TIMESKIP.

[vrykolakas]

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 [ ✖ ]

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. 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. 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. 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. SPRING IN 2,702 (Mar, Apr) DATE - Description DATE - Description DATE - Description

( codes by whambam )

Comments

[fairyfoes]

That sense of other in the primitive back of his mind slashed again, frantically, and there was an alien sense of—

Won't lose again can't lose again lost too much in those teeth, old ally-enemy, don't lose them don't—

His panic faded while his senses sharpened, hunting not by vision but taste-scent-hearing as if he were blind, picking out the cries that had etched themselves into his mind in that one reeling moment of recognition, the same olfactory sensitivity by which beasts knew their own kits and cubs and fawns and foals. They became outlined to him as if in red.

Cut through the cage of claws for Ishtar before she was cast to the hungry shades? Scoop up fading Shamash before one of the creatures prowling the edge poured its darkness into him and took him, sure and certain as death? They were so far from each other.

[vrykolakas]

He was closest to Ishtar; had seen her clearest, had seen her closest to the slavering shades.

He ran for her. As he ran he raised one hand, nicked at his own armoured wrist with a curved black gauntlet-claw, trusting that the only thing that could cut through the armour would be the armour itself. It healed almost immediately, skin and shell snapping together. Black blood spattered across the altar. Leaves sprung up from it, wildflowers, succulent and thriving, and they raced not for the great, vine-caged creature which bent over the altar but for Shamash.

If they got to him, they'd wrap thick stems about him, squeeze tight, and one great carnivorous-mawed flower would bend its neck with clumsy gentleness to drop his father's blood onto his screwed-up face, into his mouth.

Ishtar, Ishtar! The cold bright fire of the Brucolac's armour clanged, burned, hissed as he lashed out at the huge, black fingers separating him from his daughter.

[fairyfoes]

He ran, cutting through shades, fears, terrors; they had some sense that he had cut through the mesmer they all had made, and cast themselves before him. Wore the faces of his dead, of other fears, when they weren't scrabbling to pour themselves into the vessels they all trod upon.

The Brucolac's bootprints left a red wake. His claws slashed, a rain of white-and-blue fire that made the shadows recoil in a fit of fire-crackle hissing, like cats back from water. Two fingers severed through, clean as necks on the executioner's block, and faded like smoke whisked away on a hard wind. The hand snatched back as if burned by the cold fire, raked through the vining plants that bound its face instead, shredding them in a bellow of pain that quaked the earth.

Ishtar seemed almost to reach for him; a violent thicket seemed to have sprung tightly about Shamash, unseen through its darkness. The garden muffled the thin-voiced cries which proved him still living.

[vrykolakas]

Shadows gurned and twisted. One cried out for his attention, the youngest of his kin, the first to die in the Dry Fallen mutiny. One lumbered towards him, one-fanged and starving, in the shape of the thing which had sired him centuries ago. The dragon of Redgate raised its great and awful head, one-eyed and snorting false fire. He didn't look at who it held clamped between its teeth.

Ishtar had heat left in her. For some reason it startled him. He hadn't expected her to be warm. He scooped her up and clutched her tight as she screamed, and swung to find Shamash, where leaves and stems and flowers cradled him close.

More blood. More plants. They were thinner now, less lush, more utilitarian. Spiked and cruel-looking, drained of colour, they launched themselves like harpoons into the body of the leaning thing which overlooked the whole cave. Ishtar's cries reached a whining, breathless pitch. Struggling towards Shamash felt like running through treacle. The air was hot and stinking. The vines which held him stretched out and out and one-handedly, half-blind, the Brucolac groped in the dark to find him...

[fairyfoes]

His hand curved around a shoulder too small even to fill his palm. It was easy to gather the small body close, and the plants parted to admit him, possessed of a dim cunning. The great many-eyed creature that loomed over the Brucolac as he collected his son tore the last of vines from its face, their fleshy leaves and spines and flowers falling upon him like some hellish rain.

It reared back, neck stretching, serpentlike now, the darkness all about him growing thick, the only light now the red radiance of its hundreds of eyes. All around the Brucolac shadows had frothed over the altar, drowning it under their darkness like a stone under rising tide, and as infant voices were snuffed out en masse, a great silence rose like a cresting wave.

It struck down for him, open-mouthed.

[vrykolakas]

They were both too light in his arms, like nothing at all, their chests rising as spasmodically as butterfly wing-beats in between thin cries. He clutched them close and was fool enough to look up.

The hundreds of eyes coming crashing down towards him looked like a city at night hurtling nonsensically through the black air. He gave a soundless cry, wraiths gulping down his terror with hissing delight. Shamash was shivering and thrashing. He snatched the children closer and and made himself step backwards with no idea where to go but elsewhere. Take miles in his stride. Cut his losses and run.

[fairyfoes]

Darkness swallowed him, and the massive maw crashed down on empty air, on bones and dead bodies. Leagues above, the streets of Mair trembled finely with the force of it. Those magically sensitive paused, had to shake off vague seconds of dread before returning to the routine of their lives.


The Brucolac, with his burden, found himself in the garden of Redgate. Stone-carven statues, grim-featured guardians, flanked red stone walls along which hardy soft-colored tea roses had been encouraged to vine. Several blooms still clustered here and there, defiant to the cooling weather. Raised planters grew thick with practical, medicinal plants. Evergreen shrubs encouraged the illusion of privacy, but the benches, the small seats beside small tables, were all empty at this hour.

Further away on the high walls of the fortress, the torches of guards at their watches moved at leisurely paces. A trick of the cleaner air made the stars seem very close, brightening the night, painting the sky a spectrum of blues rather than an ominous black. The strange light glinted off the ranks of snow-capped mountains in the distance.