THE BRUCOLAC
COURT Unseelie.
TITLE Baron of Srathmarbh, Black Omen.
OCCUPATION Baron, drugs manufacturer, political thinker gods help him, Umibōzu captain.
ABLE TO FAST-TRAVEL Yes; puca.
RESIDENCE IN 2,701 Srathmarbh.
RESIDENCE IN 2,702 Srathmarbh.
MAJOR EVENTS
PUBLICATION OF THE REDDENED HILL
Being a Personal Account of the Battle of An Carn Ban... [ ✖ ]
ADOPTION DISCUSSION
"There is no one I would want to do it more." [ ✖ ]
COMPLETION OF THE SRATHMARBH SPIRE
Description [ ✖ ]
PUBLICATION OF THE GOVERNOR
A brief meditation on what and what not to do while holding public office. [ ✖ ]
BIRTH OF SHAMASH
Description [ ✖ ]
BIRTH OF ISHTAR
Description [ ✖ ]
RESCUE OF CHILDREN
Description [ ✖ ]
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PLANS
By the time the timeskip ends, the Brucolac will be in a more stable position, his spire complete and the surrounding lands a buzzing centre of construction and commerce. He will have two children in the care of Alyosha Hazan.
SUMMARY OF KNOWN DETAILS
Beebins; daring rescue of beebins; becoming reluctantly published; stuff stuff stuff; seeing a scifi film and being the biggest nerd; building a wee town & preparing for ports & shipyards; maybe hunting cloudwhales; tsk'ing unhappily at the cult of the fox
TIMELINE OF EVENTS
| SPRING IN 2,701 (Mar, Apr, May) |
- MARCH - Publication of the Brucolac's The Reddened Hill: The Unseelie Triumph of An Càrn Bàn. Anonymous, though rumour suggests it was one of the Barons.
- MARCH - A long talk with Alyosha about adoption.
- APRIL 5TH - The Srathmarbh Spire is completed and the name 'Srathmarbh' finally begins to catch on. Construction workers are encouraged to stay and continue building on the town proper. Whispers abound of future, grander plans (the Brucolac himself ensures these whispers circulate). Various grants and start-up loans are offered to would-be business-owners.
- APRIL - Hunting cloudwhales for their precious floaty bones.
- MAY - Publication of The Governor. Anonymous/under penname.
- MAY - A run-down rural farmhouse west of Mair is chosen for the location at which to base the Brucolac & Dasha's growing drugs business.
- MAY - Aileas an Seabhac requests that the Brucolac act as her diplomat to help smoothe over tensions between the vampires and the elves.
- MAY - Those fucking swans. The Brucolac will scoop up a few and be seen to pour what wealth is gained from them straight back into Srathmarbh.
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| SUMMER IN 2,701 (Jun, Jul, Aug) |
- JUNE - Two vampire entrepreneurs take advantage of the Brucolac's offered start-up loans and begin to create a printing press in Srathmarbh.
- JUNE - The Brucolac participates in the Treun summer tourney, in the Melee category! Yseult comes to watch; the rumours which have long abounded about the Brucolac's kept woman in Mair become noisier. The event ends terribly for them when, during the daytime, Yseult is attacked by copycats of the fox cult for her association with shardbearers.
- JULY - Perhaps it's the rich heat of the summer sun which the slakemoths respond to? Or the blood in the air. They wrap themselves up in cocoons and emerge terrible, but are manageable. Don't ask how.
- JULY - An attempt is made to feed one Mr Bones to the slakemoths.
- AUGUST - The Festival of Shadow.
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| FALL IN 2,701 (Sept, Oct, Nov) |
- EARLY SEPTEMBER - The Brucolac is affected by the scrambling of the translation enchantment; he speaks some stilted Drabbish, and a whole heap of languages from his world, which are all totally useless to him. Expect terrible handwriting and a lot of gestures. Also expect one great big universally-understandable I TOLD YOU SO.
- SEPTEMBER - The Srathmarbh press is complete and ready for business! Grants for teachers and educators, or literate people wishing to become teachers and educators, are refined and more widely publicised.
- SEPTEMBER 29TH - Birth of Shamash, son of Verla.
- OCTOBER 3RD - Birth of Ishtar, daughter of Yseult.
- OCTOBER 5TH? - By the grace of the Unseelie monarchs, the children are returned, delivered safely to the arms of Alyosha Hazan.
- OCTOBER 25TH - 30TH - Samhain! An excuse to be naked with loved ones.
- NOVEMBER - Some of the escaped criminals are former employees of Mr Bones, out for vengeance or perhaps out for gainful employment now that Mr Bones is no longer quite the force he was. The Brucolac puts out feelers to ascertain various situations and deal with them appropriately.
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| WINTER IN 2,701/2,702 (Dec, Jan, Feb) |
- DECEMBER - The Brucolac stays far away from the White Hart. No thanks. Srathmarbh will hold a fervent Yule celebration, which promises to become a tradition.
- JANUARY - Fuck, what do you mean the slakemoths bred? Oh fuck.
- FEBRUARY - Yseult causes controversy at the Ostara Festival by anonymously submitting a work named Blindeye, a great abstract mural of wild colours meant to be touched and stroked and stared at with unease. It is torched by a traditionalist. The Brucolac tries to use this to distract from possible re-emergence of elf/vampir tensions caused by the assassinations of elven artists.
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| SPRING IN 2,702 (Mar, Apr) |
- DATE - Description
- DATE - Description
- DATE - Description
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vrykolakas) wrote2015-02-06 09:01 pm
paloma.
But there's work to be done, and this exhausted, teeth-tight nervous terror is no excuse; nor does he want it to be. The work makes him feel better. Each ticked box is a relief and a defiance.
"Come in," he says, before Paloma knocks, catching her scent and isolating the familiar creak of her footstep outside. He leans back, sighs, and arranges his face into neutral attentiveness, though his skin has a faint grey-greenish pallor to it, and on his desk the fingers of his left hand drum and twitch.
no subject
The vampire who slinks through the doors isn't suffering an unnatural pallor beyond the usual (death). But her eyes are buggishly wide and she forgets to blink as often as she probably should; both fists are knotted in the fabric of a dress with a muddy hem. She's only got shoes on because this audience is... formal. In a sense.
Barefooted heartbreak just seems like insult to injury.
"--You okay?" Her voice is thinner, more reedy.
no subject
"What happened."
no subject
But she shoves the locked door out of mind. There's an unwell baron expecting Paloma to answer.
"It started early this month," she says, sticking to a shaky recital of the first lines she's practiced for this nerve-wracking encounter. "I didn't black out or forget where I am, but there would be moments I stopped caring. And because I stopped caring," here the speech she's prepared falls away, "my Beast took over without me resisting it. I haven't killed anyone! I-I wasn't seen, the men I bit won't remember who or what happened."
"Tried to make hunting my first priority every night. Wake up, go outside the city, feed on animals. Thought that would help. It should have. But I met a hunter and jumped on him. He's alive, too." Her words begin rushing together, cramming tight and upset. "Flew far away, and I met with my friend who saw how I was and asked him not to run away but he tried cutting my head off and I lost it, I didn't care who he was anymore either and-- and."
Paloma's become glassy-eyed, seeing the Brucolac through a gathering fog of tears as the melody plays and her terror and regret swamp everything. "I can't stay here anymore if I'm going insane."
no subject
"Shit," he mutters, almost absently. His fingers twitch. He sucks in a breath to try and calm himself and think outside of, think above the anger that's crowding in around him, cramming his throat. Tangy as copper. "You selfish," he begins and then with a mental effort something akin to hauling a ship's wheel around against the current in a screaming storm he shuts himself up before he can do more damage. No matter how satisfying it would be.
"Your friend," he says, voice tight. It's difficult to form sentences. "Alive?"
no subject
But Paloma's hand creeps up to squeeze her own throat, nerves plucking to the melody of a harp.
"Yes. He wasn't-- wasn't well, either. We're never violent with each other."
no subject
Rip her tongue out; what Tzilan did to him. Poetic. No, just violent. Would it make him feel better? No; worse, undoubtedly. Would it serve any point? She wouldn't do it again. Or she would feel more miserable the next time she did it. Fuck! The next time? Was that what he prepared for now? Next times?
"Were you," he snarls, "my kin, truly my kin, was this my world, I would have your head. For—" He turns to stare her down. And can't. His anger at her collapses, and his head droops. She's about the age he was when he was sired. He remembers coming to covered in blood. The bad-dream nonsense of it, almost funny in its absurdity. Sitting still and trying to wake up, occasionally calling out pathetically for his travelling companions as if he hadn't put everything together—the ruined campsite with its the bloodied hoof-prints, the fuzzy fever-memories of Mirja whispering just put the knife in his throat before he comes around just please just give it to me if I have to I'll, the strange, delicious taste in his new-tongued new-toothed mouth.
He was supposed to stop this happening. He should have watched closer. "Understand, Paloma," he says, "how much better we have to be than every single quick fucker if we are to do anything more than survive. This freedom we have now is too hardwon, too rare, too fragile to weather such foolish losses of control." He swallows, bares his teeth. "I spent decades a beast—no—nothing so proud, just a skinny bit of vermin too hardy for its own good. Do you want to end up so debased?"
no subject
"No!" she bleats, a scared quivering sheep. In the face of song those hard-earned lessons of survival among Kindred have flown away. Paloma is stripped down bare, raw, a sapling with its bark all torn off. "My friend mentioned harps. I don't know how to fight this harder than I already am, it's like I hear music and I forget I'm at war. I want to stay, I want to... keep my place. What have you heard about harps?"
no subject
He stares at her, uncomprehending, for a few moments; then slumps back. Drops his shoulders. Yes. Of course. He should have fucking known.
"This damnable place," he mutters. His voice sounds like nails scrabbling from the wrong side of a coffin lid. "This godsforsaken miserable brain-searing maddening fucking place..." He pushes back a few strands of black hair with dark, sharp fingernails, presses his fingertips to his temples. "Nothing. I've heard nothing about them."
But the music has been plucking at his nerves. Not really audible, a song stuck in his head. A tune which wakes him fitfully for half-seconds even in sunlight, winds its way snakelike about his brain.