Run by: Stilled Silence (4 xp)

Player: Kardama

At the appointed time and place the an acolyte Nimble Nick, such as any servant of mischief can be considered religious, makes the appropriate offer, burning a scrip of jade and invoking the name of Lord Kardama, beseeching your assistance in a matter of grave importance. Little do they know these wishes do not communicate directly to you but fortunately for him, you happen to be just right nearby. Appointed times and places are handy for such illusions, after all.

Being a god -- or even a sort-of god -- has its benefits. And then sometimes it has its responsibilities. Kardama can pick up on the tiny candle in his soul that represents his nascent faith, and the urgent flicker of its need. And so the Midnight Sun turned his way home, silently passing through in the dead of night, until he moves tracelessly into the tiny building used as his shrine. As Nimble Nick's soft prayer reaches its end, Kardama coughs politely from where he's standing right behind the acolyte. "You know, the request for benediction really isn't necessary. Like all thieves, we make our own luck."

Nick jumps a bit, startled by the utter silence of your approach. He stays kneeled though, his head bowed to the ground and glancing up just far enough to see your feet. "We...we know Lord Kardama. We foll that precept wit all our heart, you know dat. But...somethin' ain't right. People dyin' and the guard they be blamin' us, but we dyin' too. Not so many, you know, we a cagey bunch, but...we scared."

Kardama nods. "I believe you. When I left, I laid down certain rules about bloodshed. I don't doubt you followed them." He walks past the acolyte, looking at the tiny altar, then shrugs and sits down crosslegged, resting his forearms on his knees. "Tell me everything. Why are people dying? Is there a sickness?"

"We...we not really doctors you know," Nick says, only slightly more comfortable with your easy posture. "People say is natural, but we seen some of 'em before the constabulary got dere, those poor folk look like frightened ta death."

Kardama rests his chin upon his fist. "Frightened. Hmmmmm. Not impossible, I guess... Nick, I need you to think hard about this. Where did they all die? Were they on the street, in their houses? Don't think like a doctor, Nick... think like a thief. This isn't a mystery -- it's a house you're casing, and you need to find all the sweet spots." He smiles at the young cutpurse -- trying to encourage him.

Nick scrunches up his face a bit and thinks REALLY REALLY hard. He definately doesn't want to screw this up. "I...well..." he says, awfully unsure of himself. "It don't make no sense, I mean... it seem sporadic. Street, house, more inside I guess. Now I think about it, been mostly guys. More young'r than older but not entirely."

Kardama nods. "Not that random then. I think something's come to town and is doing a little hunting." He rubs his chin. "How often have people turned up dead? Every few days?" He's starting to wonder if perhaps Nick should stay in the shrine tonight.

Nick shrugs, "I...I cannae rightly say. Is certainly become common enough to give us concern, that fer sure."

Kardama smiles suddenly. "Well, then there's only one thing to do. Chase it down and get some answers." He smoothly levers himself to his feet. "Nick, I want you to stay here. I don't know what this may be, but I'm certain it'll be dangerous." He places a hand on the thief's shoulder. "You did the right thing."

"Th...thank you lord," Nick says, looking very appreciative, and hopeful.

Kardama immediately strides out of the building, shutting the door behind him. "Let's see..." Smoothly, he slips into the alley, then gets a good head start and runs right up the side of the building next to his shrine... clearing the rooftop with easy and balancing on it as he begins swiftly heading towards the more populated area in the town.

From your vantage it is clear that a problem exists here. Having studied the way that marks walk too and from their destinations, people here seem furtive and aware. You'd scarcely think that Nimble Nick and his companions could work in such an environment, the people are on edge so. Your thieves are not the only one who have felt this problem, of that you can be quite certain. Their is quite a heavier guard presence as well, with at least one lethal looking individual at every street corner.

Kardama scowls slightly at the state of affairs. . o O (This is like Greyfalls. They'll /never/ get anything done at this rate -- people are too paranoid.) He begins to work his way across the rooftops, avoiding the guards -- no point in getting into an utterly pointless tussle -- and trying to find something out of the ordinary beyond the state of affairs. . o O (I really don't want to be bait -- it'll call too much attention -- but I may have to be...)

From a nearby window you hear a couple inside having a conversation that sounds like it might just be relevant. "I'm tellin' ya Helen, it was Julianna. Which ain't right, I know, she been dead near 10 year now, ain't it? But I know family, I do. She come out that house down the way and not 20 minute later the guard up in all a fuss about it, some poor old feller 'parently screamed for help and till anyone got there he was dead'er than a doornail."

Kardama pauses, and listens. He taps his chin. . o O (Someone dead... a ghost? Damn it, next time I see sifu I'm hitting him up for some instruction.) Silently, he creeps away, then makes his best speed for the graveyard. . o O (I just hope I'm good enough to handle a ghost. Give me a good old fashioned bag of jade to steal any day.)

The graveyard is closed, though simple gates pose no problem to one such at Kardama. You find everything inside, well, deathly still.

The silence tingles at the edges of your perception, less movement and more a displacement of stale of air. Shattered then by a ghostly, keening wail from behind you and the sound of blade cutting air.

Lunging with a visage twisted into pure rage, this pale and ghostly appearing, yet definitively corporeal figure, stands slight and thin. A highly ornamental but no less deadly looking silver 'dagger' about 7 inches long is death-gripped in her right hand and a defensive cloak of utter darkness moans with it's own deathly voice. You get the impression she really doesn't want to talk, as the blade comes cutting in once, twice.

Kardama sidesteps the first blow, then impossibly bends out of the way of the second, the air around him flickering. "Alright," he growls, snapping back upright, the shimmer of a golden ring appearing on his brow, "we do this the hard way!" He plants a foot on the gravestone and kicks off, whirling as his fists come around and pick up speed -- a right cross followed by a left hook.

Kardama shakes his head. "What, are you stupid, Julianna? You're not going to be able to keep this up -- and I bet I can run up and down buildings faster than you." He vaults backwards again, cartwheeling till he lands deftly balanced on the top of the fence. "And then they salt you in and send for the Immaculates. I'm a lot kinder than they are; you might want to reconsider."

"I will slay them as I shall you, child," Julianna says in a raspy voice. "My sacrifice has made me immortal, until oblivion swallow us all." She is surprisingly agile, better than keeping pace and leaping over the fence, taking a single slash at your chest ash she does so.

Kardama flickers as he sidesteps yet another slash, remaining on the fence's edge. "And I thought you were reasonable, Julianna. Why did you kill all those men, anyways? Did someone wrong you ten years ago?" He deftly dances along the fence, moving along it as he contemplates his next move. "Man, sifu's gonna laugh his godly arse off at me when he hears about this...:"

         "Still your voice, boy," she says with distinct disdain. "The memories of the past are none of your concern. I have avenged myself upon that fool Byron who wronged me, now all will know the pain of a woman scorned." An pain it is, that nasty looking dagger coming you way once again.

Kardama bends impossibly away from yet another savage slash. "Byron, hm. Sorry to hear that. However, you're really cramping my style here, Julianna." Essence crackles around him, and he vaults straight up and away as if on a rocket, smoothly landing on a rooftop two stories up in a crouch. "Besides, if you really had let Byron go, you wouldn't be wandering around trying to kill people. You're just doing it over and over because /you can't let it go/."

Julianna begins to scale the building with great alacrity, but it will take her at least a few precious seconds to get there. This really isn't going the way she wanted it to. "What is your point, child? I said he was slain, not that I no longer cared. That callous wretch of a man took from me everything, and the rest are the same."

Kardama tsks. "And so you ruin the lives of other women? Mothers, wives, daughters who loved those men?" He looks down at her, his features distorted ever so slightly by the burning golden ring on his brow. "That's what you're doing here, Julianna. You're doing to them what was done to you. And by doing so... you're no better than Byron was. You want revenge, real revenge on him?"

Julianna pauses for a moment near the end of her climb. "Real revenge...yessss."

Kardama nods. "Then let it go, Julianna. Break free. The Unconquered Sun loves you, Julianna... just as he loved a back-alley thief and raised him up to be the Midnight Sun." No one will ever mistake Kardama for a priest, but maybe that's not what's needed here. "The greatest triumph is to prove him wrong." And he takes a chance, reaching down with an open hand. Not to strike, but to lift her onto the rooftop.

 Julianna stares at you with hate filled flickering orbs of fire, thinking for a moment.

 "Maybe...maybe I was the wrong one," Julianna says, looking very confused for a moment. "I offer you a compromise, servant of the sun. You have one week to give me a better reason than the eternal love of that wretched diety. At that time, I will resume my destrutive desires that consume me."

Kardama shakes his head. "If he is that wretched, then why was I set against you?" He smiles down at the spectral woman. "I'm not here to lay judgement, Julianna... the Midnight Sun is a mischief-god, after all. But I'm also a kind man at heart. I do not wish pain upon you, only for you to rest and be reborn. What better way to snatch victory from Byron's grasping fingers than to start over?"

"I hunger for the life so wrongly taken from me," Julianna retorts. "Bring me one last mortal that I may suffuse myself with the rush of life, and I will do as you say. I'm no fool enough to think I can stand against the friends you will have come calling, but neither do you have the power to stop me on your own. Give me this last treat, and you can claim the glory of this victory."

Kardama sighs. "Don't you understand, Julianna? This isn't about glory. I don't give a damn if nobody else knows what happened up here. I just want it to stop." He looks her in the eyes. "And I think you want it to stop too, or you wouldn't be trying to dictate terms to me. No more, Julianna. If you want new life -- and you can grasp it -- then you know what you have to do. But you won't get it by killing mortals, or me. You'll just be taking it from others, wrongly. Just as Byron did to you."

"I'm dictating terms so you leave me in peace to stew in my rage," Juilanna says very matter of factly. "Which you don't seem to be terribly interested in doing. Now give me a /good/ reason to stop this right now or I'm going to go out there and see how many I can get before you've stopped me, I'll bet I get at least 30," she says with a cruel smile.

Kardama raises an eyebrow. "I want to /help/ you, Julianna. I'd much rather you let yourself be reborn than thrash about in anguish." Once again, he reaches out to her. "You keep insisting all there is for you is rage and murder. I am telling you there is another way -- do you have the courage to take it?"

"No, I don't," Julianna says, looking at you deadpan.

Kardama pffts. "You're not a good liar. If you didn't have courage, you'd have never tried to take a swipe at a Solar. Hell, I could've been Chronos for all you know, and that would've ended things really badly, now wouldn't it?" He scratches his chin. "What happened, anyways? You might as well tell me -- it's not like I can't find out eventually. Maybe I'll ask Helen, I bet she'd know."

 "It was all his fault!" Julianna wails. "He was the evil one! Not me! I just tried to make him happy and that bastard hypocrite kicked me to the curb."

Kardama nods. "He didn't deserve you. He probably filled your ears with scorn about how you weren't a good wife. Told you that you were a monster, stealing happiness, right?"

"Uh, well...no." Julianna says, drooping and looking a bit sad. "He was evil, rotten to the core. But when I sacrificed our daughter he forsook me as evil, whence it was under his influence I became only desiring of pleasing him."

Kardama just looks at the ghost, a long, even stare that he perfected when his cult was still forming. "So," he says, keeping his voice level, "he was evil for objecting to the sacrifice of his child?"

"It...is a bit more complicated than that," Julianna says, "But yes. He'd sacrificed dozens of people! I just wanted to make him happy."

"I was a good girl! I was! And he ruined me!" Julianna adds.

Kardama pushes down any sudden anger. Complicit in the deaths of gods known how many... but there's no point to rehashing that now. She's dead; what's he going to do, kill her /twice/? "So where is Byron now?"

"He the first I killed, he was," Julianna says with a hint of...is that pride.

Kardama looks patiently at Julianna. "So what's the point of staying here then? All you're doing is killing random people for no reason -- oh, you can justify it with your anger, but it's still eminently pointless. Why not turn over a new leaf? Maybe fate will be kinder to you than Byron was."

"Know ye a priest of your kind?" Julianna asks.

Kardama looks amused. "One or two. This had better not end with 'I'm going to need one...'"

"Bring one, have them atone me my sins, and I shall go on my way." Julianna says, letting the knife slip from her hand and sighing heavily.

Kardama does something no one might expect. He steps over, and gently puts his arms around the ghost. Embracing the cold not-flesh, a gift. "I will," he says firmly. "I promise."

It takes two nights to find help, and in the end Kardama is forced to call on his mentor. And so at the stroke of midnight, a deep, shifting shadow stands before Julianna's grave, expanding into the image of the Unconquered Sun, resplendent even with its ebon countenance. Kardama kneels humbly behind the god of Calibration, as the stern visage of Five Days Darkness speaks.

"It is not given to mortals, or even to the Exalted, to know where the path will lead when their lives end. But the promise of renewal is there, as sure as the Unconquered Sun rises in the East. I know what it is to be lost in the dark, and therefore I aid those who strive to light the way." One great hand extends out. "As the shadow of Sol Invictus, I accept this burden; to absolve thee of thy sins, Julianna, and cast thou into the waters of Lethe. Go, and be reborn free from the pain of a lifetime; for this is the gift of the gods to all mortals. Cast aside thy life, and seek renewal."

And so she does, ending this tale of betrayal and psychosis.