logsinthenight | EVENT LOG: GRAVES

EVENT LOG: GRAVES

EVENT LOG:
GRAVES

characters: everyone.
location: Bonfire Square.
date/time: July 12-19.
content: mysterious shrines appear and bring visions of death.
warnings: likely violence and potentially gore.

time to pay your respects.

It happens when no one is looking, when most of the town is asleep and the rest are inside. A makeshift cemetery has come to Beacon, taking up residence in the middle of Bonfire Square. Each monument, shrine, and altar is dedicated to someone who now resides here, a memorial of their previous life.

Some may be drawn by curiosity, others by fear, and some may simply have to pass through this strange graveyard to get to the Bonfire itself. Whenever a person gets near, the altars beckon with a mysterious urge— an urge to approach, and an urge to leave something behind. They will feel compelled to make offerings at the various shrines, but doing so has a curious effect; it causes one to experience the death of the person whose grave they've honored.

Whether you resist the compulsion or give in willingly (or something in between), you'll also have to wrestle with the fact that a grave exists for you. Will you let your death be known, or try your best to keep it secret? Destroying it sure won't work, as it will return— with a duplicate somewhere else in town.

However you choose to deal with this, one thing is hard to ignore— this a tangible reminder of your death, and the fact that it's probably permanent.

QUICKNAV
comms	\|	network • logs • memes • ooc
pages	\|	rules • faq • taken • mod contact • player contact • calendar • setting • exploration • item requests • full nav

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

( ➻ smoke to the skies )

⟪ Somewhere in the shadows, there is a small shrine. For anyone who has traversed the world and seen Essos, the red stone will be familiar as the same kind the Temples is build of –– and even without such knowledge, it’s still quickly evident whose gravesite this is. Is anyone else so dedicated to the colour? Still, it isn’t even knee height, and kept simple, with a plate for a name and a date, and a small hole for a stick of incense, as well as a place for a candle.

Melisandre of Asshai
114 BC - 300 AC
This is what anyone who leaves an offering will experience:⟫
She longs to see the sunrise. It is the only need she seems to feel, and it is near overpowering. The night had plagued her as it often does, its darkness whispering into her ear, the woman who screams for Melony, the man who calls her, cruelly, Lot Seven. The visions she is pondering – the boy with the wolf’s head, the agent of the Other, a name that sends a cold chill through her bones, and then the girl she will tell Jon Snow of, the one she thinks may be his sister.

But now, she craves light, true light, and it’s not what she says, of course, there is no need to admit to such a thing. Devan had asked if she wished to eat, she had said ‘yes’, even though she has no need, and by the time she’s left her room, slipped out without her guards for once, she’s already forgotten about the feigned hunger. We are not in Castle Black, now, we are atop the Wall, a hundred feet high in the air, and the snow is dancing like flakes of ash around her.

This may strike some as odd: her dress is thin, made for a warmer climate, and the scarf she merely carries around her waist. In some ways, she is aware of the cold, but she does not truly feel it – she feels warm, held by her god. Around her, the flakes seem to vanish, she is too warm to see them last. Still, dawn won’t quite come.

She thinks of the King, too – Stannis, she calls him in her mind, and her champion, and Azor Ahai reborn, and His Grace, wishes she’d seen him in the flame, recalls how he walked this part of the Wall with her, night after night, no guards, her waiting for the first sign of dawn that would allow her to rest, him not fighting a battle elsewhere.

Exhaustion is there, too, she’s not slept in a week, and her eyes almost fall close where she stands.

Then, the peace ends, too fast to register, even for her. Her torch goes first, and dawn has not yet broken, there is no light, and the disorientation gets her as quickly as the daggers do – darkness is what she has feared since she was a slave girl at the Temple, since before that, even, and she knows her attackers fear her. It makes the stabbing all the more brutal. Pain is everywhere – in her head, at her throat, exploding like the fire around her, fire she’d cast herself. Blood, too, she can feel it now, and she need no vision to know the daggers had done all the damage they’d needed to do. It’d come down on her, again and again, the work of the desperate.

Fire can’t save her. She’s fallen, red spreads around her, there’s blood in her mouth, too much to let prayer pass. There’d been no last word, only screaming that she herself hasn’t registered in the moment. Too fast to see, too fast to be saved, and still, there is no dawn. This is the last thing she thinks, as she feels cold for the first time in so, so many years: if only she could see the sun.
⟪ She won’t mind the intrusion as much, and she will treasure her offerings – gifts are a rarity to someone like her, and the idea that someone would spend a moment’s thought on her as a person means much.⟫

Edited 2019-07-12 17:45 (UTC)

[ Like many of the graves, this one calls to him and unlike the first few where he had no true offerings at the time, he has some prepared here. A jar filled with water he had created, some unlit candles and a small drawing of a sun. In such a dark place at least a drawing was nice? He had at least prepared himself for an onslaught of visions, but this woman's?

It's almost too much. Dying in the dark and wanting to see the sun? Then ending up here? He can only fathom that this place must be their own personal hell. When the vision finally ends, a hand rests atop the shrine, a frown pulling at his lips. ]

I'm sorry you didn't get to see the sun....

I was foolish. The King left me guards for a reason ⟪ not that the men he could spare for such a bogus task would have changed the situation, but it's at least a nice, calming thing to say to the boy –– because she's seen his grave, she knows he is just a boy, prince or not. No, what Stannis had counted on was that she would do what she has done in the face of every other assassination attempt. ⟫ and they could have accompanied me.

⟪ She doesn't step closer to her shrine, having seen enough of it during the first inspection. ⟫

Please forgive me for my... harsh reaction during your previous meeting. In my lands, in the Shadow Lands I spent most of my life in, magic done in surprise is frequently a mean of attack, or at least, of intimidation. I could have told you this immediately.

[ He turns to the woman, a bit surprised he hadn't even noticed she was there. He keeps silent for a moment, not sure if there's anything he should say right now. Last time he hadn't done a very good job at placating her fears.

But again she surprises him when she says that. He had expected her to meet him again with more suspicion but, her explaination? It's enough for him look to the ground in penance. ]

No, that's all right. I shouldn't have been so, well, impulsive. I didn't think at the time that some people might take it as a threat. So, I understand why you'd be so reluctant. [ He rubs at his arm awkwardly, before saying; ]

Us all being here with a bunch of strangers we don't know? It'd set anyone on edge. I guess I was just...trying to not think too much about it.

[ But, then he looks to her and cautiously steps a bit toward her, as if he might spook her like last time. ]

Did...did you still want to feel the sun?

Edited 2019-07-13 18:04 (UTC)

It is a strange situation. ⟪ She has to admit that much. ⟫ I suppose it is more habit for me, I have left many places behind to start over in a new one, and rarely are people... genuinely kind.

⟪ To put it very, very mildly.

Still, he has her curiosity, and she does genuinely find herself interested in some manner of his friendship, if only because he seems like the kind of soul one would wish to have in one's life. Everything of him speaks of light. ⟫

Is this something you can do?

[ He rubs at his arm a bit awkwardly when she says that. People are rarely kind...doesn't he know it. He meets her gaze again, with his mouth knit into a frown and says;]

I understand, it's not the same, but, where I lived I hadn't met many kind people until much later. [ He's not even sure what brings him to say it but; ]

It wasn't until I met my best friend that I found anyone that could be kind and so, it made me want to do the same. [ He could get into more if he wanted to on his reasons, but he feels he'd just start sounding like a windbag.

Instead he approaches her when she asks that question and reaches out to take her hand. ]

Yeah, it won't take long.

[ If she allows him to take her hand, he shuts his eyes and begins to mutter the celestial words to cast a cure wounds spell. A heat begins to radiate from his hand like a fire poker pulled from a hot flame, with gold mist rising from this heat. It's there Melisandre will feel the energy pulse into her.

It'll feel like she is bathed in a warm noon sun with the happiest memory coming into her mind's eye. It'll feel bright, shiny and new within this feeling of the warm sun. As the spell ends the feeling will linger as he pulls his hand away. ]

[Ignis' offering wasn't much- a couple of cookies wrapped in parchment paper and tied with a string. He was at a loss on what he could give as the offering so he settled on things he does the best- the blackberry cookies should be tasty.

What he didn't expect was the vision of her death. It felt- like prying. Into something that was more than just personal. The longing for the sun, the devotion- the vision of it all very effectively seeps the emotion right through. And now, trapped here, where there was no Sun either.

The stabbing hurt- it was in the vital point, Ignis felt it. She didn't seem to suffer for long, though, and Ignis is glad for it. He wished she wasn't stabbed at all.

He remains standing there, at her shrine, even as the vision ends, to pay proper respect.]

[ the last thought is what sticks to daylight the most when he's released from the experience.

of course, daylight is panting, taking greedy gulps of air through his whirring vents. of course, daylight is frantically patting down his throat, his face to make sure they're not slick or torn apart. of course, daylight is looking around him, half expecting daggers, gleaming and terrible, to be waiting right beside him to continue what they were doing in that past event. but, all the same, he can't shake off the last echoes that melisandre thought before she slipped away, fell into the cold.

something about that refuses to leave him be even as he stands up from where he's kneeling, his expression sorrowful and apologetic. there's something about melisandre that speaks of an old, old soul. the way she speaks. the way she carries herself. the thoughts he heard and the emotions he felt only confirms it. he may not understand some terms or events due to his lack of knowledge of her world, but he wants to think he has chance of having a better understanding of ehr now.

out of impulse, with the taste of blood still lingering in his mouth, he makes a second offering that day. it's one that can't be passed on to her in a normal sense but, all the same, he presents it as a gift and a sign of respect that he has for her. the second offering he makes?

it's a song. daylight leaves behind a song, one that happens to be from his mother's planet. he hums it, having forgotten half the lyrics since it's been so long since he heard anyone sing it, but he thinks the wistfulness in its melody, the lyrics speaking of the desire to see light for the night is dark and the stars are not enough is- is appropriate. (yeah. let's go with that.)

he leaves the grave soon after, not lingering a second longer. all that's left that could hint to his presence are the faint footprints of his pedes on the ground. that and the paper flower that he had made by himself, the petals are red as blood, still as the graves themselves. ]

[It's odd, isn't it? It's a completely different death than her own, and still Rosalind feels similarities. Not with execution, not the searing heat of daggers and the rawness in her throat from screaming, no, but the feeling. The inherent knowledge of what's happening even as it happens; the way she has it all at her fingertips, knowing who and where and why and how, and yet how it doesn't help, not a bit.

She's shaky after each death, of course. It's no small thing, experiencing those visions. But perhaps there's something extra to the way she stares wide-eyed at her grave. Her offering-- a bit of scrap metal curved and bent in the shape of a bird-- is her focal point, and she stares at it for an awfully long time.

Well.

She finds Melisandre later on, near the bonfire. She takes a seat near her, her mouth tight and thin.]

. . . what were those voices? Lot seven, Melony . . . those weren't from around you.

[Also, hi, she saw her death.]

⟪ Tearing her eyes from the flames, she regards Rosalind with no little appreciation – this is an approach she can cherish, straightforward, no awkward dance around the matter. I watched you die, she doesn't say, no false condolences either.

Wish this was not her sorest point by far, but then again, this is what she herself signed up for when she watched so many of these visions. ⟫

Memories. ⟪ Not even much of a pause here, really. ⟫ From a long time ago. The Lord of Light blessed me with many of His gifts, but even He cannot burn away the beginnings.

No, I suppose not.

[Hm. The former she doesn't know, but the latter . . . that had sounded like some kind of auction. A slave auction, perhaps? She files it away for later.]

Your god, I take it. One singular, or one among many?

There is one of Light and Shadow and Life, and there is the Other, who brings death and darkness and despair.

⟪ Her approach to the explanation has become... more relaxed, through her time in Westeros. ⟫

He brought me out of slavery. Other things, too, but this is what made me a believer.

How?

[That isn't the point here, not when she can still feel the white-hot slice of those knives, when her throat is raw from phantom pain and there's a part of her still grieving-- but on the other hand, why not? What's the point of bringing up what she saw? I felt you die, well, yes, she had, and what of it?

Better to get concrete knowledge. Better to think of other things, not the hot rush of blood or her bitter grief--]

Did some priest of his buy you?

[Oops: there's a little more derision in her voice than there ought to be.]

Morbid, isn't it?

⟪ Stannis' tone had been harsher than hers, he had made his point clearer, but it's much the same point. Part of her agrees – she has no delusions, she had not been gifted freedom, they are called 'temple servants' but slaves is what they were, until they become acolytes proper, priests and priestesses later.

If they're lucky. ⟫

No one there could kill me for a sport, though, and I had food to eat near every day.

⟪ And the flames, she had those, too, and became skilled at reading them before she was ever caught and raised further than she thought possible. ⟫

Is this not what Faith does, in your world?

Faith buys you an excuse each time you wish to commit a sin.

[Now there's really heat in her voice, a disgust that has nothing to do with her companion.]

It's a farce, nothing more.

death

( ➻ smoke to the skies )

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

1/2

2/2

no subject

( reaction only. )

Re: death

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

⤞ death

no subject

whEW, DIVES BACK INNN