[Forge PRP] Bonaventure, Ville de Mort.

[Nyx Queen of Darkness]

Spooky Adventure

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Only the bravest will partake in this adventure. Travel, if you dare, to the cursed graveyard and survive the night!
Reward: 3 gold pieces.




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[Nyx Queen of Darkness]

Bastianna Casquete du Cimetiere looked out over her dominion. She had come to this place a few years ago. There had been no caretaker left and the place had been in ruins. Taking i upon herself to clean up the place, she had set about the work of bringing the graveyard a layer of respectability. Soon after she began the upkeep of the graveyard she named Bonaventure, Ville de Mort. City of the Dead, she came across a foal abandoned.

At first she'd thought it dead, when she found it. It was nothing but a scrawny little thing impaled with all sorts of metal. The metal though did not affect her and she was a bright, happy foal given to odd eccentricities. In a fit of fancy, she had named her. Lasciate Ogni Sperenza Kirkegård. Abandon all hope ye who enter here, graveyard. She called her Kirke for short.

The foal had grown into a gangly adult with a child-like wonder. She was always happy but the things she loved were all what others would consider strange--a bouquet of dead roses, a broken toy, or things of a more macabre nature. But it was all these things that made Bastianna love Kirke. She raised her like a daughter, giving her a red teddy bear that had been restored. Kirke always had it with her, from the moment she was given it.  

[Nyx Queen of Darkness]

Sabine had come during the summer, finally finding her sister repairing the graveyard and minding the family bussiness. It had been years since they'd seen each other and the news she brought was sad. Their grandmother, the matriarch of the family had passed leaving Bastianna as the head of the family.

She come on ahead to prepare the way for the others while they finished up bussiness in their old home. Their business had and always would be about death and secrets. E.specially, the kind of secrets you'd die to keep. It was their business to make sure they stayed buried, that the past did not reach to drag you back with it. Every once in awhile a failure of payment would come or a secret long held as leverage would be released.

It was by definition, a messy business. By now there were several hundred graves here and no more than a dozen were occupied with secrets instead of bodies. Of course, the graveyard was always expanding which made visitors wary since the chances of digging up a body were ninety to one rather than a secret.

There was also the fear of the wandering spirits, and Kirke's presence did nothing to dispel that.  

[Nyx Queen of Darkness]

Kirke had always liked the quiet of the graveyard as the shadows grew long. In the solemn darkness, she moved between the graves visiting each headstone like an old friend. She brought them flowers, not all of them of course. She tried to change it around. She never took the old flowers away, she couldn't bear to. Why not let the dead flowers rest here along with the souls?

She gave a dreamy sigh as she helped Sabine with the masonry. Some of the stones were too heavy for Sabine to place, so she often enlisted Kirke's help. The masoleum they worked on now was impressive. There were fleur de lis carved into the marble columns. The detail was intricate where Sabine had restored it to it's former glory. This masoleum though was to be something more than just a final resting place, this was to be their home.  

[Nyx Queen of Darkness]

Gris-gris complained about the feel of mortar between her webbed toes as she smeared it on the final stone of the building. She disliked the gritty feeling of it on her skin, but she had to admit that she was excited about it being finally done.

The room she would share with her bonded had an alcove for them to sleep in but it also had some stone steps that led down into a pond that was fed by a fresh river. They'd be able to simply ease down the steps and submerge themselves in relative privacy or they could swim down and out to the middle of the pond or further down into the shallower river.  

[Nyx Queen of Darkness]

Bastianna had carefully planned out the rooms of the building that would be their home. Her room was accentuated in ebony marble shot through with white streaks. It was a bit more grandoise to go with her new title of matriarch. Sabine, of course, had her water room with her otter Gris-Gris. Kirke had her room of eccentricities and flowers. It smelled like warm, wet earth in there--a good smell of clean and growing things. Kirke even had a small cultivated mushroom farm in the corner. Three of the other three were prepared to her other siblings tastes.

Céleste Casquette des Os room was the old room where the bodies had been prepared for burial. There were bones hanging around like wind chimes. She knew how much Celeste loved the clack of bones in the wind, the two small window directly across from each other making a breezeway. Tunde Casquette des Sacrifices room had a large altar in the middle of the room. The shelves and walls were lined with bottles of powders and rare ingredients. His room connected to Marcellus Casquette du Sang's room. The room was small, not very elaborate with only a place for a hearh. But the two rooms funneled into a shared stable where they raised creatures for slaughter. They would be pleased.  

[Nyx Queen of Darkness]

Kirke set her teddy bear down and began making room for the pots of flowers that Lovey was bringing in. She'd planted some rare seeds a few days before and it was time to put them in the greenhouse Sabine and Bastianna had given her. It was a smaller building, almost a shed in comparision to the masoleum they lived in. But from three feet up, the entire structure was composed of metal and glass. Lovey brought in the pots of flower and set them where she asked him to. The tomatoes he'd trained to climb were beginning to bear fruits. The lettuce was ready to be thinned again, enough to make a nice large salad for them all. The potatoes had a few more weeks before the first bach wold be ready to dig.

There were other fruits and vegetables in this portion of the green house, but in the other glass room here was nothing but a room of flowers. The smell was intoxicating when you walked in there. Sometimes, it was so divine that the smell could almost knock you down. This was her happy place, this precious room of glass that they'd made for her. It had been extravagent, but they insisted. She couldn't possible be any happier with the area.  

[Nyx Queen of Darkness]

Sabine watched Kirke hum a peculiar song as she moved between the rows of plans. They had used all their hard save money for these glass panels. It was a luxary they'd been glad to pay for. The joy in Kirke's eyes was worth every shilling. Kirke had insisted that half the place be kept for growing foods and other useful ingredients. The mare had a green thumb for all that she had no thumbs and that they would have been black.

Sabine went back into her room and layed in the small alcove staring at the waterway in the floor. The water danced and with it, she slipped into those ethereal half dreams. The future shifted like sand on a beach. The fates swirled in eddies, each passing moment changing the larger picture.

She blinked out of her reverie. Their paths would lead them here soon--her brothers and sister. The thick stone would be a comfort as well as the powers and giftts each of the siblings posessed.  

[Nyx Queen of Darkness]

Lovey pressed the earth together at the base of the plant he'd transferred from the pot to the ground. It was a lovely camelia that he and Kirke had gotten a few weeks before. They'd nursed it from a small twig to this beautiful plant before them. It was small, but it was robust. Over the next year it would grow larger, already the tiniest bloom had started. In another few years they'd be able to transfer the plant outside along the walls of this place. Often he and Kirke stayed up late to discuss the layout of the gardens and shrubs as they grew. Each spot was planned to perfection crafted by studying how much light a place got or how much moisture. Since he had paws, he kept the notes for them and the diagrams. The place wasn't much to look at now but it would be soon.  

[Nyx Queen of Darkness]

Bastianna walked amongst the gravestones and stopped beside the one they had placed in honor of her grandmother Agatha. It was the blue moon and on this rare night it was said that the spirits of those we know drift closer to the veil. It was her job as matriarch to stand watch and wait for something to happen. And for it to work, the vigil in graveyard was to be completely alone.

It seemed the wind began to whisper.  

[Nyx Queen of Darkness]

As part of the ritual, Sabine, Kirke, Lovey, Gris-Gris along with any other souls had to leave Bastianna alone in the graveyard in her vigil. Sabine hated it, it felt wrong to leave her sister exposed out there, but it was how Bastianna would commune with their ancestors and become the new matriarch. As the muscle and protector of the graveyard, everything in her rebelled against being forced to stay inside and quiet. It was an unnatural state to her. Out there, Bastianna would be sitting till the dawn. She had left as her sister and she would come back as the matriarch, the decider of things. For Sabine, Bastianna always had been. Bastianna was the one who had raised them with guidance from their grandmother Agatha. It was Bastianna who had come here to this place to make her bones so that when her siblings came, the path would be set.  

[Nyx Queen of Darkness]

Kirke loved the silence. To her, silence had a special kind of voice that echoed. The wind sang as it stirred leaves, the world shifted it's earth while sleeping. It was as though she could feel the soil breathing peacefully after a long day. Her plants now cloaked in darkness pushed toward that hope for light.  

[Nyx Queen of Darkness]

Bastianna was what you would consider skeptical about most things. She always put on a devout face when it came to Santeria, but this was a thing she believed--in the strength of the matriarchal line of her family. She wasn't so foolish as to think that her grandmother would actually appear in translucent form to pass the mantel on to her. Bastianna had felt her grandmother's passing from hundred's of miiles away just as she had felt the shift of power come to her. This was more about showing no fear, sitting in the dark alone and waiting. She didn't know exactly what it was that she waited for, or really the point but she believed it. And even if she hadn't, there was power in the act--power by it just being seen.  

[Nyx Queen of Darkness]

The hours passed slowly and the restless urge to move made her get up. Sabine was careful not to disturb Gris-Gris (who hated to be awoken) and waded down the stairs into the pool of cool water. Everything in her wanted to dive beneath the edge and wade out into the pond then on into the river but she had to stay. This was a test for each of them, and for her it was about honor and duty. Respecting traditions instead of flouting them. She swam around in the water, her anger and frustration simmering like the embers of a fire. She felt as though the water around her should be boiling. Let the ancestors test her then, she would pass.  

[Nyx Queen of Darkness]

She rested her head lightly on Lovey's back. In his sleep, he curled his tail around her neck like a scarf. He held the hand of the little red teddy bear and she held the other hand in her mouth. Bastianna had plucked her up from being seen but ignored, abandoned. She had been the only mother that Kirke had ever known. She asked for nothing, but she nurtured her and did not care if others deemed her strange. It was like, when Bastianna looked at her that there was pride in her eyes. For all her smallness, it was as though Bastianna was a shield against the world. Kirke had learned that that was love, or at least the kind of love you had when you loved fiercely.

Bastianna had sewn together the ragged cloths that now made up her teddy bear and gave it to her as a gift. Something she could hold or hug when she felt anxious or when others looked at her in that judging way that made her feel as though there was something about her that was wrong. But Bastianna had told her that people feared what was different, that that's why Kirke was feared. Because she wasn't scared of different or new or old. She called it her gift.