Written By Niklas
Nov. 14, 2020, 11:26 a.m.(5/19/1014 AR)
Relationship Note on Zyanya
I don't believe I called you a name.
However, your false appeal to pity flies in the face of your decision to use a time of great mourning in the Compact to sell people on moving across the sea to your home. You've chosen to exploit fear and pain in service of your Emperor.
A well-trained dog let loose from the leash can also be trusted to hunt in service of their master.
I'm not calling you a dog, Mistress Zyanya. I'm just saying that when you wear shackles so readily they don't even need to exist to bind you.
You talk of ages of peace in the Empire, and I do not doubt it. It's easy for there to be peace when everyone lives under writ. But perhaps the things I've read are wrong. Did Weijin choose to join the Empire? Was that a peaceful transition? Did no one ever chafe under the yoke of an empire and push to return Weijin to being a sovereign nation? If so were they listened to and reasoned with? How often does the Emperor take audiences with people from his provinces who have complaints about the way the nation is being run?
And Mistress Perronne, if you have been working as a merchant in the Compact for more than a half-dozen years then you too have enjoyed the fruits of misery and servitude. You do not need to hold the whip or own the debt to benefit from the lower cost of spirits crafted by hands that did not own themselves or textiles spun by slaves who could not do otherwise. The blood on your hands may not be so dark nor as fresh as on mine or on Duke Valdemar's, but it's surely there enough to make one dubious when seeing your response to someone who was made welcome in the Compact and who now uses that welcome to try and convince people to leave it.
However, your false appeal to pity flies in the face of your decision to use a time of great mourning in the Compact to sell people on moving across the sea to your home. You've chosen to exploit fear and pain in service of your Emperor.
A well-trained dog let loose from the leash can also be trusted to hunt in service of their master.
I'm not calling you a dog, Mistress Zyanya. I'm just saying that when you wear shackles so readily they don't even need to exist to bind you.
You talk of ages of peace in the Empire, and I do not doubt it. It's easy for there to be peace when everyone lives under writ. But perhaps the things I've read are wrong. Did Weijin choose to join the Empire? Was that a peaceful transition? Did no one ever chafe under the yoke of an empire and push to return Weijin to being a sovereign nation? If so were they listened to and reasoned with? How often does the Emperor take audiences with people from his provinces who have complaints about the way the nation is being run?
And Mistress Perronne, if you have been working as a merchant in the Compact for more than a half-dozen years then you too have enjoyed the fruits of misery and servitude. You do not need to hold the whip or own the debt to benefit from the lower cost of spirits crafted by hands that did not own themselves or textiles spun by slaves who could not do otherwise. The blood on your hands may not be so dark nor as fresh as on mine or on Duke Valdemar's, but it's surely there enough to make one dubious when seeing your response to someone who was made welcome in the Compact and who now uses that welcome to try and convince people to leave it.
Written By Dio
Nov. 14, 2020, 11:10 a.m.(5/19/1014 AR)
Relationship Note on Zyanya
Accounts of Jadairal from those who have lived there are not what I have expected.
Is the Thirteenth worshiped in the Undying Empire?
Is the Thirteenth worshiped in the Undying Empire?
Written By Ember
Nov. 14, 2020, 9:04 a.m.(5/19/1014 AR)
Dominus-regent Aureth bears a terrible weight. May the Pantheon show him favor. With regard to the late Dominus Orazio, there is nothing I can express that has not been said better in the words and the Whites of my peers and his. I am not terribly apt at eulogizing the dead, and so avenging them must suffice.
We as a Compact have been preparing for war, but war has already arrived. The assassination of the Dominus, the desecration of the Great Cathedral, and the attacks upon various Wards have shown that our enemy is ready, and the only thing that has kept them from attacking further has been their own decision to not do so. The life of one of my own family, Lady Trueth, was nearly ended amid mobs crying for the blood of Kennex and Redreef and Seryn. To say that this is now personal to me is a grave understatement.
To those who seek to rely upon diplomacy and to make out enemies "see our point of view," if you put it to them nicely, state your case, and bow to them on the way out, nothing will ever be done, for you have no knife between your teeth.
It is in these past few days that I have seen who my allies are; who among my peers has the guts to see this through, and who may well not; and who will support me in taking what measures must be taken.
We as a Compact have been preparing for war, but war has already arrived. The assassination of the Dominus, the desecration of the Great Cathedral, and the attacks upon various Wards have shown that our enemy is ready, and the only thing that has kept them from attacking further has been their own decision to not do so. The life of one of my own family, Lady Trueth, was nearly ended amid mobs crying for the blood of Kennex and Redreef and Seryn. To say that this is now personal to me is a grave understatement.
To those who seek to rely upon diplomacy and to make out enemies "see our point of view," if you put it to them nicely, state your case, and bow to them on the way out, nothing will ever be done, for you have no knife between your teeth.
It is in these past few days that I have seen who my allies are; who among my peers has the guts to see this through, and who may well not; and who will support me in taking what measures must be taken.
Written By Rowynna
Nov. 14, 2020, 5:49 a.m.(5/19/1014 AR)
Relationship Note on Emberly
It is only a matter of weeks since Emberly was seeking marriage with my cousin, Lord Romulius Blackshore. Perhaps it is because the match was rejected that she was driven into attempting a poisoning. I can still hardly believe what I have heard, for I liked Emberly, counted her as a friend and saw only the gentle and sweet nature of the girl. However, I don't doubt the evidence that must have been brought against Emberly, and can only conclude that my cousin has had a narrow escape.
Written By Perronne
Nov. 14, 2020, 12:14 a.m.(5/19/1014 AR)
Relationship Note on Zyanya
My friend,
You must understand the history of those who heap scorn on your head. I remember visiting Grimhall, years ago. The thing I first remember is how the sailors, stern Islander men all, took me carefully aside and warned me: step lightly in Grimhall if you are a commoner, a merchant, someone with no defender and no patron. I remember that advice sinking in as I stepped off the ship. The lot of thralls was never good. I mean, it's awful to be a thrall, and I never saw a happy one. Quite a few that their masters claimed were just so happy, so loyal. But you could see it in their eyes, the fear. The desire to be free.
But I remember the hollow cheeks and thin limbs of Grimhall thralls the most. I remember one unloading a vessel, falling to his knees. I remember the man who callously beat him back to his feet, and how with shaking limbs, he picked up the burden and set it back on his bleeding back. When you're a thrall, you earn a salary. Sort of. But your owner gets to charge you for food, shelter, clothing, whatever. In Grimhall, they would charge silk prices for soiled linen, Lycene wine prices for fouled water, and Merchant's Row rent for shacks built of three sticks and a tarp. Your 'debt' grows, moment by moment, day by day. And when you finally died, it would be passed onto your children. And they were worked from the moment that they COULD work, the chains dragging on the wood as they crawled over the ships, scraping away barnacles.
So, I know that it may seem super hypocritical for Islanders, especially Island nobility, to attack you, who had no power to make any changes in your land, who traveled so far to the Compact to see if you could find a home, when all their coin is built on misery, pain, and shackles. But please, be kind, and remember that they have to be able to look at someone else and say, "This person is worse than me." And it probably hurts that you don't hate that person, the person they can look at instead of themselves, right or wrong, and you don't hate that person as much as so many of their shackled victims have hated them over the years. And we're not all so inhospitable. Many of us learned different lessons than cruelty to those less powerful than us, I promise!
Also, we should get together for hot cider, soon! If you see this, drop me a letter - the stores are just about used up from the winter, and I'd love to knock it out with some cider and cake.
You must understand the history of those who heap scorn on your head. I remember visiting Grimhall, years ago. The thing I first remember is how the sailors, stern Islander men all, took me carefully aside and warned me: step lightly in Grimhall if you are a commoner, a merchant, someone with no defender and no patron. I remember that advice sinking in as I stepped off the ship. The lot of thralls was never good. I mean, it's awful to be a thrall, and I never saw a happy one. Quite a few that their masters claimed were just so happy, so loyal. But you could see it in their eyes, the fear. The desire to be free.
But I remember the hollow cheeks and thin limbs of Grimhall thralls the most. I remember one unloading a vessel, falling to his knees. I remember the man who callously beat him back to his feet, and how with shaking limbs, he picked up the burden and set it back on his bleeding back. When you're a thrall, you earn a salary. Sort of. But your owner gets to charge you for food, shelter, clothing, whatever. In Grimhall, they would charge silk prices for soiled linen, Lycene wine prices for fouled water, and Merchant's Row rent for shacks built of three sticks and a tarp. Your 'debt' grows, moment by moment, day by day. And when you finally died, it would be passed onto your children. And they were worked from the moment that they COULD work, the chains dragging on the wood as they crawled over the ships, scraping away barnacles.
So, I know that it may seem super hypocritical for Islanders, especially Island nobility, to attack you, who had no power to make any changes in your land, who traveled so far to the Compact to see if you could find a home, when all their coin is built on misery, pain, and shackles. But please, be kind, and remember that they have to be able to look at someone else and say, "This person is worse than me." And it probably hurts that you don't hate that person, the person they can look at instead of themselves, right or wrong, and you don't hate that person as much as so many of their shackled victims have hated them over the years. And we're not all so inhospitable. Many of us learned different lessons than cruelty to those less powerful than us, I promise!
Also, we should get together for hot cider, soon! If you see this, drop me a letter - the stores are just about used up from the winter, and I'd love to knock it out with some cider and cake.
Written By Tyrus
Nov. 13, 2020, 10:36 p.m.(5/18/1014 AR)
Relationship Note on Zyanya
Let me simplify my point even further for your understanding, then.
If you were anything but a loyal servant of your emperor, you would not have been allowed to leave. If it did not serve his wishes, you would not have been released. As such, your every word is suspect, propaganda to serve your masters' needs, for what are your claims worth when the only ones able to come here are those whose bounds are deemed strong enough to not even require writs to enforce loyalty?
For all his claims to be different, the mantle of Platinum is little different from Diamond's, save for the light he means to blind with.
If you were anything but a loyal servant of your emperor, you would not have been allowed to leave. If it did not serve his wishes, you would not have been released. As such, your every word is suspect, propaganda to serve your masters' needs, for what are your claims worth when the only ones able to come here are those whose bounds are deemed strong enough to not even require writs to enforce loyalty?
For all his claims to be different, the mantle of Platinum is little different from Diamond's, save for the light he means to blind with.
Written By Strozza
Nov. 13, 2020, 8 p.m.(5/18/1014 AR)
Your games are hunts
Your hunts are games
Deadly practitioner?
Your hunts are games
Deadly practitioner?
Written By Victus
Nov. 13, 2020, 7:57 p.m.(5/18/1014 AR)
Perhaps it's a wise time to jot down something wise and optimistic. Make some long speech on the troubles we face and our inevitable triumph over all that threatens us. I have never been a man who could put things to flowery words.
I am one who better deals in blunt truths. We have spoken in a theatre of diplomacy. We have conceded to points, tightened our enforcement of sacred tradition. We have seen a man break the holy sanctuary of the church and attack holy ground. We have heard him declare his allegiance to a long dead king, who arrives from a kingdom built on slaves to conquer us. Still, men come armed with weapons and leave a trail of bodies in the heart of the city.
They try to burn our homes, spill our sibling's blood, take our children from their mother's arms. They do it for him. The oathbreaker. The apostate. The murderer. The traitor.
A cathedral burns. A Dominus is dead.
Harden your heart and prepare to act. We will defend ourselves. We will rise from our ashes. We will draw blood from their guilt and drown them in it.
Tears in our wake, never at our wake.
I am one who better deals in blunt truths. We have spoken in a theatre of diplomacy. We have conceded to points, tightened our enforcement of sacred tradition. We have seen a man break the holy sanctuary of the church and attack holy ground. We have heard him declare his allegiance to a long dead king, who arrives from a kingdom built on slaves to conquer us. Still, men come armed with weapons and leave a trail of bodies in the heart of the city.
They try to burn our homes, spill our sibling's blood, take our children from their mother's arms. They do it for him. The oathbreaker. The apostate. The murderer. The traitor.
A cathedral burns. A Dominus is dead.
Harden your heart and prepare to act. We will defend ourselves. We will rise from our ashes. We will draw blood from their guilt and drown them in it.
Tears in our wake, never at our wake.
Written By Zyanya
Nov. 13, 2020, 5:51 p.m.(5/18/1014 AR)
Relationship Note on Niklas
Surely the Playwright can find more clever ways to silence a common woman speaking to other common people than calling names.
Written By Gerrick
Nov. 13, 2020, 5:06 p.m.(5/18/1014 AR)
Once again, Mercy has saved my life. Thank you Lady Kalani Seliki, Haptenna, Lady Poppy Stahlben, Marquessa Sunniva Harthall.
Apologies to Baron Norwood Clement and Marquis Kael Keaton, it was not my intention to put you or anyone through this strain.
The guard is stronger now.
Apologies to Baron Norwood Clement and Marquis Kael Keaton, it was not my intention to put you or anyone through this strain.
The guard is stronger now.
Written By Zyanya
Nov. 13, 2020, 3:53 p.m.(5/18/1014 AR)
Relationship Note on Tyrus
Perhaps it is that I still learn the language but your question confuses me, Highness. If they did not lift my writs...yes? This would prove something else entirely? If that happens in other countries it is terrible. But it did not and does not happen in mine, I am here to prove that they are lifted when requested, so...thank you for helping me to imagine this flight of fancy that does not touch on reality in Jadairal. That is the phrase, yes? Flight of fancy?
What if the sun rose blue tomorrow?
I would not be standing here to say
what if.
What if the sun rose blue tomorrow?
I would not be standing here to say
what if.
Written By Valdemar
Nov. 13, 2020, 2:38 p.m.(5/18/1014 AR)
Relationship Note on Zyanya
I learned all I needed to about Jadairal when we received the terms of its "offer" for Arvum to become part of its empire.
Written By Aureth
Nov. 13, 2020, 1:47 p.m.(5/18/1014 AR)
An excerpt from the past that seems terribly relevant this morning:
"Grief isn't about the dead. It is about what you have lost. It is about the great hole in your life that the departed have left. It is about what should be there, that you came to rely on in life, about the habits of your heart and of your existence that have been ripped from you. I have complete faith that my mother's soul was taken into the protection of the Goddess; that her brilliant spirit, kissed by Jayus, has returned the Wheel to be woven anew, sometime that Death has a need for clear eyes and total, unrelenting fearlessness.
But the hole in my heart remains. Because grief is fundamentally selfish. It is about what you had, which you can no longer possess. To give it up is to sacrifice, not your memory of whom you love -- which is a treasure to be honored -- but instead, your hurt. Your unwillingness to accept that they are gone.
Pray to Death for the souls you love. Pray to Her because she is their guardian and she will keep them whole and safe. Pray to Her because she is the ending and because she is the beginning. Because she made each soul from her own self and set it into the world, and because all things must end so that they can begin anew.
Pray to Lagoma for the bereaved. Pray to Her that they may shed that part of themselves that clings to bitterness and loss. Pray to Her because you must continue on, and accept that you no longer are who you were when they were with you, and must be someone different now. Someone shaped by who they were, yes. Someone who will never forget. But someone else."
From the journal of Archlector Aureth Grayhope, in fact, in the spring of 1006 AR. I should probably listen to that guy. He sounds like he knew what he was talking about.
"Grief isn't about the dead. It is about what you have lost. It is about the great hole in your life that the departed have left. It is about what should be there, that you came to rely on in life, about the habits of your heart and of your existence that have been ripped from you. I have complete faith that my mother's soul was taken into the protection of the Goddess; that her brilliant spirit, kissed by Jayus, has returned the Wheel to be woven anew, sometime that Death has a need for clear eyes and total, unrelenting fearlessness.
But the hole in my heart remains. Because grief is fundamentally selfish. It is about what you had, which you can no longer possess. To give it up is to sacrifice, not your memory of whom you love -- which is a treasure to be honored -- but instead, your hurt. Your unwillingness to accept that they are gone.
Pray to Death for the souls you love. Pray to Her because she is their guardian and she will keep them whole and safe. Pray to Her because she is the ending and because she is the beginning. Because she made each soul from her own self and set it into the world, and because all things must end so that they can begin anew.
Pray to Lagoma for the bereaved. Pray to Her that they may shed that part of themselves that clings to bitterness and loss. Pray to Her because you must continue on, and accept that you no longer are who you were when they were with you, and must be someone different now. Someone shaped by who they were, yes. Someone who will never forget. But someone else."
From the journal of Archlector Aureth Grayhope, in fact, in the spring of 1006 AR. I should probably listen to that guy. He sounds like he knew what he was talking about.
Written By Nina
Nov. 13, 2020, 12:07 p.m.(5/18/1014 AR)
In spite of what happened, I simply refuse to stop incorporating Eurus design elements into my gown designs. I know some of them have done some bad things, but I know not all of them are bad people!
I believe that surely beauty will bring us all together in the end. So let us look to the good.
I believe that surely beauty will bring us all together in the end. So let us look to the good.
Written By Niklas
Nov. 13, 2020, 11:02 a.m.(5/17/1014 AR)
Relationship Note on Zyanya
A well-trained dog can be let loose from the leash and still be trusted to come when its master calls.
Written By Aleksei
Nov. 13, 2020, 11 a.m.(5/17/1014 AR)
Relationship Note on Orazio
The Orazio I knew.
I met him in the Archive of Vellichor. He was very smart and having a very smart sort of conversation. I asked him if he knew a lot about the gods. It was a stupid question. He looked at me with this sort of expression of amused patience that I would become very, _very_ familiar with.
(He still didn't know much about the Lost Gods. None of us did, back then.)
I think I also referred to Aldwin as "that Archscholar guy" or something like that, and he looked at me with a look of deep, long-suffering pain. It was also an expression I'd become intense familiar with.
He lived through a plague. He watched his family die. His parents and siblings die. He watched them die slowly and painfully, and I can tell you that, decades later, he could still remember every detail.
He didn't lose everyone to that plague, but he lost them later. I don't think that I've ever known anyone who lost so much family he loved.
He was patient with me. He was frustrated and exasperated with me. He liked me a great deal and thought I was smart and passionate and funny. He would scold me when I called myself an idiot.
His opinion meant everything to me.
The Church meant everything to him. Not just the gods, not just the virtues themselves, but the Church. He'd lost one family, and so he gave everything to the family he found. He was viciously, ruthlessly smart -- he was Lycene -- but he wasn't very personally ambitious, wherever he ended up. His ambition was for the Church. It was to help people. He understood the Faith's place as an institution in the Compact better than anyone I knew. He saw the scope of things.
He believed in duty. He believed in his position as a service. Priests aren't barred from relationships, so long as they don't get in the way of their service and dedication to the Church, but his love was duty and the Faith. I think there was only one person he felt really softly for in that way in all the years I knew him. He didn't have dalliances with disciples, or people working under his authority, or anyone really who looked to him as a mentor. He had too much respect for that duty and responsibility. For the weight of his authority. It left very few people.
(Me? I was a "fine young man." Anyone would be "flattered by my attentions." He had a terrible habit of ruffling my hair in a way that made me want to die inside. I wouldn't have told him to stop doing it for the world.)
I remember him sitting on the floor of his room after too much whiskey mourning the loss of someone he couldn't save. I remember him telling me the worst of him that night. I remember something fitting together in my heart like a puzzle piece. I didn't realize it until later, what it was.
I remember the Vigil outside the Rectory. I remember sleeping on the steps, the daily terror that the whole mess would turn into a riot. That he'd be cut down, if I weren't right there to save him.
(I was right. It just didn't come until years later.)
He was so funny. Most people didn't know. He was in such deep need for friends who saw just Orazio, because he couldn't let his duty falter anywhere else. He got stuck with me. I did my best to make him laugh as much as I could. I'm pretty funny, too.
("No," he told me. "Holy whiskey. Holy shit we put in the fields, with Petrichor's blessing.")
(Also!! The terrible story he told me about two of his fellow soldiers during his soldiering days and how people keep _occupied_ while on _boring watch duty_ and what happens when one of them gets _startled_ with his _mouth full_ and oh my gods I had a full body cringe.)
He liked romantic poetry. He was an excellent dancer.
He found my instinct to trust people both deeply frustrating and somehow strangely admirable. I was good at some things he wasn't. I wasn't good at any of the things he was best at, though.
He never doubted my intentions. He sometimes doubted my self-awareness, but he was right to.
I saw him. I think he needed to be seen.
I remember the look on his face during my vows, when he dropped in a _brand new set of vows_ for the Lost Gods, and he didn't _warn me_, and I cursed in the Cathedral. Honestly, I'm pretty sure he was about to kill me. (It was his own fault! He knew how nervous I was!)
I took something from him, when I took my vows. He was happy, and he deeply believed in me, but when he ended up in charge of me, he lost something. He couldn't let himself be the same sort of friend after that. He had his duty.
(I still tried. I still did my best.)
I wasn't very good at a lot of my priest duties when I started. He sent me to etiquette classes. He didn't throw me out when I showed up in his chambers in the middle of the night to freak out about messing everything up.
(He was very, _very patient with me.)
He wrote me a letter once and I framed it. "Aleksei. Aleksei. No. You're a member of the Faith, now, and whatever you're thinking about doing, it will likely not enhance the dignity of the Faith."
(I don't even remember what I was talking about doing. Something about taking my clothes off for something, I think.)
It was one of my most treasured possessions for a long time. I sacrificed it for something very important. I wish I still had it.
I gave my confession to him once. Watched him record it in my Black Reflection. In the end, I made him write, "I would like to add that Father Orazio, Legate of Concepts, Shield of the Faith, is one of the greatest assets the Faith has. And my best friend. That's all." I wanted him to have to say something nice about himself. The look he gave me was priceless. But he wrote it. It was his duty.
The worst thing I ever did to him, that hurt him more than anything else, was leave the Faith. I broke something between us, then. Not fully healing that, not being able to truly find my way back to our friendship as it was, will remain one of the greatest regrets of my entire life.
I've loved him every day of my life for almost a decade. Sometimes, right now, I almost wish that death changed that. Because he took part of me with him.
But mostly I don't. I think he needed someone in his life who loved him like that. He didn't think he deserved it.
But he did.
I met him in the Archive of Vellichor. He was very smart and having a very smart sort of conversation. I asked him if he knew a lot about the gods. It was a stupid question. He looked at me with this sort of expression of amused patience that I would become very, _very_ familiar with.
(He still didn't know much about the Lost Gods. None of us did, back then.)
I think I also referred to Aldwin as "that Archscholar guy" or something like that, and he looked at me with a look of deep, long-suffering pain. It was also an expression I'd become intense familiar with.
He lived through a plague. He watched his family die. His parents and siblings die. He watched them die slowly and painfully, and I can tell you that, decades later, he could still remember every detail.
He didn't lose everyone to that plague, but he lost them later. I don't think that I've ever known anyone who lost so much family he loved.
He was patient with me. He was frustrated and exasperated with me. He liked me a great deal and thought I was smart and passionate and funny. He would scold me when I called myself an idiot.
His opinion meant everything to me.
The Church meant everything to him. Not just the gods, not just the virtues themselves, but the Church. He'd lost one family, and so he gave everything to the family he found. He was viciously, ruthlessly smart -- he was Lycene -- but he wasn't very personally ambitious, wherever he ended up. His ambition was for the Church. It was to help people. He understood the Faith's place as an institution in the Compact better than anyone I knew. He saw the scope of things.
He believed in duty. He believed in his position as a service. Priests aren't barred from relationships, so long as they don't get in the way of their service and dedication to the Church, but his love was duty and the Faith. I think there was only one person he felt really softly for in that way in all the years I knew him. He didn't have dalliances with disciples, or people working under his authority, or anyone really who looked to him as a mentor. He had too much respect for that duty and responsibility. For the weight of his authority. It left very few people.
(Me? I was a "fine young man." Anyone would be "flattered by my attentions." He had a terrible habit of ruffling my hair in a way that made me want to die inside. I wouldn't have told him to stop doing it for the world.)
I remember him sitting on the floor of his room after too much whiskey mourning the loss of someone he couldn't save. I remember him telling me the worst of him that night. I remember something fitting together in my heart like a puzzle piece. I didn't realize it until later, what it was.
I remember the Vigil outside the Rectory. I remember sleeping on the steps, the daily terror that the whole mess would turn into a riot. That he'd be cut down, if I weren't right there to save him.
(I was right. It just didn't come until years later.)
He was so funny. Most people didn't know. He was in such deep need for friends who saw just Orazio, because he couldn't let his duty falter anywhere else. He got stuck with me. I did my best to make him laugh as much as I could. I'm pretty funny, too.
("No," he told me. "Holy whiskey. Holy shit we put in the fields, with Petrichor's blessing.")
(Also!! The terrible story he told me about two of his fellow soldiers during his soldiering days and how people keep _occupied_ while on _boring watch duty_ and what happens when one of them gets _startled_ with his _mouth full_ and oh my gods I had a full body cringe.)
He liked romantic poetry. He was an excellent dancer.
He found my instinct to trust people both deeply frustrating and somehow strangely admirable. I was good at some things he wasn't. I wasn't good at any of the things he was best at, though.
He never doubted my intentions. He sometimes doubted my self-awareness, but he was right to.
I saw him. I think he needed to be seen.
I remember the look on his face during my vows, when he dropped in a _brand new set of vows_ for the Lost Gods, and he didn't _warn me_, and I cursed in the Cathedral. Honestly, I'm pretty sure he was about to kill me. (It was his own fault! He knew how nervous I was!)
I took something from him, when I took my vows. He was happy, and he deeply believed in me, but when he ended up in charge of me, he lost something. He couldn't let himself be the same sort of friend after that. He had his duty.
(I still tried. I still did my best.)
I wasn't very good at a lot of my priest duties when I started. He sent me to etiquette classes. He didn't throw me out when I showed up in his chambers in the middle of the night to freak out about messing everything up.
(He was very, _very patient with me.)
He wrote me a letter once and I framed it. "Aleksei. Aleksei. No. You're a member of the Faith, now, and whatever you're thinking about doing, it will likely not enhance the dignity of the Faith."
(I don't even remember what I was talking about doing. Something about taking my clothes off for something, I think.)
It was one of my most treasured possessions for a long time. I sacrificed it for something very important. I wish I still had it.
I gave my confession to him once. Watched him record it in my Black Reflection. In the end, I made him write, "I would like to add that Father Orazio, Legate of Concepts, Shield of the Faith, is one of the greatest assets the Faith has. And my best friend. That's all." I wanted him to have to say something nice about himself. The look he gave me was priceless. But he wrote it. It was his duty.
The worst thing I ever did to him, that hurt him more than anything else, was leave the Faith. I broke something between us, then. Not fully healing that, not being able to truly find my way back to our friendship as it was, will remain one of the greatest regrets of my entire life.
I've loved him every day of my life for almost a decade. Sometimes, right now, I almost wish that death changed that. Because he took part of me with him.
But mostly I don't. I think he needed someone in his life who loved him like that. He didn't think he deserved it.
But he did.
Written By Lucita
Nov. 13, 2020, 9:28 a.m.(5/17/1014 AR)
They made a mistake, these heretics did.
When they killed the Dominus, they did not take the heart from us, nor did they cripple our leadership that our wise Dominus Orazio has... had working with him. Those will step in and fill the gap even as we mourn. We mourn, yes, oh, how we mourn but hand in hand with the grief is the desire to do something, to protect those who are most vulnerable. The heretics have roused our ire and brought us together. I am sure our leaders will see that they will be dealt with, not in a heated unthinking way, but with clarity of thought and determination to bring the Sentinel's justice to those who planned, supported, and performed these attacks, these foul deeds. They have made us stronger.
When they killed the Dominus, they did not take the heart from us, nor did they cripple our leadership that our wise Dominus Orazio has... had working with him. Those will step in and fill the gap even as we mourn. We mourn, yes, oh, how we mourn but hand in hand with the grief is the desire to do something, to protect those who are most vulnerable. The heretics have roused our ire and brought us together. I am sure our leaders will see that they will be dealt with, not in a heated unthinking way, but with clarity of thought and determination to bring the Sentinel's justice to those who planned, supported, and performed these attacks, these foul deeds. They have made us stronger.
Written By Tyrus
Nov. 13, 2020, 8:56 a.m.(5/17/1014 AR)
Relationship Note on Zyanya
And I wonder whether you'd sing the same song had they refused your request.
But you wouldn't be here to do so, would you?
But you wouldn't be here to do so, would you?
Written By Ophelia
Nov. 13, 2020, 5:48 a.m.(5/17/1014 AR)
To all Mercies and Physicians,
Thank you for all that you do.
Thank you for all that you do.
Written By Romulius
Nov. 13, 2020, 5:43 a.m.(5/17/1014 AR)
There are many in the city who would disagree with the display placed in the Crimson Square following the apprehension of three traitors. To some, such punitive displays of violence are distasteful.
Ivan Helianthus and his sympathizers hide under the blanket of 'tradition' so that they might find some protections for their abominable actions. Let no slaver or their follower every find a safe harbor - in Arx, in the Isles, or anywhere else in our world. Such evil can only be fought back with sufficient violence of action. The just must, on occasion, wield virtue as a weapon to banish the wicked. The penalty for treason is clear.
We've plenty enough wood for the crosses.
Ivan Helianthus and his sympathizers hide under the blanket of 'tradition' so that they might find some protections for their abominable actions. Let no slaver or their follower every find a safe harbor - in Arx, in the Isles, or anywhere else in our world. Such evil can only be fought back with sufficient violence of action. The just must, on occasion, wield virtue as a weapon to banish the wicked. The penalty for treason is clear.
We've plenty enough wood for the crosses.
Please note that the scholars may take some time preparing your journal for others to read.