Canen Darkflight
08-07-07, 07:10 AM
((OOC notes: The events in this thread take place between 108 and 123AD (AD: After Domine) in the Nocturnian timeline in Canen's past. For a fuller description and understanding of these events, and their follow ups, please read the segments in Canen's history in his profile under the said dates.
The Riisan Black Fist are the technological equal of Alerar in terms of vehicles and the like. They use steam powered airships and small arms such as flintlocks, but nothing more advanced than that.
Gideon Xerxes is property of Fallen Angel and has been used with permission as an NPC for this thread. I do not own Gideon, and in some cases there may be discrepancies to character backgrounds as Fallen Angel may have further developed his plot. However, the account given below is, at the time of writing, as close to and as realistic as the original plots for Canen and Gideon as can be.
This one is for Jon, who'se roleplaying, writing and ideas I miss sorely, and anyone who took interest in the Khaians and Nocturnis.))
The Mirror of Epitaph
"Always raining…" Canen muttered, shaking his black hair as he emerged from the doorway. Gideon, who had stopped under the awning at the front of the silver rune hewn temple of Khaia, shook his head silently, a single pale hand rested on the hilt of the sheathed Vampire Blade, as always, in habit alone. His ceremonial red robes flashed under his black greatcoat, rushed by the constant breeze that swept through the valley settlement in the dark and cold winter months. Hugging a huge textbook to his chest, the young Canen staggered up to the tiny porch of the adjacent mortar, lumber and clay house and pushed up against the wall, breathing heavily through the heavy mist of rain that had been pounding Khaia’s streets for three days. He hoped that this awful weather would cease before every single scripture he had to bring home was destroyed.
The night was darker than sin. The heavy, cumbersome rain clouds had rolled over the valley and hung there for longer than expected, even in the winter season, flash flooding the less than perfectly maintained roads with sudden downpours and drowning out the crops in the wheat fields to the south, near the farming town of Sael. Indeed, the weather was hampering everybody’s day to day lives.
"Well," Canen said, turning to the towering, almost ghostly figure of Gideon, who had slowly crept up to the blackened doorway. "We managed to get what we needed. The manuscript should prove useful for the task. But Gideon, I must ask of you, what do you intend to use the Mirror for?" The Khaian, peering up at Canen through the glassy sheets of rain, frowned.
"Whatever my heart desires, brother, surely." Gideon piped up, with a rare sly grin, perhaps using it as a mask, quoting the vaguest passage from the memorised pages of the book Canen was grasping without technically telling a lie. It hadn’t gone unnoticed to Canen that Gideon had been keeping his cards close to his chest recently. His shadowy movements between libraries, spending more and more time away from the family and out in the woods, hunting, was a very sudden behavioural change. Was there something Canen had missed?
"I’m guessing everything will be made clear later then." Canen tacked on to Gideon’s statement. It seemed he had been out of touch with his best friend and his old Khaian ways for several years, since the death of Gideon’s father, Gabriel. Once he had known almost all of Gideon’s time to be spent with Canen doing what the young Khaian’s woud do best, buying and trading new equipment with most of the shopkeepers in Sael, training to hunt with Gideon’s tutor Ardemis in the nearby Riisan forests and just relaxing in the local hot springs. Now, having had his world turned upside down by the morbid events of the past years, the Riisan and Domine civil wars, and the horrifying and abrupt murder of Gideon’s father Gabriel he found his friend to be a ghostly shadow of his former self, and in most people's minds Canen was thought to hate that.
There was some truth in that. Canen had long since gotten used to Gideon being, if not by blood, then certaintly a brother by nature to the young Khaian. Witnessing the constant changes Gideon had gone through, feeling the suppressed hatred flowing through Gideon’s veins for the Riisans and realising that some things just could never be the same again was enough to feel some animosity towards his best friend, even if it wasn’t a direct emotion. Perhaps he hated the Riisans more for causing this in the first place. Another issue was that Gideon was remembered in Khaian society as the son of Gabriel, and not Gideon, the Xerxes family figurehead, the heir to the legacy, and that was if he was even remembered at all. Now he found it hard to relate to the few people he could still call his friends what he was experiencing in both dealing with the death of his father and coming to terms with Khaia’s new and cold reference tags for him.
"A bitter night tonight Canen," Gideon muttered, avoiding bringing clarity to the subject of the mirror, and instead choosing to state facts about the weather. “We should go inside. I fear we will catch our death out in these brutal winter nights. Come inside where it is warm and where we can drink the supple Tokay wine I have been saving.”
With a smooth gesture, the pale hand of Gideon Xerxes warmly ushered into his home the ringing wet Khain, and closed the door, grasping and firmly bolting the metal lock to his right.
The Riisan Black Fist are the technological equal of Alerar in terms of vehicles and the like. They use steam powered airships and small arms such as flintlocks, but nothing more advanced than that.
Gideon Xerxes is property of Fallen Angel and has been used with permission as an NPC for this thread. I do not own Gideon, and in some cases there may be discrepancies to character backgrounds as Fallen Angel may have further developed his plot. However, the account given below is, at the time of writing, as close to and as realistic as the original plots for Canen and Gideon as can be.
This one is for Jon, who'se roleplaying, writing and ideas I miss sorely, and anyone who took interest in the Khaians and Nocturnis.))
The Mirror of Epitaph
"Always raining…" Canen muttered, shaking his black hair as he emerged from the doorway. Gideon, who had stopped under the awning at the front of the silver rune hewn temple of Khaia, shook his head silently, a single pale hand rested on the hilt of the sheathed Vampire Blade, as always, in habit alone. His ceremonial red robes flashed under his black greatcoat, rushed by the constant breeze that swept through the valley settlement in the dark and cold winter months. Hugging a huge textbook to his chest, the young Canen staggered up to the tiny porch of the adjacent mortar, lumber and clay house and pushed up against the wall, breathing heavily through the heavy mist of rain that had been pounding Khaia’s streets for three days. He hoped that this awful weather would cease before every single scripture he had to bring home was destroyed.
The night was darker than sin. The heavy, cumbersome rain clouds had rolled over the valley and hung there for longer than expected, even in the winter season, flash flooding the less than perfectly maintained roads with sudden downpours and drowning out the crops in the wheat fields to the south, near the farming town of Sael. Indeed, the weather was hampering everybody’s day to day lives.
"Well," Canen said, turning to the towering, almost ghostly figure of Gideon, who had slowly crept up to the blackened doorway. "We managed to get what we needed. The manuscript should prove useful for the task. But Gideon, I must ask of you, what do you intend to use the Mirror for?" The Khaian, peering up at Canen through the glassy sheets of rain, frowned.
"Whatever my heart desires, brother, surely." Gideon piped up, with a rare sly grin, perhaps using it as a mask, quoting the vaguest passage from the memorised pages of the book Canen was grasping without technically telling a lie. It hadn’t gone unnoticed to Canen that Gideon had been keeping his cards close to his chest recently. His shadowy movements between libraries, spending more and more time away from the family and out in the woods, hunting, was a very sudden behavioural change. Was there something Canen had missed?
"I’m guessing everything will be made clear later then." Canen tacked on to Gideon’s statement. It seemed he had been out of touch with his best friend and his old Khaian ways for several years, since the death of Gideon’s father, Gabriel. Once he had known almost all of Gideon’s time to be spent with Canen doing what the young Khaian’s woud do best, buying and trading new equipment with most of the shopkeepers in Sael, training to hunt with Gideon’s tutor Ardemis in the nearby Riisan forests and just relaxing in the local hot springs. Now, having had his world turned upside down by the morbid events of the past years, the Riisan and Domine civil wars, and the horrifying and abrupt murder of Gideon’s father Gabriel he found his friend to be a ghostly shadow of his former self, and in most people's minds Canen was thought to hate that.
There was some truth in that. Canen had long since gotten used to Gideon being, if not by blood, then certaintly a brother by nature to the young Khaian. Witnessing the constant changes Gideon had gone through, feeling the suppressed hatred flowing through Gideon’s veins for the Riisans and realising that some things just could never be the same again was enough to feel some animosity towards his best friend, even if it wasn’t a direct emotion. Perhaps he hated the Riisans more for causing this in the first place. Another issue was that Gideon was remembered in Khaian society as the son of Gabriel, and not Gideon, the Xerxes family figurehead, the heir to the legacy, and that was if he was even remembered at all. Now he found it hard to relate to the few people he could still call his friends what he was experiencing in both dealing with the death of his father and coming to terms with Khaia’s new and cold reference tags for him.
"A bitter night tonight Canen," Gideon muttered, avoiding bringing clarity to the subject of the mirror, and instead choosing to state facts about the weather. “We should go inside. I fear we will catch our death out in these brutal winter nights. Come inside where it is warm and where we can drink the supple Tokay wine I have been saving.”
With a smooth gesture, the pale hand of Gideon Xerxes warmly ushered into his home the ringing wet Khain, and closed the door, grasping and firmly bolting the metal lock to his right.