unfinishedlibrary | do you bare your fangs at us, sir? MOONLIT RIVALS LOG 2, SCENE 2

Entry tags:

do you bare your fangs at us, sir? MOONLIT RIVALS LOG 2, SCENE 2

Who: Readers and Actors
What: The werewolves who are not sneaking into the party cause a bit of mischief... and did anybody actually agree to keep the peace tonight?
When: The night of the ball itself. [ooc timeline: Feb 6th - 19th]
Where: The city of Montica.
Content warnings: Please include any warnings in headers.

Waxing Gibbous Moon

In Town

Above the city, the Umbra Mansion stands tall. Its grand doors and windows have been opened, spilling light like a beacon. Music lilts in the air, drifting so far as to be faintly heard even in the neutral centre of the city.

The streets have emptied, particularly in the vampiric half of town. Most of the vampire loyalists have joined the masquerade, leaving their homes and shops unattended. Tonight is a special night - a once in a century event, and they wouldn’t miss it for the world.

Even some werewolves and neutral citizens have been enticed to attend. Jadis the Mystic has created a lotion that will disguise the scent of a werewolf; an effect that is broken by shifting, breaking the skin, or the gradual passage of time. It is not widely distributed, but rumours travel fast. The lotion is only given to any Guildulf-aligned werewolves, but… well, there’s nothing wrong with a little trade here or there. Right?

For all of the wolves in town - with the moon so close to being full, it’s natural for them to feel a bit more excitable. Energetic. Ready to take on the world. And seeing as Montica is so empty, it’s like a playground has just been opened up. The young wolves in particular are eager to take advantage of the empty streets, the sound of not-quite-mature howls breaking through the air in their excitement. There are hardly any people around to be scared if they play too rough or run too fast, and they are taking advantage of this with great enthusiasm.

In the highly-debated 'neutral' zone, some small packs of adolescent werewolves are gathering. There's banter and roughhousing, the not-quite-adults playfully shoving each-other over the invisible line where the vampire territory begins.

Some of the bravest amongst them take the challenge to dart over and brush their fingers over silver doorhandles - their yelps spurring courage and adrenaline in the others. What starts harmlessly enough quickly escalates as they urge each-other on, teenage excitement and the thrill of the moon encouraging all sorts of bad choices. The longer they go without reprimand, the more bold they become; and somewhere along the way, bulbs of garlic start winding up in places they wouldn't normally be found. (There is at least one group who is excitedly challenging each-other to leave the garlic in more and more absurd places. If they happen to sting themselves on some silver ornamentation on the way, all the better.)

Not all homes are unoccupied, though - sooner or later someone’s going to disturb someone else’s peace, and tensions are already so high. Hopefully there are some Responsible Adults around to curtail the worst of the mischief before someone’s temper is sparked.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Jadis is watched as she suddenly lurches to her feet, but Curze doesn't interrupt. She's moving .. .alright, for someone injured, nothing telling him she's likely to bleed out or lapse into a coma that isn't psyker-related. He was no medic. He knew how to take care of his own injuries, for what minimal care those tended to require, but someone else's? A mortal's? The principle was there, an innate knowledge, but no real experience. "From what I could tell, without disguising himself either. Forcing your foes to acknowledge him when they cannot move against him is a clever move." Sigrid he didn't know the scent of, couldn't tell where she was. But she should have been there.

The bridge that would end this Story was in theory to begin tonight. Would it still, with this mayhem?

"Information easily gained from these. Perhaps not that one." A gesture to the charred corpse; that one might not be good for much.

The grin that crosses his face at Jadis' questioning what Roberte is up to is utterly friendless and full of way too many teeth. What the Lord Wolf is doing seems terribly obvious to him, and Curze surely had nothing to do with this decision.

Jadis remembers, when Roberte looks at her, that her legs are half-bared by the cut apart remnants of her skirts. She flushes and really wants to get behind the desk, but that would call attention to her state. So would trying to pull the ragged new hem lower. She's going to pretend two men can't see her indecency.

It's a good look from her patron though. The malevolent intensity put aside a moment, his pale eyes in a mask of drying blood... he really is kin to the night heron. But there's more warmth in Roberte, for all that he keeps it tucked away. He's so-

-she's staring. Jadis shakes her head and regrets it as her skull protests the sudden movement. "I'll go to my stillroom in a minute. That is such an undertaking for a trophy. If you make that 'statement' the whole city will see us as completely unhinged and barbaric. Can't you take a paw, or his ears? His tail, even, he's the only pack leader with that russet band."

She may be the most regular person present in this regard but it's all relative. Trophies - most of them understated, when compared to a whole pelt - from the bodies of fallen pack leaders are rare and mostly passed down as heirlooms. Far more usual for the loser to survive and surrender a lock of hair, a tuft of fur.

Something she doesn't see with her eyes draws her attention past the vampire. Now that she's encountered SecUnit's drones and her insight has diagrammed them out, they're not really hidden to her. "Why do you have a- never mind." Not a conversation to have right now. She looks at the night heron with visible apprehension and bows her head. "Thank you. I'm sorry I gave insult the last time we spoke. Is there a way I can make it right?"

Not that she gets why he was angry when she asked him not to hurt Sigwulf again - she has a dim awareness that he'd done something, far away, when Sigwulf was a sky person. Jadis assumes it's that she all but told him what to do.

"The point," Curze interrupts, almost gently. Almost. "Is barbarism, humiliation and terror. To make it clear there is no honor in this defeat. There is no respect to a worthy foe on offering. Let them see the price of their cowardice and their crime, and think twice before ever doing it again, knowing their dead will be desecrated and their remains treated as a beast's." His admonishment has no hostility in it, no anger. He outlines it as if it's fact, with a strange calm persuasiveness that makes his chosen methods seem ... somehow perfectly reasonable. "The cost must be unbearably high, or it will reoccur, emboldened by civility when they have given none, and the next time there may not be a decadent party to lure away the young or vulnerable."

He gestures to the corpses with a blood-soaked hand. "Would you be still feeling so nobly inclined to these criminals if it was this pack's pups lying dead? No. I think not. An example made now prevents more from being needed later."

He ran a planet like this. it was in fact super effective up until he left, so much so that the average person genuinely wished him to return.

The price Curze exacts is high, but it .. is effective, if maintained.

His head tilts slightly, to the ever present drone. "It keeps me from killing what I do not wish to." A simple answer. The rest.. making things right, insults given, simply earns a slight, dismissive shake of the head. Not worth apologizing for, and not worth addressing - to him, anyway. His ongoing struggles with his kin are his problem.

Jadis's admonition sends a flash of hurt, then of anger, across Roberte's face.

He opens his mouth to retort, but is beat to it by the Night Haunter. His expression tightens, blue eyes cold as he listens to the great giant of a man talk, and nods. He tries so very hard to be civil and civilized. And most of the time, he succeeds. (...doesn't he?) But there is a vein of darkness that runs through him that agrees with this man. Especially when his family is at stake.

"What they have done is barbaric. No courage. No honour." He takes up the knife again. "I shall return the rest of him, if his family will claim him. But this is mine."

Jadis presses her lips together and keeps herself from a sharp response. There are a lot of points in that little speech that she disagrees with. Among other things, it works so well for the night heron because of what he is, someone who's never had to build a coalition, or make peace that isn't a wasteland, who can't hit the point where people have had enough and have the tables turned on him. That level of brutality only works as well as he's confident of in settings designed for it to work. But it's obvious neither is going to listen, so she may as well save her breath.

Additionally she is herself, at base, from a setting that has a long slow work towards justice and horror-as-deterrent. Of course people shouldn't get to lie about an honorable death, of course there should be examples that sit in the memory of those who'd try something similar and those should be dramatic. So there's a part of her that finds some sense in this. Just. Not to that degree.

She eyes the night heron, really wanting to say What, I wouldn't be cowed into thinking they're right? but she doesn't need the faint flickers in her peripheral vision to tell her that would be fruitless. He won't understand and she is trying not to antagonize him, because someone has to take that kind of position and apparently it's her.

"Don't be surprised by being put at a distance, then," Jadis says at last, with all the dignity she can pull together. Her eyes flick towards something unseeable. "Now the first of our people are coming back and I've work to do. I'll have some remedies for you so you don't get blood fever and will be able to sleep. Whenever that happens."

She's not saying she won't still support him or she doesn't understand or care, and her voice is gentler by the end of that statement than it was at the beginning. There are just places she won't go. Jadis crosses the room, trying very hard not to falter when she has to step into something particularly gruesome; she's not going to pick her way around it and look squeamish. On her way out she remembers a final thing: "And don't shift, your bones need time to set themselves. It will be worse if I have to redo it."

In another reality, Curze's methods aren't painfully effective. In other times and places, instead of learning the only way to get people to live to higher standards is viciously punish lower ones, he was taught compassion and kindness, and did not learn to bring worlds to heel with suffering and terror. That man is much different from the one crouched easily in Roberte's manor, grinning like the cat that ate the canary. He has no doubts about his methods, they've worked flawlessly for well over a century on hundreds of worlds, one mortal's protest over a lifetime of evidence wouldn't do much indeed.

But he's made his point, he's sure of it, and sees no reason to pursue it further. Retribution has been achieved, and what's left of that rival family isn't going to consider doing this again for a long, long time.

"..Mm. She is right about the medicae matters. Infection is a concern, neither human nor wolf mouths are particularly clean." He'll be fine, little was going to get past his immune system, but Roberte? "By the time you must make your show of solidarity and strength, it is best it not be an act. Rest will be important."

Practicality.

The dead werewolf, mostly minus its hide, is considered for a long moment. "If none will touch that, I know a thing or two about leatherworking. It will take.. three or four days to get something workable from it." Unfortunately not through his preferred method of brain tanning, given the mess..

Jadis reprimand stings, and then his pride bites back -- she is his servant, why should it matter? -- and that stings too. But he holds his tongue and his temper, only huffing softly as she takes her leave. (He knows why it matters, doesn't he?) After she is gone, he looks to the Night Haunter, shaking his head.

"She'll come around," he says, in a effort to convince himself. She will.

He looks down at the half-butchered werewolf, at his bloody hands... testing his mettle. But he still feels no guilt for what he is doing. In the depth of his heart, he doesn't feel that he's in the wrong.

"It is tempting. The tanners will be displeased. But I may need to show his hide to his family before it's done." There is a cold calm in the discussion of practicalities. It's comforting. "Your offer, though, is appreciated."

He continues. "I, in turn, would offer you a reward, should you desire." He isn't the type, though, Roberte suspects. "But if you do not, at least know that you may call upon me, should you need anything. That is only right."

"It is often ... uncomfortable for some to realize there is no moral high ground that doesn't empower an opponent, gratuitous force is often what is necessary to preserve order against those who have grown complacent." The still-burning wolf will go out in time, but may burn a hole in the floor. What's left of it is herded bit by bit across the bloodstained floor towards the hearth, where it can burn freely on granite instead of something more flammable. He doesn't need to stand to do it, there's no room to stand here anyway. "It is always the victim that is expected to 'be the bigger person' and 'have higher standards', to shame them into neglecting proportionate retaliation."

A lesson that might only be listened to for the duration of this Story. He knew every single one of his brothers save Mortarion abhorred his methods and reasoning. "..Hm. Well. Keep it salted, and once you are finished rubbing their noses in their mess, I'm sure I'll still be around." Somewhere. If the story's ongoing, he'll be there too.

"I have my reward already. This was a debt to be paid, remember." That's both true and not quite, but it serves his purposes. "As such, I will ask my brother to see to your wounds, and those of your household. Your witch risks damage if she continues to exert herself further."

Curze doesn't think infection is worth playing with. But it's also not an emergency.

It's easy to assume he means another vampire, and that it might not be til sunset that said brother might arrive.

Edited 2026-02-15 21:30 (UTC)

"There should be," Roberte says plainly. "There can be, if those with the strength of will make it so. But there are times that the troublesome elements must be made an example of. The man-eater wolf must be culled for the sake of men and wolves." He taps the back of the loaned blade on Appienne's skinned ribcage. Almost done, now.

"As you say," he acknowledges, though he truly does wish he could offer more and have it accepted. "I am still grateful. As for your brother, if he can secret himself past the gates, just let him not be seen. Or have him move openly, and identify himself as your brother, and he shall be given entry." A familiar sort of wry smile. "So might you, though I expect you shall make your own way instead."

Curze's smile is brief and bitter. "Often I have heard others say something similar. But I have never seen life work the way it 'should', if all were fair and equal. And so we do what we must, so others do not have to." Including killing and skinning rival pack leaders, it seems.

There's no doubt in his mind Sigrid and Sigwulf would have been targets if they were there, as well. Leave even one wolf alive..

"Avoiding being seen isn't much his style, but I'll advise him all the same. He favors red, I imagine he'll be difficult to miss." What name is Magnus currently using? He hadn't bothered to find out. How troublesome. "I will draw too much attention, I think. It is better for the perceived strength of your pack if this.." He waves one bloodsoaked hand at the corpses - and surely more out of sight. "..is seen as self defense, and not the interference of an outsider."

When he rises, it's never quite straightening up, well used to moving in spaces not made for him. "Nothing lives in these walls save those which carry the scent of the house. If any linger outside, they will not for long." He is, apparently, fully intending on making sure of it.

"So that others do not have to," he agrees solemnly.

The worst case scenario of his children, his children being harmed, is in the forefront of his mind as well -- will be, until this is all resolved to his satisfaction -- and were it to come about, he would burn Montica to the ground himself. God willing, it won't come to that.

"Red. I shall watch for him." He cuts the last bits of tough flesh with the Haunter's knife, as he watches him rise. It may be the finest knife he's ever used. But it is not his. He wipes it off on his thigh, and offers it back to the man, hilt-first. "Good moon and good hunting, Night Haunter. Be safe and be well."

He really should take the knife back.

It's just a story. He'll get it back eventually. "You may keep it for now. I doubt there's much else in this 'city' which can match adamantium. Put it to use."

He had others, if it came to it. He could get a skin off a man as well with his nails or a broken piece of glass, a knife was a luxury he didn't require. "I'll be watching."

With that pseudo-reassuring statement, Curze heads for the window. Between one step and the next, ten feet of too-pale primarch becomes an oversized but much more maneuverable indoors bat that hops easily up onto the open window's sill and then right out it.

He's still not good at flying, he's only been at it a single night. But he's catching on quick.

"If you're certain --"

But the Night Haunter is already moving to leave before he finishes his sentence, and Roberte is getting enough of a feel on the man's mind that he knows pursuit would be futile. He chuffs softly, in frustration, and flips his grip on the fine blade. If the man insists that he holds on to it for now, so be it. When it must be relinquished, it will be.

"Be well," he says to the open window, in an echo of sentiment. He shall accept the Night Haunter's gifts, and use them as intended. Of there is a chance to thank him later, he promises himself, he will.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

do you bare your fangs at us, sir? MOONLIT RIVALS LOG 2, SCENE 2

In Town

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject