who: @nylathriasoulseer
where: The Lonely Scroll
when: some time after the Standing Stones quest
notes: please let me if you need anything changed
Freydis was in the market for a few tools she suspected might come in handy in the near future. After dropping a figurative (thought it may as well have been literal) brick of gold at Abelas' charming animal sanctuary to provide Griffon Charms for a handful of dear friends, she had turned her attention to magic scrolls. No such shop would have ever been allowed to exist in the borders of Iskaldrik, and magic was novel to her both in theory and in practice. She was curious about what such a shop might offer and more than open to pushing past the fear of magic she'd been raised to house within her; if these scrolls would help her achieve an increasingly important goal, who was she to turn her nose up at them? When she entered The Lonely Scroll and recognized the face that floated around the displays with no special sense of urgency, a warm and familiar smile spread across her face. "Nylathria," she greeted, taking a few more steps into the shop. She had to remind herself that Nyla and she were still more strangers than anything else and that just because they both likely felt a sense of pride in a job well done didn't mean they shared enough kinship for a hug. Yet. "It's so nice to see you again--I hope you've been safe since we parted ways. I don't know how I didn't put two and two together that this was your business."
When: before most left for Aventia
With: Open starter
Where: Eterna.
Maybe she could have taken a quicker route to Eterna, but she had to visit some old friends along the way. Most were looking like they were about to leave in the coming days. All Nyla could do was sigh as she dropped her pack to her side, she had only just got here no way was she trudging where everyone else was going. “Excuse where is everyone going?” What war was it this time?
What a night, day well she wasn’t sure but it had sure been a shit show. It started off a fantastic night, calla had been there and they had played some games together, one cutting closer to the bone then she had liked. But she hoped what the game runner had said when she got fate ‘A heart once broken may yet mend anew’ was somewhat true. Because she had been a mixed of emotions when hearing Agnes screams but one thing she hadn’t been was guilty. She had felt like she was betraying Lyra when she was around Agnes… actually her wife was the furthest from her mind when around the other. But now lied there in her own bed next to Agnes, while the others eyes were still closed she couldn’t help but sink into her own thoughts of how much of a horrible wife she was. Here she was sharing a bed with someone who wasn’t Lyra, she had have chosen to sleep anywhere but she had chosen to be beside Agnes. Maybe it was karma that her hands were necrotic, cold, like they were suffering from the last stages of frostbite. 
When she first received that invitation she hadn’t thought twice about accepting it, maybe she had been to prideful in think that she would have received such an invite naturally. There were to many things that didn’t add up for all this to be pure coincidence. Turing over to now face Agnes slumbering face she gently tucked a strand of lose hair behind her ear. All that pain Agnes had been through had been a trap, she had been bait. Nyla wasn’t sure she was the intended target or not but how would they know her affection for Agnes if she’d never said it out loud? The back of cold fingers trailed down Agnes cheek, down her arm till there hands met. Nyla hadn’t meant to disturb the other as they started to wake one word softly slipped from her lips “Hi”
Even though she had no control, her sul’dam forced her to use her gift she could help but feel the burden of responsibility. Nyla had to dissociate from what she was doing at the time. She wasn’t the same woman from before. Not only had her soul changed but there was more to it than that. She had violated her own rules or how her power should be used. Self imposed for her safety or everyone else… perhaps both.
She had done her part in trying to make this jail brake work, had freed two others but was that enough to balance those she doomed? Perhaps not. This time there wasn’t any strategy as to why Freydis part from she cared for the woman. Nyla knew how capable she was the, her heros soul. The collar still around her neck she searched for Freydis. Nyla hadn’t even thought about the blood war paint that lingered below her eyes. Instead her eyes locked in on her target. Here eyes didn’t brake from the other bearing down upon the other like an oppressive force. Her approach was slow but direct, purposeful.
Talisa had been amazing! Who would have thought the steel dragon would be so good at attracting customers. Nylathria didn’t originally ask her to help because she would be good at it. It was more she liked Talisa company and if the stall was quiet at least they would have each other to talk to. Nyla was smiling warmly at the sight of Talisa “sweetheart I think you have earned a brake.” At this rate Nyla wouldn’t have enough prizes “ you never said you were this good with people.” Nyla said as though Talisa had been keeping a secret from her. “If you’re not carful I might have to offer you a job.” That wouldn’t be such a horrible idea though.
“I understand now why you resist. You aren’t strong… I don’t even think you’re all that stubborn. You’re lost, confused. You resist because of the lie you were raised on - this illusion that you’re still clinging to. You spent your whole life believing you are a person, when really, you are a mistake of flesh made animate. You are a rahaat. A tool to be used, nothing more. Do you know what rahaat means in High Kossathi? It does not mean servant. We do not bind our servants, we give them roles, names, honors. You are beneath that - so do not think we punish you for your resistance, we only work to correct your confusion and when you stop believing you are a person, you will stop suffering. You will know peace as only rah’tashan can.”
Rahaat
noun | High Kossathi
An instrument or tool - a person reduced to the status of a mere object, stripped of autonomy and identity, existing solely to serve the will of another.
A captive - a being whose thoughts and actions are no longer their own, forced into servitude through magical means, particularly the a’dam collar. Usage: “You are no longer a person, you are a rahaat, a tool for our use.”
Rah’tashan
noun | High Kossathi
A perfected instrument - a rahaat who has been fully subdued and transformed, their will completely erased, existing only to obey without question.
A reprogrammed tool - a captured being who has been conditioned to embrace their loss of identity and autonomy, functioning as an ideal vessel of another’s power. Usage: “She is no longer merely a rahaat; she is a rah’tashan, free from resistance, free from self.”
Shan'tar
noun | High Kossathi
A collective, a bonded unit formed of three or more rahaat, each bound by the a’dam under a sul'dam’s control, united in servitude. Loosely this translates to “Heart” though it is not used to describe the organ. Usage: “You are not individuals, you are a shan'tar, nothing more than tools of the Kossathi.”
Prompts should be posted by Thursday May 1st, no IC response is required but is encouraged, the aim of these prompts is to help fuel IC interactions on the dreadnought. Anyone who has posted dreadnought content should receive a prompt, please discuss/plot/coordinate with your fellow captives on how your prompt might influence others.
PROMPT
They force you to look. To stare into the souls of the others, day after day. Your eyes burn black with the weight of what you’ve seen - screaming children, killers begging for release, souls shattered by despair. They make you speak it aloud. The sul’dam calls it confession, says it’s purging weakness. But your mouth becomes the instrument of trauma. You peered into the soul of Velkha’thuun (Prospero) and there saw the blackness that surrounded his soul - his fate was in your hands, but your sul’dam did not give you a choice. Every word you say tears someone else apart. And when you are commanded to look inward? You see your own soul has begun to unravel. Thread by thread.
Veynrak, the Kossith have renamed you. Vein-Seer.
They’ve assigned you to the Heart of Shadow, run by the sul’dam Valkessh. A Heart forged for fear, espionage, and psychological warfare. To Valkessh, her rahaat are instruments of subjugation through terror and illusion.
so many trigger warning please proceed with caution that this could be an uncomfortable read.
Then a man walked through the door, she had heard his old name spoken Prospero. Only days ago had she spoken to Agnes about how her own soul belonged to the dark one. She was now faced with a man with the same claim to his soul. How the tendrils of the dark wrapped around the threads of his soul like an invading force. Her voice shook with every syllable, what was once tears turned to rivers of blood as she tried resisting once more, but even as they poured down her cheek, the words formulated “Darkfreind.” She spoke of how the dark one used him to kill that legionary. She had been his judge, jury… his exactioner. This gift was vile, it was responsible for sending a man to his death. How could anyone take pride in such a power? How could she ever be responsible for rebuilding the hollow with such blood on her hands? How could Nyla live with herself? Valkessh had won; she had broken Nylathria, only Veynrak remained. Disconnected, desensitised to the plight of others. The blood eventually dried, staining her face, the sin committed to her skin. The others went swiftly, or so she might have thought; it was hard to tell anymore.
It started with a room, cold, damp, intertwined with the smell of the sea. Hope was still in her heart, that her worst fears wouldn’t come reality. Nylatheria had always set boundaries when it came to looking at another’s soul, maybe someone might have seen the boundaries as restrictions of her power, that the other had to be willing. But that was self-imposed; she didn’t need permission from anyone to see the threads the wheel had spun. It was all to protect herself. She lived by the lesson her grandmother, Esta, had taught her from a young age. “Just because you have the power to perceive, to intrude upon someone’s privacy doesn’t give you the right to do so. Having the power and the right to use your gift are two different things, my sweet girl.” It’s why she limited herself, only to see one soul a day, to ask permission unless in dire circumstances of defence, and make sure they knew there was no hiding from her gaze before she proceeded.
Her Sul’dam, Valkessh, had no regard for these boundaries; a tool didn’t dictate how it should be used. A plough didn’t stop tilling the fields because it didn’t want to be dirty; it stopped when the farmer was done for the day. The first was brought in, Nyla tried to protest, tired to make it known that she thought it was ethically wrong but it was all very short-lived as her own eye betrayed her, as the threads of her own soul headed the commands of Valkessh. She couldn’t look away, any attempt was futile. Her eyes burned like the sun as they crossed a line she had drawn all those years ago. She tried to use silence as a defiance of this command, but that attempt came to nothing “You will speak what you see.” The words had to be obeyed. It was one thing to see but another to digest what she was seeing and turn it into words, to make it coherent. A tear rolled down her cheek as she reviled the stranger in front of her to Valkessh.
The screams of innocents being burned to death rang in her ears even after she was done, but there was relief at the thought she was done for the day, that she would have been given the grace to disconnect from what she had just witnessed. Her body slumped from exhaustion, mentally and physically, she couldn’t take anymore… or so she thought. The door opened, another stepping through the threshold to relive the ghosts of the past that haunted their very soul. “I can’t… my eyes” Nyla tried shallowly to inform her captors before she was cut off. “You will learn quickly that you will stop when i wish it. Not before. Again” was all the words that needed to be said to lurch Nylathria into the trauma of another. Necks breaking, swords clashing, guts strewn on blood-soaked dirt. “Next” they came faster now that Valkessh knew how this power worked, the Kossith needed to know exactly what tool they had added to their retinue. Subjecting her own tool to see them all was a fine way to break her without the need for violence. Tears fell from her eyes like a river, saturating her cheeks with their brine. The atrocities committed to and by the other rahaat made her question the very pattern the wheel spun. Again and again, she witnessed the darkness of Taravell present itself.
Nylathria was guilty of indulging in a glass of wine or two. When the world was dark at least there was wine. Shed been in a dark place in her life a couple hundred years ago where it was got her up in the morning. But thanks to her friend she developed a healthier relationship with the liquid. She didn’t rely on it to numb her feelings but enjoyed the taste now. She had acquired a couple bottles and held them in her arms as she made her way home. But on her travels towards her home she spotted a familiar face one from the standing stones “Tianyou right? Nylathria.” Just in case he had forgotten. “How are you feeling after the stones?”
