pc: maomao

[sacredpath]

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saturday zero

[sacredpath]

[after locations are made available, she's changed into a more casual outfit than the sexy angel dress, and can be found most of the rest of that evening at the bar.]

No wine, really? Ah, well.

[she will order a mixed drink and raise the glass to whoever is sitting nearby.]

A toast! How about to death being unexpectedly twee?

[apoisoncary]

[ there's so many beautiful people here. maomao is in her usual outfit. she seems to be studying a beer, a colorful mixed drink, and a shot closely. just giving them a sniff before raising each to the light to see if there's anything to them.

looking over at shadowheart and lifting up the beer in two hands. ]

It is rather lacking for the afterlife.

[sacredpath]

Please, paint me a picture. What would you expect the afterlife to be?

[she will clink the beer with her drink.]

[apoisoncary]

[ clink! she takes a sip of the beer and then ponders on if she likes it. ]

People would say that you would be judged before being reborn again. [ hmmm ] I'm not sure if I ever believed it before now.

[sacredpath]

...I see. That isn't what I was taught. But I expected to go to the domain of my goddess.

[apoisoncary]

[ they should submit a complaint to whomever is in charge. mid afterlife doesn't meet expectations ]


Your goddess?

[sacredpath]

She is the goddess of darkness, of night and of emptiness and loss. Those that serve her faithfully will be rewarded by the comfort of dreamless rest in her embrace.

[apoisoncary]

[ hmm ]

Dreamless rest does sound like a better ending.

[ especially if there isn't anything to do here but socialize and eat cute food. ]

Perhaps this is merely a stop before you reach your goddess.

[sacredpath]

That's what I'm afraid of.

[oof.]

[apoisoncary]

[ ah. it feels like there might be a story there, and unlike most of population here, it doesn't feel like it would be too much trouble to hear if the other wants to share ]

Do you prefer this place?

[sacredpath]

Not even a little bit. This place is much worse than eternal torment would be.

[apoisoncary]

[ ... ]

Are you worried about meeting your goddess or were there things left unfinished?

[sacredpath]

[b...oth.]

Mostly leaving things unfinished, I think.

[apoisoncary]

[ she understands leaving things unfinished part at least ]

I still have quite a bit left to drink and don't mind listening if someone wanted to get things off their chest.

[sacredpath]

[she's not really supposed to get things off her chest, but she's had a little to drink, so...]

A disobeyed a command from my goddess because I wanted answers to a question I've been asking for a very long time. So I both... am afraid I will be punished for it, if I were to go before her, and... I shouldn't have done it, but I do want those answers.

week 2; monday

[sacredpath]

[gimme prompt? au timeline? baby? whatever you choose. shadowheart has some stuff too, but it will depend on what you want to do what i'll choose. she won't be baby though.]

i crashed earlier tonight and then we had babies on the mingle

[apoisoncary]

[ want bandaged up maomao?

she will likely be somewhere near plants and just give me what you'd like ]

[sacredpath]

[yes, that works. shadowheart looks normal at least.]

Maomao? Were you hurt?

denise really doesn't want me tagging you

[apoisoncary]

[ she looks a little startled for a moment. then confused. ]

... It looks worst than it is.

[sacredpath]

I should hope so. What happened?

[apoisoncary]

I angered a guard in my world.

[ Like it's no big deal ]

I will admit that I am a bit confused. I had these for a couple weeks.

week 3; monday

[sacredpath]

[hello i'm throwing us right into the thick of it. cw: for eye stuff but the video that's linked censors it.

The funhouse mirrors take you down a path that seems to grow darker as you walk. What is reflected in the mirrors is a hazy landscape, all in grays, with swirling thick darkness that looks like smoke all around. Everything in this land is dead, everything. The ground is cracked and patched. No plants grow here, except for the odd glowing foliage of the underdark, which is adapted to darkness. There are no living animals, but there are beings in the dark. Undead corpses of animals with glowing eyes animated by some evil power, dark shadow shapes, even the corpses of people from time to time, ones who wandered in here and fell.

Other mirrors show flickers of the story of this land. A century ago, this was a thriving and lush landscape ruled over from the nearby castle, Moonrise Towers. There was a market town and many people who lived in the rural areas. But a curse was placed on this land by the goddess Shar. Everyone who once lived here either died or fled, because no life can thrive in the shadows. The shadow curse eats away at anyone who travels through it before they join the armies of undead.

Shadowheart is traveling through this land with her companions, Gale, Karlach, and Astarion. A blessing protects all of them from the worst of the shadows, allowing them to explore, to look for others who have wandered out into the shadows and become lost or missing.

By an abandoned cemetery, they find a little tiefling girl named Arabella. She’s found some magic in her that also offers her protection, even lets her control the shadows - the only reason why she could be out here and still be alive. There’s an inn, not far away, that would offer protection, and many of the other tieflings have taken refuge there, but she refuses to go.

Arabella is looking for her parents, who went missing during an ambush on the group they were traveling with. She recognizes Shadowheart and the party as people who have helped her before and asks that they help her again to find her missing parents. Shadowheart asks Arabella to go to the campsite where the rest of the party is; even if she does have magic of her own, it’s dangerous out here, and she’ll be protected there. Arabella agrees, as long as Shadowheart and the others promise to help.

(Another memory appears on another wall; a cruel woman threatening the girl with a poisonous snake, before Shadowheart intervened; a man and woman who look much like the little girl crying and holding her, expressing gratitude for her safe return, gifting one of their only possessions, a small magical locket, as thanks.)

The path through the mirrors leads to the town’s hospital. The “House of Healing,” a Sharran house of worship. Unlike the rest of the town, it hasn’t been completely abandoned. Inside, undead nurses with headdresses covering their eyes still attend their duties.

Inside one of the hospital rooms, Shadowheart and the others find one of the nurses tending to corpses, gently sponging their heads and feeding them medicine. In the operating theater, the party finds the undead doctor in charge Malus Thorne, who performs surgery on patients who seem to have been kept alive just for this purpose with the help of the nurses.

(Here is video, it’s kind of fucked up but the worst part is censored on Youtube. The dialogue at the end is a little different.)

“Step forward, sister” Thorne gestures to Shadowheart, over the body he’s operating on. “I can see the love of Shar darken your eyes. Be welcome.”

Shadowheart greets him politely, praises how gracefully he speaks the words of Shar.

“Long have I basked in her embrace. A vessel of Shar I will become. Tell me,” he says, his tone teacherly. “What is the guiding principle of the goddess?”

“Absence,” Shadowheart answers, as easily as if she’s attending a lecture.

“Precisely! No other word captures her essence so completely. It is the scalpel led journey that leads from pain to peace.” He begins to stab his scalpel into the skull of the body lying prone on the table, again and again, blood splattering in his wake, and then gestures to show that he has cut out the patient’s eyes. “See? What is the light of eyes but the cancer that causes one to witness the curse of being? If light is the symptom, then darkness is the cure, for in light there is presence, but in darkness there is absence.”

Shadowheart’s companions react to this appropriately, as though something very fucked up is happening here, but Shadowheart just watches, angry.

(Another path has opened up, one that journeys deeper into the hall of mirrors. But it’s pitch black, and whatever ugliness is plain before them in this place of healing, there’s something much uglier down that way.)

The doctor smiles at Shadowheart. “But you, look how the succor of Shar eludes even you. One who walks faithfully in her shadow. See how painfully present you remain.” His voice becomes sympathetic. “Oh sister, we do not wish to see you suffer. Let us cure you.”

Shadowheart responds calmly. “Your nurses are not ready for that. They have been insufficiently trained. How can I trust them to deliver Lady Shar’s mercy?”

“Their incisions are, as yet, streaked with imperfections, I admit,” Thorne says. “How to steady their hands, I wonder?”

“Perhaps they need a better subject to practice on,” Shadowheart suggests. “Not a student, but rather the master.”

He watches Shadowheart for a long moment, and then nods. “...I see now. By example, I must edify and quell the light that blinds us.”

He stabs the patient on the table through the heart with one messy stroke of his scalpel, and shoves the body off the table. In the body’s place, he lies down on the operating table himself.

“Come, sisters. Soothe me!”

The nurses surround Thorne, take their scalpels, and all at once begin to drive the blades into his body, again and again, until there is nothing left but an unrecognizable bloodied husk. Once this is done, the nurses, with no one else to tend to, turn on them, but Thorne was the most dangerous entity here, and without him, the party makes quick work of the nurses.

The undead doctors and nurses are no more, but in one of the hospital rooms, they find bodies that belong to Arabella’s mother and father. There’s no way to recover them; they’ve been operated on and were being tended to by the nurses.

That night, Shadowheart finds Arabella, waiting near their campfire. She tries to tell her that they were unable to save her mother and father, but the girl screams at her that she’s lying and flees into the dark.

(Another dark path opens, down another hallway, something shrouded so that it’s impossible to know what lies there, but you don’t have to take it. This memory can be over now, if you want it to be.)

im sorry been babysitting and brainded

[apoisoncary]

[ She is momentarily distracted by the party because Karlach reminds her a little of Charlie. However, she re-focuses on the child and the events that play out. The twisted versions of a doctor and nurses, their experimentations all in the name of their believe system... There is so much to react to, but curiosity is winning over. She will take the path down the hallway wanting to know more. ]

[sacredpath]

[the memory that follows down this path is what happens after they return to camp for the night, accepting that arabella didn't want to be found. and, well, some members of this particular traveling group are fairly soft. wyll, karlach, gale - none of them are going to give up on a lost child easily. but they didn't go to the shadow cursed lands to rescue children or go on errands for them. they have a purpose here. and yet, in that moment, the failure hurt, and she didn't fully understand why. arabella was a child it was hard not to get attached to, with her defiance and independence, but even so...

sometimes in moments like this, there are things on the edge of her memory. the feelings stronger than the events themselves.

a memory of a child, crying herself to sleep after another nightmare. wondering why no one had come to save her, besides the people who found her. wondering if there ever had been anyone looking for her, waiting for her to make it home. but if there had been, she'd never remember their faces. she'd never see them again.

a memory of a child, who knew she should be grateful to the people who did come for her, the people who took her in. they are the only family she has, even if they show her no kindness. she never seems to do anything the way they want her to. mother superior, and her book, writing disapproving notes of her progress, never finding her good enough. she wonders if it's because of the hopes that she clings to, the desire to remember the faces of people she once knew, and if she tries, perhaps she can let that go and be good enough. to hold onto these desires, to want, to desire to have something of her own is to reject shar.

this is how she learns to wield the knife, to make her incisions perfect, to steady her hand. she practices on strangers, learns how to cut and how to hurt without doing lasting damage. practices for hours upon hours, how to say her prayers, how to praise shar, and she practices this on strangers, too. it's brief, though, just brief impressions, forgotten memories.

but then one of the patients, an older woman, calls out to her. uses a different name than the one she knows. and it shatters her, right in the careful practice, and suddenly there is a presence there in the room with her instead of an absence, a familiar face where a cadaver's should be.

and shadowheart's hand catches maomao's sleeve. she looks angry, but it's partially to cover up fear.]

This isn't yours. Stop prying. Let's go.

[i am not actually going to punish you icly for engaging with my memories though, she's just mad at this moment but will get over it after they talk.]