In her sepulchre there by the sea

[hellonspectacles]

Who: Palamedes Sextus and his cavalier, Camilla Hect, the rest of the House Heirs, a gaggle of spooky monks, some skeletons, a murderer, and you!
What: Memshare adventures! All memories are open to all.
When: Anytime in March
Where: Canaan House, Earth!
Warnings: Canon-typical blood, violence, and mild body horror
Notes: Below the cut you will find some scene-setting and descriptions/notes for each of the prompts. Prompts themselves are in the comments!

In general, characters will assume that you arrived with the other visitors to Canaan House a few weeks before any of the events described below, but they will have no idea who you are and why you’re there, and will be extremely suspicious of your presence.



Canaan House rises out of the sea like a castle, a tower, a crumbling mausoleum. Outside the small island on which it stands, the ocean stretches as far as the eye can see, sparkling under the bright rays of Dominicus. The building itself is clearly old, crumbling in places, windows cracked and bricks pitted; even on a thanergenic planet, where life must fight for its existence, nature is slowly overtaking one of the last symbols of humanity on the planet all people once called home.

Inside, the sense of grand decay continues. If you squint, you might notice the way it resembles a university building, some wings made up with wood floors and elaborate bannisters, fading paintings and rotting tapestries on the walls, while others are full of large, light-filled spaces, all glass, and steel, and concrete. There is a large courtyard with a dry fountain, broken elevators and flights of stairs that end halfway up, and dozens of doors with numbers above the threshold, each with its own unique lock, each requiring a key to open. Listen closely and you might hear an ambient hum of electricity, or the quiet clatter of bone from the dozens of otherwise-silent skeleton constructs that clean, and cook, and gather food for the planet’s first guests in nearly ten thousand years.

Welcome to the First House. Don’t stay any longer than you have to.

The Wind Came Out of the Cloud By Night
Investigate a murder scene! This is the best chance of meeting lots of other characters or exploring Canaan House more broadly.

The Demons Down Under the Sea
Solve a puzzle, fight a skeleton monster, hang out with Palamedes and Camilla

We Loved With a Love That Was More than Love
Experience Palamedes death! Please note that unless previously discussed, characters will not be able to interact with this memory, only observe.

Comments

[hellonspectacles]

The empire of the Necrolord Prime isn’t a society that encourages a sense of trust. The House Heirs had arrived on the First with all their suspicions and prejudices intact, all built up over centuries of propaganda that told them that they were the true masters of necromantic arts, the rest of the Houses pretenders at best. They may have more in common with each other than not, but that does nothing to lessen their animosity.

But all of them maintain even less faith in the members of the human race that live beyond the House system. Even Palamedes, who has from time to time voiced his objections to the Empire’s wars of expansion, imagines those faraway people as victims at best, and threats at worst. And the man before him certainly doesn’t seem like a vicim of anything.

“I can’t say I have,” he answers carefully. “What is Malkuth when it’s at home, Colonel?”

[fonomena]

Hmm, as reaction-gauging goes, this is not a positive one. Still not terribly surprising. Palamedes really is far too shrewd a person, to try evading about in a situation like this...

"Malkuth is one of three major nations upon the planet of Auldrant. Which I imagine to be very, very far from this place." This is entirely honest too, and Jade's prompt and firm answer denotes it as such. ...But he does follow the words with a slight and almost conceding tilt of his head.

"To judge by the caution of both your bearings, and the tension of the overall situation here--trust in strangers must be in terribly short supply, and I certainly don't fault either of you that. ...I could say that I'm not here of my own volition. That I have in fact been drawn here by some other force entirely outside my own understanding, and am still trying to find my bearing on these current circumstances. But when it barely sounds believable aloud in my own ears, I'm hardly about to demand that you take my word for it either."

Put himself in Pal's shoes. Clearly trying to solve a pressing issue in an imposing place, only to find a stranger cropping up with stranger answers to rather basic questions. ...Yes, if Jade were confronting a situation like this himself, from the other side...

"So, the real question now is probably how I ought to prove myself here, isn't it? I won't demand that you trust me at my word, but I'd rather not be run through with prejudice by your cavalier either." Here, a slight tilt of his head. "...How receptive might you be to an offer of assistance with the current situation, I wonder? The two of you did seem to be investigating something, before I quite rudely interrupted."

[hellonspectacles]

Both Palamedes and Camilla watch Jade as he talks, neither of them reacting to his outlandish tale. When he offers to help, they look at one another, and a silent conversation seems to take place—a lift of an eyebrow here, a pursing of the lips there, until they seem to come to some kind of agreement.

“Very well,” says Palamedes. “Camilla, would you mind walking him through what we know.”

Cam jerks her head at Jade and walks back to the chamber with its glass wall. “We’re looking for keys,” she says, voice clipped and businesslike. “Presumably, to open one of the many locked doors in the floors above. The door,” he gestures at the door in the window, “doesn’t open by any obvious mechanism.” The she points at the door in the side wall. “We haven’t been through there yet.”

[fonomena]

Having said his piece, Jade is content to simply wait and watch the silent conversation run its course; the subtle exchange of expressions between Palamedes and Camilla is certainly quite interesting even to just observe. Jade has to wonder if there's some form of genuine telepathy actually taking place over there...though Pal had never mentioned such a talent before, granted. Perhaps it's also that the two truly are simply close enough to read each other's thoughts in the more conventional way.

Though that notion brings about a vague and almost sympathetic sort of twinge. Because, if it's true, then that means Pal has been without a very dear friend for quite some time aboard the ship indeed...

At any rate, they reach a consensus after a few more moments--and it's rather more positive than Jade was expecting. Which means he's certainly not about to question it too much, when Camilla jerks her head at him and begins moving towards the glass-walled chamber; instead he's following her direction acquiescently enough, even as he takes care to ensure none of his movements are sudden or steer overtly close to Palamedes.

A search for keys...and a current barrier of entry, within these quarters here. Isn't this rather familiar, actually? Goodness knows himself and his party would often find themselves trying to navigate rather abstract facilities in just this sort of way back home...hopefully that past experience might render itself fairly useful here and now.

"That does sound like the setup for a puzzle of some sort, I'd imagine." Jade nods slowly as Camilla lays out the explanation, and follows the pointing of her hand to the door in the side wall. "How much time have you two had to examine the rest of this particular room here so far? Naturally, trying to step through that door over there in the wall would be the next option...though there's always the potential of some sort of lethal trap waiting on the other side. I've seen a few such things in times past...perhaps I ought to try sticking my head through there and see if it springs for me first!" He smiles wryly, visibly not terribly daunted by the prospect. "Less risk run for the two of you, and an opportunity for me to prove some form of mettle as the shady stranger, hm?"

[hellonspectacles]

With their grey robes and closed-off expressions, Palamedes and Camilla are a matched pair, watching Jade with suspicion, but not outright hostility. “That’s what the Warden said,” Cam observes when Jade mentions the side door might be booby-trapped, the slightest hint of long-suffering irritation in her voice. She doesn’t quite accuse him of overreacting, but the implication is obviously there.

“I did say that, didn’t I?” Pal returns, a sing-song quality to his reply. “We’ve yet to encounter anything quite so obvious as that, but it is a possibility. He shares a glance with Camilla. The stranger has a point—the fact that he is willing to take this risk marks him as, at the very least, a potentially useful ally. He offers Jade a wry smile of his own in return. “By all means—but do be careful. This place has seen enough blood already, I think.”

[fonomena]

"They do say that great minds often think alike--or at least, minds that are similarly trap-paranoid," Jade remarks with a tint of amusement, when Camilla notes how Pal's thoughts had taken the exact sort of tangent Jade's are currently. Evidently she thinks the possibility more ridiculous than not, while Pal himself remains clearly amenable to the potential, even if they apparently haven't found anything quite that blatant yet. "Naturally, though, I'm not exactly harboring a death wish myself--I'm as disinclined to bloody this area as you are to see it, rest assured. Though I'll try my best not to make too much of a mess, if it comes to that! Let's see here..."

With Pal's cautious blessing made, Jade approaches the side door accordingly with his pace still idly relaxed. He's expecting to actually need to open it, of course, and so it's a bit of a surprise when the door actually slides opens of its own volition instead when he closes enough distance. And inside...

Huh. After briefly pausing at the threshold, Jade slowly passes through it to peer beyond it properly; no traps seem to go off, and within there's...actually not a lot of space to begin with. Filled with dusty rusted machinery he can't divine the purpose of at a glance--but also, most distinctly, there's...

"Warden--hmm, both of you. I think this might be relevant to your interests." Calling out mildly from within the room, Jade circles the tall metal pedestal set in the enter of it carefully, an attempt to set off any floor-panel-base mechanisms that might lead to other potential traps. Though nothing seems to be happening, at least. "No particularly immediate dangers to be had in this particular spot, I think, or I'd likely have set them off by now...feel free to come in."

[hellonspectacles]

“And do you consider yourself a great mind, Mister Curtiss?” While Jade’s back is turned, Palamedes grins faintly and shares a look with Cam. He is smart enough not to let his guard down, certainly not around someone he’s still half-convinced might be a spy, but he can’t deny that there’s something comfortingly familiar about the man’s too-clever-by-half good cheer.

Once Jade has crossed the threshold and called to them, Palamedes follows, with Camilla close behind, one of her short swords drawn. They step into the new room cautiously, each of their gazes swiveling from side to side.

“Well, this isn’t at all what I expected,” Pal observes. He approaches the pedestal in the middle of the room. “Interesting…”

[fonomena]

"On my especially fruitful and clever days, yes," Jade had retorted with a mild sort of shamelessness, in prompt response to that first question. Which is every day, rather humorously implied, as if they're not currently in what's most likely some very convoluted past necromancer's setup, eyeballing a new room that still may or may not be a trap...but anyway--

Jade considerately draws to one side as soon as Pal and Camilla enter the room, giving them space to take their own looks about. He eyes the glass pane on the pedestal as Pal does, head tilting slightly with mirrored curiosity. "Could I ask what it is that you were expecting? Versus what we seem to be finding in reality about now, of course. At a glance, this device is entirely unfamiliar to me."

[hellonspectacles]

“Hm. Cam, where have I heard that before?” Hands behind his back, Pal is peering closely at the reflective screen at the top of the pedestal.

“Archivist Zeta made a very similar observation about herself during your last weekly appointment. I believe you reminded her that she should be required to coat her brain in thermal paste to keep it from overheating.”

“Ah, yes.” Pal looks at Jade with faint amusement and arches a brow. “What was I expecting? Ancient laboratory equipment. A doorway into there, maybe.” He gestures at the wall, on the other side of which is surely the glass chamber. “But I can’t tell what this is, either. A tablet of some kind, maybe?” Pal takes a small shard of bone out of his pocket and places it into his palm, where after a few minutes it grows into a skeletal replica of his own hand. With a satisfied little nod, he places it on the panel.

The good news is that nothing explodes. The bad news is that a metal cage immediately encircles the hand and the door slams shut.

1/2

[fonomena]

"My, it certainly sounds as if Archivist Zeta must has been receiving some entirely unwarranted verbal hardship," Jade remarks from the sidelines--naturally sympathetic to the stranger's evident struggles to express her genius without grievance. The comment is made with about as much amusement as Pal's, of course...though said amusement's also only partly at the words, while the other part takes a secondhand-fond sort of humor in observing the way Pal and Camilla so effortlessly sling the exchange back and forth. Like two parts of a single unit. It reminds him, with a bit of a pang, of...

Well, no, best not get distracted by such a thought tangent as that. Jade instead watches with an openly intent sort of interest, as Pal pulls the little shard of bone from his pocket and it proceeds to unfold into--aah.

"Quite the clever measure against any potential finger-eating curses, there. I suppose this device might--"

[fonomena]

No explosions at all, small blessings. If the cage that promptly closes about the decoy hand wasn't concerning enough, though, the door slamming shut behind them of its own volition sure is somewhat alarming.

With the reflexive swiftness of a soldier's training, Jade is immediately turning towards the doorway in a half-step, casual posture squaring; his right arm is lifting defensively even before a full-sized spear promptly materializes in his hand with a crackle of fonons. Fully expectanting something threatening to drop into the room at any moment, really--for surely that would be the most likely reason for them to suddenly be shut in here, wouldn't it?

[hellonspectacles]

In the same moment that Jade’s spear appears, Cam raises her sword, equally ready to defend, and turning in a slow circle to catch the sudden appearance of any attackers.

In sharp contrast, Palamedes has gone completely still, and is staring at Jade. He doesn’t look frightened, or even concerned. No, because he is Palamedes Sextus, he mostly looks interested.


“Well, that’s something I haven’t seen before.”