy before him.

"I am the threat," Mayerling intones gravely, "I am the danger. You should leave while I can still let you go, while I remain under control of my own faculties." It'd only be one, a thought reminds him. He's no dhampir, to go on a killing spree. No, should D do as much, Mayerling will do for him what the vampire hunter would want. Even if it kills them both.

D's not here. He has no reason to believe this boy, this Sleeper, can stop him, nothing so comforting as that. "Please," he begs. Slowly, he tries to inch past, back out of the dead end, even though other temptations surround them. He only needs to resist this one, he tells himself. This one. Then the next, and the next.

[ekkoeffect]

So maybe he had misunderstood the crazy mix of emotions he'd been getting. So he's scared of hurting others? Losing control. Like when someone falls into beasthood. He hasn't run into anyone dealing with that yet, but he's gonna assume it's not that different from whatever this guy is going through.

"Not sure where you think you can go," he says. "It's a maze out there and all it did was lead me here. You'll get turned around as much as I did. So how about we calm down and take control."

Honesty under the Bone Moon [Closed to D] (~mid-late November)

[whowillmourn]

CW: potential references to death (including loved ones), bloodlust, violence, etc. VHD typical.

A few hours before dawn, Mayerling and his carriage, a little rougher for the wear, return to the Staging Point where D, up to a few others, and Mayerling all reside. His schedule means that he doesn't always meet everyone who spends nights there. After all, that's when he's out. When he spends the day there, his schedule is strict and unforgiving.

He's quiet, out of respect for those who may be asleep, carrying his coffin back indoors to where D has allowed him to keep it. Other than that, he's mostly empty-handed. The silver ring Never Mind gave him is on his right hand. The mushroom, and the bag which protected it, have returned to the Pthumerian for the sake of the Tower and Trench.

Of course, he's only being politely quiet, not coming in like a thief in the night. So he's not surprised to hear movement in return. "D," Mayerling declares softly.

[distant_one]

Mayerling's arrival had neatly coincided with D no longer needing to be strictly nocturnal, though he'd spent much of the last month still awake all night. As a dhampir his body naturally had more energy while the sun was down, but centuries of practice made being awake during the day simple.

However, sleep in Trench was never easy, and with nights growing longer it was more and more difficult to avoid staying up too late or waking too early. It was an early morning when he sensed as much as heard Mayerling returning.

"Mayerling."

If D had to pick a Noble to come to Trench, that name would've appeared there several times. There were only a couple others he would even feel comfortable not supervising, but the fact of the matter was that D felt no need to make any attempt at all to double check and see if there were any victims. Or any need to keep track of his coming and going more than anyone else he invited in; Enough to make sure they weren't going on a corruption-fueled rampage or suffering from anything serious, but nothing more than that.

[whowillmourn]

The coffin rests in as lightless a room as Trench offers, and Mayerling maintains his good posture, despite the hard journey deep into the Wilderness. He trusts that D will be honorable (and no one in town has reason to hire D to kill him), and only just returned to town, his urges are well in control. Conversation, however, is one of the ways to lower corruption. A good measure.

"Has anything of particular note occurred while I was away?" Mayerling asks. For all he accidentally messaged Sharon at the start of his departure, he has not kept up with the network.

[distant_one]

"No. Did you find what you were looking for?" Sharon had passed along the message, which was a bit of a relief that he wasn't going to have to go hunt down Mayerling's coffin when D had arrived to find it wasn't there. It wasn't too much of an issue, there was a perfectly serviceable place for a noble to sleep in the extradimensional coffin D acquired a few months before. But people stealing coffins meant that the extradimensional coffin might be taken, too, if anyone with the strength to move a few thousand pounds found it.

[whowillmourn]

Mayerling inclines his head. Trench still stands.

"Yes," he answers, "No one, beyond beasts, even tried to kill me." He had been ready for that on their return. He lay awake in his coffin the previous day, waiting, lest anyone try anything. Every time someone opened the door to the carriage, Mayerling listened and watched carefully.

[distant_one]

"That surprised me as well," D said. His own venture out in to the wilderness had brought of more of his other side, but no one had held it against him. It was strange not to worry about being attacked for what he was or run out of town. There were a surprising number of people who had never even heard of vampires, much less dhampirs.