Quiet Nights

[Cassandra]

OOC: This is just a sandbox to muck about in Cassandra's head and get a feel for her on off-nights. Very little important will happen here. And it's all in private. I fully expect to reuse entire sections from here in better RPs, once I figure out something works. Good writing takes repetition and experimentation. Enjoy it anyway.

The way the Sanctum was set up was like some titanic hand turned a church on its head, and pushed it into the ground with one massive finger. Its topmost floor - which, as it happened, was the ground floor - was the crypt itself. Whereas most church folk would put all the coffins in some subterranean undercroft right across from a gilded sacramental tabernacle, they were the first thing people saw upon entering Crypt Thirteen. Twelve wooden caskets, two pairs of six, flanked a carpeted walkway. The lids of each pair were inscribed with some sort of letter or crest, symbolizing the first six vampires who tore their way back out of the Shadow Realm and into a world of life once more.

The caskets were, of course, empty. Most of them had never held a body, and perhaps most of them never would. They were symbolic, a statement that all of their kind were bound together, had a place together, even if they never chose to use it. Missing from the chamber was any mention of the Traitor, upon whom their kind had turned their backs long ago. Many didn't even elect to use his name anymore, opting for the ultimate insult of consigning his identity to the mist of those unworthy of history.

The carpet ran along the middle aisle and dead-ended into the wall - if you believed your eyes. If you wanted to remain here long, however, you'd know how foolish that might be. Cleverly hid behind the illusion of a wall, a small dark room contained a circle etched into the floor. Arcane lines and whorls caused reality to dissolve around the room's occupant, stitching them back together one floor below.

Newly transported visitors would rematerialize in a large entry room constructed of dark stone - floors, walls, and ceiling. The room was entirely bare except for one wrought-iron chandelier and more patterns carved into the stone underfoot. The small circle our hypothetical visitor stood in was only part of a larger pattern: one circle at the southern compass point of an eight-pointed star, more teleportation circles centered upon the other three. To the left stretched a long hallway, while an archway ahead looked in upon shelves of books and tables for workspace.

Two of the other three circles led to significant points around the City, while the third went one level even deeper into the earth. An upper floor of many cathedrals housed cells for priests and clergy; the deepest level of the Dusk Sanctum was a sparsely-furnished apartment meant to be shared by the Sanctum's caretakers. At present, however, there was only one being filling the scant need for this role, so it was her belongings stretching to fill the seemingly cavernous space. As a result, it looked impersonal...disused, careless, dusty. As well it should, because most of her time lay along the path not taken in this spectral tour.

Following the long hallway to the left of the Portal Room led to the Sanctum Sanctorum. A common name for "inner sanctuary", it was obviously where all the care was placed in this endeavor, and it looked like nothing so much as a cathedral lit for vespers. There were stained-glass windows on the walls, but there was nothing to look out onto as the sanctuary was below ground. Instead, the windows cleverly concealed alcoves in the stone wall, and light within to illuminate their artistic, scenic menagerie. Pews lined either side of the walkway, with wider seats than would be found in a church centuries ago, but still carved from simple wood into hard backs meant for piety and not comfort.

Violet carpeting paved the walkway, leading up to a fountain of clear water over an engraved moon. Altars stood off to either side of the fountain, and beyond it lay an indoor garden. Stone floor gave way to soil covered in species of ground-cover which thrived in low light. Boxes delineated patches of Scarlet Ammania, Blueheart blossoms, and orange-edged Green Dragon leaves. To one side of this space, looking alien in the subterranean vault, even stood a tree. It was squat and thick, as if it would make up for its restricted height by growing wide of trunk and robust of branch.

Two paces behind the fountain stood an obelisk engraved with the holy symbol of Noxism - a moon within a drop of blood. It sought to oversee the room, a stark representation of this place's purpose, and it did an admirable enough job when it had nothing to preside over besides a tree and some varnished seats. Unfortunately for the basalt bishop, its purpose was dwarfed by the presence of the room's sole animate denizen.

Leaning on the sill of the fountain was a figure that would be unremarkable by any standard, were it cast in common materials like metal or stone. She was not particularly tall, nor short; she was not beautiful, but her demeanor and expression lent a handsomeness to otherwise plain features. Her long brown hair was combed simply; her attire was without guile, and a certain pallor to her cheeks evidenced a lack of interest in the magics of makeup, even if it would go far to hide her nature.

Instead, her nature was quite literally on display for anyone who came in to see. Hovering a foot above the surface of the water, a sphere of softly glowing, ever-changing numbers and letters rotated a handful of degrees per second. An ability she had cobbled together from her developing telepathic abilities and intuition for the networked world, the sphere displayed information to her in a manner more concise and accurate than any flat-screen monitor she'd ever run across. Her eyes, formerly the light brown of a fawn's hide and now the gray-flecked dun of a old book's mouldering leather binding, twitched back and forth. Searching, they examined every character of the sphere with precision and analytic finesse.

Something out in the Portal Room rustled. Dismissing the globe with a negligent wave of her hand, the brown eyes focused back on reality instead of the mutating characters of the Datasphere or the swirling mists of the Vathia. With the disappearance of the globe also went something else in those eyes - a good measure of their confidence. In the glittering data trails of the cybernetic world, she had a solid presence. Here, though, in reality...this was a different case.

Instinctively opening her mouth to call out, all that became audible was a distorted electronic screech, and her hand quickly covered the offending lips. Her speech had been taken nearly a year ago, in the dark realm that served as either an afterlife or a waiting room for her kind. She'd returned, but her voice had not. Instead, she focused on a talent she'd developed over long months by herself, broadcasting her thoughts to whoever might be outside.

"Blessings of Night," the thought/voice came. "I am Cassandra."

[Cassandra]

OOC: Tentative new Character Sheet Description

When she was human, Cassandra was very nondescript and drew little attention to herself - light hair, average height, average weight, average looks, and forgettable eye color. Clearly introverted, Cass kept to herself, spoke softly, and smiled easily. After her turning, the bookish girl turned to the faith of Noxism, its study and ministry to her fellow vampires.

Then, her murder (and the resultant extended period in the Shadow Realm) changed the girl from the inside out. The miasma escalated her innate weaknesses, turning simple shyness into social anxiety and a severe reluctance to go out in public. Her human voice was lost completely, transformed into a distorted electronic cacophony whenever she attempted to speak. In a perverse mirror of one of tenets of her faith, she was left as weak as a human during the full moon. While none of this was easily noticeable by the casual observer, her movements and demeanor were left slightly off as well, evidence that no part of her was left untouched by the change.

However, what the Shadow Realm took away, her vampiric gifts supplanted. After returning, Cassandra gained the ability not only to speak with others through telepathy, but to impart her memories to them as well. Her other mental abilities, including her talent for computers and hacking, increased as well. The touch of the miasma upon her mind even helped her better understand the wraith of Damien Eventide, last living priest of pre-Holocaust Noxism.

Cassandra can now be found studying the Tome of Stygia to which she is bound, between the stone walls of the Dusk Sanctum, where she is willing to give counsel and assistance to those who seek it.

[Cassandra]

The tree probably would have been better outside where it could tower into the sky, but it did its best with the situation it was in. Branches stretched up to the vaulted ceiling of the Sanctorum, some of the leaves touching the delicate stonework of the ceiling far overhead. It was curious why the leaves even turned upward - all the illumination came from down near the floor, candles and soft indirect lighting installed to feature the stained glass. Some latent enchantment probably confused the leaves and caused them to grow normally, but the tree knew well enough where its limits were, left the ceiling itself unharmed, and swelled horizontally to fill the space it was allotted. Thick branches proved perfect for climbing and sitting, amongst other things.

Cassandra watched one of the amongst-other-things curiously, draped over a branch. She wasn't too worried about anyone seeing her, since visitors had been few and far between for quite a while. As such, she was bent at the waist over a thick branch, rear in the air, hands and feet dangling lazily below her. The Tome of Stygia, holy book of her belief, swayed slowly back and forth a handful of inches above the ground, dangling sacrilegiously at the end of the chain binding it to Cassandra's wrist. She considered it payback - when she awoke that morning, she found it'd decided to take one of its biggest forms yet. It was presently nearly a foot and a half on a side, and several inches thick, with a chain the size of one she'd once seen someone tow a truck out of a ditch with. It looked like it should be pulling painfully at her thin wrist, but vampiric strength was a many-wondered thing.

Cassandra was staring thoughtfully at two smaller branches, a bit below her and arm's-length away. Between the oversized twigs, an orb spider was weaving a solid web, glimmering satin threads spiraling out from the web's stabilimentum to entrap any unwary insects that happened to pass that way. Cass couldn't for the life of her figure out what it hoped to trap - besides some crawling bugs taking up residence in the soil beneath the tree and other gardening boxes, the sanctuary was pretty insect-free. Still, she admired its determination and the effort it was going through.

Tilting her head to one side, she half-smiled at the arachnid. Reaching out with her mind, she touched its consciousness lightly. "Hello," she crooned softly. Even the one word was too much for the spider's tiny mind, though - its legs curled up beneath it, rigid, and it fell from the web into the grass beneath. Cassandra sighed.

"Well, blast."