May 2022: Augustine the First catch-all

[butnotyet]

Who: Augustine the First and ____________ (This could be you!)
What: A little bit of everything, including Event threads, and who knows what else
When: Throughout May
Where: Specific locations listed in TLs.

Content warnings for this character: Explicit gore/body horror as a baseline, probably omnipresent (high-level necromancer); callous and amoral outlook on life (jaded AF); very high likelihood of mentions of death/suicide/weaponized-sexuality in basically any and all interactions.

Specific warning for this post: A profoundly offensive number of conversational lyric-drops in the thread with Anna. It's fantastic.

Comments

[survivalthroughhate]

Maul keeps the reins of his mount looped loosely around one arm so that they won't drag on the ground. It's also a good position to tighten the slack should Slicer decide to attack. He's confident the beast won't, not after all the training he and Maul have done together, but Maul hasn't gotten where he is by taking chances when there is no need to. He snorts through his nose at the question. "Hardly. Most people who arrive here are idiots. But I seem to run into them sooner or later no matter what." Maul isn't the most social of people but he is nosy and likes hearing gossip, hence why he shows up on so many network posts.

Maul notes the denomination of time the man uses, curious as to the usage of 'an hour'. There was a standard calendar in his own world though even then he's since learned there is a big difference between what a month or week means in his own galaxy versus that of other universes. Still, he assumes an hour where this man is from means what it does most places; sixty minutes. "I have been here physically in Trench for nine months, though I have been traveling through places ruled by Pthumerians for over two years now." He pauses. "At least I think it is two years. The passage of time when it comes to our gracious hosts can be strange."

[butnotyet]

"Oh so?" Now that's curious; it's also the first time someone has outright told Augustine that they've encountered the Pthumerians somewhere other than this. (Not the same, necessarily, as encountering a person who has done so — but what he doesn't know...)

"Not that the passage of time in general can't be perfectly strange all on its own," which is more of a muttered undertone, "but I have to admit I'm quite curious to hear about the rest of it, if you're offering. Not that I can promise I'm not an idiot — but then, I have to imagine that anyone who does you'd be prone to disbelieve."

He hasn't said anything too idiotic yet, at least. Right?

[survivalthroughhate]

"Yes. I was in the previous town that was run by them. Deerington, a product of one of the most powerful half-Pthumerians, Julia Sodder." Maul is more than happy to give his (highly biased) opinion on Julia.

"She was half-human and half-Pthumerian. Unfortunately, one of her grandmothers was the Pthumerian Queen and didn't see her so much as a young girl as a tool to be used in a plan that went back generations. But when a child has fantastic abilities that make them very powerful, the worst thing one can do is treat them like they can be controlled and used by others. They sought to harness that power. It didn't work. Julia died and in the throes of her death she created a dream world. There was some similarities here to Trench but it was a very different place. To this day, I don't know if we were brought there bodily or only in mind as some thought. When the last echoes of her power finally faded, the town had the chance to save her. I tried to tell them to give the girl a second chance."

Maul's yellow eyes hardened with fury.

"They chose to sacrifice her instead. Some will claim they thought it was the best thing for her but they only say that because they want to assuage their own guilty consciences. She could have been saved just as the Moon Presence was. She was trapped in the town as well and was Julia's mother, a full-blooded Pthumerian who needed our help. Back then she was known as Cynthia Sodder. People chose to save her and it's mostly because she wasn't just a handy scapegoat to blame for all the miseries that happened there the way her daughter was." Maul feels very strongly about what happened to Julia, but then, given he was once a young child with fantastic powers who had been manipulated by someone who sought to use those powers for their own end, it wasn't hard to see why.