With every season’s turn the cycles of life give and take away from the citizens of New Orleans. But with all of grief and pain, now and then we must find time to celebrate life!
It is in this spirit, that we wish the greatest of congratulations to the Class of 2018!
In order to honour the younger members of our cast and the milestones most teenagers experience in America, we will be hosting a high school and college graduation event. All characters are welcome to attend, as both events are public knowledge.
Participation in this event is optional, but highly encouraged for those who are graduating and/or the friends and family of these characters. Starters and threads set at St. Aloysius and/or Tulane related to either graduation are also encouraged. There is no time-limit on the initiation or completion of these threads, and we leave it up to the freedom of individual players to decide whether or not to get involved and in what capacity. Please tag any graduation-specific starters and threads with ‘VNGraduation’ to distinguish them on the dash. We will be upwards-aging all the high-school and college-aged kids to reflect the fact that it’s been a little over two years since their introduction to this roleplay. We will also be updating their bios to reflect where they are now with respect to pursuing their education (if that is a choice your character has made). We ask that members please contact us with the relevant information regarding their school or work choices post-graduation, so that we can update the bios accordingly.
Congratulations to our teens! We hope everyone can make use of and enjoy this writing opportunity!
The darkness was immediate and all-enveloping. Elijah Mikaelson’s last moment among the living was startlingly unclear—one second he stood with his family, with Davina Claire in Lafayette Cemetery and then he was ripped from them, lost. Gone were the mouldering tombstones, the faltering wrought iron lights, the lustrous paragon diamond. His unrivalled senses were muted. He could no longer see, hear or feel anything.
Faintly, the whisper of a question flittered through his mind. Was this paralysing anaesthesia a side affect of true death? No, he remembered, he was an Original. He could not be slain. Confusion and fear stained this assertion with uncertainty. In over a thousand years, he’d never experienced such desolate solitude. Slowly, then all at once, time withered. There was no unit with which to measure its passing. It could have been seconds, hours or weeks before a distant voice pierced his oblivion…
Lo, there do I see my father.
Lo, there do I see my mother,
Your sister and your brother.
Elijah yearned to reach into the unknown, to locate its source as the words danced circles in his skull. Father, mother, sister, brother. Father, mother, sister, brother. Again and again until the verse continued.
Lo, they do call to me,
They bid me to take my place among them.
Where the brave shall live forever.
With each passing syllable louder than the next, his heart beat faster until the sound of blood rushing through his ancient veins became devastating. It couldn’t be…
Where thine enemies have been vanquished.
We shall not mourn, but rejoice -
Elijah gasped violently as the darkness unfurled its claws. Splintering floorboards scraped against his cheek as he forced the end of the prayer that woke him past gritted teeth, “For those who have died the glorious death.” As his eyes struggled to open and his limbs, leaden from sleep, pushed upward, memories of the Norse scripture flooded back. Composed by Mikael after his first born was taken by disease, the passages were later appropriated by his wife to honour both her lost children. The vampire hadn’t heard it uttered in a millennia.
“Mother?” He rasped, while his vision rapidly adjusted to their dilapidated surroundings. They were in an apocalyptic version of his drawing room at the Compound… another false reality.
“Don’t look so startled Elijah, it doesn’t become you.” The formidable matriarch waved dismissively, “Besides, we don’t have time for trivialities. You must listen.”
Straightening his suit lapel, Elijah stalked forward until he was mere inches from her. “Release me.” Both carefully articulated words threatened retribution should she deny him. Whatever magic it was that had rendered him unconscious, his siblings were in danger if they too were apart from their bodies.
“For centuries, I’ve been forced to watch you.” Esther rebutted, matching his ire as she stepped forward. “Felt the pain of every victim, suffered while you shed blood. Even you, Elijah, with your claim to nobility, you’re no better. There is a storm coming, dear son. An unrest to rival all others.” Sighing, she continued, “I wholeheartedly believe that one day, you will recompense for your sins, but tonight you must end one more life to save your own.”
When her words sunk in, the room began to shudder. Priceless vases rattled and smashed to the wood below, books snapped their spines as they tumbled, a gilded mirror shattered, fracturing its scene to a million pieces. “Davina Claire WILL be sacrificed!” The witch yelled, grasping her son’s forearms. “The power she stole is too great. No longer will it exist in harmony with our family’s. Heed my warning, or you will all perish.”
Please Elijah!
Before he could refute, the walls gave one last heaving sigh. Glass exploded as the magical plane they inhabited began to disintegrate. In slow motion, tiny slivers shredded his flesh. Blood bubbled to the air like water droplets in deep space. Father, mother, sister, brother. Father, mother…
Coughing, the Original's hands clawed into the clay earth of the Claire crypt. For the first time in what felt like an eternity, he was still. A candle’s flame reflected sickly off the sweat beading on his skin. He truly wished not to, but he believed the woman in his vision. If this experiment didn’t work, if the diamond proved to be nothing but a souvenir, Davina Claire would have to die at the hands of the French Quarter Coven. Always and forever depended on it.
Relevant to: @littlestxwitch @niklaus-no-mans-son @bexmikaclson @marcelxthexking @bigmikaelsonsister
Will I grow weary of the sun, remembering what I have done with old mythologies?
How was it that he had been relegated to the role of voice of reason? In his thousand years, he couldn’t remember ever being looked to as the paragon of restraint or levelheadness. Honestly, not a once. And yet here he was.
“Bekah, love, you’ve had scores of truly dreadful ideas over the years, but honestly you’ve outdone yourself this time. Really. I’m actually impressed.” The words were whispered because they stood just outside the gate to Lafayette Cemetery, and while witches didn’t have the same talent for eavesdropping as wolves or vampires, he had no intentions of announcing their presence. Perhaps this Paragon Diamond would work, perhaps his blood would be a powerful enough channel to carry this through, but what he didn’t understand was why it all had to happen in the same bloody place it had started. It was just poetic enough be exactly what a witch had planned.
“The minute we pass that gate we are on their territory. We are supposed to be p r o t e c t i n g her. Not delivering her on a silver platter.” The ‘her’ in question was in a bad way, and Klaus felt the weight of his promise suffocate him with every passing minute. The truth was, he didn’t know what would save Davina. He didn’t know if this would work, and if it did, would it work in time?
It didn’t take Derek long to find her after the howl sounded through the wind. Stiles’ text providing the location confirmed his direction, that he was following the right path. Hayley never left his side, tracking his sister with him as if she were part of her own pack. When they arrived at the mansion he shuddered, the sight of its exterior enough to make his skin crawl. “You go in, I’ll case the outside...” Hayley’s words were low, audible only to his ears. He gave a single nod in response, glancing at her one last time before heading inside...
Walking through the rooms, his desperation growing by the minute. She was close, he could sense her...if only he could find her. The further he went, the more empty rooms he found until finally, he caught a different scent. One all too familiar to him. Rounding a corner he saw her, a brunette of a different kind. “Jennifer? What are you doing here?” Confusion furrowed his brow as he approached, had she lost someone too? “Have you seen Cora?”
Something wasn’t right – she wasn’t doing this. The young witch had hardly gotten through reminding herself of what the chant for the archaic spell was.
“Klaus?”
Kneeling down the brunette tapped his shoulder once, twice, before she froze. Despite knowing better, and ignoring the gut feeling that wouldn’t just go away, Davina had started to hope that maybe there was another way. But that had been naïve, maybe just as naïve as she had been the night when she had expected the Elders to slice her friends’ hands and put them to sleep.
Her lips pulled into an unamused smile as her arms wrapped tightly around her body.
Time was up.
Staring at the scene that laid in front of her, the pain that lingered in every muscle, every joint was harder to ignore as she fought to keep the magic inside of her from tearing the city apart. Sucking in a shaky breath the witch stood, leaving the unconscious Original to find the others and see what had happened to them.
Maybe the Ancestors were interfering. Lafayette Cemetery was their strongest source of power here, and as she found the other siblings similarly affected, it was the only thing that made sense. Even with the power she currently had, Davina wasn’t sure if she would have been able to take on all three at once.
Did it even matter?
It was only when her eyes found him that she remembered he was there. Of course, he was there. And as her vision temporarily blurred she quickly made her way next to him, her arms wrapping around the vampire as tightly as she could manage.
Pulling away after a few moments, Davina looked up at him and a blew out a breath. “Marcel, it’s okay.”
He knew it was the right decision, Cami leaving. She needed to get the hell out of dodge, especially given how deep her tail spin had become of late…he just didn’t expect to feel like this about it. Alaric had been fingering a torn shirt from Jennifer’s, left behind the other night, thinking about seeing her again to bury the pain he felt deep inside when it hit him. A vision unlike any he’d felt before, darker and more powerful that most.
The vision was set in Lalaurie Mansion, and the power emanating from there was tied to the Virgin Sacrifices, something about that place was important. On a hunch, he headed over...Several minutes later, his car pulled up just as a group of teenagers left the building. The detective grabbed his handgun from the glove box and on a whim, the cuffs he’d nicked from Cami, too. He spotted Stiles and Lydia amongst the group as he exited the vehicle… “Get them the hell out of here.” He called out to Stiles, knowing the kid would look after them as he darted inside…
WHO: Hayley Marshall & Stefan Salvatore ( @savior-salvatore )
WHAT/WHEN: Aftermath of the earthquake
WHERE: The Bayou
There’s this saying that every one hears at some point in their life that bends their mind to philosophy over physicality in regards to the knowledge of reality -
“If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?”
To Hayley, she could attest, that without a doubt, a falling tree made a crackling sound as it splintered down to its roots. That a quake like the one wreaking havoc on the city’s epicenter could radiate out into the Bayou, and could shake the tallest spruce, the meatiest base, and send it tumbling haphazardly cutting through the air like a saw blade.
She heard the branch before it fell, a small click of a break, before it hit her skull on impact. Splitting a wound on her head between her brow and her hair line, Hayley felt the warmth as blood trickled down her face.
Perfect, she thought. Coming to the Bayou, with a newly acquired vampire friend, to help her pack and getting injured in the process was simply the icing on the cake of a shit day. “Just another day in paradise,” she muttered sardonically with a glimpse over her shoulder Stefan’s way.
As the blood continued to spill, harnessing the power of her sense of smell to the forefront, it nearly eclipsed her sense of sound as the final synapse of the trees’ roots snapped far below the Earth’s surface. The tree barreling down in an instant, with a surefire shot right into its intended target - HER. She couldn’t pull her eyes away, her sour mood now turning to purely ignited fear and reaction. She couldn’t flash forward in wolf form fast enough to escape.
There was no out for her, but there was for Stefan.
For in an instant her hand, with all her supernatural force of strength, had pushed him out of the way - his body barreling across the Bayou, to what she hoped was safer air space than her current line of site.
The same could be said for a tarnished body lying broken and bloody in the brush, lost in a world of unconscious disbelief and utter unknowing pain. The sounds of bones cracking were much like the splintering of a tree - roots ripped from the Earth, sinew cut from bone.
Crushed under the weight of said fallen tree, would anyone hear the girls’ screams in a Bayou that tended to echo the sound?
