Illarion Albireo (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
unsheathedfromreality) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
deercountry2022-03-13 01:59 am
unsheathedfromreality) wrote in deercountry2022-03-13 01:59 am
Entry tags:
Real & Half-Real: Iskierka's Notes | OTA
Who: Illarion's Omen Iskierka and anyone who happens to stumble across her notes.
What: Receiving messages from hell.
When: March 5 onward, after Sayo's full return to the Waking World.
Where: Throughout Trench and the Levels
Content warnings: All of the following are mentioned or discussed obliquely: magical zombies, mind control, emotional manipulation, war-time violence, murder of family members, drug use, cannibalism, suicide, hallucinations/derealization, existential horror, apocalyptic setting, kidnapping, enslavement.
Iskierka has not been idle while her Sleeper is missing from Trench. Somewhere, he's wandering a hell far removed from the Waking World; somewhere, he rehearses to himself the briefing he might give to any would-be rescuers when they arrive, what is necessary to survive and sufficient for Sayo's ritual. When hoping for rescue pales on him, he dictates his thoughts to the air or an animal or a corpse's patient ear, and she hears it.
She hears every word of it, and she cannot respond; she listens faithfully, and the words fill her head to the point of forgetting. When there's no more room for them, she writes. With whatever comes to hand--beg buy borrow or steal--on whatever surface she can find, she writes--scratches out--rewrites. Notes and letters emerge beneath her pen, and she takes them where she thinks they belong. Some she abandons in significant places and others she brings to significant people, urging them to take this fragment of her lost Sleeper.
It may help, when they go to rescue him. If anyone can.
[[ OOC: Real & Half-Real Plot Write-Up and Interest Check, for those just joining us. Even if you haven't left a comment there you're more than welcome to join in on finding notes!
See comments for how to use this post and tasty tasty plot hooks. ]]
What: Receiving messages from hell.
When: March 5 onward, after Sayo's full return to the Waking World.
Where: Throughout Trench and the Levels
Content warnings: All of the following are mentioned or discussed obliquely: magical zombies, mind control, emotional manipulation, war-time violence, murder of family members, drug use, cannibalism, suicide, hallucinations/derealization, existential horror, apocalyptic setting, kidnapping, enslavement.
Iskierka has not been idle while her Sleeper is missing from Trench. Somewhere, he's wandering a hell far removed from the Waking World; somewhere, he rehearses to himself the briefing he might give to any would-be rescuers when they arrive, what is necessary to survive and sufficient for Sayo's ritual. When hoping for rescue pales on him, he dictates his thoughts to the air or an animal or a corpse's patient ear, and she hears it.
She hears every word of it, and she cannot respond; she listens faithfully, and the words fill her head to the point of forgetting. When there's no more room for them, she writes. With whatever comes to hand--beg buy borrow or steal--on whatever surface she can find, she writes--scratches out--rewrites. Notes and letters emerge beneath her pen, and she takes them where she thinks they belong. Some she abandons in significant places and others she brings to significant people, urging them to take this fragment of her lost Sleeper.
It may help, when they go to rescue him. If anyone can.
[[ OOC: Real & Half-Real Plot Write-Up and Interest Check, for those just joining us. Even if you haven't left a comment there you're more than welcome to join in on finding notes!
See comments for how to use this post and tasty tasty plot hooks. ]]
TARGET | Prince of the Forlorn Hope - 1A
Number available: Several
Conditions to receive from Iskierka: None
Vopiscus Rufus Valerius is a man I should have known, and didn't. It is a testament the the Empire and the Crownbreaker Legion we never learned the names of the Suncrowned while they were alive.
That damned impressive secrecy may still cost us the whole war and the world with it.
The Suncrowned--the Dagger of the Imperium, the Witchhammers, etcetera, part of the secrecy and mystique is going by a thousand names (as I well-practice)--were the hidden hand of the Imperial cult. Where the visible hand--the Crownbreakers--punished devotion to Princes the Empire didn't want ascendant, the Suncrowned dealt silently with warlocks and Throneborn and anything else threatening the Imperial Peace.
Eyes beheaded them years before making his first overt move. We knew something had happened to them but never what. If a single one of them had broken his vows, we would have known about the Unearthed in time to prepare for them.
If the world had believed him. The Suncrowned were rarely granted belief.Atratus, the Prince of the Forlorn Hope, is a man I should know, and don't. He leads the Knights Pariah; he is a just man. He honors his dead--all of us--walking and burned and buried. He is worthy of the name Prince. But he is not my Prince; I do not know if there is room for a fourth in my heart.
I do know that the slavering jackal prowling the Spire isn't him. It wears his face and his magecraft--no magic touches him, for good or ill--and its Court fights harder the more of them die, but it isn't Atratus.
Atratus never wanted the Throne. To take it would have been to abandon us and complete our exile in truth as much as name.