Of Cats and Kings
Sept 30, 2015 21:56:52 GMT
Post by Kelathi on Sept 30, 2015 21:56:52 GMT
((Okay! So, this is a rebirth of my first ever roleplay character who was a typical Gary Stu, and was basically perfect in every way, haha! So, this is me stripping him down from that high place and giving him some faults! Was so much fun but a little tricky to do. I wanted to find a balance between having a man that is completely at the bottom without making it too emo/depressing. I’m looking for more of an overall sense of hopelessness, not necessarily a sense of being suicidal, but more... resigned. I hope I managed to achieve that.
Also it was a struggle to capture how old he feels and yet stress that he is not actually that old, he is middle-aged. Not sure if I managed that, haha. Anyway! Enough explanations! The usual gist, please ask to join before you post so I can see your character is suitable, of course Red has auto join privileges. I’ve set a sort of storyline but please don’t be put off from incorporating your own storyline in too, in fact I would love that! Makes for some interesting dynamics. Anyways, onwards! Enjoy ))
The lighthouse was in the midst of a blustery storm, it’s stone walls trembling as the structure is buffeted relentlessly from all sides. It was perched precariously atop a snowy peak; the fragile edifice revealing an age akin to centuries. It leant perilously to the side, overhanging the steep incline, drifts of snow piled against its archaic walls. Beneath, far below, dark tumultuous waves crash against black stone.
A spiral staircase for a spine, a pyre for a heart. Yet there is no light within the gallery of the building, no fire to warn sailors of the treacherous rocks beneath. For leading up to the deck, the decrepit stone steps could not be trusted, damaged as they were from years of weathering and fighting against storms such as this. He was too afraid of their creaking voices, too suspicious of their groans to trust them to carry him safely to the top. And so the pyre remained unlit, abandoned and forgotten, just, as he had been.
The windows were boarded, all except one, and a quick glance through this small opening would reveal a modest room. A pile of furs in the corner, a small, chipped desk in the other. A second pile of furs could be seen on the small wooden chair. Movement reveals that it is a man. Despite the pelt of warmth, his breath escapes in clouds. A shiver runs down his spine. A particularly strong wind brings forth eddying snowflakes into the room, dancing in the air like shimmering dust motes. He knows he should pull the cover over the window, block out at least some of the weather. But he does not. Perhaps he hopes the birds might brave the storm and visit him still. He is preoccupied with the items in his hands, his shaking hands that are clasped so tightly that his knuckles have turned white.
There had been a time when he would hear the flutter of wings at the window, and he would catch a glimpse of the familiar shadow cast across the stone floor. That was when the crows would visit him. Curious little creatures, always bringing with them gifts of silver, small trinkets, precious stones. Items he could use to sell at the village in exchange for food. The humble village nestled in the mountainside, a good trek down the hill from here. With all these ornaments he found that sometimes he could not sell select objects, for too charming were they to part with.
And every curve of jewellery reminded him of her.
He thanked the birds and sent them on their way, always with a request. Send me word of her wellbeing. Tell me that she is safe. But although he coaxed and pleaded and later, begged, for the merest utterance of her wellbeing, they returned with trinkets, not letters. Not even a tiny note attached to a small, scaly, corvid foot. Surely, though, if she were dead they would not continue as they had done? They would not return day after day to ensure his survival?
He had not seen a crow for four days now, and the days are so very fast, the nights far too slow. The line between dreams and memories blur. He awakes one night consumed in a cold sweat, gasping in fear. He knows he is in purgatory, but he cannot remember why. He pulls himself out of bed. The remnants of a dream make him unsteady on his feet. He pulls away the stone, caught in a frenzy, a panicked scramble, and every second it eludes him only serves to further ignite his panic. Until finally, he finds it, silver glinting in the dusky half-light. Only when his fingers brush against the cold metal does his breathing become steady. He calms. It grounds him, reminds him as to why he is here, and trapped in this eternal limbo. Reminds him that he is not simply caught in the throes of a nightmare, this is his reality. It floods back to him. All that has happened and why he is here... he is reminded who he was, and in turn, who he has become.
It’s a last resort.
He feels old beyond his years. As if his bones are glass, finally brittle from over a decade of fighting. His once steady hands shake when performing any task that requires dexterity, and he cannot lift his left arm further than a narrow ark, a fate gifted by the presence of an old wound that forbids even the simplest of tasks. He had been a soldier; he had once fought for king and country. Now he was a hermit, and he would die in this hovel of a building. His raven hair had grown into an unchecked mane. These years it held more streaks of grey than he cared to count. His face was no longer smooth, but now displayed shallow crows feet at the corner of his eyes, and a few more prominent scars from years of battles. His sword was hidden within the tower, a dangerous game to play, for it’s identity would surely reveal his own to a trained eye. But he simply could not cast away all remnants of his past. It’s presence kept him grounded. It reminded him why he was here.
But clasped now in his hands were his most precious possessions, even more so than his sword. The stones that she had left him. The stones that spoke to him.
His hands trembled.
Was it because she was dead, or was it the storm that kept the birds away? Questions he mused upon silently. The tempest itself howled even now, beating against the stone walls and causing them to shake and groan against the merciless onslaught. Snowdrifts piled against the sides on the outside, he was not sure if he could open the front door. He had forgotten to check. Would he be buried alive? Is that how it ended? A petty death for a soldier.
He exhaled gently, and once again noticed the fog cast by his breath. Simultaneously, a chill ran through him. The storm had yet to abate, had it really been four days? He could not hunt and he could not trek down the mountainside to the little village. His eyes are closed. Suddenly, he casts the stones onto the table. They fall into place. He opens his eyes and reads the pattern. The reading he'd been getting for the last four days. He knew what it meant.
Death.
He awaited death as one resigned. Like an old man eager to get an unsavoury task over and done with. Unsavoury but necessary. He had known this day would come, they both had, which is why she had given him the stones. So that he would be prepared. So that he could make arrangements.
But there were no arrangements to make. The only difference within the room was that he had hung the trinkets up on the wall in front of the desk. He was not sure what had possessed him to do this. Perhaps with the hope that they would be the last things he'd see. He'd lit a candle, which bathed the room in a pleasing, flickering orange glow. By all rights it should have been blown out by now, but he knew a trick to keep it burning. He wondered if it would go out when he finally died, or keep on burning throughout the storm, a lonely ray of warmth in this dead wasteland of blinding white.
He hadn't expected it to end like this. He had expected, as every soldier had, to die by the sword as he had lived by it. He wondered what it would be that finally carries him to the afterlife. Starvation? The cold? Would these aged walls, weary from decades of standing tall and proud, suddenly surrender and collapse? If they did, he hoped the rubble would bury the sword, his one pride and his last shame. Then again, what is identity when one is dead? Discovery would not matter then.
Another howling gust of wind sent the parchments on his desk flying around the room, like wheeling paper birds, and absently, he pulled the furs closer around himself. They were not important. Scrawlings of memories, further attempts to keep himself grounded in those thankfully rare moments of delirium. They would not likely make sense to anyone else reading them. And yet through all this, he was not as old as he felt. Yes, his long hair now bore streaks of silver, and his face was grizzled by a beard. Yes his face bore new lines, and there was a weariness betrayed by his demeanour. But he was not the old, fragile man he saw in his mind's eye. He had simply cocooned himself with the idea, and now he was struggling to break free from it. But all that was young within him was not yet absent, merely buried beneath the bars of his ribcage, trapped in the secret tomb of his heart.
He found his eyes drawn again down to the stones. There… on the edge. The little red stone. The polished piece of jasper, which held nature’s sketch of a burnt sky and towering mountains in it’s rivers of chalcedony.
The anomaly.
It confounded him so. It was there at every casting of the stones. Sitting on the edge. Mocking him with its presence. It should not be there. All the other stones, in their small groups with their partners that fate had chosen for them, together they created the pattern that signified death. But the anomaly? It ruined the reading, perhaps even made it obsolete. What did it mean?
In drawn out days he remembers the man that had raised him. The man that in a simpler time he had come to accept as his father. “You don’t talk to strangers.” One lesson of many. He chuckles to himself in the darkness, the blanket of the storm blocking out the light. He was the stranger now.
“Don’t wander out of sight, and don’t trespass too far into the snow.”
It’s the final sacrifice.
And he can’t make his way back to the life he had known.
People feared him. He lived alone in that hovel of a home, and only emerged to buy essentials, meat, bread, and sometimes a flagon of mead to keep away the chill. They never saw him travel anywhere, yet he always had a few handy trinkets to sell. He spoke little. Some villagers had begun to treat him as a mystical man; his skill in so called ‘magick’ impressing them enough to overcome their urge to drive him away, for now. Petty parlour tricks at best. Things he had picked up along the way. Small healing magicks. Temporary gifts of strength and wisdom for the user. He never revealed more tricks than he could handle used against himself, just in case fear did one day override curiosity. This transaction repaid him with safe passage in and out of the village. It allowed him to keep his home.
And now he would die in it.
He gathered the stones again. He paused. He closed his eyes. Carefully, sombrely, he formed the question in his mind, and cast the stones again. When he opened his eyes, he saw the familiar pattern.
Death.
But…
The unwanted anomaly.
He exhaled impatiently, his brow furrowed. He was ready! Why wait? Today was the day, he was sure of it, and he was no longer afraid of death. He was afraid, instead, of the emptiness that his days held. The loneliness in his heart that sucked away all warmth until all that was left was a bitter man, old before his years. He had grown to hate solitude, and yet he sought it, too unhabituated to bridge the cavernous gaps between himself and others. In his secrecy he had built himself a temporary prison for which he no longer seemed to have the key, and it had grown, mutating the wooden bars into hateful iron. It was suffocating.
As a young man, he had often sought out solitude. Craved it, even. He had been loved and cherished by many, once, and solitude had been hard to come by. He had enjoyed the quietness of his mind in such rare times, but now he feared it. Back then had been simpler times, indeed. The world had opened up it’s arms for him. He had been regarded as handsome, a great swordsman, a noble soldier. He had believed in honour above all else and he had been brave.
His eyes became unfocused, misted by memory. Was there, perhaps, still a trace of that man within him? A trace of the man he had been before in the man he was today? Or had the years finally succeeded in their goal of erasing every indication of the man he was?
Today. Today was the day. She had told him so, so that he would be prepared. All was as she had said it would be.
...
Except for that mischievous, uninvited jasper.
Also it was a struggle to capture how old he feels and yet stress that he is not actually that old, he is middle-aged. Not sure if I managed that, haha. Anyway! Enough explanations! The usual gist, please ask to join before you post so I can see your character is suitable, of course Red has auto join privileges. I’ve set a sort of storyline but please don’t be put off from incorporating your own storyline in too, in fact I would love that! Makes for some interesting dynamics. Anyways, onwards! Enjoy ))
The lighthouse was in the midst of a blustery storm, it’s stone walls trembling as the structure is buffeted relentlessly from all sides. It was perched precariously atop a snowy peak; the fragile edifice revealing an age akin to centuries. It leant perilously to the side, overhanging the steep incline, drifts of snow piled against its archaic walls. Beneath, far below, dark tumultuous waves crash against black stone.
A spiral staircase for a spine, a pyre for a heart. Yet there is no light within the gallery of the building, no fire to warn sailors of the treacherous rocks beneath. For leading up to the deck, the decrepit stone steps could not be trusted, damaged as they were from years of weathering and fighting against storms such as this. He was too afraid of their creaking voices, too suspicious of their groans to trust them to carry him safely to the top. And so the pyre remained unlit, abandoned and forgotten, just, as he had been.
The windows were boarded, all except one, and a quick glance through this small opening would reveal a modest room. A pile of furs in the corner, a small, chipped desk in the other. A second pile of furs could be seen on the small wooden chair. Movement reveals that it is a man. Despite the pelt of warmth, his breath escapes in clouds. A shiver runs down his spine. A particularly strong wind brings forth eddying snowflakes into the room, dancing in the air like shimmering dust motes. He knows he should pull the cover over the window, block out at least some of the weather. But he does not. Perhaps he hopes the birds might brave the storm and visit him still. He is preoccupied with the items in his hands, his shaking hands that are clasped so tightly that his knuckles have turned white.
There had been a time when he would hear the flutter of wings at the window, and he would catch a glimpse of the familiar shadow cast across the stone floor. That was when the crows would visit him. Curious little creatures, always bringing with them gifts of silver, small trinkets, precious stones. Items he could use to sell at the village in exchange for food. The humble village nestled in the mountainside, a good trek down the hill from here. With all these ornaments he found that sometimes he could not sell select objects, for too charming were they to part with.
And every curve of jewellery reminded him of her.
He thanked the birds and sent them on their way, always with a request. Send me word of her wellbeing. Tell me that she is safe. But although he coaxed and pleaded and later, begged, for the merest utterance of her wellbeing, they returned with trinkets, not letters. Not even a tiny note attached to a small, scaly, corvid foot. Surely, though, if she were dead they would not continue as they had done? They would not return day after day to ensure his survival?
He had not seen a crow for four days now, and the days are so very fast, the nights far too slow. The line between dreams and memories blur. He awakes one night consumed in a cold sweat, gasping in fear. He knows he is in purgatory, but he cannot remember why. He pulls himself out of bed. The remnants of a dream make him unsteady on his feet. He pulls away the stone, caught in a frenzy, a panicked scramble, and every second it eludes him only serves to further ignite his panic. Until finally, he finds it, silver glinting in the dusky half-light. Only when his fingers brush against the cold metal does his breathing become steady. He calms. It grounds him, reminds him as to why he is here, and trapped in this eternal limbo. Reminds him that he is not simply caught in the throes of a nightmare, this is his reality. It floods back to him. All that has happened and why he is here... he is reminded who he was, and in turn, who he has become.
It’s a last resort.
He feels old beyond his years. As if his bones are glass, finally brittle from over a decade of fighting. His once steady hands shake when performing any task that requires dexterity, and he cannot lift his left arm further than a narrow ark, a fate gifted by the presence of an old wound that forbids even the simplest of tasks. He had been a soldier; he had once fought for king and country. Now he was a hermit, and he would die in this hovel of a building. His raven hair had grown into an unchecked mane. These years it held more streaks of grey than he cared to count. His face was no longer smooth, but now displayed shallow crows feet at the corner of his eyes, and a few more prominent scars from years of battles. His sword was hidden within the tower, a dangerous game to play, for it’s identity would surely reveal his own to a trained eye. But he simply could not cast away all remnants of his past. It’s presence kept him grounded. It reminded him why he was here.
But clasped now in his hands were his most precious possessions, even more so than his sword. The stones that she had left him. The stones that spoke to him.
His hands trembled.
Was it because she was dead, or was it the storm that kept the birds away? Questions he mused upon silently. The tempest itself howled even now, beating against the stone walls and causing them to shake and groan against the merciless onslaught. Snowdrifts piled against the sides on the outside, he was not sure if he could open the front door. He had forgotten to check. Would he be buried alive? Is that how it ended? A petty death for a soldier.
He exhaled gently, and once again noticed the fog cast by his breath. Simultaneously, a chill ran through him. The storm had yet to abate, had it really been four days? He could not hunt and he could not trek down the mountainside to the little village. His eyes are closed. Suddenly, he casts the stones onto the table. They fall into place. He opens his eyes and reads the pattern. The reading he'd been getting for the last four days. He knew what it meant.
Death.
He awaited death as one resigned. Like an old man eager to get an unsavoury task over and done with. Unsavoury but necessary. He had known this day would come, they both had, which is why she had given him the stones. So that he would be prepared. So that he could make arrangements.
But there were no arrangements to make. The only difference within the room was that he had hung the trinkets up on the wall in front of the desk. He was not sure what had possessed him to do this. Perhaps with the hope that they would be the last things he'd see. He'd lit a candle, which bathed the room in a pleasing, flickering orange glow. By all rights it should have been blown out by now, but he knew a trick to keep it burning. He wondered if it would go out when he finally died, or keep on burning throughout the storm, a lonely ray of warmth in this dead wasteland of blinding white.
He hadn't expected it to end like this. He had expected, as every soldier had, to die by the sword as he had lived by it. He wondered what it would be that finally carries him to the afterlife. Starvation? The cold? Would these aged walls, weary from decades of standing tall and proud, suddenly surrender and collapse? If they did, he hoped the rubble would bury the sword, his one pride and his last shame. Then again, what is identity when one is dead? Discovery would not matter then.
Another howling gust of wind sent the parchments on his desk flying around the room, like wheeling paper birds, and absently, he pulled the furs closer around himself. They were not important. Scrawlings of memories, further attempts to keep himself grounded in those thankfully rare moments of delirium. They would not likely make sense to anyone else reading them. And yet through all this, he was not as old as he felt. Yes, his long hair now bore streaks of silver, and his face was grizzled by a beard. Yes his face bore new lines, and there was a weariness betrayed by his demeanour. But he was not the old, fragile man he saw in his mind's eye. He had simply cocooned himself with the idea, and now he was struggling to break free from it. But all that was young within him was not yet absent, merely buried beneath the bars of his ribcage, trapped in the secret tomb of his heart.
He found his eyes drawn again down to the stones. There… on the edge. The little red stone. The polished piece of jasper, which held nature’s sketch of a burnt sky and towering mountains in it’s rivers of chalcedony.
The anomaly.
It confounded him so. It was there at every casting of the stones. Sitting on the edge. Mocking him with its presence. It should not be there. All the other stones, in their small groups with their partners that fate had chosen for them, together they created the pattern that signified death. But the anomaly? It ruined the reading, perhaps even made it obsolete. What did it mean?
In drawn out days he remembers the man that had raised him. The man that in a simpler time he had come to accept as his father. “You don’t talk to strangers.” One lesson of many. He chuckles to himself in the darkness, the blanket of the storm blocking out the light. He was the stranger now.
“Don’t wander out of sight, and don’t trespass too far into the snow.”
It’s the final sacrifice.
And he can’t make his way back to the life he had known.
People feared him. He lived alone in that hovel of a home, and only emerged to buy essentials, meat, bread, and sometimes a flagon of mead to keep away the chill. They never saw him travel anywhere, yet he always had a few handy trinkets to sell. He spoke little. Some villagers had begun to treat him as a mystical man; his skill in so called ‘magick’ impressing them enough to overcome their urge to drive him away, for now. Petty parlour tricks at best. Things he had picked up along the way. Small healing magicks. Temporary gifts of strength and wisdom for the user. He never revealed more tricks than he could handle used against himself, just in case fear did one day override curiosity. This transaction repaid him with safe passage in and out of the village. It allowed him to keep his home.
And now he would die in it.
He gathered the stones again. He paused. He closed his eyes. Carefully, sombrely, he formed the question in his mind, and cast the stones again. When he opened his eyes, he saw the familiar pattern.
Death.
But…
The unwanted anomaly.
He exhaled impatiently, his brow furrowed. He was ready! Why wait? Today was the day, he was sure of it, and he was no longer afraid of death. He was afraid, instead, of the emptiness that his days held. The loneliness in his heart that sucked away all warmth until all that was left was a bitter man, old before his years. He had grown to hate solitude, and yet he sought it, too unhabituated to bridge the cavernous gaps between himself and others. In his secrecy he had built himself a temporary prison for which he no longer seemed to have the key, and it had grown, mutating the wooden bars into hateful iron. It was suffocating.
As a young man, he had often sought out solitude. Craved it, even. He had been loved and cherished by many, once, and solitude had been hard to come by. He had enjoyed the quietness of his mind in such rare times, but now he feared it. Back then had been simpler times, indeed. The world had opened up it’s arms for him. He had been regarded as handsome, a great swordsman, a noble soldier. He had believed in honour above all else and he had been brave.
His eyes became unfocused, misted by memory. Was there, perhaps, still a trace of that man within him? A trace of the man he had been before in the man he was today? Or had the years finally succeeded in their goal of erasing every indication of the man he was?
Today. Today was the day. She had told him so, so that he would be prepared. All was as she had said it would be.
...
Except for that mischievous, uninvited jasper.