[Forge PRP] Bonaventure, Ville de Mort.

[Nyx Queen of Darkness]

There was no pearly prescence or familiar voice that came. It was only a thought, a seed of a plan that seemed to grow quickly in her mind. A secret long forgotten that one of her brother's would bring with him. It was with clarity that only solitude can bring that she realized what she must do with that secret. Maybe this rite of passage wasn't anything but the time to reflect on her family, to reflect on what being a matriarch really meant. A kind of peace filed her that she had not known she was searching for. She felt sure that her family's future was secured. The secret alone would bring them protection or help against any threat if it ever came, and the proof her brother would bring would be even more. That was the thing about being a matriarch to this type of family, mutally assured destruction was a weapon she could wield if it came to it. Because the deal, that first deal had been built on an elaborate lie, a secret truth of theirs tha didn't actualy exist.  

[Nyx Queen of Darkness]

From the bottom of the stone lined pool that Sabine waded in, grew a light. It was soft like a light blue glow in the darker water. She knew that it meant the sun was rising,that it was hitting the water outside and sending in this one ray of light blue light.

She waded out of her pool even though she was eager to exit into the water outside rather than stay in doors. But she had promised and her sister watched, whether the ancestors did or not.

The cool air kissed her skin in the shadows of her room. Spring had not yet come fully but she had long stopped using a fire to keep her warm in her room. She ambled her way down the hall to the meeting room where she would wait as patiently as she could for Bastianna to return. By now though,her patience had worn thin.  

[Nyx Queen of Darkness]

The night was darker than most, not a star in the sky. The grass was damp with dew as her hooves moved through them without a whisper. But this was not the silence of night that was never truly silent with the stirrings of creatures and life. This was the silence of death, as though as sheet had been thrown down across all sounds making them cease to exist. Something was not right, not even the graveyard was silent in this way. This was the silence OF the grave or rather in the grave. Something prickled on the back of Kirke’s neck as she moved through thicker and thicker dew.  

[Nyx Queen of Darkness]

Bastianna sat letting the thoughts and plans coalesce in her mind. She let an idea meld with advice her grandmother Agatha had given her a long time ago. Patience was what she needed now and time. Though she was eager for the rest of her family to come and join her in their new home, she knew that things were not ready. There were still foundations to be laid, escapes to made, livestock to be secured, a well to be dig, and that was just the tip of the pyramid. There was so much more to be done, that with luck, no one from the outside would never realize had been done. Because what lay beneath the surface was a labrynith of things she didn’t want ever to be known--not if she was doing her job as matriarch right.

She arose from the damp grass with the sun and weaved her way amongst the gravestones back to the mausoleum they were turning into a home and a fortress.  

[Nyx Queen of Darkness]

When Bastianna came through the door, she knew that her sister had a plan. Sabine popped her shoulders as she listened to Bastianna outline all the things they would be doing in the coming months to prepare for the arrival of their kin.

She would be in charge of making sure there were ample escape routes in their home and out amongst the graveyard. She would also be tasked with making sure weapons would be easy to find if you knew where they were. There, of course, would be the things she’d have to travel and retrieve in preparation for their siblings---the things that couldn’t wait like the livestock her brothers would require or the bones from several other graveyards that their sister would need. If Bastianna was correct, and she was almost unerringly so, then the first of their siblings to come would arrive before the end of summer.  

[Nyx Queen of Darkness]

Dimly Kirke realize that this was a dream, even though she was still within the dream and dreaming. It was the only thing that made sense when she realized it was not dew on the grass, but blood. It dripped from the leaves of the trees and the waters ran with it.

Lovey's paw petted her nuzzle and brought her awake. Her heart was racing, but she was not afraid. Blood was not a thing that bothered her and she suspected that the dream was more her brain processing what was happening around her. She could feel the change in the air as she opened her eyes. The sun was just cresting in the window outside her and Lovey's room. To dream of blood, she thought that it meant Marcellus Casquette du Sang was coming. She would finally get to meet the rest of her family, the family that had taken her in and called her their own. The only family that mattered.  

[Nyx Queen of Darkness]

Bastianna's very bones were tired after her night-long vigil, but she explained in detail the plans she had for this place. For the most part, Sabine listened adding a recommendation here and there. Funds would have to be gathered, trips made, and even a few small favors called in to prepare. It was the foundation of their new life and they could not be more careful. But she knew that Sabine had been building in conjunction with the standards set forth by their ancestors since the beginning of their very first mausoleum.  

[Nyx Queen of Darkness]

The mausoleum proper was strong, Sabine had been sure to remove every brick before allowing the place to be rebuilt. She had made sure that in the mortar and mud used to seal the masonry together there had been something more--their blood and Kirke's. Every stone that was laid would be sealed together with a mixture containing it. Not just their blood, but the vials of blood she'd brought for each of their siblings and their grandmother to line the bottom stones, a protection as old as time itself. And there was the stone she'd carried from the last mausoleum to be laid in the middle of the most interior room. Marcellus would likely come next to finish the protection of blood and Celeste would come as soon as she had prepared Agatha's bones for travel.  

[Nyx Queen of Darkness]

Kirke had wandered into the room where Bastianna and Sabine stood. She listened intently as Bastianna went over the plans for the building and protections. The outer walls were largely finished and they had begun to lay the stones for the floor. It was a painstaking process of both making the stones and then placing them and drying them. There was blood mixed in the mortar along with bone dust and herbs that Kirke neither knew or understood.

The windows would be given collapsing stone to shut if they ever needed it. The foundation stones that Sabine had helped her lay were not just on the surface. Most places they went thirty feet down. Her room floor was largely made of dirt but it was still impossible to tunnel into because of the ground work laid fair below.  

[Nyx Queen of Darkness]

Bastianna walked with Sabine and Kirke into the meager room that would be Marcellus' when he came. They would have gladly spare no expense for his tastes, but they were quite basic. His floor was made of dirt and sprinkled with blood. Later she knew that the floor would be more clay in nature after he mixed in even more protection. The hearth to warm his room was the only bit of flamboyance. Several of the stone were removable and the rest were eaborately designed with symbols of various archaic things and the fleur de lis.  

[Nyx Queen of Darkness]

Sabine explained in detail the tunnels that she had begun.. The outer foundations of the building could not be dug under, the stone work went at least thirty feet down. Beneath the altar in Tunde's vast room would be the largest entrance to the catacombs. There was a trick lever that made the stone move and sent you down a tight spiraling staircase to the catacombs beneath. There Sabine had been digging with the help of Kirke, Bastianna, and their familiars--using some of the creatures that they would later use for sacrifice to carry out the dirt.

He was the more devout of them all, she wasn't sure if it was that he had true faith or if he just liked the ritual or excuse of it. Tunde though, was quite devout---the true believer  

[Nyx Queen of Darkness]

Kirke had come up with the solution to the dirt issue early on. It was easy for her to take the dirt and use it in her own room and in the large greenhouse. But even that proved to be too much dirt for either of those places. Every night, she helped Sabine take the dirt into her room where Sabine and Gris-Gris sifted it into the water making sure not to block the water pool in the room. Once it caught with the stream, especially during a storm or flood surge, the dirt and sand was rushed away without a trace.

Long stout wooden beams were cut then moved in during the secrecy of night. Each beam was used to support the earth around them while they enforced the catacombs they built. The tunnels were dug, spiraling out in numerous directions with concave little spaces to put a body, supplies, or provide a rest point.  

[Nyx Queen of Darkness]

Bastianna made sure long stout wooden beams were cut then moved in during the secrecy of night. Each beam was used to support the earth around them while they enforced the catacombs they built. The tunnels were dug, spiraling out in numerous directions with concave little spaces to put a body, supplies, or provide a rest point.


Then there was the bricking. Each wall though lined with stout beams was also enforced with stonework. Most of the places it was done it was for the sake of structure to enforce rather than anything else, but there was some places like the bone cells that were not only made for strength. There were three bone cells. Each was elaborately lined with the finest stonework and usually layered. The bars to the cells were made of bone that they had a metalworker encase in bronze.


She had also agreed secretly to make them the weapons they wished with no questions asked. There were more than they were likely to ever wield really, but they had to prepare for weapons to be lost or broken in fights.  

[Nyx Queen of Darkness]

Sabine smoothed the stones of the spiral staircase to cover any crack or groove, until the stones looked as though they were made of one continous piece of stone rather than with stones. The process brought a kind of soothing calm to her as she worked. She was not one to admire beauty but this was a different kind, the beauty of hard work and secrecy. She was proud of the results she was achieving. Gris-griss mixed the paste most of the time. Her little paws mixing out any lump or imperfection even as she griped about it.

The staircase would dry soon and then Sabine would decide if another coat was needed, the bone cells had been done this way several times. They would be nearly impossible to get out of.

She had smoothed out the ground in the great room where the catacombs began, but the rest were either tiled or dirt as need and time allowed.  

[Nyx Queen of Darkness]

Kirke's plans took more forethought. She and Lovey had built a drying rack then traded for salt to be able to store food longer. Most of what they would use would be eaten fresh, but the extra would all go towards the winter---and towards any inevitable disaster.

In her heart she knew that her family could at best be described as shady, but they were her family. They were everything to her. She'd heard that others had referred to them as devils or morally bankrupt, but how could they be when they loved her when no one else would? There was no purpose that she served that couldn't have bee fufilled by any old minion. She had value and worth because of who she was rather than she could do and no one would ever make her think otherwise.