deercountry | He's a feral creature (Open)

Entry tags:

He's a feral creature (Open)

Who: Darth Maul and you!
What: Event prompts + TDM overflow
When: All throughout September
Where: Beach and boardwalk for TDM prompts, throughout the city for event prompts

Content Warnings: Corpses of teenagers, stalking behavior

A. Event Prompts

I) Growing Pains

After hearing about the ritual from some of the Trench natives, Maul decides what the hell, might as well participate. While he isn't inclined to believe too much of what they have to say and is still suspicious this would lead to possible harm, he also knows letting go of the past and looking towards the future is nothing but a good thing for him personally. To that end, he is in his front yard near one of the big trees that adorned the house, several items surrounding him for the ritual to be completed.

Maul scribbles down a few words in a large, blocky script on a blank page in journal he's been writing in since it showed up with the rest of his Welcome Bag. While he means for this to be a private moment, anyone around snooping will be able to see what it says. 'Break the chains.' But anyone who comments upon it will receive a glare and harsh growl in return. He looks at it for a moment before dropping it into the hole he's made. Once it is covered with dirt, he picks up a dagger given to him by a dear friend and slashes his palm open. He lets a few drops fall onto the dirt and waits.

After a few moments, a beautiful rose with most peculiar coloration blooms. It remained vibrant and healthy only for a few moments before it begins to wither and wilt. Maul stares at the limp flower for a moment as a frown crosses his face. "Of course" is all that he had to say on the matter. He is not at all surprised his flower would be defective right off the bat.

II) River of Regret

Really, Maul is doing his best not to be surprised about what has happened. He's just been waiting for the other shoe to drop now that he's started getting his bearings here in Trench, so this had been bound to happen. Granted, having a raven feather touch him and then getting swept up in a whirlwind of them only to be deposited in a canoe on a sun-spackled river wasn't quite what he'd had in mind. When he sees the corpses, Maul's first instinct is to throw himself out of the boat and start swimming, but he knows he'd drown with his lower metal half before he got more than a few strokes out. No, he and the other person are going to be forced to sit here and look upon all the regrets of his past.

There are faces, so many faces up there. There is a whole group of teenagers of various species, the most prominent one a young Nautolan with large purple eyes that seem to bore right into Maul's, a strange sort of smile on her face. He can see his family, Savage still with the two holes that had been stabbed through his chest by his former master and Mother Talzin, also with lightsaber wounds in her chest. Some people from Deerington are there as well. Usagi. Xue Yang. Reaper. Ben. Varian. Fern. Luz. Even Darth Sidious is hanging there, his corpse looking as if it had fallen from a great height. Maul pointedly avoids staring at that one as if he's trying to avoid staring into the sun for too long.

Maul's face is set and determined after he is done staring at all the corpses without blinking. His voice has a note of grim resignation in it when he turns to whoever he is stuck with. His hands are tense, claws digging small grooves into the wooden sides of the canoe. "Alright, if this place is at all like Deerington, it wants us to experience some emotions by talking out what's in front of us. So do you want me to go first or do you?" He's been around the block enough times to recognize one of the usual group therapy or friendship building exercises this place was already likely to entail when he saw it. That doesn't mean he is going to like it at all but he knows better than to fight it for too long.

III) Bloodsport

Maul can feel it right from the start of the moment, that restlessness that makes him want to go out and kill something. It's not really different than his usual state at first, so he doesn't really feel like anything is out of the ordinary, chalking it up to being in a new place and trying to be on his best behavior instead of immediately going out and massacring the populace.

He makes offers to spar or train with anyone during this time to help get out all that extra energy and they are completely genuine. If he does get a little bit more vicious than usual during these sessions, at least the curse he's still under is able to rein him back in fairly quickly, preventing him from going too close to the edge of turning it into a potentially lethal fight. He can also be found meditating a lot more as well during these feelings of murderous energy, also offering to show anyone the basics if they want to pull up a seat next to him wherever he might be and learn how to meditate in the ways of the Dark Side.

But he can't resist his feelings forever and so he's eventually led towards the Gate. Despite the handicap of feeling pain when he attacks anyone sentient, he's not willing to back down. His truly terrifying side comes out when he faces the monsters and he can go all out against them, but his brutality towards the Sleepers he faces is only slightly less. He'll twirl around his lightsaber or whatever weapon he currently has in his possession, a cocky smirk on his face. He twirls his weapon around before facing the business end towards whoever he is facing. "I'm not going to go easy on you. So let us get this over with as quickly as possible, shall we?" With those few words, he's on the attack.

[OOC: Maul is still under a magical curse from Deerington where he feels pain anytime he inflicts it upon someone else. He can still hurt someone thanks to the naturally high pain tolerance of a Vileblood, it's just going hurt him as well. For this reason, he likely won't be able to kill anyone.]

B. Newsletter Prompts

I) Moon Flowers

Standing in front of his house in Prufrock, Maul was studying the outside of it with a puzzled expression on his face. The entirety of the still somewhat worn-down old giant house is now completely covered in white roses. While he's confused by this, he's also not complaining given they seemed to be having a calming effect on his mind, which Maul being Maul was always a good thing.

He clipped a few of them off at a time and carefully sliced off any thorns, twisting a piece of spare rough brown cord around them to form them into a tiny bouquet. He sat there outside, watching Venge and Malice the vornskr play fight in the front yard while Slicer the warg slept underneath his favorite tree. When anyone he knew passed by, he'd hand them a bouquet of the roses. "For you," he'd say simply without explanation. Maul wasn't usually keen on being nice to people but keeping a stable mind was always important considering all that he'd experienced in Deerington.

II) Drawn to Palebloods

It wasn't the first time Maul had been drawn towards certain people due to the machinations of whatever was going on around him. At least this time, he seemed to be in full control of his mental faculties, something he and everyone around him could be thankful for. It just felt natural to be drawn to certain people as surely as if the Force itself was drawing him towards them.

Of course, being a psychotic Sith Lord, Maul wasn't always one for the best social niceties. So it would be no surprise to have someone suddenly see Maul watching them from the shadows of a dark alleyway or perched like a sentient gargoyle on top of the nearest building. Actually just talking to anyone seemed to be out of the question for the weirdo. Granted, the minute anyone actually called him out on his strange behavior, he'd be sure to actually approach them, but until then the Palebloods of Trench were going to be having fun with a creepy sort-of Sith stalker.

III) Walking Around The City

Maul had wasted no time in learning the ins and outs of the city. This place had a far different vibe from Deerington and so far he's liking what he's seeing. His Maalraas Omen, Venge, was always by his side. Though with the way they could cloak themselves in the darkness of the Force, he oftentimes seemed to be alone until suddenly there was a monstrous apparition that appeared out of the dark, all teeth and beady eyes, watching whoever was talking with Maul intently.

He'd taken note of certain places that he was sure he would want to investigate further like Ursula's Ink and Earworm. For the most part, he was just absorbing the atmosphere, but what started to annoy him was the way that the citizens of the city kept staring at him for long periods of time, whispering among themselves whenever he passed by. A few of the bolder ones even tried to follow him unobtrusively. He already knew he was a distinctive individual no matter what galaxy he was currently inhabiting but after the fifth time this happened he'd had enough.

Maul, with how little patience he usually possessed, could only put up with this for a short period of time. He whirled on them, saberstaff suddenly ignited in a show of intimidation. "Go on. Be off with you."

This didn't seem to dissuade them at all. One of them was nudged forward to be a spokesperson. "But you are the one we have heard talk of. The ancient Sleeper who wields great power over the Dark. The one with the face of a demon and two hearts, one dark and one light."

Maul was not likely to trust any of the residents of this city anytime soon but the fact they'd heard of him did appeal to the part of him that still had a large ego and a heaping dose of arrogance even after all these years. He stopped trying to make them leave, now a little intrigued. "So you have heard of me. Tell me more then of what you know about me and the other Sleepers."

One could find him then sitting down at a nearby tea shop as he listened to what the citizens had to say about what they had heard of the Sith in their old legends. Though Maul wasn't at all inclined to believe them too much, he had an inkling of an idea beginning to form in his mind. If they didn't prove to be malicious, the people of this city could prove to be very handy indeed...

IV) Wildcard

[Want a customized prompt? Something a little different for any of the above or with a bit more horror in it? Let me know at either

Light_shade or Lightshade#4738 on Discord! I'll match format and tenses. This will also be an overflow post for TDM threads that are still ongoing.]

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

(OOC: The ultimate trolling Luz icon)

Luz had no idea why Darth Maul was keeping tabs on her. She'd like to think it was because he was concerned about what she was doing (considering this month it was a fair option) but a part of her new fully well that she couldn't possible matter that much to the Sith lord. For the moment all Luz had been doing was gathering items for the house, but she finally decided it was for the best to actually approach him before people began to wonder if he were terrorizing her.

She was on her staff, appearing to look as if she were going to take off far out of the city, then lightly changed course and landed behind him.

"Yes?"

In some ways, it felt like the cleverest trick played on her yet. Ariadne never could resist black feathers, the way they made her think about her wings, and how if you looked at one in the sun, you could see a rainbow. She'd already fallen for the trick once, ending up in a boat with Obi-Wan Kenobi. There was some poetic justice to the fact that she found herself now with Maul.

At first, she was too busy mentally kicking herself for being fooled twice. So she was a little surprised when Maul actually spoke.

The last time they'd met, he'd been too far gone.

She turned to face him from her niche in the boat, a piece of hair sliding off of her face. Over his shoulder, she saw Savage. Or what looked like Savage anyway. "I guess you don't need me to tell you that it's not real?"

Willow has noticed Maul has been around a lot more often. Mostly, she tries to stay out of his way, so she tries politely ignoring his presence around Gaze. After all, he has just as much right to be out on the streets as she does. Even if he sometimes turns up in odd places.

She gets nervous as it starts becoming clear that the sightings are not just a coincidence. They were supposed to have a truce at least until the end of the world - but it's no longer the end of the world. She figured as long as they could stay out of each other's way, she'd be safe from raising his ire again, but maybe she's pretty sure he knows how to hold a grudge, and maybe he's just trying to pick out a good time to strike.

She's leaving the mansion to go to the School of Mutter when she spots him again, lurking in an alleyway between a couple buildings. Great. Now he knows where she lives. Enough's enough. Besides, she's close enough to home that she's sure if she needs it, she'll have help. She strides towards him, and the fox omen at her side is bristling.

"Okay, Maul. What the hell. You've been hanging around everywhere I've been - and you're not even all that subtle. Why. Are you trying to intimidate me? Planning on trying to kill me again?"

Edited 2021-09-12 23:58 (UTC)

Maul had been watching over Luz for some time now. He wasn't sure just why he was drawn towards his young teenage friend, but so long as this new desire didn't turn malicious the way it had when Sidious' ghost had wormed its way into his mind, he didn't feel any alarm at simply following her about.

Of course, he was bound to have been seen eventually no matter how stealthy he was. Even so, he was a bit startled as Luz landed behind him on the slanted rooftop where he was precariously perched. He whirled around, the tiles of the roof groaning beneath him at the weight of his lower metal half. "Ah, yes." He wasn't really good at any sort of eloquence, especially caught unawares as he was right now. "Hello there," he said blithely as if they had simply met on a streetcorner.

Minako couldn't help but pause as if she was trying to understand just what was going on in this situation. Curiously she looked at the flowers and then at the other, still trying to ponder the situation in front of her.

"Uh...thanks." She still took them. After all they are beautiful and she was sure that Makoto would love them.

"What brings you to give out flowers?"

Maul looked moody and unhappy as he glanced over at Ariadne, which was really no surprise given the grisly tableau before them. Some of them weren't so bad to look at but he was sure it wouldn't be long before they started talking to him. Sure enough, the Nautolan girl, still pretty despite being impaled on a stake started to speak. "We were friends. How many did you even have in that place? And you ran your lightsaber through my heart."

Maul ignored her, instead choosing to address Ariadne. "No, you don't. They don't feel real in the Force. They're just phantoms." But he seemed to be trying to convince himself as much as her.

He could see ones he didn't recognize and supposed those belonged to Airy. "Why are yours up there?" He couldn't imagine the woman had too many regrets as it stood.

Maul's not entirely certain why he feels drawn towards Willow. He certainly doesn't like the woman, that much is certain. She's annoying, preachy, and the idea of executing her still seems like a tempting one. Yet he can't seem to leave her alone, always appearing on a rooftop or up in a tree no matter where she goes.

Then she decides to confront him about his behavior and Maul hardly knows what to say. Venge, who has been cloaked in the shadows up until now, suddenly appears by Maul's side. They have a rather toothy grin upon their intimidating looking face, one that only a mother could love.

"No. If I wanted to kill you, you'd already be dead." That is not a reassuring thought but at least a honest one. Maul tends to be far more subtle when he's stalking someone to kill them, using far more of his skills as a sneaky alien ninja space wizard.

It was true Maul wasn't exactly the type to help other people at the best of times, especially when there was nothing in it for him personally. But there was no harm in being civil right now, especially since so many people who both were fond of him and disliked him greatly had made their way over from Deerington to Trench.

"They appear to calm the mind and soothe the senses when you breathe in their scent," he explained. He pointed towards his home, covered in the roses from the gales of the rooftop to the foundations of the rundown building. "Might as well give them to people given that unstable minds might soon become apparent in this place." He was waiting and was certain the other shoe would drop before too long here in this new town.

Luz, despite having seen Darth Maul at his most vicious (ah, Deerington times) was not afraid of him now. She was smiling and chuckled at his fairly awkward attempt at a hello.

"Oh come on, I haven't seen you since you turned up on the beach! It's good to see you up and talking again! I'm guessing by now that you found your brother, right?"

Luz had been having a very up and down month, so she was pretty happy to see someone she cared about back properly on his feet.

Hopefully Luz would never let on she wasn't afraid of him anymore. Maul could be rather proud of his reputation as a monstrous psychopath, even as detrimental as it otherwise was to getting people to see what he was really like.

The talk of Savage did make him brighten up a little bit. "Yes, I found him eventually. Our house arrived here along with most of the pets and it is currently covered in the most peculiar white flowers." Luz had been one of those to show Maul kindness when he'd first arrived and he wasn't quick to forget that, nor all that she'd done for him during their time in Deerington.

Puck positions himself between Willow and Maul and Venge as they appear, standing sideways, but his head is still turned towards the pair. His fur is still bristling, and he pulls his lips back to show his teeth.

Willow takes a step back to give them all a little more space. She's sure he's probably right - if he intended to kill her, he would have at least tried by now. She is, as in their previous encounters, determined not to show any fear otherwise.

"So why are you being Mr Lurky and following me around, then?" She studies him and Venge both. "You're not trying to kill me. I really, really don't think you're trying to protect me from something. So, what? Are you just trying to be creepy? 'Cause if so, mission accomplished."

Luz would rather NOT want to feel that way about Darth Maul. She didn't doubt that he wasn't dangerous (he almost choked her to death, you don't forget something like that), but she didn't want to see him that way. It seemed to reductive, like that was all there was to him.

She had a feeling talking about Savage would make him feel more relaxed. She understood that feeling pretty well. "I'm glad. I was pretty happy to reunite with most of my friends from Deerington. I'm actually living with a few of them now."

Right, the flowers. She was really starting to wonder if there were somehow more significance to them.

Honestly, Ariadne had an eye that was always drawn to novelty. And seeing the strange array of creatures from Maul's world was more than enough to distract her--perhaps willfully--from the ones she knew. But it was inevitable that they'd be here. That was how Deerington worked. And apparently how Trench was going to work as well.
Slowly, she turned to look over her shoulder, already knowing she would regret it.

And there she was.

Like Ariadne (in her natural form), she had pale green skin, the color of the underside of a maple leaf. There were purple undertones, though. Especially under her eyes. And unlike Ariadne, she had pastel pink hair, streaked with blue, matted and hard with violet blood. She was less lithe than Ariadne, more muscular and solid. But there could be no doubt that the two of them were related. Same facial structure. Same bright, gray eyes.

Perhaps most noteworthy was that the entire left half of her body, and two hard, unidentifiable stumps on her back, were charred and burned.

The woman was propped up on the stakes so that she was almost lying down on her burned half. Her eyes were on the sky. At least they were until Ariadne turned around. And then they shifted, her upper lip raising into a snarl. She hissed, charred, flaked skin spraying in the air.

Ariadne quickly turned back to Maul, a shudder raking her entire body. "I don't want to remember her like that..."

[From here!]

Maul blushed when Usagi kissed him, a sensation that looked a bit odd now that his blood was green underneath his skin instead of the proper red it was supposed to be. She was honestly one of only two people who could have gotten away with kissing him here, the other one being Reaper. She was just lucky he held that much affection for her in his two hearts.

Maul tilted his head, trying to figure out what she was drawing, but unable to fully make it out until she was done. He looked less amused when she pushed the doodle back over to him, seeing a horned walrus that was clearly meant to be him. Nope, he did not find that funny at all...just ignore the fact he was also placing this in his pocket to hold onto for later. It might end up being useful. That was his excuse for keeping it and he was sticking to it.

"I am NOT a walrus!" He wrote on one of them, looking a little sour.

Venge just stares at Puck with their beady little eyes, looking very much like they'd like to reach over and snap the little Omen up into their large jaws. But they don't, instead staying by Maul's side. Unbeknownst to everyone yet, they're actually the more calm and reasonable of the pair.

"Hmmmm. No," Maul says, trying to think of a way to put it. "There are certain people in the city I feel drawn to. Like the way iron filings are drawn towards a magnet. It's not that I want to so much as it's involuntary." But unlike most of the other times this had happened, he didn't feel the urge to hurt anyone, so at least he had that going for him. He didn't really want to cause any harm to any Sleepers right now, not when he had still just arrived so recently in this place.

"I was very glad to see that most of the people I cared about turned up here. Even some of those that I thought I would never see again," he says, thinking of at least one in particular. Reaper, for one, Maul had thought he was never going to see his boyfriend ever again, and had been immensely thankful to have him back in his life. Despite what anyone else might think, the two of them were good for one another.

"Oh? Which ones?" Maul will have to pay them a visit and make sure wherever Luz is living is going to be secure. Granted, that won't stop anything that truly wants to rampage in the city he's sure, but he can at least make sure that Luz is as safe as he can possibly make her.

"Right, me too! I'm going to miss the ones that didn't come back, but hopefully they're living better lives back home."

She decided she wouldn't think of Margot when saying that, of course. That part still hurt her a bit, and it would be hard to talk about, especially since Darth Maul had gone and killed her that one time.

"I'm living in Cassandra now! I'm with Varian, Finn and a new kid, Luca! Also, they said that Reaper lives here, but in a cup? I'm not really sure how that works."

Maul looked over at the woman that resembled Ariadne so closely, despite the very different coloring between them. At a guess, he would say it was either her mother, aunt, or sister. It was a little difficult to discern the age of the figure given that she was half-burned, so charred that Maul figured that had to be the way that she must have died.

Were he a more gentle man, Maul would have offered some comfort to Ariadne, putting his arm around her shoulder or hugging her. But he is not, and especially right now facing all the sins of his past, he finds himself hard and angry. Anger had always sustained him before and he sought out the eternal well of it within himself to keep him from falling to pieces right now.

"What happened to her?" He asked. Might as well get this over with, talking out the worst things that had happened to them in the past.

"I suppose that is true. Those that didn't end up here deserve a better ending," he said slowly, thinking of some people like JP that had definitely needed to go back to something better than where they were right now.

"Ah, yes, you should be fine with those two." Maul hadn't met Luca, but between the other three, Luz would be fine living in such a house. Varian, Fern, and especially Reaper could make sure that they were completely safe from most things that came across their doorstep.

Maul's face softened up a little at the mention of Reaper, the expression on his face becoming what one could call even dreamy or smitten. He did love his boyfriend very much, even if he couldn't truly say it yet. "He should be thankful they decided not to make him sleep in a vacuum cleaner," Maul said with a chuckle. "Reaper is made of smoke on his most basic level, so unless he is consciously solid, he can fit easily into a bucket or cup most of the time."

Wasn't it obvious?

Even as Ariadne thought it, the woman shifted position, the charred stumps on her back stretching out to reveal the skeletal remains of a pair of wings. They flaked and turned to ash with every slight movement, the wind blowing the dust right at them in the boat.

When Ariadne held up a hand to shield her face, she felt the remains of her mother brush against the skin of palm.

It made her whole body shudder.

"She died. When I was ten."

"That's for sure! Besides, most people made the choice on what they wanted to do, so if they're home I imagine it's what they truly wanted."

She knew for sure that it wasn't what Margot wanted, so she had no choice but to think that she'd been woken before she got to make the choice. In any case, Luz would remember her in her own way, such as with the omen watching Darth Maul right now.

"I think so too! Right now I'm just cleaning the house a bit so we don't fall into a pit or stab ourselves on one of Fern's many, many weapons."

Huh. That was definitely an expression she had not seen Darth Maul have before, and she sure had never expected a chuckle unless it was one mired in bitterness or malice.

"Oh! Why the heck did no one ever explain that to me? They just told me he lived in a cup! You try telling someone new that and then shrugging when they ask what you mean!"

"Good. That house could use a good cleaning." Maul cared for his nephews dearly but he also knew Varian was usually too caught up in his latest experiment and Fern too busy with his latest weapons to really care about whether or not the place looked like a pigsty. As for Reaper, well, there was a reason Maul had called him a murder hobo repeated times in Deerington.

"Clearly, they need to work on their communication skills." Really, it wasn't that hard to explain once one knew at least a little bit about Reaper. "You'll be safe with that many people in the house. There's not many that can defeat Reaper in combat besides me and a few others." Plus Maul had mostly won because he'd played on Reaper's affections for him when he'd been brainwashed, so while it was a fair fight, he was certain such a maneuver wouldn't work again.

"I'm sure you'll see me over there sooner rather than later." If not just to talk to Reaper or Varian, he still had to talk to Fern, something he was not looking forward to but knew that had to happen.

"Ah." Well, that made sense. After a pause, Maul asked a question. "Was it your fault?" He didn't mean it in a malicious sort of sense. Savage and Talzin were among Maul's corpses and he hadn't killed either of them, but he did blame himself for their deaths. So he wondered if it was the same for Airy.

The broken bag of bones that had once been Sidious turned its eyes towards Maul. His voice was like the sound of rattling bones in the wind. "Still so weak, my apprentice. Too weak to protect those you loved from me. Too weak to even try to kill me. You'll never be strong enough. Never..."

"Shut up!" Maul yelled with unusual fervor, his voice raised up to a higher volume than his usual whisper-soft tone. "You don't get to tell me what to do anymore!"

Ariadne grabbed the sides of the boat when Maul started shouting. She'd seen him angry and feral before. But this was something else. This felt...raw. And more personal than when she'd seen him kill the Jedi.

She turned to look in the direction of the body he was shouting at.

Not much to see. But probably a lot of emotions wrapped up in whatever that creature had once been.

"Don't shout," she said softly. "We can't shout at the dead. They can't hear us. Not really." And there was the sense that maybe the shouting was exactly what Deer...Trench wanted them to do. It seemed like the sort of trick to get them all worked up.

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

Page 1 of 4

He's a feral creature (Open)

Newsletter Prompt II

River of Regret

Newsletter 2

Newsletter 2

no subject

Moon Flowers

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

Usagi - TDM

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject