Two Deaths - One Night

[d0ntc4r3 104]

     On a peculiar night of the current year, two women, who quite ironically hated each other yet didn’t know it, found their lives terminated whilst on a boat traveling between Haria and Courland. One of them, Theodora Palaiologos, was in the midst of a coughing fit while her son, Theodore, was tending to her side. The other women, an old maid named Mira Sansya, was facing the same affliction only a few decks below Theodora.
     Theodora, aged 66, called on her son to fetch her more water, while down below, Theodora’s various servants were tending to Mira, aged 94.
     Theodora knew her life was going to end soon. Oh, how she had accomplished so much yet so little throughout her life. She closed her eyes, wanting to bask in the memories.
     One of her earliest memories was being locked up in a prison as a child with her brother, Demetrios, and watching as the Vanirs killed their father during the Dukes’ War. Once the War was over, her brother worked his way up Courland’s chain of command, becoming good friends with Duke Richard Staunton. Demetrios became a knight, though some claimed his anointment was unofficial. Regardless, the Duke granted the family the keep of Nikae, formerly known as Kraken’s Watch under House Vanir.
     Theodora was not content with their status, however. She wanted the House to go further in society and become nobles. She scolded her brother over his attempt to marry a peasant Girl, while Demetrios claimed it was true love. The girl said was pregnant, prompting Theodora to privately threaten to kill both the girl and the child should they attempt to rise above their ranks.
‘How hypocritical,’ she thought now. Regardless, Demetrios would later kick the ‘girl’ out upon discovery of her masculine origins.
     Then Demetrios began spending more time with an old family friend named Valeria. Theodora was at first suspicious of Valeria, but grew to become friends with her. Valeria’s husband was promised a barony in Lorraine, and Valeria asked Theodora to teach her how to lead, in which she complied. Theodora and Valeria bonded over their search to find a suitable match for Theodora. Demetrios had originally planned for Theodora to marry one of their neighbors, Luke Alexander, who also owned a keep, but Theodora protested, saying that she was going to marry the person SHE wanted, not her brother. Another reason she didn’t want to marry Luke was because half his family seemed to have died almost overnight. She thought it might be a curse, so found it best to stay well away from that.
     Meanwhile, Valeria’s sister-in-law had insulted the Duke of Lorraine, thereby preventing her husband from attaining a barony. The two divorced shortly after. During their marriage, they had a total of 2 children, the youngest named Nikolas.
     At one point in time, Valeria and Theodora were talking in the dining hall of Nikae when Demetrios came in, bleeding from all sorts of wounds. He had been attacked by bandits. In her panic, Theodora would cry in front of anyone for the first time in her life. Demetrios healed, fortunately, and Valeria moved into a mansion near Nikae.
     At another point in time, Theodora had been called away by a Lorrainian guard, who claimed a noble wished to meet her about marriage. She followed, and was taken to a discrete location by a river. 3 men came along, one of which was named Maulhawk, who knocked out the guard and attempted to attack Theodora. Valeria stumbled upon the ambush and was attacked as well. The two of them were killed, only to be revived by the Cloud Temple Monks. Theodora then plotted her revenge against the men who attacked her. She reported the crime to the Lorrainian guard, and came up with a plan for her own ambush.
     She would have her brother’s squire draw the men into a discrete location. Then he’d yell out a phrase, and Courlandian troops would come rushing out to attack them. The plan ultimately never fell through as Demetrios never got around to asking the Duke of Courland to help.
     Theodora began to notice certain behavior between Valeria and Demetrios: a glance here, a handhold there. She would imply to them their love, only for them to awkwardly deny such a thing. One day, Valeria privately told Theodora of their love, and that they would be getting married. Contrary to Valeria’s belief, Theodora supported the decision. Before the wedding, Theodora met a man named Ser Ulric Tiberan, and they hit it off rather quickly. Ulric was invited to the wedding, and he shortly afterwards received a barony in Erochland, called Eroch’s Watch. Theodora and Ulric had scheduled a wedding. Ulric wanted to marry Theodora out of love, but Theodora wanted to marry Ulric for his name. However, delays set in place and they began to lose interest.
     Through their various love making, Demetrios and Valeria had 2 children: Constantinos and Anastasia. Furthermore, their long-lost sister, Persefone, had come home. The family was growing and the future looked bright.
     But then, tragedy after tragedy occurred. Valeria had been found dead, murdered, in the dining hall of Nikae. The killer had never been found. They buried her in a crypt beneath Nikae.
The second tragedy was their eviction. The Emperor of Oren had declared that Nikae belongs to Britannus Vanir, who renamed the keep Kraken’s Watch.
     Homeless, she vowed to seek revenge against the Vanirs, to kill them all. First they kill her father, then they take her home. To further infuriate her, they had destroyed Valeria’s crypt.
She plotted to create a coalition of forces in and around Courland. After saving the life of the Master of the Order of Vincere from Dagr Vanir, who had accused the man of heresy, she managed to convince the Master to join her on her mission. She was also confident she could persuade Ser Florent of Duppendale to help her. To benefit her situation even more, the Emperor gave Demetrios a fief in northern Courland.
     Everything was falling into place, except it all went awry when Duke Aleksander Staunton acted before her. In the course of 2 Saint Days, both Arik and Vasili Vanir were killed, and the Vanirs had fled Courland. Nikae was once again the property of House Palaiologos. Demetrios, not one to miss out on life, fell in love with a doctor named Rosalyn. They got married and had a son named Alistair. Things were on the up-and-up.
     But the Vanirs, it would seem, would not back down from a fight. They got the aid of the Duchy of Carnatia, thus plunging the two duchies into war. The Emperor himself even sanctioned the war, allowing the two sides to fight it out.
     Quite stupidly, Theodora walked right into Carnatia and was subsequently captured. There, she was tortured. The Gold Corps cut off her hands and her feet, but she still fought back with everything she had. She eventually bled out and was repaired by the Cloud Temple Monks. She made it back to Courland and back to her brother. There, she learned that another long-lost sibling named Theodore had come home.
     During the Battle of Vasili’s Hills, she fought hard against the Carnatian onslaught, but to no avail. The Courlandic Army lost that day, prompting the Carnatians to plan a siege of Nikae.
Her brother Demetrios was hell-bent on fighting till the death at that siege. Upon hearing this, she broke out crying. This would be the second time she had ever cried in front of another person. Fearing her brother’s death, she met in secret with Fiske and Emma Vanir at the Royal Palace. In her frenzied state, she pushed for an ill-thought-out peace where neither side wins: simply give Nikae/Kraken’s Watch to some other family and forget about the whole ordeal. The two Vanirs promptly rejected the proposal, planning instead to continue with the siege.
     As she was attempting to leave the palace, a man named Jaromir tried to kill her with her own sword. She managed to escape, but lost her sword.
     She was soon pressured by her brother into marrying a man named Carrick MacCanonach. How ironic that the sole reason she hadn’t married until this point was because she didn’t want to marry someone out of her brother’s request.
     From this marriage, she gave birth to a baby girl. She named her Valeria Palaiologos after her late friend. She and Carrick had decided earlier to give their children her maiden name so they are nobility by birth. Of course, Theodora wanted this as she didn’t want some peasant taking over her family name.
     Sitting in Carrick’s cabin far off into the woods, she and Demetrios talk for a while. She learns of the affair between Demetrios’s first wife, Valeria, and William Roswell. She’s shocked by this, and the two of them soon conclude that Anastasia was born out of wedlock.
She soon departed on a pilgrimage for 2 years. Upon returning, she found her home retaken but Demetrios dead. The Gold Corps would later sack the capital of Courland, killing both Persefone, Theodore, and Anastasia. Saddened, she flees the chaos of the North for the South, where Oren’s enemies are far and wide.
     The war would end. After many years, she comes back to Oren, but this time in Axios. She would find that her nephew Alistair had grown up and been granted the Viscounty of Chambery in Lorraine. Meanwhile, her daughter Valeria had also grown up. She would meet the two of them, as well as Rosalyn. Alistair had changed his last name to VonSchlicton, Rosalyn’s family name.
     She’d marry her daughter off to the Count of Ayr in Haense. Shortly afterwards, she decides to find her other nephew, Constantinos, in Haria, where it was rumored he was hiding. She doesn’t find him, but instead get injured out in the desert and is cared for by a Farfolk man named Musa ibn Musa ibn Qasi. He takes her to his family home, where she’s nursed back to health.
     It was there she acted out of desperation. She married Musa, fearing that Constantinos was dead and her family name was going to vanish. They had a son together, which she named Theodore. Musa’s family hated the marriage, seeing it as an affront to their culture. Musa’s sister attacked Theodora, and in her self defense, killed her.
     She knew she had to flee, so she grabbed Theodore and ran, but Musa stopped her before she could leave the house. He urged her to stay, but she struggled with him, knocking over a candle, setting fire to the carpet as well as the house. Musa’s family was trapped in the house, but Musa was pulling for Theodora to help him save them. Not wanting to risk her life, she took her dagger and plunged it into her husband’s neck, killing him. She quickly fled the site before anyone noticed the smoke.
     She would later propose to the Sultan of Haria that she fill the vacant position of Safeera of Haria, which is Haria’s foreign secretary. She thought that her ties to the Empire of Oren and the Kingdom of Haense would make for a beneficial position to negotiate foreign policy for the three nations. She was accepted as Safeera almost immediately.
     A dozen years passed as she lived in Haria. She watched her little boy grow up. She decided to take her retinue of servants with her to visit her family.
     And here is where she is now: old and waiting to die. One of the maids, Mira, had contracted something and had given many crewmembers the illness, including Theodora. Mira lay in a crammed bed, surrounded by other servants. She laid her head back, reminiscing on the past and the wildness of her youth.
     She never knew her father, but lived with her mother, Elyssa Sansya. When her mother passed away, Mira set of for Felsen in search of work. She worked at a bar for a while, then heard of the Dukes’ War. Apparently the Vanirs were at war.
     She left her job in Felsen to try and find her potential father, but to no avail. The war ended, the Vanirs were kicked out of Oren, and Mira eventually gave up. She went on a pilgrimage for a few years.
     On her first day back in Oren, she accidentally pushed the then-Empress off of a balcony, but quickly escapes before she’s caught. She later bumps into the one and only Britannus Vanir. She had him take her to Kraken’s Watch, then unoccupied, so they could talk in private. She told him a secret: she was the bastard daughter of one of the Vanirs, but didn’t know which one. Of course, this was all a lie. She had a fairly elaborate plan laid out to achieve fame, for her to rise above her status as a peasant.
     Britannus seemed shocked at the news, and suggested that perhaps Dagr Vanir was her real father. Mira soon set out on her own once more, this time for work. On her second day back in Oren, she was applying for a job at a mercenary guild when she was whisked into the guild’s dining hall and asked to stand at the side. She was shocked when she saw the leaders of various nations walk in, leaders from nations like Uruguan, Fennland, Haria, and an emissary from Oren. She had walked in on a peace negotiation.
     The negotiations ultimately failed, leading to a massive war between Oren and Uruguan. But that wasn’t her main concern, not yet. She had met a lovely dwarf at the negotiations named Azkel Frostbeard, grandson to the Grand King of Uruguan (she of course met other nobles, but this one in particular caught her eye).
     The mercenary guild didn’t seem to want her, so she found a job working for the Gambino family in Felsen, but ultimately left that. She found her way into Courland, where she got a job working for Luke Alexander at Dunwych Hold.
     She was loyal to House Alexander for many years, and served faithfully as a maid. She would use her many years of service to plan out how to eradicate House Staunton, and found the perfect person to help her: Azkel. She planned on marrying him, thereby forging an alliance between Uruguan and her Vanir “family.” Of course, Dunwych Hold would also offer a solid foothold for her war. She’d only have to ensure Uruguan wins the current war with Oren.
     Azkel bought a house for the two of them, but she was evicted a while later after Azkel’s family saw it as a bad idea for a dwarf prince to marry a human peasant. But back at Dunwych Hold, there was even more tragedy. House Alexander was falling apart, as if it was cursed. Luke’s wife passed away and his eldest son committed suicide out of grief. Most of the servants left as well. Mira was the last to leave the Hold. She would eventually write a book about the House, titled “The Rise and Fall of House Alexander.”
     She’d try to find odd jobs here and there. When she heard the Vanirs were back in town, she thought about joining up with them, but decided against it. There was no point in continuing her plan given how few allies she had left. She decided to devote herself to maid service, as that was all she seemed to be good for. She eventually found herself in the service of the Safeera of Haria, who asked for her company on a journey to Chambery.
     And here she lays now, coughing up her lungs. She sips a cup of water then rests her head back down. She thought back on her life, back to her various lovers, to her plot, to her hatred of the Stauntons and all those close to them. “It was all a lie...” she’d say, as her lungs let out one last sigh.
     A few decks above her, Theodora looked into her son’s black eyes. He looked so much like his father. She gazed back up to the ceiling. She had two regrets: that she never married Luke Alexander and that she never met her grandchildren.
     She knew her life was ending and simply wanted the pain to end. She reached back and gave her pillow to Theodore and nodded. She didn’t have to say any words; she’d trained him well enough to do her bidding unquestioned.
     It was odd: the last thoughts she had as her son pressed the pillow over her face was of her friend, Valeria.

 

((I want to thank Juliana, Glocky, Bubby, Budderbacca, Knightie, Pledgy, Vege, Ezo, Dixie, Daekra, AndrewTech, Connor, and others for an amazing time while I played Theo and Mira. I’ll never forget you guys.))

[CaptainHaense 1154]

Joseph Alexander sits alone in the seven skies, wondering why anyone would have wanted to marry his father, Luke.

[AndrewTech 3333]

Dr. Rosalyn VonSchlichten, in her extreme old age at this point, weeps hysterically over Theodora's grave, comforted by her son, who has made a rare appearance to visit it...

 

Theodora had helped her when she most needed the help. She helped her when she was alone, and afraid... She'd helped her with raising Alastair and Crysilla as a single mother. He at least had turned out alright, serving as a Crownlands Chief Justice under the Holy Orenian Empire and later as a Viscount of an incredibly prosperous boomtown, before it's eventual decline following the breakup of the Empire.

 

"G-goodbye... Mien f-friend... I l-loved you like mien own seester..."  Rosalyn wipes a tear away, as her son, now in his 50s or so, comforts her.

 

The former 1st Viscount of Chambery looks upon Theodora's grave, and now adjusts his monocle as he rests his hand against his mother's shoulder. She too will go soon... He knows this, and the normally tough man of the law closes his eyes in reflection.

 

"...For every time, there is a season, and for every action, there is a reason." He quoted Mandru VonSchlichten, his grandfather, as they stood over the grave.

 

"She is with GOD now, mother..."

 

Alastair attempts to gently lead her away, his frail old mother still crying into the night as they head back home...

 

((Bye fluffy! Loved your RP, loved Theodora. So many great adventures; hope to see you around in the future!))

[d0ntc4r3 104]

Theodore Palaiologos would watch the funeral from the back, hooded to hide his face. He wanted to be incognito for now.

 

When the ordeal was over and everyone had gone, he went over to his mother's grave. He knelt down and put his head to the floor, as if bowing to the gravestone. He let out one, solitary tear.

 

He stayed like this for a few minutes. He was contemplating; thinking of what to do now that his mother was gone. Perhaps return to Haria? No, he hated it there. He could visit his nephews and neices in Haense, but thought it best to instead try and find the Patriarch of his House: Romanos.

 

He got up. Time to roll.

[gandalfo 1452]

Moved to The Great Library. It shall be sorted into the appropriate category shortly.

 

If you feel this is a mistake, please contact myself or any FM and we'll restore it.