NEXT... Some of my favourite characters
Jul. 24th, 2003 09:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sparkindarknessAfter Rick and Darren of course.... naturally.
I just have a thing for faeries, what can I say, I'm a rabid elf-lover.
This is just an introduction type thingy though. Enough to placate muses and let me stay on track with Spark in darkness.
Oh, and the builders are still being named. It is most distracting.
Anyway, here's light and dark, unfortunately lots of scene/background description and little character interraction.
The old Marcherson factory was little more than a ruin. In fact, it had been a ruin for as long as anyone can remember. It was surrounded by a small model village, the sort that became common during the industrial era when philanthropic factory owners decided to make luxurious (for the times) living accommodations for their workers. Unlike many such model villages, Marcherson had not become a fashionable abode for people eager for period property, and willing to pay extortionate amount of money for what, in modern times, must be considered a slum. In fact the mercurial winds of fashion had largely left the area untouched, allowing human common sense to come to the fore and leave the run down, tiny Victorian terraces vacant and slowly rotting into ruin. Few people lived in Marcherson, even the homeless rarely spent much time in its ruinous streets. So it had always been, as far back as anyone can discover.
Not that anyone actually does try to discover anything about Marcherson. No property developer has seen the potential of the huge patch of derelict land with easy and quick routes to the city centre (a city that had long since swelled and absorbed the tiny ghost village). No historians have swarmed over the building exclaiming about the industrial revolution and dragging teams of bored school children through Marcherson factory’s mouldering halls. No architect has seen the classic, and quite attractive lines of the giant building and ran forward to renovate it into flats or retirement homes. No curator has discovered just how perfect it would be if converted into a museum, nor has the realised the vast potential of the site for renovation and redevelopment. In fact, no-one can remember who owns the site anymore, or even if anyone does. No-one even knows exactly what the factory made when it was open, assuming it ever was. And no-one ever wonders, or cares, or asks. The local residents, even the neighbouring, highly fashionable residential estates that border the waste land with fashionable artist lofts and flats, and ritzy modern apartments for young, wealthy business men, rarely complained about the ruin. But then criminals, homeless and gangs didn’t infest it, not even it’s overgrown and completely wild park, as they do many other areas. The factory dominates the sky line, and no-one ever thinks of it, never have, and never ill.
And that is just the way the fae want it.
It has been the work of centuries of delicate glamoury and intricate faerie magick. Here they have an island where they can be themselves without having to worry about curious, or hostile mortal eyes. To the eyes of the fae, or any whose vision can, or is allowed to pierce the intricate cloak of mundanity, the factory soars far higher even than it’s twenty stories. Capped with minarets and sky piercing towers, connected by a tracery of wondrous sky bridges. Scattered with platforms to allow the landing of dragons, griffins and pegasi, anointed with beautiful carvings in rare stone, adorned with precious gems and lacings of gold. The factory is a castle, greater than any crafted by human hands, rearing up like an ivory monument to wonder and dreams.
Girding the base of the castle, the village of Marcherson comes alive to the faerie eye. Troll towers and boggun holes stand side by side with fairy hives and pooka dens. Giants rest in impossible demesnes, pixies sport with leprechauns in tiny villages. Pucks watch gnomes labour in their workshops, and red caps laugh as the nockers curse their quest for perfection. The park is a rushing glen of perfect wilderness, crystal clear waters running through flowered medows and thick oak forests. Where the goblin mound aggresively protects its borders, satyr’s run wild through the glen, dancing with dryads and nyads.
It is a place of wonder, a place of joy and awe. And Sitharensor looked down upon it from the tallest tower of the castle and sighed.
Sitharensor was a sidhe. The greatest of all fae, their rulers in times of peace, protectors in times of trouble and their generals in times of war. The proud nobles would ever guide their subjects in perfect self-sacrificing honour. Or so it should be, and perhaps it once was.
The sidhe were dying. The fae were dying. Humanity no longer cared for dreams, no longer looked for wonders. Logic, order and science were the words of the day, the rules that governed mankind’s steps. Who had time for fantasy in today’s corporate world? And as the dreams die, the fae die. Magick which was commonplace centuries ago becomes impossible for all but the sidhe, then becomes impossible even for them. All the fae feel the decline, but none more so than the sidhe. The greatest magick users the world holds, they keenly feel the death of the mystical. Their powers fail them, and every generation, fewer and fewer sidhe are born. Every year the ancient faeries domains grow weaker, grow smaller, grow less. The sheer sterility of the modern world is painful to the sidhe. The weakening of their subjects is like a dagger to their hearts. They see fae born who no longer possess their birthrights, fae who have little or no magick, fae who are mortal.
The sidhe have failed. And they know it. They cannot see beauty without remembering the beauty they’ve lost. And more and more fade in grief and melancholy, their immortality failing as they loose the will to continue a fight they’ve already lost. Even Sitharensor, the youngest of the few sidhe who still resided in Marcherson castle, looked down on the domain and saw not its beauty, but the wonders his family had described, preserved in ancient tomes, that have been lost.
But today he had another reason to worry. Today he would meet his new consort Ilatheril. A marriage for duty, he had never met the other sidhe, and had been told only one thing about him. He was Unseelie.
The fae, even though they were now united as one nation, under the High King, were still a divided people. Divided by kith, divided by noble house, divided by politics and ancient rivalries preserved by immortal actors. But above all, they were divided by court. The Seelie court, essence of light, beauty, honour and love and the Unseelie court, essence of darkness, change, chaos and passion, have contended against each other since the beginning of time. There have been countless wars raged between Unseelie and Seelie realms with tragic death tolls in both courts. Nobles have played games of dagger sharp politics and commoners were ready to take up arms and brawl whenever they met. Never did the two courts rest easy, held together only by delicate truces, carefully worded treaties and poisonous understandings. The most delicate of these was the High King of the sidhe and all fae.
This one uniting rank of the fae wielded the power of both courts, and the word of the King was law. Even the rulers of each court couldn’t gainsay him (though the political reality often rendered the High King powerless in face of one court or other’s obstinate opposition). Though the king did not bring an end to conflict, he held it in check, kept wars localised and poisonous politics from spreading. By ancient tradition, the king was Seelie during the spring and summer, and Unseelie during the winter and autumn. This chaotic stability held shakily for millennia, even the great wars of the courts, when the whole faerie world seemed plunged into endless conflict, the High King survived. Until fifty years ago.
Sitharensor looked down at the faerie landscape, made clear to his piercing lilac eyes, and still could see scars from the last great war of the courts. A gentle tear crept down his flawless ivory skin as he thought of that last great massacre, that last waste of faerie life, and the that Error of Pride that followed victory.
The war had been a completely different entity to the fae. The then recent laws of concealment from humans were strictly held in place by the High Kings, both Seelie and Unseelie. It was a subtle war. A war of influence and gentle power, a war of bureaucracy and the manipulation of humans. Unseelie cared little for humanity, beyond their use as toys or playthings. They cared little for stifling humans systems, restrictive human laws or pointless human customs. The Seelie, political, ordered and lawful, were well versed in these arts. It was a war the Unseelie couldn’t win, never before had a court war been so dramatically fought, never before had victory been so crushing. The casualties crushed the Unseelie, and destroyed what little influence they had left. Fearing destruction by the shining court, they were forced to sign the treaty that the Seelie sidhe now quietly called the Error of Pride.
For fifty years the Unseelie were excluded from power, from politics, from any rank or position. For fifty years, the Unseelie were persecuted and repressed. For fifty years the monstrous creatures that existed solely in the Unseelie court were driven near to extinction. For fifty years the High King was a Seelie. For fifty years, the court grew great with tradition and order. And stagnation. For fifty years the Unseelie seethed in anger, their dark passions growing ever stronger. And it took fifty years for the Seelie to realise their mistake.
Now bridges are hastily being built before the Unseelie forge their own. Old alliances re-forged, power released and persecutions ceased. Gentle reparations are being made, though sidhe pride demands that the Seelie cannot admit their mistake. Most startling of all, old lords of ancient, powerful domains were approaching the few remaining Unseelie lords, and the disenfranchised Unseelie nobles. The reached out with alliances, alliances sealed with the marriage of their heirs.
Sitharensor tried to think of Ilatheril, and failed. He would be beautiful, that was beyond question - all the sidhe were divinely beautiful. It was said that a great mortal artist once plucked the eyes from his head having seen a sidhe, declaring that after such beauty, everything would look foul to him. Sitharensor, himself was a sight to awe any artist. Tall and fair, he had a sheet of pure golden hair, washed with waves of sunshine that flowed down his body to his ankles. His eyes were a pale lilac, soft and gentle when at rest, but piercing and glowing with power when his wrath was raised. His delicate pointed ears emphasised his fine, sculpted face with its almost cat like angles. But he could not imagine exactly how Ilatheril would look. He had never met any Unseelie, except on the battle field, and never had he faced an Unseelie sidhe. Most of the sidhe in the castle were of his family, even if distantly, and all possessed pale skin, pale hair and light eyes.
But it was more than looks that concerned him. The Unseelie were the dark court, cruel, chaotic and tainted. He shuddered slightly, drawing his rich gold and white robes around him. How could he marry an Unseelie? How could he bed a creature of darkness?
“It is time, my lord.” The words were gravely and rough, but the tone was trying to be gentle. Sitharensor turned and saw Sir Hrolf, an ancient Trollish knight who had been his guard and companion since Sitharensor’s birth. The knight towered over the tall sidhe, easily nine foot in height, with rough, stony grey skin, bulging with massive muscles, topped with a pair of short, straight horns.
Sitharensor nodded his head regally, “thank you, sir Hrolf.” Today was the time for formality. He rose gracefully, smoothly checking that the lines of his robes fell perfectly. He set his shoulders like a man marching to war, and headed down the long stairwell.
He was glad the long robes hid his shivering. Glad there was no-one to see the fear in his eyes. Glad Hrolf was behind him, and he didn’t have to see the pity in the eyes of his ancient guardian. The tears glistening in his gem-like eyes.
He was going to wed an Unseelie. Try as he might, Sitharensor could hardly think of one time in a history full of wars, upheavals and desperate cruelty, when duty demanded so much of the sidhe.
I just have a thing for faeries, what can I say, I'm a rabid elf-lover.
This is just an introduction type thingy though. Enough to placate muses and let me stay on track with Spark in darkness.
Oh, and the builders are still being named. It is most distracting.
Anyway, here's light and dark, unfortunately lots of scene/background description and little character interraction.
The old Marcherson factory was little more than a ruin. In fact, it had been a ruin for as long as anyone can remember. It was surrounded by a small model village, the sort that became common during the industrial era when philanthropic factory owners decided to make luxurious (for the times) living accommodations for their workers. Unlike many such model villages, Marcherson had not become a fashionable abode for people eager for period property, and willing to pay extortionate amount of money for what, in modern times, must be considered a slum. In fact the mercurial winds of fashion had largely left the area untouched, allowing human common sense to come to the fore and leave the run down, tiny Victorian terraces vacant and slowly rotting into ruin. Few people lived in Marcherson, even the homeless rarely spent much time in its ruinous streets. So it had always been, as far back as anyone can discover.
Not that anyone actually does try to discover anything about Marcherson. No property developer has seen the potential of the huge patch of derelict land with easy and quick routes to the city centre (a city that had long since swelled and absorbed the tiny ghost village). No historians have swarmed over the building exclaiming about the industrial revolution and dragging teams of bored school children through Marcherson factory’s mouldering halls. No architect has seen the classic, and quite attractive lines of the giant building and ran forward to renovate it into flats or retirement homes. No curator has discovered just how perfect it would be if converted into a museum, nor has the realised the vast potential of the site for renovation and redevelopment. In fact, no-one can remember who owns the site anymore, or even if anyone does. No-one even knows exactly what the factory made when it was open, assuming it ever was. And no-one ever wonders, or cares, or asks. The local residents, even the neighbouring, highly fashionable residential estates that border the waste land with fashionable artist lofts and flats, and ritzy modern apartments for young, wealthy business men, rarely complained about the ruin. But then criminals, homeless and gangs didn’t infest it, not even it’s overgrown and completely wild park, as they do many other areas. The factory dominates the sky line, and no-one ever thinks of it, never have, and never ill.
And that is just the way the fae want it.
It has been the work of centuries of delicate glamoury and intricate faerie magick. Here they have an island where they can be themselves without having to worry about curious, or hostile mortal eyes. To the eyes of the fae, or any whose vision can, or is allowed to pierce the intricate cloak of mundanity, the factory soars far higher even than it’s twenty stories. Capped with minarets and sky piercing towers, connected by a tracery of wondrous sky bridges. Scattered with platforms to allow the landing of dragons, griffins and pegasi, anointed with beautiful carvings in rare stone, adorned with precious gems and lacings of gold. The factory is a castle, greater than any crafted by human hands, rearing up like an ivory monument to wonder and dreams.
Girding the base of the castle, the village of Marcherson comes alive to the faerie eye. Troll towers and boggun holes stand side by side with fairy hives and pooka dens. Giants rest in impossible demesnes, pixies sport with leprechauns in tiny villages. Pucks watch gnomes labour in their workshops, and red caps laugh as the nockers curse their quest for perfection. The park is a rushing glen of perfect wilderness, crystal clear waters running through flowered medows and thick oak forests. Where the goblin mound aggresively protects its borders, satyr’s run wild through the glen, dancing with dryads and nyads.
It is a place of wonder, a place of joy and awe. And Sitharensor looked down upon it from the tallest tower of the castle and sighed.
Sitharensor was a sidhe. The greatest of all fae, their rulers in times of peace, protectors in times of trouble and their generals in times of war. The proud nobles would ever guide their subjects in perfect self-sacrificing honour. Or so it should be, and perhaps it once was.
The sidhe were dying. The fae were dying. Humanity no longer cared for dreams, no longer looked for wonders. Logic, order and science were the words of the day, the rules that governed mankind’s steps. Who had time for fantasy in today’s corporate world? And as the dreams die, the fae die. Magick which was commonplace centuries ago becomes impossible for all but the sidhe, then becomes impossible even for them. All the fae feel the decline, but none more so than the sidhe. The greatest magick users the world holds, they keenly feel the death of the mystical. Their powers fail them, and every generation, fewer and fewer sidhe are born. Every year the ancient faeries domains grow weaker, grow smaller, grow less. The sheer sterility of the modern world is painful to the sidhe. The weakening of their subjects is like a dagger to their hearts. They see fae born who no longer possess their birthrights, fae who have little or no magick, fae who are mortal.
The sidhe have failed. And they know it. They cannot see beauty without remembering the beauty they’ve lost. And more and more fade in grief and melancholy, their immortality failing as they loose the will to continue a fight they’ve already lost. Even Sitharensor, the youngest of the few sidhe who still resided in Marcherson castle, looked down on the domain and saw not its beauty, but the wonders his family had described, preserved in ancient tomes, that have been lost.
But today he had another reason to worry. Today he would meet his new consort Ilatheril. A marriage for duty, he had never met the other sidhe, and had been told only one thing about him. He was Unseelie.
The fae, even though they were now united as one nation, under the High King, were still a divided people. Divided by kith, divided by noble house, divided by politics and ancient rivalries preserved by immortal actors. But above all, they were divided by court. The Seelie court, essence of light, beauty, honour and love and the Unseelie court, essence of darkness, change, chaos and passion, have contended against each other since the beginning of time. There have been countless wars raged between Unseelie and Seelie realms with tragic death tolls in both courts. Nobles have played games of dagger sharp politics and commoners were ready to take up arms and brawl whenever they met. Never did the two courts rest easy, held together only by delicate truces, carefully worded treaties and poisonous understandings. The most delicate of these was the High King of the sidhe and all fae.
This one uniting rank of the fae wielded the power of both courts, and the word of the King was law. Even the rulers of each court couldn’t gainsay him (though the political reality often rendered the High King powerless in face of one court or other’s obstinate opposition). Though the king did not bring an end to conflict, he held it in check, kept wars localised and poisonous politics from spreading. By ancient tradition, the king was Seelie during the spring and summer, and Unseelie during the winter and autumn. This chaotic stability held shakily for millennia, even the great wars of the courts, when the whole faerie world seemed plunged into endless conflict, the High King survived. Until fifty years ago.
Sitharensor looked down at the faerie landscape, made clear to his piercing lilac eyes, and still could see scars from the last great war of the courts. A gentle tear crept down his flawless ivory skin as he thought of that last great massacre, that last waste of faerie life, and the that Error of Pride that followed victory.
The war had been a completely different entity to the fae. The then recent laws of concealment from humans were strictly held in place by the High Kings, both Seelie and Unseelie. It was a subtle war. A war of influence and gentle power, a war of bureaucracy and the manipulation of humans. Unseelie cared little for humanity, beyond their use as toys or playthings. They cared little for stifling humans systems, restrictive human laws or pointless human customs. The Seelie, political, ordered and lawful, were well versed in these arts. It was a war the Unseelie couldn’t win, never before had a court war been so dramatically fought, never before had victory been so crushing. The casualties crushed the Unseelie, and destroyed what little influence they had left. Fearing destruction by the shining court, they were forced to sign the treaty that the Seelie sidhe now quietly called the Error of Pride.
For fifty years the Unseelie were excluded from power, from politics, from any rank or position. For fifty years, the Unseelie were persecuted and repressed. For fifty years the monstrous creatures that existed solely in the Unseelie court were driven near to extinction. For fifty years the High King was a Seelie. For fifty years, the court grew great with tradition and order. And stagnation. For fifty years the Unseelie seethed in anger, their dark passions growing ever stronger. And it took fifty years for the Seelie to realise their mistake.
Now bridges are hastily being built before the Unseelie forge their own. Old alliances re-forged, power released and persecutions ceased. Gentle reparations are being made, though sidhe pride demands that the Seelie cannot admit their mistake. Most startling of all, old lords of ancient, powerful domains were approaching the few remaining Unseelie lords, and the disenfranchised Unseelie nobles. The reached out with alliances, alliances sealed with the marriage of their heirs.
Sitharensor tried to think of Ilatheril, and failed. He would be beautiful, that was beyond question - all the sidhe were divinely beautiful. It was said that a great mortal artist once plucked the eyes from his head having seen a sidhe, declaring that after such beauty, everything would look foul to him. Sitharensor, himself was a sight to awe any artist. Tall and fair, he had a sheet of pure golden hair, washed with waves of sunshine that flowed down his body to his ankles. His eyes were a pale lilac, soft and gentle when at rest, but piercing and glowing with power when his wrath was raised. His delicate pointed ears emphasised his fine, sculpted face with its almost cat like angles. But he could not imagine exactly how Ilatheril would look. He had never met any Unseelie, except on the battle field, and never had he faced an Unseelie sidhe. Most of the sidhe in the castle were of his family, even if distantly, and all possessed pale skin, pale hair and light eyes.
But it was more than looks that concerned him. The Unseelie were the dark court, cruel, chaotic and tainted. He shuddered slightly, drawing his rich gold and white robes around him. How could he marry an Unseelie? How could he bed a creature of darkness?
“It is time, my lord.” The words were gravely and rough, but the tone was trying to be gentle. Sitharensor turned and saw Sir Hrolf, an ancient Trollish knight who had been his guard and companion since Sitharensor’s birth. The knight towered over the tall sidhe, easily nine foot in height, with rough, stony grey skin, bulging with massive muscles, topped with a pair of short, straight horns.
Sitharensor nodded his head regally, “thank you, sir Hrolf.” Today was the time for formality. He rose gracefully, smoothly checking that the lines of his robes fell perfectly. He set his shoulders like a man marching to war, and headed down the long stairwell.
He was glad the long robes hid his shivering. Glad there was no-one to see the fear in his eyes. Glad Hrolf was behind him, and he didn’t have to see the pity in the eyes of his ancient guardian. The tears glistening in his gem-like eyes.
He was going to wed an Unseelie. Try as he might, Sitharensor could hardly think of one time in a history full of wars, upheavals and desperate cruelty, when duty demanded so much of the sidhe.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2003-07-25 07:12 pm (UTC)(altho the entire alfheim contingent is teasing captain hrolf about being a troll now. =p )
(no subject)
Date: 2003-07-25 08:41 pm (UTC)Heh, Hrolf can hold his own. Sidhe may play better politics, but are far too worried about getting their clothes dirty and looking bad (well... as bad as a sidhe CAN look).
(no subject)
Date: 2003-07-26 01:52 am (UTC)This is going to be fun.
This has really clicked with my idea of fae. I like the hidden island in the middle of the city.
Can't wait for more.
(no subject)
Date: 2003-07-26 12:56 pm (UTC)