event: a gentle web

[thestewards]

I've lived a lot of different lives
Been different people many times
I live my life in bitterness
And fill my heart with emptiness

► The OOC plotting post for this event can be found here.

► Direct all questions to the mods at this link.

► Characters can speak with Fayura or Verim in response to her request or her web. If you would like to speak with them, please add a prompt to your top-level or as a comment to your top-level. A thread with Fayura can be requested here. A thread with Verim can be requested here.

STRANGER SUMMONS
In the morning
You wake to a feeling of unease. It’s not the room, which is comfortable and well-appointed, if plain—much like the guest room of a hotel. A note rests on the nearby bedstand, inviting you to breakfast with Queen Fayura, her court, and the Strangers who make their home with her, and it lets you know you can ask the many footmen in the twisting halls of the Queen’s Residence for directions.

That isn’t what leaves you uneasy, no.

There’s a strange flavor in the air to those both new and already present. Some of the Strangers who have been in Draega for a month or more will recognize this unease as the psychic flavor of the Queen’s emotions. Fayura’s dark presence fills the residence, and while it is normally calm and steady (if a bit wrinkly around the edges, like an exuberant young woman rumpled from her activities), now it is outright unsettled. Because her presence is so strong, because it permeates the very rocks of the bizarre building, it changes the mood in air.

Breakfast is lean: little more than thin porridge, glasses of milk and water, and carefully rationed cups of fruit preserves. The Queen’s Court, those of her First Circle, look wan and hungry. There is as much unease between them as in the air.


In the afternoon
Around midday, a psychic call touches the minds of each Stranger in Draega. Fayura’s mental presence slips along your own, quietly seeking permission to speak to you mind-to-mind, and when she has it, she says: Come straight to the Residence if you are not there already, close your minds to every thought but the beacon I leave for you, and speak with no one, not even your friends.

The beacon is a mental loadstone calling you to the Queen’s Residence. When you arrive, you’re ushered not into the Great Hall, but into a little used room. Here, the Queen holds formal court, something she rarely does.

Though witchlight and candles fill the room with light, a psychic darkness creeps across the floor. Tendrils of ice fill the spaces between the old, hardwood floorboards. Frost spiderwebs across windows and over the walls. In spite of this, the room itself doesn’t feel cold.

At the end of the room, the Queen of Hayll sits on a simple stool. Gowned in black spidersilk, she looks like midnight come to life. To her right stands a frame two feet by two feet: a tangled web simply woven. At its heart sits a Jewel chip. Should you probe it, you find its color and rank difficult to determine. Red, but not. Something darker, something strange, something that isn’t quite right. Her Consort stands just behind her, his golden eyes glazed.

“A coven of Black Widows has come to my city,” the Queen of Hayll tells you once all the Strangers are assembled before her. “They broke a young girl who had the potential to be a Queen when they tried to kidnap her last night.” A wave of fury ripples through the residence, something dark and dangerous—a dull roar from the abyss in the mind from which the Jewels’ power springs. “I have never directly asked you to put your lives in danger, but I ask you now: find these Black Widows. Bring them to me or bring them to Grand Master Niall or Lord Grejor, whomever you trust more to mete out justice, but bring them.”

She gestures to the web beside her. “A Black Widow rarely shares the webs she weaves, but I will share this one with you.”

Fayura's web Trigger warnings: mental assault against a child
Webs of dreams and visions are not concrete things. To weave them, a witch steps to the side in her mind, looking through the veil of madness to read possibile futures. But Fayura’s web doesn’t tell of possible futures. It recounts a single past, a vision pulled from walls that echo with a child’s agonized cries of pain and fear.

Three spiders crawl through the night. They chitter and clamber. They weave their wicked webs in dark corners of the city, ensnaring minds. They search, they search, they look, they seek, seek, seek, probing dreaming minds, peeling back shields around vulnerable minds, tasting the air for the earthy flavor of a Queen. (this one this one take this one to rip and rend)

They find her— is that her? —a girl that is a Queen but a girl who is not a woman— too young to have her adult strength it makes her sweet so sweet —young enough to be woven into a new shape— CON­SUME HER DE­STROY HER

They sing to her from the Darkness, but she doesn’t want to go, she doesn’t want to leave her dreams or her family her home this place this city it’s not dark but it’s Dark and it feels right and good there’s more right and good in the Darkness than in the dark corners and she fights and she pulls and she won’t go, she won’t, and she—

White
Yellow
Tiger Eye
Rose
Summer-sky
Purple Dusk
safety that's safe
it's safe there it is
it's safe it's safe
it's safe it's safe
it's safe it's safe
it's safe it's safe
it's safe it's safe
it's safe it's safe
it's safe it's safe
it's safe it's sa

She flees into the sanctuary of her mind, where the Darkness is a caress around her. She plummets past the White and the Yellow, and the Black Widows give chase, thrilling to the scent of fear.

One peels off with a shriek of rage.

Deeper, darker darker, where the abyss is quieter (quieter still deep below in the frigid depths of the BLACK and she reaches reaches for a presence deep below her) and full of Summer-sky power—she can’t go much further, her web is made of Purple Dusk, but the other doesn’t slow. The little girl slams through the web of her mind, shattering it, collapsing the abyss with a scream of power, flooding her body with more power than it can contain.

The spiders withdraw. Their prey is no good to them like this, but maybe they’ll feed on the corpse of her mind later, filling it with nightmares until not even the Black Widows of the Lady’s court can piece the little girl back together.

beneath them far beneath them a quake of power a profound fury a silent song of rage and sorrow that spirals and shivers

TANGLED WEBS OF FEAR AND LOATHING
This Black Widow coven has left tangled webs throughout Draega. These webs snare the minds of light and dark Jeweled Blood and Strangers alike. In many of the webs, the mind of a captured victim assumes an active role within the vision contained inside the web, forcing them to live through the vision. Landen minds can’t be trapped by tangled webs, but their moods and actions are certainly affected. Until the webs are cleared, they will radically alter the behavior of landens throughout the city, twisting their behavior.

Fayura has tasked you with not only finding the members of the coven but with removing the tangled webs the Black Widows wove throughout the city. The events in the web can be changed—much like with lucid dreaming, you need only realize you’re trapped within a tangled web to change the course of its vision or to escape it, and then, when you understand it, you will be able to destroy it.

A Web of Violence Trigger warnings: female on male rape, sexual violence, impending death

run

run

run

RUN

breath burning run faster faster legs aching heart hammering pulse pounding throbbing throbbing throbbing

She’s behind you, you know she’s behind you, hungry for your body and your mind, but you can’t slow down. Your sister, you think about your sister, who just barely wears the White. You need to be there for your sister. She could be a Healer, she could be more that what the Blood have become, she co—

An acrid psychic scent hits you, sour and sharp and seductive. You want her and you hate her as her power slams into your back and throws you into a wall.

A second later, she’s on you, her nails ripping through your skin as she tears off your clothes. You try to shield with your Purple Dusk, but she’s stronger than you. Shields shred like butter beneath her hands. Skin parts and opens and burns. She jabs the snake tooth under the nail on her right ring finger beneath your skin (the rough edges of all her rings cut into your bleeding flesh, and you scream before she muzzles you with an aural shield) and pumps poison into you.

Your panic spreads it faster. You feel the poison in your limbs. You’re going to die. You know you’re going to die. She’s climbing onto you, and you’re going to die like this.

A Web of Desire Trigger warnings: dubcon, sexual assault, assault, sex work, abusive relationships

You were pretty, once. You paint your lips with red paint made from the venom you milk from your snake tooth during your moontime, and you smile. Your face is hazy in the mirror, but your lips are red red red (he wears the Red, and one day, he’ll see how much you love him and he’ll love you, too) and males love red lips. Red mouth, red body, red between your legs when they ride you too hard.

You were pretty, once, but that doesn’t stop them from pushing you down. You watch the ceiling as they pant and groan and heave above you. This will keep you safe. This will keep you alive and fed. There’s nothing left in the wilderness except dead, dry desolation. Same as the desolation inside you. You’re not a Queen, but you feel it, too.

You were pretty, once. You remember what it was like to smile and watch a male’s blood drop from one head to another. You remember the power you had before they used you up and left you dry, before they wrung the joy from loving someone else. You love him, and you wear him close to your heart.

You were pretty, once, and then you told him no, not tonight. You were pretty, once, until he held you down with Summer-sky power. You railed against the Darkness for letting him be just one rank darker than you as he took your beauty from you. A blade over your eye and down your cheek. Sharp edges in your arms, across your breasts, cutting new roadways of pain all along your abdomen.

You were pretty, once. With red, red lips and a smile that drove males to their knees before you, but now red repulses you and your love never came for you. But in this memory, things are different. You are not you. You are someone else, and you can escape the one who wants to cut you.

A Web of Innocence Trigger warnings: domestic violence, violence against women, blood, implied medical torture

You’re five years old, on a ship that rides the waning waters of the Heartsblood River. Your face to the wind, adventure on the horizon. Papa calls out to you, and you turn, running barefoot across the deck to him. He holds his hands behind him, and you jump around him to see what he hides. A shield hides your prize, but Papa is kind, and once you close your eyes, he puts something soft and warm in them. You cry out with delight, opening your eyes: a stuffed animal in the shape of a puppy. From Draega, he tells you, where the landens make amazing things.

You’re 12 years old when you meet him. He’s landen but he’s smart and he makes you giggle and blush, and you give him the stuffed puppy you’ve cared for all these years and he gives you a blue ribbon. You wear it until it falls off your wrist, and then you go back to Draega and buy another.

You’re 20, at the altar in Draega. You want to wear the Sapphire, because Sapphire reminds you of the landen boy, but no one gets Birthright Jewels that dark anymore. Still, you squeeze your eyes shut and hope and hope and hope and hope and pray and pray and pray until you bite your cheek and taste blood. A wish offered with blood is a prayer to the Darkness. That’s when you smell the smoke. You know you should run, but you have to finish your Birthright, you have to succeed, you have to complete it, so you struggle and struggle and struggle. The fire takes your eyes but you take the Sapphire.

You’re 21 and you’re with him now. Your family disowned you, but you don’t care. At last, you’re happy. “Can you tell me our future?” he asks, and you weave a web that shows you with two Sisters but no husband. You lie and tell him something pretty.

You’re 27 years old, reading fortunes not just for your husband but for the hypocrites among the Guild. The Guildmasters come to your husband in the dark and pay him for your visions. He trades the money for drink and comes home stinking of alcohol. Even their Grand Master comes to you, the young prodigy they all adore. “Tell me how to ensure the Blood don't destroy the landens,” he tells you, and you give him a vision of Ebon Askavi and a song that resonates deep within the mountains, growing louder with every passing year. He strikes you hard across the face, but you know he’ll go to the Black Mountain within the year.

When you’re 29 years old, your husband drags you to the Medico Guild and leaves you there. “Weave, little spider,” their Guildmaster says, and you weave because they hurt you when you don’t, turning on their muters and cutting into your skin to see what color you bleed. You weave and weave and weave, pressing deeper and deeper into the sanctuary of your mind until at last you break yourself when you drift down below your inner web.

You’ll kill them all one day. You’ll leave them broken on the floor, eternally sleeping in puddles of their own blood. But you need to find a Queen, and the Queen you want is here but she isn’t ready, not yet, so you’ll wait ten years or find another. You’ll make her understand, you’ll make her see what you no longer can.

AIR TIME
Whether you catch the news on a Far-caster in the city or you're spinning the dial on your own device, you'll hear…

etiquette with evandra and aren
[Today, Evandra speaks softly and slowly. Sorrow thickens her throat and stretches her words into brittle filaments.] How do landens deal with Black Widows, Lord Aren, when even the Blood can be destroyed by them?

[Aren, too, is quiet.] Trust is—

[Evandra, sharply:] The Blood always speak of trust! What good is trust so often broken?

[Aren stumbles over his words.] I… that is, as Blood, we… We rely on Queens… [He trails off.] You are right to be furious. Nothing can be said that repairs a shattered mind.

the weather
[A soft-spoken man’s voice rumbles out of the Far-caster. He’s pleasant to listen to, with a soothing cadence to his voice.] …flooding along the banks of the Heartsblood River to the southeast. The river walk will be unsafe for the next week, and pedestrians are advised to take great care if they want to walk it. Interested in sailing? The Transport Guild…

the news
[Garret speaks with his usual briskness, but his temper snaps behind his words in a way it never has.] The Ebon Council and Guilds have spoken out against Queen Fayura, demanding to know what use a Queen can be if she can’t keep “undesirables” out of the city.

[Wilt sounds hollow.] While the Ebon Council demands the Queen's Court do more to guard the city’s gates, the Guilds have announced their intention to build a large-scale muter that would suppress the power of the Blood within a two-mile radius of the city. A spokesman from the Tinker Guild says they’ve already begun work on this device.

[Garret:] Indeed. The Strangers’ support for the Guilds the past few months…

Comments

[theladyofwinterfell]

( Being held by him physically is enough to pull her the rest of the way out of the web and when she's free, Sansa buries her face against his chest for a moment and tries to gather her wits. Ramsay is something that's always in the back of her mind, always there to lurk in her dreams, but she hasn't seen him in her waking mind in a long time. Remembering the knives and the way he'd used her body just makes her want to hide in her room. )

I didn't know...I should have come with an escort, I just didn't know what would happen. I'm so sorry.

[sinistral]

Don't apologize for something you didn't know. It could have happened to anyone.

[He holds her carefully and lets her lean. He's not exactly the kind of person to whom one would go for comfort, and he knows it, but if all he can provide is a calm, anchoring presence he considers it worth the effort. There are still webs scattered around the city and even if he directs her back to the residence, there's no telling if she might get caught in another. He thinks it might be best to escort her there and see that she's safe, before coming back out on his own.]

[theladyofwinterfell]

I know but it wasn't my intention to go out without an escort and subsequently need to be rescued. I do not try to court trouble, Bucky, I swear it.

( She tips her head up to look at him, still wrapped in the circle of his arms. It's good to be held by someone she trusts, at least, and it helps stave off the chill of her ill memories. She's more grateful to him than she can possibly say. )

I am in your debt once more. I shall never be able to repay you, I think, but hopefully you'll never call in the debt.

[sinistral]

I don't doubt your intentions. Even with the warnings I don't think anyone could have been fully prepared for these webs. We're simply not familiar enough with this place.

[He won't move, not until she's ready. It's certainly no hardship, and he really isn't sure if a sudden movement could send her spiraling back into the web in which she'd been caught. As he said, he simply doesn't know enough about it, and no crash course is enough to prepare a person completely for something like this.]

It's not about debts or collecting favors, you know that. You needed help, and I was able to give it. You would have done the same had the situation been reversed.

[theladyofwinterfell]

That's very true. I would have come and guided you out, no questions asked. I am still grateful for your help, though.

( Sansa pulls away a bit but only just so he can escort her back, not completely away. )

I think I'm steady enough to make my way back home if you don't mind taking me?

[sinistral]

Thank you and you're welcome on both our parts, then. And we'll not speak of debts.

[He doesn't intend to let her get too far away though, not in the wake of such a triggering experience. The arm around her waist might not be proper for their level of acquaintance, but it is protective.]

I don't mind. Stay close to me just in case.

[And hope that he doesn't get caught in a web, though his guard is up.]

[theladyofwinterfell]

( Sansa doesn't mind his arm around her waist, not when she's shaken and so cold from what she's seen. She hates that Bucky's seen it, even if only in part, because no one has experienced this but her and she'd locked it away. Clearly she hadn't done a good enough job of it. )

He...I was weak to him, then. I thought I was stronger than that now but I suppose I'm not. I let him put me right back into that fear and anguish.

[sinistral]

The mind is a muscle no different than the body. To make it stronger you have to work at it, and that's going to come with some pain.

[He tries to keep his steering of her gentle, so as not to manhandle her too much and remind her of the Web into which she'd fallen. This isn't like escorting her through the slums or at a festival, and the tension in him is because he's on the look out for potential attacks.]

[theladyofwinterfell]

I suppose that you're right in that regard. I had someone tell me once that I had to fight every battle everywhere, always, in my mind. Everyone was my enemy and everyone was my friend. The person who told me that was the man who sold me to him. As much as I hate the source of it, the knowledge is good.

( Baelish had gotten his in the end, as did Ramsay, but Sansa hates that some of her greatest tutors had been men and women who showed her cruelty. She doesn't want to be cold and cruel, not even a bit, but sometimes she does wonder if it'd be easier to simply lock herself away. She cannot be hurt if she's encased in ice, can she? )

[sinistral]

Keep what's useful and use the rest only to fuel your determination. You are the one who has control over what you want to be.

[It's not really that simple, but that's where it starts, if nothing else. Bucky doesn't know the extent of her situation but simply being in Draega could have something of an impact on it, or so he thinks. In a way this could be an escape for all of the Strangers from the lives the lead before; whether or not that's a good thing he hasn't yet decided.]

[theladyofwinterfell]

( It's good advice and advice she should take the heart, she thinks, though perhaps not just now when the wound is so fresh. Sansa has knit up her wounds before, though, and she'll do it again. These are only ghost wounds and ghost pains, memories and phantoms, and Ramsay's knives are no longer sharp. )

I don't know how to repay you - both for saving me and for your counsel. You must tell me something I can do to repay you, Bucky. Something.

[sinistral]

I truly need nothing.

[It’s not a sense of false modesty that lends his words their weight but rather simple truth. He’s not a materialistic person, and most of his need for activity is settled on the training fields. Anything else he could want is not something that he thinks another person can provide.]

We’re in the very unique situation of having shelter provided to us, and meals as we need them, and all in return for acts of service. We are technically trapped here I suppose but all told our situation isn’t that bad.

[theladyofwinterfell]

( Sansa stops for a moment and wraps her arms around him, holding him tight for a moment. She isn't one for demonstrative displays of affection, except with her family, but her emotions are running high just now and Bucky won't allow her to give him a token of gratitude. )

You've been protecting me. You protected me from my own mind - which isn't something I expect of anyone. I'm going to find some way to repay that kindness. I will.

[sinistral]

[The embrace surprises him, and he stiffens immediately. Eventually though one hand comes to rest on her upper back, between her shoulder blades. She's been through something trying, and there's still some residual distress; an emotional display is only natural.]

Sansa, no. [He tries to say it gently, though gentility is not a thing for which he was made.] At least, let's not talk of it now. You've been through an ordeal, and these things are better considered when you're not in distress. It wouldn't be right at all for me to accept anything from you under such duress.

[theladyofwinterfell]

( Sansa can tell she's surprised him by the way he stiffens against her and even though he does eventually seem to embrace her back, it's clear what what she's done has crossed their normal levels of physical intimacy. She holds him for a few moments longer, long enough to hear him speak, and pulls away. )

You're right that I shouldn't be brokering the terms of a deal while I'm terrified and riding high on that terror. Still, I will find a way to repay the kindness. My first husband's family is quite fond of reminding people that Lannisters always pay their debts and since I was one, once, I pay mine as well.

[sinistral]

I won't refuse, if you're insisting. I ask only that we not talk of it until tomorrow, at the earliest.

[He'll start to lead her again when she steps back, eyes sharp on their surroundings even as he knows that keen eyesight won't help them avoid unseen webs. But he's trying to be aware through his Jewel as well. It seems to be working, so far at least.]

[theladyofwinterfell]

I can agree with tomorrow. Just get me back to my rooms safely, for now, and I shall have to think on how to begin repaying you later. I continue to accrue debt.

( Sansa says it softly, though, with a hint of hope. She's still terribly shaken but she feels confident enough that Bucky can lead her back without stepping into another web and she can start to gather her strength around her again. It's a painful thing, having to expose something so intimate without choice, and she wants the time to build her walls. )