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

[astrogator]

It isn't often that Ari sees this level of decay, the kind that results from long abandonment. Most colonies are new, relatively speaking, and those that fail do so hard, and quickly. She smells blood. She walks cautiously, alert, as if anticipating a threat. Well-trained spacer that she is, her precautions even extend to looking upwards. The people who died here didn't die recently, but the deaths were sudden, she surmises. The little piles of bleached-white bone are unnerving. Whose life is this? Who could live in such a place?

She soon has her answer. Palamedes Sextus, the Master Warden. Ari Tayrey peers through the door, standing beside the auburn-haired woman. She listens to Palamedes, and the sickly-looking young woman on the couch. Ari hasn't the context to make sense of it. When what started?

Eight is perilously young to let anything start, even by Tradeline standards, especially if it carries risk of death. She resolves to ask him about it, someday. Not today. Today she has to deal with him as he is. Ari tries to step forward, into the room, but some invisible force rebuffs her. She takes two quick steps back, her hand reaching towards her gun. She glances towards the woman in black, as if seeking some explanation.

[hellonspectacles]

The young woman can't move, and not by her own choice. Pinned like a bug by necromatic power, her eyes flash as a stranger comes into view, but she can do nothing to communicate with this person, or stop what is happening just beyond the doorway.

Meanwhile, the little drama playing out inside continues. The strange pair in the room speak to one another calmly, unaware that their audience has grown. “Why the Fifth?” Palamedes asks next, hands folded in his lap, his expression unreadable. And though the woman, the so-called Dulcinea, tries to hem and haw, she finally admits why she murdered Abigail Pent and Magnus Quinn. Pent was good at talking to spirits—more than that, she was a historian, someone who could have easily blown this woman’s cover.

Palamedes seems satisfied with this answer, but ultimately unmoved.

“What was your second question?” the woman asks.

“Where is she?” Palamedes answers quietly, so quietly that those standing at the door might have to strain to hear him. “What have you done with Dulcinea Septimus?”

“Oh, she’s still here,” says the woman who is definitely not Dulcinea with a flutter of her hand.

From there, the story pours out of her in waves, each one growing with momentum. A dam has broken in this creature, this Lyctor, and she talks about the perfectly polite conversation she had with the real Dulcinea Septimus when she intercepted her ship on the way to Canaan House, how she killed her and her cavalier, and took her place, and burned her body. And why? Why come back here, why pick off the House heirs one by one?

“This wasn’t really about any of you, not personally,” she says, as though that would mitigate her evil deeds. “I knew that if I ruined his Lyctor plans, I’d draw him back to the system.” Without actually getting louder, her voice seems to grow in power as she speaks. “I’ll give the the King Undying, the Necrolord Prime, the Resurrector, my lord and master front-row seats as I shatter his houses one by one and find out how many of them it takes before he breaks and crosses over.”

“Why would one of the Emperor’s Lyctors hate him?” Palamedes asks in that same dangerously calm voice.

“Hate him? I have loved the man for ten thousand years. We all loved him, every one of us. We worshipped him like a king. Like a god! Like a brother.”

They continue to talk, but Palamedes is barely listening. Those that know him well might even notice the look of concentration on his face—a slight tightness in the mouth, a hardening of his jaw, and most significantly of all, a trickle of blood down the back of his neck.

“You’re taking this much more sensibly than I thought you would,” the Lyctor is saying. “I assumed you would try something silly when you realized she was dead.”

“I wouldn’t ever try to do something silly,” Palamedes answers lightly. “I made the decision to kill you the moment I knew there was no chance to save her. That’s all.”