Clockwork Abattoir: Sordid Tales

[False Epiphany]

[ooc]Roll to convince Alphosine, per our AIM discussion. Spending another 2 grit to negate my Morbid penalty. [blockquote]Rolled 1d6 : 3, total 3[/blockquote][/ooc]

[Rose-of-Vellum]

[ic=Alisandre]Still aglow with the risqué pageantry of the Devil's Second Nuptial, Alphosine is all-too happy to follow her half-sister's lead.  Meng-Yao expertly takes the ladies first to the Saffron Ward, where a quarter-hour of shopping -and a hefty exchange of crowns- gives the disowned magistra the guise of a Phel-Nirian handmaid, clad in maroon and white livery. Alphosine chuckles at the transformation. Zeernebub, however, ignores the spectacle and busies herself by regurgitating her poached salmon from lunch. Zorjub's corpse is quite –silenced by Alisandre's switching of masks.

So disguised, Alisandre tracks down Xedric using Alphosine's contacts. Fortunately for their schemes, they find him in a less-than exclusive pleasure-club in the Indigo Ward called the Sateen Comte. Alphosine initially balks at Alisande's idea to drug their half-brother, but her affronted mien soon fades. By the time they purchase the potent, yet subtle, vintage of madwine, she is positively bursting to execute their plot.

He sees them of course –he even eyes the guised Alisandre and makes a snide comment to Alphosine about her changing servants as often as their father changes brides. But he never truly looks at Alisandre, none of the club's patrons do. She is no more watched than Alphosine's shoes. Alphosine, of course, banters back, noting how Xedric's waist is always changing too –but sadly only in one direction. Her remark draws cigar-choked guffaws from Xedric's drinking companions: a fellow parliamentarian and a reedy-faced bureaucrat. To Xedric's great chagrin and half-spoken shout, the goateed nobleman invites the magistra to join them for a hand of Black Faro. She pretends to demurely reject the invitation, but eventually saddles over to their mercerized booth and its gaslamp chandelier. To Alisandre's secret delight, Xedric gives a feeble, completely ignored growl of protest as Alphosine sits down, separating her half-brother from his companions.

Beyond flustering the already peevish man, the positioning is perfect for Alisandre's scheme. Standing beside the booth, she is just an elbow away from Xedric's servant: a dim-eyed doormat that was old before Alisandre was weaned.  As the game progresses, it's all-too easy for Alisandre to pour, mix, and substitute the drinks, all the while pretending to offer the old valet a hand. Xedric remains oblivious –especially as he begins to lose ever-greater sums of money to his bearded peer... and any chance of sealing a back-room deal on Sarantos' quarry-tariffs are ruined by the combination of Alphosine's well-timed barbs and the increasing toll of potent madwine.

Already flustered, the liquor-addled man begins to shout at illusory barkeeps, laugh at hallucinatory jokes, and sweat profusely as terrifying images dance and flit across his vision. He tries to play off his faux pas, but the parliamentarian ribs him for cracking under the pressure, for being a sore loser.

Xedric snaps. He flips over the table, scattering the glasses, cards, and tokens. He hefts his prodigious bulk and throws a meaty fist at the man, accusing him of cheating, or poisoning him. Xedric's intoxicated aim is tragically off. The parliamentarian ducks, and the punch smashes into the bureaucrat's temple. The thin man crumples, knocked out cold by the frothing magister.

Patronage and staff alike stop and stare with undisguised shock.

Horror blanches Xedric's face.

The Comte's maitre d' –whose expression is nearly aghast as Xedric's- rushes forward, stammering some nonsensical half-question, part-apology. Xedric just shakes his sweat-drenched head. He shoves the man aside, then pushes past the flabbergasted doormen, shouting for his quite confused lackey to follow. The near-blind valet gives a stiff bow to Alisandre before leaving, thanking her for her assistance, and then stumbles after his enraged master.  

As the rest of club still reels at the scandalous scene, Alphosine raises a glass to her 'servant' and curtly motions with her eyes. The gesture seems to ask whether she wants to follow Xedric or stay and chat up his erstwhile companions.[/ic]

[Steerpike]

[ic]Catena fetches a few coins and tosses them into the black pool.

"This should be more than sufficient to slake your appetites.  Now speak."[/ic]

[ooc]She'll offer 4 crowns.[/ooc]

[Rose-of-Vellum]

[ic=Catena]Two-Smiles praises Catena for her exceptional generosity, then relays Red Mei's usual routes and on-duty whereabouts. "At thiss-s hour, s-she'ss likely at the Mooncalf, where Chigger Lane cuts-ss-s the Tangle."

Aided by said directions, Catena is able to hire another rickshaw -this one pulled by a dark-skinned bastard of Lophian descent- and makes her way to the Mooncalf Tangle. The paint-splotched rickshaw swims through the Ebon Ward's flimsy traffic, subdued by yesterday's excess. Along the way, a few rash-scarred costermongers lazily hawk 'goods': gleet-stained sacks of dubious content, tumorous produce speckled by mites, and rubbish-picked leftovers from magistras' tables.

Light retreats as she reaches the Tangle. Here, the Northern Rail rises above the slums like a shadow-shatting wave, covering entire buildings under the iron-wrought line and supporting elyctromechanical platforms. Oscillations in the voltaic batteries cause intermittent discharges of sallow sparks and evanescent phlogiston. Underneath, the buildings bear strange injuries: spiraling burns, rooftops like melted glass, upper stories warped by some strange thaumaturgic radiation. Disturbed by the rail's thoughtless intrusion, the now-subterreanean streets curve in crooked patterns.

Chigger Lane is no exception. Initially a straight line running from the Sepia Ward, the throughway abruptly snakes around rust-smeared girders and seeping cables. Under the railway, paper-lanterns sag like radiant boils, dangling from a cat's cradle of laundry lines and grounding wires, providing dim illumination for those few shops that haven't abandoned the Tangle. A cluster of red lanterns announce a half-pence brothel. From its broken-glassed windows, liver-marked gigolos and hirsute strumpets battle for passers-by's affection, promising ever more obscene acts in a tired, oft-rehearsed bidding war. Squatting across the iniquitous den and several fungus-crawled flophouses, a derelict factory now serves as a well-intentioned, but woefully underfunded hospital. Down the line, where the moans of lust and ebbing life become a slurred murmur, a Collegia-dropout-turn-junkie commands his pinafore-dressed familiar, a frog-faced monkey-thing, to perform petty tricks for some fadingly amused Watchmen.

One of the Watchmen, upon seeing the albino warrior ride up, nods to an ugly blockhouse marked with the tarnished seal of the city's gendarme.

"Lieutenant's inside," he says with Shambles-accented Hellspeak. He beckons for Catena to follow, then throws down a bent crown to the bactarian demon.[/ic]

[ooc]Note that the rickshaw ride provides you with time for another recovery roll if you wish to take it.[/ooc]

[False Epiphany]

[ic]The assembled nobles see only a servant waiting upon their needs. In another lifetime, Alisandre might have been embarassed, indignant, to find herself playing such a role. Now, she hardly pays mind. With every faux pas, with every gaff, with every embarassment her half-brother subjects himself to, Alisandre's eyes dance with cold, harsh laughter.

When Xedric finally overturns the table and assaults the hapless bureaucrat, Alisandre can barely contain her joy. Such an appalling loss of control in one who expects to rule. This will be gossiped about long after the madwine has worn off. She can already hear the scorn-filled voices laughing, "Remember that one time Xedric..."

Yes, my brother. Know what it is to be disgraced. Abhorred. Humiliated. This is but a first taste of things to come.

As Caraumonde's heir flees the establishment in horror, Alisandre meets her half-sister's gaze and covertly signals for them to split. They can reunite later to share their gossip. Making sure to stay a safe distance away, she follows Xedric out into the streets, already mentally rehearsing the lie should she be caught.[/ic]

[ooc]Agility (stealth) check to avoid being spotted.

[blockquote]Rolled 1d6 : 2, total 2[/blockquote]

Intellect (deception) check for the fib we discussed, in case I flub the stealth check. Spending 2 grit to negate my flaw's penalty.

[blockquote]Rolled 1d6 : 4, total 4[/blockquote][/ooc]

[Rose-of-Vellum]

[ic=Alisandre]Alphosine nods understandingly. "Be careful," she breathes, then turns back to the goateed parliamentarian who struggles to rouse the still-unconscious bureaucrat. Nearby, the Comte's staff flutter ineffectually, unsure how to untangle themselves from the scandalous incident without further insult.

Outside, the still-disguised Alisandre follows Xedric's valet. She spots her half-brother as he steps into a parked cabriolet. Adorned with House Mei-Vourne's insignia, the two-seated pleasure carriage has a massive folding hood reminiscent of bent batwings and a funeral-wreathed draft animal with aspects both lupine and equine. Xedric violently grabs the reins from a startled groom –whom he promptly and unceremoniously kicks out. As the liveried man stumbles to the rear platform, the elderly valet barely steps into the cab before Xedric viciously lashes the harnessed beast, causing it to half-leap, half-gallop down the manicured boulevard. The groom, left behind in a cloud of dust, gapes in stunned silence.

Alisandre herself has little time to react before Xedric disappears. Dashing to Balfor's hansom, she orders Meng-Yao to follow her sibling's cabriolet. The chase is difficult, but Balfor's driver is skilled. They follow Xedric, pursuing as unobtrusively as possible, but the intoxicated magister drives his carriage like a possessed swine. Twice he nearly crashes into a gaslamp. Fortunately, the streets are relatively uncrowded, and no pedestrian is crushed along the drunkard's warpath from the Indigo to Viridian Ward.

Abruptly, the bone-rattling ride halts. Xedric leaps from the carriage, barking at his valet to remain behind and tend the reins. He then dashes into an alley wedged between a museum of bathysmal antiquities and a shop selling epistolary curios.

Time passes, and curiosity beckons Alisandre to rise from her poor vantage. She slinks down the alley. Dismally, she spots a dozen or so backdoors, but no sign of her half-brother. Having come so far, she continues down the dead-end corridor, creeping past dumpsters and empty crates. Peeking through dark-paned windows, she is surprised when she is suddenly grabbed from behind and slammed against the brick wall.  

It is Xedric. Instinctively, she tries to break free, but the man's grip is like iron.

"What'dwe have 'ere!" the stout man hisses in her ear, his breath reeking of madwine. "A spy for my corpse-faced siser, hmmm?"

He waits for her to answer, then spits into her mouth. Fighting back her rising gorge, she stammers her rehearsed lie. He half-listens, then pushes her into the bricks again, bashing her head painfully.

Then, his grimace slackens –although his grip remains frighteningly tight. He smiles, a wild, yellow-lipped grin. For a terrifying moment, she fears he might violate her. She can almost see the thought slip across his eyes. But the moment passes.

"Well, you jay-garbed sheathe," he hisses, leaning in disgustingly close, spittle flecking in her face, "Your mine, now. We're gonna go to a lil' soiree together, jus' you and me. Won't that be nice. Then, when I've had my fill, you'll scamper on back to Sine's nest and tell her all the sordid details, all nice and pretty and unharmed-like."

"Resist me," he says as his fat-face darkens into a blood-sapping stare, "-n I'll dash your brains out and send them to Alphosine in a lil' cake-box."

No deceit mars the man's promise or threat.

Then, whether by blood or some specious epiphany, Alisandre momentarily, but perfectly, understands him. He doesn't want to hurt her –not because he has a conscience or compassion, but because pain isn't his objective. He wants control, he wants power –and as long as she obeys, as long as she plays his game, he won't harm her. There's something else, though, she senses. He wants to show her something. She can almost see it, something that stirs in the man's visage, something focused not on Alisandre, but something else, something absent in the ink-scented alley.  

The moment passes.

He snaps back, and without waiting for Alisandre's reply, he roughly escorts her down the alley. He leads her to an unassuming door, graced with a barren plaque mid-chest. He touches the plaque with his signet ring. A pulse of numina passes from the man to the bronze plate: an engraving of his signature suddenly appears, then disappears along the plaque's surface. As it does, a tumbler clicks and the door swings open.

Xedric steps inside, half-dragging his disguised relative. The door closes behind them, locking ominously. Hearing the door latch, he releases Alisandre, then mimes putting something into a box as a silent reminder of their 'arrangement'. He then leaves her, heading to a daubstone counter. Behind it, a tangle of wires and mechanical devices spill from a half-dozen compartments. Nodules blink, elyctrochemical lights flash, gears whirr. A subsonic hum prickles Alisandre's skin, an alien pressure she feels in her teeth. Other than the strange equipment, the room is bare. No chairs, no decorations diminish the industrial austerity of the room's tin-plated walls and ceiling.  

Xedric goes to ring a bell –but is interrupted by a thin woman that steps from an unseen alcove behind the counter. No mask conceals her grotesque, lopsided face. A massive tumor pulses on the left side of her head, creating cancerous ripples that ebb and flow over a gnarled eye-socket and ruptured ear. A single, seeing eye stares out at Xedric, barely noting Alisandre's presence.

If the magister is repulsed by the woman's appearance or indecency, he does not show it. Instead, his demeanor is one of familiarity.

"I need a message sent-," he says simply, "-to the usuals."

"Contraplex?" she asks in a monotone voice.

Xedric shakes his head, "No, I don't need their replies. They don't have a say."

"Standard rate," the deformed woman responds matter-of-factly.

Xedric nods. He passes her a pouch that rattles like loose marbles. She slides him pen and paper. He eagerly takes both and begins scribbling something just beyond Alisandre's sight. Wordlessly, he passes it back.

She does not read it, or if she does, she does so with a swiftness that Alisandre cannot grasp. The woman instead reaches into the pile of flickering apparatuses and draws forth a syringe-like device, its lever connected to a series of wires. She checks the oscillating gauges, adjusts a few dials, then plunges the syringe into her cranial tumor. She grimaces as she pulls back the plumb, drawing a strange incarnadine fluid. Then, with the syringe simultaneously jabbed into her skull and connected to her bizarre devices, she begins to trace Xedric's message. Once, then twice with utmost precision. Then again and again, gaining greater speed with each iteration. The gauges quiver, lights flash, and the strange pressure builds. Alisandre's fingers twitch. Xedric remains quiet, but Alisandre notes his fingers also spasm, ticking in disconcerting synchronization with her own.

Slowly, the woman's motions slow. The pink ichor steadily evaporates, and the pressure decreases to its 'normal' intensity. Alisandre's fingers stop twitching.

Grimacing once more, the deformed woman retracts the syringe from her skull. A pus-like substance leaks from the minute wound.

"Message sent and received," she says, without aplomb or doubt.  

Xedric grins fiercely, then motions for Alisandre to follow as he turns to leave. As before, the door unlocks at his approach, swinging open for the pair to depart.

He hustles back to his carriage, kicking out his elderly valet just as he did his groom. He shouts at Meng-Yao to return to his "ghul-lipped mistress," and inform her that her "monkey's replacement will be late." Shrouded by his hijab, the driver's expression is hidden, but Alisandre can sense his long gaze.

Once more, he lashes his wolf-horse, and drives the spliced animal to dash away, Alisandre beside him, off into the sinking sun, away from the splendors of Skein's east side. As they cross the flotsam-churned Radula, he barks at her, grinning manically:

"Let me show you where you'll be buried!"[/ic]

[ooc]You take 2 Might damage from Xedric's rough treatment. Also, please remember to post your current Pools at the end of each post, especially since you've been spending Grit.

That said, your ride allows you to make a recovery roll if you wish. You also have time to speak and ask Xedric things during the ride -though if you do, you need to make a deception check since you need to both disguise your demeanor, voice, and intent. And since your last check was a similar bluff, your Vogue Whim increases the DC.[/ooc]

[Rose-of-Vellum]

[ic=Catena]The Watchman escorts Catena inside the mud-colored blockhouse, leading her past its electrified fence, sentinel automata, and turreted roof. There is an oppressive vigilance to the structure, a stifling gaze that brooks no questioning. Within, the ambience is little different. Although none of the Watchmen within stop Catena and her escort, dozens of eyes follow her with unveiled suspicion. Watchmen halt mid-sentence as she passes by; they close doors to hide pinned maps and marked heliotypes. Only when they reach the elevator and the floor below does the unnerving tenor relent. There, they pass an office where two bureaucrats sip sour-whiskey and trade bedroom boasts. From another office, a gramophone blares the operatic tones of Yvonne-Pei and Malibran's Fifth Aria. Further down the lone corridor, the sounds of sparing and taunts echo.

The Watchman follows those sounds, leading Catena into a room dominated by a pugilist's ring. Sweat and old blood permeate the air, while an elyctric lamp buzzes angrily above. Old wanted posters –wantonly defaced with crude pictures or slurs- plaster the walls. In a corner, an absconded statue of a St. Sothis, the Justicar-Saint of rabid fervor, serves as an impromptu rack for helmets and codpieces. A half-dozen Watchmen, stripped of their armor and vigilant mien, smoke cigars and fraternize while two of their peers spar against one another in a ring roped off with scavenged grounding cable.

Inside the ring is Red Mei. Like her opponent and other comrades, she is stripped down to her cotton undergarments. Sweat glistens over her taut, pale-fleshed muscles. She dances on her feet like a predatory cat, dodging and weaving with ease against her taller, long-limbed opponent. Her red-dyed wig sits haphazardly on a ring-post, leaving her red-tattooed eyes unobscured on her sloped brow. Below, her nose is splotched with yellow-brown bruises that stand out starkly against her albino skin.

She winks at Catena as she enters, then drops low as her sparring partner delivers a fatigued haymaker. She simultaneously lunges to his side, spins left and backfists the man with an agonizing kidney-shot. He crashes to his knees in pain. He attempts to surrender, but Mei throws a jab to his jaw, snapping his head widely. He blacks out, crumpling to the saw-dusted planks.

His comrades cheer, offering compliments to Mei and condolences to the downed man. Mei checks his pulse, then smacks his cheek. Once he rouses, she motions for one of her subordinates to help him up. She then saunters over to the side of ring that faces Catena and leans heavily on the synthetic rope.

"Thanks for bringing her down, Sergeant," she says to Catena's escort with the barest hint of a Chattelchatter dialect. The man bows, then turns to leave. Mei halts him though, saying, "Ah, Delune, sit for a spell and have a cigar whilst me and my old pal have a chat in my office."

"Unless-" she taunts, turning to Catena, "-she'd like to have that chat in the ring."[/ic]

[ooc]Red Mei and Catena have a checkered past. She helped Catena learn enough Hellspeak to get around when the latter first arrived in Skein, taught which wards to stay out, which districts to steer clear off as a 'subhuman'. Red Mei never shared how she escaped from Dolmen, and she's never asked Catena about her's. Since then, they've crossed paths, sometimes on the same side of the law as allies, other times as rivals hunting the same bounty, sometimes with Catena's head having the bounty. Still, Red Mei has always been friendly to Catena -sometimes too friendly for Catena's liking, as Mei's bruised nose attests.[/ooc]    

[False Epiphany]

[ic]Alisandre's heart and mind race as her brother seizes her.

"I-I'm no one, m'lord," she begins, "my mistress merely wished..."

She fights the double urges to gag and break character as the enraged, drug-addled man spits in her mouth. Could she kill him? Maybe. He was a big man, certainly stronger than her, but nigrimancy had its ways of evening odds. Seeing him scream as his bones melted to goo within his arms would be satisfying. But it would gain her nothing. He'd know it was her, that his half-sisters had conspired together, and everything they'd accomplished today would be naught. Killing him? Even if--a rather large if--she was able to, that would be even more useless. Father would simply name another one of her many half-siblings as heir. A sibling who had not, in fact, sullied the family's reputation as part of a larger conspiracy to usurp the previous heir. She needed Xedric alive.

Besides, killing his reputation would be far more satisfying than killing him.

And so the lie tumbles out. Alphosine merely wished to follow his movements. It wasn't spying, not really, it was just... well... her mistress only wanted to know... Alisandre's heart relaxes as Xedric seems to swallow the 'frightened, ignorant servant' act, though not by much. Her own person clearly remains in danger, even if Alphosine and the larger plot have been saved.

The necromancer briefly considers incapacitating her half-brother and force-feeding him lethe-wine, then dumping him somewhere by a low-class tavern or drug den. It wouldn't raise too many questions--ashamed over losing his temper, he ran off to drink and drug away his woes, doing so to disgusting excess. The scandal of being found face-down in the mud would certainly do nothing to help his already damaged reputation.

But, if her instincts were right, there might be a real prize to be won through playing along...

"I-I'll do anything you want, m'lord," she stammers, telling her half-brother what he wants to hear. "J-just please don't hurt me."

Alisandre the maid remains a picture of frightened silence during their carriage ride, eyes downcast, hands fumbling nervously. Alisandre the magistra simply has no wish to stretch the deception any further than necessary. Yes, the man was drugged, nor was he especially clever, but they were still siblings. The fewer words exchanged, the better. And frankly, his company was already starting to get tiresome...

She endures the visit to the nameless building in similar silence, meekly following Xedric's lead. The transmitted 'message' more than piques her interest--that has to be something important for such a... nonconventional means of communication to be necessary.

As the carriage rattles off, Alisandre suppresses a laugh at Xedric's threat. Show me my burial site? Dear brother, I've been working on the design plans since I could hold a pen. If you wish to frighten me, you could take me to my old bedroom closet instead--I think I've spent less time there.

But such thoughts remained unvoiced. She simply buries her head in her arms, a frightened servant who wants the nightmare to be over.[/ic]

[ooc]Pools before recovery: Might 6/8 (0), Agility 8/11 (1), Intellect 11/17 (1). (Different values from earlier, as I read the Grit rules wrong and deducted fewer points than I should've.)

Pools after: Might 7/8 (0), Agility 10/11 (1), Intellect 15/17 (1)[/ooc]

[False Epiphany]

[ooc]Also, making two recovery rolls, distribution of points to be edited into my previous post.

[blockquote]Rolled 2d6+2 : 4, 1 + 2, total 7[/blockquote][/ooc]

[Rose-of-Vellum]

[ic=Alisandre]The faux-nightmare continues as Xedric violently spurs his chimeric beast across the western city. As dusk falls, they reach the Maggotorium: the makeshift bazaar at the confluence of the Ebon, Indigo, and Cemetery wards. There, off-duty grave-diggers sell corpse-fat worms to fishermen, vermeologists, and undiscriminating grocers. Dirge-witches advertise their services by rending their sack-clothed raiment, causing the ensorcelled garments to wail in pain and anguish. Others cry rivulets of blood, sing numina-steeped laments, or command skeletal pallbearers to caper and dance. Coffin-makers, tombstone-librettists, and back-alley morticians do business from votive-lit shops and black-draped stalls.

Xedric ignores the funeral-mongers and their coin-light customers. A few brazen entrepreneurs attempt to gain his attention, but he drives them back with his carriage-whip. Seeing his foul mood, the masses part, allowing the magister clear passage through St. Qaspiel's Gate. Crossing its acid-pitted barbican and helminthoid palisade, they enter the cemetery proper.

Shrouded in deepening gloom, the Cemetery's skyline resembles a forest of age-worn stelae, obelisks, and crypt-steeples. Within the perantique expanse of the Mosswine Barrows, the headstones look as old as the hills. Their names and dates have been worn away by the patient, but relentless wind. Even the stony justicar-cherubs have been scoured faceless; only the lichenous hollows of their eyes remain. To Alisandre, those pits glare at the intrusion of the quick. But their stony accusers are silent, content that time will make the trespassers will pay with their lives, to rejoin them, welcome and justly dead.

Subdued by the quiescent pall, Xedric slows the carriage to a respectful crawl. Almost in unison, the half-siblings breathe in the twilight air. To a Mei-Vourne, it is as if tasting an old vintage's bouquet: delighting in the aroma of millennia-distilled bones and long-consummated rot. Xedric sighs. His countenance loses much –but not all- of its manic fervor. His eyes pass over the shadows, searching for something among the countless gravesides. His hands steer the cab down forsaken paths, winding between smoothed barrows of earth and rock.

Eventually, he stops the carriage at the base of large burial mound, prominent even among the Mosswine's tumuli. A slanted dolmen marks its entrance. Its lintel is graven with ancient, now indecipherable runes that glow in the gibbous moonlight.  

Xedric pays them no heed. He steps from the chiropteran-hooded cab and unharnesses the wolf-horse. He brushes its lupine muzzle, then releases it to hunt among the hills. Silently, he then bids Alisandre to follow him up the mound. Together, they climb the mossy hill.

From its height, Alisandre has a starlit vista of Skein and its surroundings. To the north, the Slouching-Devil Mountains swallow the lower sky. To the south, the Clockwork City rises in brazen verticality, its eastern shore aglow with sepia gaslamps and elyctric lines, its nacred spires glistening like moonsweat. And to the west, hidden in the darkness, she makes out the faintest outline of her home: the crypts of House Mei-Vourne.  

Xedric, however, does not gaze outward. Instead, he stands head downcast. He murmurs a barely audible mantra:

"Control... control. Like stone. Stone. Still. In control... like stone."

Eventually the murmurs stop. He then looks up, not at Alisandre, but out into the darkness, his expression cold, hard.

"Now we wait for the others."

He does not elaborate.

Time creeps. Distantly, the Palace of Chimes rings out, proclaiming Ze, the eleventh hour, half-spent.

Shortly thereafter, the others arrive. They trickle in, as if directed by some unseen stagehand's signal. Their transports speak of privilege and power. A carapaced stagecoach pulled by elaborately coiffed stallions. A gilded rickshaw hauled by a glass-headed automaton. A pair of saddled terror-birds. A steam-powered gyrocycle. An ur-tapir with a silken howdah. The spectacular mounts and vehicles soon surround the tumulus.

From such conveyances, figures ascend the barrow. In the darkness, their features are veiled, but Alisandre can make out the accoutrements of wealth and prestige. Like Xedric, they are primarily masked magisters attended by valets or handmaidens. Others, however, complete the silent congregation: warriors scarred with countless blows, hardened by nameless back-street battles and worse.

Wordlessly, they form a large circle around the mound's apogee. Two figures, however, break from the ring and approach Xedric, who waits with clenched jaw.

The first figure carries a hooded lantern, its interior lit by unsettling moth-shaped lights that flit and batter against the cracked glass. As the figure approaches, the flickering, gray-hued radiance reveals an old magistra. Her back is bent, her gait slow, but there is strength that radiates from her bones: an iron will unbowed by time. She wears a plague-doctor's mask, pungent vapors hissing from its articulated vents. A diminutive demon, resembling a three-eyed screech owl, rides atop the magistra's wig.

The other figure holds a bouquet of white chrysanthemums. Tall and broad-shouldered, the figure is shrouded by a flowing chadri of black silk. In the gloom, Alisandre barely makes out the glint of two eyes staring through a lattice of cloth-of-gold fibers and see-through muslin.  Large hands, clad in iron-studded cestuses, gently grip the delicate flowers.

"There are rules, Mason," the magistra says. Her voice, though distorted by her leathery mask, is severe and disapproving.

"I know, Lanterneer," Xedric says with a mixture of defiance and deference.

"You know, yet your break them," she reprimands.

"We're not to meet till next Molting's Eve," the shrouded figure adds. The voice is deep, with an uncultured accent.

"I know-," Xedric repeats, his face somewhat flushing, "-but I-"

"You!" the magistra snaps, "You do not summon the Ring."

"But the Ring is summoned all the same," Xedric snaps back, his teeth gritted, "So either send them away, or let us do what we came here to do."

The magistra hesitates. Her familiar fidgets. The moth-lights continue to silently smash themselves against the lantern's glass.

She looks to her taller companion. He shrugs.

"So be it," the Lanterneer replies in a steely voice, "But we shall discuss your infraction –and its penalty- later."

Xedric grimaces. His eyes, however, burn with fierce pride.

"This is your Second, Mason?" the deep-voiced figure says, acknowledging Alisandre's presence with a slight turn of his veil.

"Yes, Florist," Xedric answers, "But she is only an Observant. Tonight, I will be the Celebrant."

"Irregular," the magistra hisses with a voice that can only come from a scowl.

"But not unprecedented," Xedric retorts.

"So be it," the Florist answers, "But choosing the other then falls to me."

Xedric jaw half-gapes to contest, but then closes in resignation. "So be it," he says as if reciting a liturgy.

As the Lanterneer walks to the center of the Ring, Xedric pulls Alisandre back to the circle's edge. "Now poppet-," he says leaning in close, so close his words drown out the Lanterneer's invocation to the assembly, "-stay here and stay quiet. Do not –do not make a sound- or a cake-box will be the last of your worries. Just watch with those jay-spying eyes, watch and witness, and remember."

Xedric then steps into the circle, motioned by the Lanterneer's hoary light. With her aid, he is striped down, nude from head to toe. Seeing his naked bulk is startling –not only of the public indecency, but due to the sight of so many scars. They litter his torso: nasty lines crooked and straight, large and small. They proclaim a litany of old punctures, stabs, and bludgeoning, a supplication of pain survived. In the ashen glow, that scar-prayer seems amplified. His body, scarred and corpulent, is still muscled, thick-boned and strong. Xedric stands proudly, unashamed.

Meanwhile, the Florist reverently breaks off the heads of the pale mums, slowly spreading them in a ring not ten paces wide, an inner circle where the Lanterneer and Xedric stand. When all the blossoms are shed, he steps into the crowd. Silently, he taps a beshadowed magister who nods, then motions for his second to enter the ring.

Tall, but not as stout as Alisandre's half-brother, the selected man approaches the Lanterneer. Sallow-skinned and slant-eyed, the man has a long-plaited pony-tail of jet hair that stands in stark contrast to Xedric's now-wigless, bald pate. His eyes shine red against Xedric's indigo. Although far from callow, he is weighed by fewer years than Caraumonde's scion.

As with Xedric, the second man is stripped, his multitudinous scars laid bare and inspected under the ghoulish light. The Lanterneer and Florist then gather their clothes, handing them to their seconds. Alisandre nearly groans under the sweaty weight of Xedric's frockcoat, hose, wig, boots, and other raiment. By the time she adjusts her pile so she can see, the Lanterneer and Florist have returned to the silently waiting nude figures and have drawn curious blades. Shaped like crossed crescents fused by unknown reagents, the blades are so black they seem to drink the light around them. Ur-fossils, Alisandre realizes, talons of some unknown horror harvested from the bowels of the Slouching-Devil Mountains. The crowd, though eerily silent throughout the proceedings, tenses at the sight of the nether weapons.

So armed, the Celebrants are left alone in the ring, the Florist and Lanterneer retreating to its edge.

Xedric's grips the bone-blade tight, his face set like stone. His rival hefts the blade, a dark grin splitting across his face.

Without word, the Lanterneer opens the glass cage of her lantern, releasing the spectral moth-lights to dance and writhe over the nude bodies. At their touch, both men wince, but remain steadfastly quiet. At their touch, they charge, silent as death.[/ic]

[Rose-of-Vellum]

[ic=Alisandre]The younger man senses Xedric's bloodlust. As they charge, he feints, dropping his blade a finger's width. The gap in his defenses is so subtle that only a seasoned killer would have even a chance of spotting it. Yet, Xedric –as Alisandre learns- is just such a man.  His crescent-blade flashes forward in the instant before he realizes his mistake, and the younger man's weapon slides easily into the magister's corpulent gut. The moth-lights rush to the wound, garishly illuminating the violation of flesh.

Yet, by some incredible stint of willpower and stamina, Xedric neither drops nor screams. Instead, he lashes back, savagely swift, slicing off his opponent's nipple. With similarly astounding composure, the man clamps down a cry. The winged flames taste new prey.

Cradling his bleeding stomach, Xedric presses his attack. His opponent falls back under the brutal assault, their knives clacking in the quiet of the cemetery. The moth-lights dance back and forth, alighting on each moment of suffering. The younger man is quick, but in the end Xedric's controlled fury proves stronger. His opponent tries a series of clever feints, but Xedric is wise to his tricks. The magister pursues him across the ring, and it's only when their blades are locked at the very edge of the blossom-marked ring and the younger man stares defeat in its cold face that his finds his nerve. He pushes back, and with agonizing slowness, the entangled blades begin moving away from his throat and ever closer to Xedric's.  Blades locked, Xedric's cannot disengage. Sweat pours from skin. The strain tears at his wound. Blood leaks between his clenched fingers. The grey flames swarm his jollux frame.

Then, sparing one glance at Alisandre, he knuckles his empty hand, squeezing his gut's blood between his fingers, and lashes out with a low blow that makes every man in the crowd silently wince. His opponent's gasp splits the air. The shock at his noise rivals his pain. Xedric staggers back, white-faced but triumphant, moth-lights still suckling at his stomach. The spectators, keeping the ring's rule of silence, clap with disturbing solemnity.

The Lanterneer fingers her namesake object, tracing some unseen pattern, awakening some eldritch power. A spectral wind emerges, cold and piercing. It sucks up the moth-lights, drawing them one-by-one into the battered lantern. The old magistra closes its latch.

The Lanterneer and Florist step into the ring. They retrieve both blades, reverently wrap them, then stow them under their robes. Then, without fanfare or benediction, the congregation disperses. The defeated celebrant limps away, shame-faced and subdued; his patron clearly displeased. With a practiced hush, the noiseless congregation returns to their mélange of mounts and vehicles. They leave without a parting word, vanishing into the night. Four figures remain on the barrow's crown.

Xedric has collapsed in pain, his wound a sickly sight, his face blanched and sweating. The Lanterneer stands over him.

"For your infraction," she whispers with grave finality, "For taking the rules into your own hands, for your selfish disregard of our traditions, you will bear that pain. Alone. No other aid can you seek or accept, save that of your Second. This is your penance. And should it kill you... so be it.

"So be it," the Florist murmurs in assent.

"S-so... be i-it," Xedric echoes between gasps.

Seeing he understands their decree, the Florist and Lanterneer depart.

Silence once more descends upon the barrow.[/ic]

[False Epiphany]

[ic]Alisandre breathes in the cemetery's musky, grave-laced air like a fine wine. Indeed, it's all she can do to keep up the pretense of fright. As she sees the madwine pass from her brother's eyes, she can't help but feel a moment of shared pride in their heritage. This place was theirs. Their family cared for it when neither the Moth-Kings, nor the magisters, nor any of Skein's rulers would. If nothing else, her brother was still a Mei-Vourne. If nothing else, the same blood that made them caretakers of the dead, that same blood which flowed through his veins, flowed through hers as well.

But then the moment passes. Yes, they were blood. And he'd still made father cast her out. He'd stolen everything. He'd spat on all that blood should have meant.

She mutely nods as Xedric tells her to watch and observe the proceedings. Only too happy to, brother dearest. If only you knew. Now what have you gotten yourself into...?

Alisandre holds her breath as the naked combatants clash. Damn it all, she needs the man alive. She could intervene... a problematic enough matter to keep her identity hidden from just him, let alone all these people...

She lets out a breath as her brother triumphs, however, sparing her the dilemma.

Only for his fellows to leave him to die. Presenting her with a new one.

The incantation to a flesh-rotting hex runs through Alisandre's mind. It would be so easy to end his life... make him pay for everything he'd done... it didn't have to be fast, either. There was time. There were no witnesses. She could drop this charade, reveal who she was, and make him pay, knowing exactly why all the while...

But it would gain her nothing. There were other heirs--and Symus, Patrois, still other conspirators. In the end, practicality wins out.

She looks down at her brother's wounded form and coldly states,

"Information. Give me information to bring back for my mistress, and I'll help you. Or don't, and I'll feed your corpse to the scavengers here. Piece by piece. Whatever's left can rot in a dung heap somewhere." She fights to keep the pleasure from her face. "Not so grand an internment as your family usually prefers, is it, Mei-Vourne?"

Should Xedric accept these terms, she continues.

"Who are these people? Why are you willing to die for their traditions? Why did you call this combat?"[/ic]

[ooc]Rolling intimidation. Difficulty is reduced by one for being a speciality.

This dice roll has been tampered with!
Rolled 1d6 : 2, total 2

Pools: Might 7/8 (0), Agility 10/11 (1), Intellect 15/17 (1)[/ooc]

[Rose-of-Vellum]

[ic=Alisandre]Xedric laughs. Between groans of pain, but he laughs.

"S-so.. ah-aha, uhnn... poppet's got a spine, n-now?"

He grunts, trying to rise, then lays back down in pain.

"I've survived... ugh... w-worse then t-this. Plenty... times."

Bravado marks his works, both false and true.

Weakly, he continues, his heavy-lidded eyes staring at the star-smeared sky:

"Stupid... girl... I know you're just a... ugh, c-commoner... but you ask... y-ou... how could possible understand..."

His sweat, now cold in the night air, causes him to shiver. He grunts with pain from the spasms. Propping himself, unabashed despite his nudity, he growls at her, pointing with his blood-stained hand:

"C-come here girl and bring... my clothes... or I'll snap that ugly head off..."

Crooking a finger, he smiles. It is not a nice smile.

"Do it snappish... sheathe... and I might j-ust explain what your simple mind... failed to comprehend... ughh..."[/ic]

[ooc]Attempt failed. But I definitely appreciate you posting your Pools.[/ooc]

[False Epiphany]

[ic]"Perhaps you have survived worse, Lord Mei-Vourne. But does your family not acknowledge that death comes for all, that no matter how many times one bests him at the game, he will always win the final hand? I would not be so quick to play another round with him, were I you. Your present odds do not appear favorable."

Alisandre drops the man's pants at his feet. Close enough to retrieve, but far enough he'll have to stretch... at least a little bit. His other clothes remain in a pile.

"That should be sufficient for purposes of basic modesty. Further articles will be forthcoming with your cooperation."

Part of her, though, hoped his cooperation wouldn't be so forthcoming. She needed her brother alive, yes. In pain, however... well, if he wouldn't spill on his own, she would be more than happy to extract answers through less pleasant means of inquiry. Her scalpel had seen little enough use of late.[/ic]

[ooc]Pools: Might 7/8 (0), Agility 10/11 (1), Intellect 15/17 (1)

Deception check:

[blockquote]Rolled 1d6 : 2, total 2[/blockquote][/ooc]

[Rose-of-Vellum]

[ic=Alisandre]Xedric growls in rage as Alisandre so flagrantly disobeys him. Pain cuts short his stream of invectives, however, and in his silence, he listens to the woman's voice and words. He grows quiet, then grimaces as a shiver runs through his pain-wracked body.

He clutches his hosiery and presses it against his wounded gut, attempting to staunch the blood-flow. Bleary and blanched with pain, he scans the night-clad barrows, then turns to regard his guised half-sister. His eyes narrow, becoming indigo slits:

"No commoner would... dare speak to a magister like thus..."

Another shiver wracks him. He hisses in pain. 

"You should have... held your tongue, poppet... it's betrayed you..."

"Now..." he says, shifting his bulk to firmly eye Alisandre, "You're going to, uhnn... tell me who you are... or I'll be calling Lucretius... and have him rip out that... tongue and eat it before I... truly begin to hurt you..."[/ic]

[ooc]Any further talking and you'll need to make another deception roll... and Vogue Whim will apply. Should you take an overt action such as a hex or attack, you'll need to hit a DC 3 Agility check.[/ooc]