Post by Annasiel on Mar 15, 2016 20:13:40 GMT
The Forsaken Ones
~
~
Ser Godfried Lelmont
Age: 36
Gender: Male
Height: 6'1
Weight: 182 lbs
~
~
Lenore Dimsied, Esquire to Ser Lelmont
Age: 21
Gender: Female
Height: 5'6
Weight: 139 lbs
~
Two weary travelers walked the path, not penny nor power to either a name.
Two weary travelers walked the path, aburdened by tense apprehension of blame.
A wandering heart from a faltering past, and a lasting impression of alien fate,
They walked hand in hand, and would ne'er apart, until come the end of their days.
~
~
Ser Godfried Lelmont
Age: 36
Gender: Male
Height: 6'1
Weight: 182 lbs
~
~
Lenore Dimsied, Esquire to Ser Lelmont
Age: 21
Gender: Female
Height: 5'6
Weight: 139 lbs
~
Two weary travelers walked the path, not penny nor power to either a name.
Two weary travelers walked the path, aburdened by tense apprehension of blame.
A wandering heart from a faltering past, and a lasting impression of alien fate,
They walked hand in hand, and would ne'er apart, until come the end of their days.
"My new-found friends, gather round. Bear with a tired, old knight and listen to a story. I won't guarantee any listening value other than the morals it may hold within your ears, but see in your mind and heart that morals are worth more than blighted entertainment. More than even the tallest coffers of gold in the castle of an emperor. True lessons bring wisdom in time, the greatest gift of all. I wish with all my being someone had told this story to me, long before, and with it the warnings it entails... but then I would not be here today. And this story would not exist, of course, so how I would have heard it I cannot fathom. Now... how to begin? I suppose many tales start with the same old line, and mine is a tale enough to follow that tradition. So... once upon a time... there was a grand king."
He was not a noble king, nor was he a bold one. In fact, his vices far outshone his virtues, if any virtues dwelt within his soul to begin with. Born into his blood and wealth and power, he knew not the burdens that the crown was meant to shoulder, and instead gave in to hedonistic ways unfit for any proper ruler. It was his divine right to rule, after all. The gods and fate were in accordance with that. And as long as he sat on the throne of his ancestors, his decision was as powerful as an edict of Den himself. His father had passed away when he was quite young, and his mother fell into delusions that required institution. Locked in her tower keep, far away from prying eyes and condescending lips, she wailed endlessly about death and dereliction. The cries brought fear and sorrow to the young king's heart, but he did not have the will to put the woman out of misery. So, unsatisfied with neither death nor familial duty, he ignored the piteous banshee, her screams only intruding in his sweat-soaked dreams. They were not the only nightmare in his life. The crown had many enemies, so paranoia took a stand, as did the apprehension that he would fail his mission as ruler. The latter may have been some unconscious warning, or even a message from Lady Fate herself, but in any case it went unheeded. The royal child took a shaman instead, to melt away the terrors with acid brews, the fumes of which were almost as sickening as the dreams themselves.
From a tiny age the king showed fondness for the lavish. He drowned his troubled mind in wines and spirits, and called for the presence of beautiful serving girls to cater to his every whim. He came to expect attention from the snap of his fingers, and even went as far to expect anticipation of the finger-snapping itself. As no man, or no man without magic, can read another's mind, many servants faced the ire of the child. Slowly but certainly, the spoilment was turning him into a tyrant. The disconnect between king and people only widened as he busied himself with distractions. Much of the kingdom's running was left to the avaricious advisors, whose every policy enacted served to brighten their green-eyed glow. The people grew restless, the people grew disheartened, the people grew angry. What was once a prosperous land was now the personal gag-show of a prepubescent dictator. Revolt was believed impossible, though, for the court was cunning as they were greedy. They lined the pockets of mercenaries, who in turn lined the streets of the palace city. Any dissent was met with brutal force, a guillotine to the tongue of any possible rebellion. And so the resentment grew.
As the sovereign aged, so his maturity changed. Not as in the case of a well-refined cordial, sweetening and widening in scope of flavor, but more like a farmer's cheese, growing more sharp and pungent in time. His tastes turned more from the lavish to the carnal, taking to bed any girl around that seemed to catch his fancy. Many woman were more than willing to lie in bed with a man of such position, either out of lust for power or love of all his assets, but those that did not were forced to feign enthusiasm. The king believed himself irresistible in his egoistic view. And thus, it came as a terrible shock when one woman refused him outright, spurning his advances and turning his hand out of hatred for him and his character. The king new some people disliked him; he was not a total fool. But his advisors had convinced him the dissenters were few and far apart, and were all old lunatics with few wits and teeth to spare. When this gorgeous young girl with heart-shaped lips and doe eyes spit the things alleged to the courts of idiocy, the young noble's world took a monstrous shaking. It did not help that her beauty only seemed to grow in her denial, enticing the king's libidinal lust into a covenant with the forbidden. He needed her. He needed her for her refutations, for her unobtainable glamour, for her caramel skin and chocolate curls.
What happened next is tied between the lips of gods and demons. Some say a great monster possessed the young king, fooling him from whatever scant wisdom he might have had. Others say the king himself was the monster, with no care for consequence or propriety, acting only for his own personal gain. I prefer to hold a view that rests between them... no beast took control of the young man's hand, he acted entirely of his own accord. What he did that night was his to bear the blame of. However, the king was not without remorse, nor did he not regret every mortal sin he had committed. On one evening, when the harvest moon shone bright and roguish in the wispy cauldron sky, the king stole out to find the girl who had rejected him. She was the daughter of a tanner, but her father was away on some merchant's voyage. Left alone in a tawdry house with only the wind and the dust for company, nothing stood between the man and what he wanted. The king knocked on the door. The girl answered in an innocent daze, her supple calves slightly apart beneath a cotton bed-gown. She peeped through the opening of the door, still rubbing her eyes from a musky slumber. She did not recognize the man behind it.
"Can I... can I help you?" she asked, ready to slam the panel and latch the slide-lock if need be. Perhaps a more cautious head would have saved her that night. No right-minded lady, powerful and poor alike, answered a knocking in the witching hour. But the tanner's girl had too much faith in her judgement and reaction, too much credence in the kingdom's safety, too much naivety about the monsters that prowl in the dark. A swift push of a shoulder sent her reeling back, and the king was through the door. As he lowered his hood, recognition dawned on the young woman's face.
"You..." she said. "What are you doing here? Get out of my house! Get out!" She had awakened in full, her gorgeous features torn with worry and ire. As if pulled by some unknown force, the noble staggered across the floor, cocking a hand behind his head and swinging it across her flushing face. With the sound of a horse-whip, she dropped to the floor in a graceless pirouette. If you would ask the king why he acted the way he had that night, he would not be able to tell you. I believe a darkness lies in the root of all mortals, longing for a time to rear its hideous face, and that it can make anyone act like the hand of a devil in passion. Taken up in a dreamlike trance, carnal thirst and euphoria driving his pummeling heart, the king descended on the girl. For a great many minutes, the king had his way with his supine prey. It wasn't until he released his seed that the fury in turn released his will. Rising, aching, covered in scratches and bruises, the king stared at the deed he had wrought. The tanner's daughter lay naked on the floor, shivering and decrepit, her doey eyes turned hollow as a gypsy's heart. She was bleeding as well, but did no effort to staunch it, only curling into the crimson mess betwixt her thighs. The young man had to bite back a scream.
"I don't... I..." he couldn't talk, so he heaved instead, adding more to the splattered mess on the desecrated floor. Backing away, the king turned and fled.
The girl survived, but she had truly died that night. When a neighbor checked in the next morning, made worried by the open, swinging door, what he found was little more than a husk of what once lived. She lost all voice and will, becoming nothing better than a corpse with breath. A less scrupulous man would rejoice in this news. Without a tongue to tell, how could a rapist take blame for his deplorable acts? But the king had more morality than his opposition would claim. A part of him, too, died that night, a suicide of innocence and peace of paltry mind. He began to draw more and more into himself, shutting out his advisors and his aides, furtively secreting away to his shadowy chambers. Rumors ran that the king had fallen ill. A sickness had taken him, but it was more one of mind than of body. Thoughts filled his head in the self-inflicted isolation. Dancing ghosts with monstrous faces, chanting about hell and punishment and tainted spirit. Every now and then, one of their mouths would let loose a familiar, haunting scream that could have only come from lips long locked in death. The king's dear, mad mother, driven to suicide not half a decade before, coming back to reprimand her forsaken child. You have failed us, you have failed yourself, the screeches seemed to say. You deserve your golden name even less than your father and I, you are the worst thing to come to our kingdom! Covering his ears but not escaping their accusations, the cursed young man cried himself to sleep for the better part of a year. It was in those later months that a chance at salvation came in the shape of a peculiar bundle on the castle stoop.
One of the serving maidens found it. The poor servant had been heading out to the well for a bucket of water to wash the linens when she caught sight of the small lump. At first, the servant thought it to be a pile of cloth she had somehow pulled along outside, but when she reached down to touch it, it moved. She screamed bloody murder. The workers of the castle were in for a sight to see this once rational woman fleeing deep into the walls, bellowing about demons on the doorstep and redemption from the abyss. Maybe in an earlier time, such a spectacle would be spelled off as stress or disease, but the entire household had been swayed by the somber aura of their monarch. A shadow had descended on their eyes and hearts. Maybe the father's young death and mother's descent into madness were only the heralds of a great curse on this family. Maybe they would all be dragged into this inevitable war with demon-kind. So a group of the bravest men gathered some weapons from the armory and cautiously approached the door. A sword-point swept away the tinted swaddles... and a little coo met it. Immediately, the strong men, so timid in their supernatural paranoia, were filled with deepest embarrassment. It was only a baby. After a quick search nearby for the obviously nonexistent mother, they brought the infant in to the nurses of the hold, who began to fuss over it with terrifying fervor. It was a welcome distraction, and a new experience, for them. With all the gloom and doom... with the only other child that had been in their care now locked away in his room... it gave them a fire of heart that was long unknown inside these stony halls.
And as for the king, he quickly found out. It seemed almost like he was waiting for the news. As soon as a knuckle knocked on his chamber door, the wooden board swung open, and the pallid, harrowed man exited without a word. He had heard in his dreams his redemption was coming. He had sinned, and he came to terms with that. This was the universe's chance to give him succor, to heal the wounds he had dealt the best he could, to become a new man. As the young monarch walked into the nursery, as he lay his hand on the animated bundle, a low crinkle rose from a buried present. "Here is the fruit of our loins, my liege," the note buried in the sheets read. "I want you to have it. I can't stand to live with it any longer." He didn't need the note to know where the baby had come from. The dreams, and his bitter intuition, told well enough. But the missive still lent a special gravity to the find, a sense of seriousness that would lack without its accusatory message. This child was his consequence. The fate of his failure. Born of monstrosity, so it would be the king's gods-given duty to make certain a monster the child would not become.
"Her name will be Lenore," the monarch finally spoke. "After Eleanor, my mother. And Dimsied, out of the evil that burrows its roots in us all. May such an evil never take over her heart, as mine is already tainted soil." It was the first time he had spoken in a year outside of grunts and screams. His voice was hoarse, an earthy rasp that conveyed more of a difference of decades than months. All the attendants in the room grew silent at the sound of it. "Why do you stand there gawking?" the king said. "Back to work. I have... duties to attend to."
He was not a noble king, nor was he a bold one. In fact, his vices far outshone his virtues, if any virtues dwelt within his soul to begin with. Born into his blood and wealth and power, he knew not the burdens that the crown was meant to shoulder, and instead gave in to hedonistic ways unfit for any proper ruler. It was his divine right to rule, after all. The gods and fate were in accordance with that. And as long as he sat on the throne of his ancestors, his decision was as powerful as an edict of Den himself. His father had passed away when he was quite young, and his mother fell into delusions that required institution. Locked in her tower keep, far away from prying eyes and condescending lips, she wailed endlessly about death and dereliction. The cries brought fear and sorrow to the young king's heart, but he did not have the will to put the woman out of misery. So, unsatisfied with neither death nor familial duty, he ignored the piteous banshee, her screams only intruding in his sweat-soaked dreams. They were not the only nightmare in his life. The crown had many enemies, so paranoia took a stand, as did the apprehension that he would fail his mission as ruler. The latter may have been some unconscious warning, or even a message from Lady Fate herself, but in any case it went unheeded. The royal child took a shaman instead, to melt away the terrors with acid brews, the fumes of which were almost as sickening as the dreams themselves.
From a tiny age the king showed fondness for the lavish. He drowned his troubled mind in wines and spirits, and called for the presence of beautiful serving girls to cater to his every whim. He came to expect attention from the snap of his fingers, and even went as far to expect anticipation of the finger-snapping itself. As no man, or no man without magic, can read another's mind, many servants faced the ire of the child. Slowly but certainly, the spoilment was turning him into a tyrant. The disconnect between king and people only widened as he busied himself with distractions. Much of the kingdom's running was left to the avaricious advisors, whose every policy enacted served to brighten their green-eyed glow. The people grew restless, the people grew disheartened, the people grew angry. What was once a prosperous land was now the personal gag-show of a prepubescent dictator. Revolt was believed impossible, though, for the court was cunning as they were greedy. They lined the pockets of mercenaries, who in turn lined the streets of the palace city. Any dissent was met with brutal force, a guillotine to the tongue of any possible rebellion. And so the resentment grew.
As the sovereign aged, so his maturity changed. Not as in the case of a well-refined cordial, sweetening and widening in scope of flavor, but more like a farmer's cheese, growing more sharp and pungent in time. His tastes turned more from the lavish to the carnal, taking to bed any girl around that seemed to catch his fancy. Many woman were more than willing to lie in bed with a man of such position, either out of lust for power or love of all his assets, but those that did not were forced to feign enthusiasm. The king believed himself irresistible in his egoistic view. And thus, it came as a terrible shock when one woman refused him outright, spurning his advances and turning his hand out of hatred for him and his character. The king new some people disliked him; he was not a total fool. But his advisors had convinced him the dissenters were few and far apart, and were all old lunatics with few wits and teeth to spare. When this gorgeous young girl with heart-shaped lips and doe eyes spit the things alleged to the courts of idiocy, the young noble's world took a monstrous shaking. It did not help that her beauty only seemed to grow in her denial, enticing the king's libidinal lust into a covenant with the forbidden. He needed her. He needed her for her refutations, for her unobtainable glamour, for her caramel skin and chocolate curls.
What happened next is tied between the lips of gods and demons. Some say a great monster possessed the young king, fooling him from whatever scant wisdom he might have had. Others say the king himself was the monster, with no care for consequence or propriety, acting only for his own personal gain. I prefer to hold a view that rests between them... no beast took control of the young man's hand, he acted entirely of his own accord. What he did that night was his to bear the blame of. However, the king was not without remorse, nor did he not regret every mortal sin he had committed. On one evening, when the harvest moon shone bright and roguish in the wispy cauldron sky, the king stole out to find the girl who had rejected him. She was the daughter of a tanner, but her father was away on some merchant's voyage. Left alone in a tawdry house with only the wind and the dust for company, nothing stood between the man and what he wanted. The king knocked on the door. The girl answered in an innocent daze, her supple calves slightly apart beneath a cotton bed-gown. She peeped through the opening of the door, still rubbing her eyes from a musky slumber. She did not recognize the man behind it.
"Can I... can I help you?" she asked, ready to slam the panel and latch the slide-lock if need be. Perhaps a more cautious head would have saved her that night. No right-minded lady, powerful and poor alike, answered a knocking in the witching hour. But the tanner's girl had too much faith in her judgement and reaction, too much credence in the kingdom's safety, too much naivety about the monsters that prowl in the dark. A swift push of a shoulder sent her reeling back, and the king was through the door. As he lowered his hood, recognition dawned on the young woman's face.
"You..." she said. "What are you doing here? Get out of my house! Get out!" She had awakened in full, her gorgeous features torn with worry and ire. As if pulled by some unknown force, the noble staggered across the floor, cocking a hand behind his head and swinging it across her flushing face. With the sound of a horse-whip, she dropped to the floor in a graceless pirouette. If you would ask the king why he acted the way he had that night, he would not be able to tell you. I believe a darkness lies in the root of all mortals, longing for a time to rear its hideous face, and that it can make anyone act like the hand of a devil in passion. Taken up in a dreamlike trance, carnal thirst and euphoria driving his pummeling heart, the king descended on the girl. For a great many minutes, the king had his way with his supine prey. It wasn't until he released his seed that the fury in turn released his will. Rising, aching, covered in scratches and bruises, the king stared at the deed he had wrought. The tanner's daughter lay naked on the floor, shivering and decrepit, her doey eyes turned hollow as a gypsy's heart. She was bleeding as well, but did no effort to staunch it, only curling into the crimson mess betwixt her thighs. The young man had to bite back a scream.
"I don't... I..." he couldn't talk, so he heaved instead, adding more to the splattered mess on the desecrated floor. Backing away, the king turned and fled.
The girl survived, but she had truly died that night. When a neighbor checked in the next morning, made worried by the open, swinging door, what he found was little more than a husk of what once lived. She lost all voice and will, becoming nothing better than a corpse with breath. A less scrupulous man would rejoice in this news. Without a tongue to tell, how could a rapist take blame for his deplorable acts? But the king had more morality than his opposition would claim. A part of him, too, died that night, a suicide of innocence and peace of paltry mind. He began to draw more and more into himself, shutting out his advisors and his aides, furtively secreting away to his shadowy chambers. Rumors ran that the king had fallen ill. A sickness had taken him, but it was more one of mind than of body. Thoughts filled his head in the self-inflicted isolation. Dancing ghosts with monstrous faces, chanting about hell and punishment and tainted spirit. Every now and then, one of their mouths would let loose a familiar, haunting scream that could have only come from lips long locked in death. The king's dear, mad mother, driven to suicide not half a decade before, coming back to reprimand her forsaken child. You have failed us, you have failed yourself, the screeches seemed to say. You deserve your golden name even less than your father and I, you are the worst thing to come to our kingdom! Covering his ears but not escaping their accusations, the cursed young man cried himself to sleep for the better part of a year. It was in those later months that a chance at salvation came in the shape of a peculiar bundle on the castle stoop.
One of the serving maidens found it. The poor servant had been heading out to the well for a bucket of water to wash the linens when she caught sight of the small lump. At first, the servant thought it to be a pile of cloth she had somehow pulled along outside, but when she reached down to touch it, it moved. She screamed bloody murder. The workers of the castle were in for a sight to see this once rational woman fleeing deep into the walls, bellowing about demons on the doorstep and redemption from the abyss. Maybe in an earlier time, such a spectacle would be spelled off as stress or disease, but the entire household had been swayed by the somber aura of their monarch. A shadow had descended on their eyes and hearts. Maybe the father's young death and mother's descent into madness were only the heralds of a great curse on this family. Maybe they would all be dragged into this inevitable war with demon-kind. So a group of the bravest men gathered some weapons from the armory and cautiously approached the door. A sword-point swept away the tinted swaddles... and a little coo met it. Immediately, the strong men, so timid in their supernatural paranoia, were filled with deepest embarrassment. It was only a baby. After a quick search nearby for the obviously nonexistent mother, they brought the infant in to the nurses of the hold, who began to fuss over it with terrifying fervor. It was a welcome distraction, and a new experience, for them. With all the gloom and doom... with the only other child that had been in their care now locked away in his room... it gave them a fire of heart that was long unknown inside these stony halls.
And as for the king, he quickly found out. It seemed almost like he was waiting for the news. As soon as a knuckle knocked on his chamber door, the wooden board swung open, and the pallid, harrowed man exited without a word. He had heard in his dreams his redemption was coming. He had sinned, and he came to terms with that. This was the universe's chance to give him succor, to heal the wounds he had dealt the best he could, to become a new man. As the young monarch walked into the nursery, as he lay his hand on the animated bundle, a low crinkle rose from a buried present. "Here is the fruit of our loins, my liege," the note buried in the sheets read. "I want you to have it. I can't stand to live with it any longer." He didn't need the note to know where the baby had come from. The dreams, and his bitter intuition, told well enough. But the missive still lent a special gravity to the find, a sense of seriousness that would lack without its accusatory message. This child was his consequence. The fate of his failure. Born of monstrosity, so it would be the king's gods-given duty to make certain a monster the child would not become.
"Her name will be Lenore," the monarch finally spoke. "After Eleanor, my mother. And Dimsied, out of the evil that burrows its roots in us all. May such an evil never take over her heart, as mine is already tainted soil." It was the first time he had spoken in a year outside of grunts and screams. His voice was hoarse, an earthy rasp that conveyed more of a difference of decades than months. All the attendants in the room grew silent at the sound of it. "Why do you stand there gawking?" the king said. "Back to work. I have... duties to attend to."