#b5 rpg

[siryl]

Cover art by Régis Moulun for Babylon 5: The Lurker’s Guide to Pak’ma’ra by Bryan Steele.

[b5oc]

Question for watchers

So far I've been keeping the posts here to  finished fanworks involving the B5 OCs. However, there's a lot of discussion and such that goes on too. Do you want me to archive that as well?

Also, is there a problem with the submit feature? I know at the beginning there was an issue but is it still there?

[b5oc]

Call for submissions!

As I've posted on my own blog, the B5 OC Blog is open for submissions! Do NOT worry if you think your work has already been posted, or might be posted. I would rather have something posted twice than not at all, and if in doubt I would rather delete my own post than yours. So post away! 

[b5oc]

Aela Cantori Drabble

Well, this got away from me. My first little drabble featuring my OC Aela Cantori and Emperor Mollari II :D

B5 OC Drabble

Much like the Human emperor Caligula, the late Emperor Cartagia was feared and despised in secret amongst the members of the Centauri nobility until his death freed their tongues. However, also like Caligula, there was a second side to his personal disinterest in the day-to-day running of the Republic, a side the nobility is often to quick to dismiss. Though it is clear it was more by accident than design, Cartagia continued Turhan’s policy of laissez-faire governance and the majority of Turhan’s experienced staff was left in place. It was only the highest levels that were decapitated (footnote: see attached image file for further information on the literal decapitations). Cartagia would be remembered fondly by the common people as the leader of a golden age of Centauri expansion, the darkness of the following years of death, famine, and crippling reparations elevating his memory to stand amongst the most popular emperors in Centauri history. Only those who lived in the palace knew the truth of his madness, and even then there are questions that remain…

  “You should turn up the lights, my dear, or you will strain your eyes,” said a voice from the shadow or the doorway. Aela glanced up and inclined her head at the sight of Emperor Mollari, the Imperial white of his clothing outlining him against the shadows of the room.

“If the lights were too bright then you would never visit me, Londo,” Aela Cantori said, in her crisp precise tone as she tapped the buttons to save the manuscript. “I prefer it this way.”

“You’ll go blind, child,” said the Emperor with a wag of his finger. He strode across the room and took the seat across from her. The darkness of the room sat on his shoulders like a mantle but her desk lamp illuminated the amused smile that played across his face and the flash of his canines. “I hope I was not interrupting anything.”

“Only Cartagia, but he can wait. Might I fetch you some refreshment?” 

“No, no. I’ll not be long,” he reached into a pocket and pulled out a leatherbound journal, “I brought this for you. It seems to contain the musings of the late Emperor Turis, the second one, and I’m afraid I lack the time to read it. I thought you might give it the attention it deserves.”

Aela took the journal reverently in hand, running her hands along the cover as if unable to believe her eyes, “Londo this is a priceless piece of history, I can’t possibly-“

“Oh, don’t be foolish,” Londo said, “I found it rotting on a shelf somewhere, it would have turned to dust before anyone noticed. I want you to have. Or are you going to refuse a direct order from your Emperor?”

Aela closed her mouth and arched an eyebrow at Londo before turning back to the book, her breath whispering out in admiration as she turned the first page and peaked at the delicate calligraphy of the late Emperor’s penmanship.

“Thank you, Londo, I look forward to reading it,” she said, a smile of child-like glee breaking over her face.

“I am glad,” he said, then paused as if listening to something. A frown, hardly visible, flitted across his face and he stood.

“Won’t you stay? I have time, and perhaps some brivari here. It has been quiet lately…”

“I’m afraid not, my dear,” said Londo. “One must not overuse important tools or they will lose their edge,” Aela looked at him in confusion and Londo shook his head, “Perhaps another day,” he said, and left the room. 

[b5oc]

While Rome Burns

My second Aela Cantori fic, also featuring Londo Mollari

Title: While Rome Burns

Author: Avelera

Words: 1,540

Summary: Aela Cantori, Imperial historian for the Centauri Republic, shares ja'la with Emperor Londo while discussing his Roman counterparts, and learns more than she had ever dared hope. Or fear.

Author Note: Some reference is made to the Centauri Trilogy of the B5 spin-off books. The only thing an unfamiliar reader would need to know is that Durha is Londo's fascist Prime Minister, who carries out the Drakh orders without knowing who they are, thinking it is his own idea. Londo also goes along with the Drakh legislations, creating increasingly dictatorial laws, because he has no choice. The alternative is that fusion bombs planted across the surface of Centauri Prime will be set off, killing nearly everyone on the planet.

“Nero, is it?” Londo said with a dry chuckle. His voice carried the dry whisper of age, and those years had not been kind to him. Gone was any attempt at hiding the toll Londo’s reign had taken on him, there were no further attempts to dye his hair back to its original black, or conceal the furrows of age that dug deeper and deeper into his face. Age marks pocked the skin of his hands that caressed the glass of hot ja’la. It was one of the few times of late that Aela had seen him without a bottle of brivari near at hand, not to drink but merely hold close like a weapon to be snatched at a second’s notice. His hands shook, and the yellow of his eyes gave testament to the tides of alcohol that had washed in and out of his system. Londo had been a hard drinker all his life, and it showed.

And yet he had never drank heavily with Aela, or any other member of the court that she knew. And this was puzzling. The Emperor was sometimes spotted deep in his cups, shouting incoherently, raging like wounded animal. None were allowed to be near him in that state, not that anyone would have wanted to. It had prompted rampant, disdainful court gossip. The Emperor was a joke, a stinking drunkard that put up with the Interstellar Alliance’s crippling reparations and did not raise a hand to protest. Only Durha, Durha their savior, took any steps to restore the glory of the Centauri Republic.

That man, Emperor Mollari II of the Centauri Republic, seemed very far away here in the archives where the dust of centuries gathered on ancient manuscripts from the days before data crystals. It was here, in the back corner of the temperature-controlled manuscript room that they would occasionally meet, surrounded by the smell of books. The old Centauri across from her was withdrawn, a shadow in white that wandered through the stacks like a ghost. It had been over a decade since they struck up their first conversation while she researched her thesis for the university. Now she came here for her larger work, the great work, the lives of the Centauri emperors of the 23rdcentury, including the one that sat across from her. She was older now as well, well into her forties and still unmarried. A spinster, an embarrassment to her family when they bothered to remember her.

“I’m afraid so, Londo. For both the good reasons, and the bad,” she said gravely.

“And how is it, my dear, that you think history will remember me?” he said with a flash of fangs and the old, self-deprecating humor. “How will the scholars twist my life to suit their ends, hmm?”

Aela’s eyes flickered slightly as she studied him, “It’s not over yet.”

“No, it is not, is it? Gods help me…” for a moment it was as if a window had opened in his eyes to a place of darkness and crushing weariness. Londo stared at the ja’la for a long silent moment. The he leaned back in his chair with a chuckle, the shadow of a bookshelf falling across his shoulder. “But we might already guess, eh? They will remember the war, the bombings, the end of our expansion. They will remember the reparations we have been forced to pay. And Durha and Cartagia will become heroes of our brief golden age while I stand as the shadow behind them, the fool who halted ourglorious expansion. Quite ironic.”

“But the Shadows, and the deals he made with their agent, Mr. Morden. Cartagia will be remembered for that too,” Aela said, leaning forward. Had he flinched at the name? But then, Londo like all the ministers of Cartagia’s reign had lived in a state of terror, never knowing when his capriciousness might be turned on them. Londo more than most had been exposed to the danger, courting the former Emperor’s will, entertaining him, directing his madness. It was one of the many contradictions she noted in her biography, that a man apparently so adept at handling the mad emperor would be the creator of so many mad legislations himself. The itch returned, the need to know what stood behind that flinch, what could possibly possess such a man to behave so differently in his personal and political life. And there wasn’t much time left. Age and something else, something heavier than time, weighed upon him, pulling his body apart and wearing away his vitality like water washing smooth a stone.

“Perhaps, but not by the Centauri. They will remember that it was under his reign that we reached out to the stars and crushed our enemies before us,” he said, making a fist as if to crush that enemy’s heart in his hand. “What do they care of the executions? Why should they believe that he meant to make our world into his funeral pyre?” Londo grimaced , “After all, I did not believe it. At first.”

“The record can be set straight, Londo,” Aela said, searching his face. She reached out and clasped one age-spotted hand in hers. His skin was dry like paper and she wrapped her fingers through his, earning a faint smile, as if in remembrance of better times, “There are things the Centauri do not know about the end of the Shadow War, things wemust know for the future, that don’t make sense now. Where did Morden come from? Why did the expansion begin before Cartagia’s reign if he was responsible for the Shadow’s involvement? Did Regent Virini really launch those attacks on the Alliance ships and why? Where were our defenses when the Alliance bombed Centauri Prime? You must know something of these questions!”

Londo ripped his hand out of hers, but before he did she felt the shock that raced through his body as if he had been electrocuted, saw him flinch away as if stabbed….not in the hand but in the shoulder. His eyes went wide and for a moment she thought he might strike her, the instinct of an animal in pain lashing out at the nearest target. A shudder ran through him, a breath and he calmed, drawing himself up from the chair and into himself, “You forget your place,” he said, his tone harsh and almost…alien in his throat.  Another shudder ran through and he closed his eyes and pushed a hand to his forehead as if pushing back a headache. His lips moved as he muttered to himself, but she could not make out the words. Then the creases eased in his forehead, now shiny with sweat, and after a few ragged breaths he sat.

Aela stared as he gathered himself, and when he spoke his voice was faintly hoarse, “I hear enough of the affairs of state in my day-to-day life, Lady Cantori. I would much rather not hear about it here. If it is too difficult for you to stay away from this topic then we will have nothing more to discuss and I will have you dismissed from this post.” He fixed her with his gaze, “And dismissed with extreme prejudice. Do I make myself clear?”

Aela gave a shaky nod and clasped her hands in front of her, staring down at them. Yet out of the corner of her eye she watched Londo’s hands shake, imperceptibly, then still as his posture became more relaxed, more familiar. But that edge remained in the stiffness of his spine as he reclined back in the chair, taking the now cold ja’la in hand and finishing the glass in a single gulp as if it were a shot of Earth whiskey.

“So, Nero is it?” said Londo, “I know the story well, Sheridan had a habit of comparing the councilors to him. What was the phrase? Dancing a “jig” while Rome burned?”

“Fiddling,” said Aela, “Or rather, playing an instrument known as a lyre, something like a harp. In his early reign his mother controlled his every move. Once he pulled free of her though…” His eyes flickered. It was barely perceptible, but he looked down, to the right and back. Aela kept her gaze fixed on her hands and saw a faint thread of tension ease from his body when he thought she had not noticed his lapse. A chill of horror ran through her so intensely it brought with it a wave of nausea.

Someone is threatening the Emperor. Something so horrible he dare not speak its name, even to her. What conspiracy could possibly terrify one such as him to this extent? Every instinct in her body pushed her to jump up and race from the room but she kept still, reciting some vagaries of Suetonius and his take on the poet-emperor. Londo nodded in all the right parts, glancing up only briefly when a servant came to pour him fresh ja’la.

When they parted ways, he kissed her hand and promised expansively that they would meet again soon, once the damned affairs of state allowed.“And I won’t hear a word on them, hmm?” said Londo good naturedly, wagging a finger at her.

“Of course not, my friend,” said Aela, placing a light kiss on his cheek.  She watched as he strode down the hall and away, keeping her face carefully neutral as fear twisted in her belly like a snake. 

[avelera]

B5 OC Blog Note

Once the B5 blog is working I can always go through and try to find all the OC work from the last couple weeks OR you can submit your own work youself! The latter is probably going to be more effective since tracking down all the tags and users is a bit complicated. If I've already posted your work there DO NOT BE AFRAID TO POST IT AGAIN! I'd rather have something posted twice than miss something! 

[avelera]

Ok, the consensus seems to be that we want a Tumblr blog for the B5 OCs. I promise I will make it prettier as I go. As soon as I figure out how to make it work  -_-;;

[avelera]

AND WHILE I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION

I've noticed the B5 OC prompt has a slight problem of archiving the fanworks.

SO

I ask your advice in the form of a poll.

Should I:

A) Create a Tumblr Community with established tags for navigation of the B5 OC Prompt

B) Create a Livejournal Community

C) Try out Plurk, which has bee recommended. 

D) Something else/none of the above/ just keep it the way it is. 

I just don't want any of the cool OCs being created to be lost and we've been noticed by Universe Today for our OC adventures. So let me know!

And because I need a question mark or I can't ask for answers: ?