Roen

At first, the Outsider seemed on the cusp of refusing Koji. He looked at the Emperor with soft, endearing indulgence, his eyebrows delicately arched and his expression decidedly neutral, as if well-practiced. In truth, it was a face Irene might have worn when dealing with the necessary unpleasant. At least, that’s what Roen thought, reflecting. If imitation was the most sincere form of flattery, then he flattered the foreign Orisian Queen highly, imitating her body language. He was waiting for the Emperor to finish speak, the devil’s mind already turning to other, weightier matters that had to be attended to in Orisia and the Black City besides, when his lazing gaze happened upon Irene. It was just a small glance, a drifting sort-of attention while he waited for Koji to finish making an offer Roen already determined to decline, but he saw it: a smile, both genuine and pleasant, on his chosen’s sensual mouth. And then he knew he couldn’t refuse Koji. The decision was as visceral as it was final within; Roen but rarely ran counter to the will of his lover, especially in regards to her genuine delight. Her happiness was a rare and flighty thing, and if he could grant it to her for an hour, a day, then it was worth the price he would pay in logistics concerning the commitments he had made prior in the meeting. Koji looked at him, but Roen looked at Gabriela, and very slowly, even naturally, his expression began to change. No more the well-practiced imitation of dearly beloved, Roen’s countenance reverted back to sullen scowls and pinched eyebrows, an expression far more genuine than any. He wasn’t unhappy - at least not more than typical - but rather thoughtful, even considerate. He was thinking, thinking of her, thinking of the future, thinking of all. A devil of worries was he, and it showed in the wrinkles at the edges of his mouth and the corner of his eyes. “That would be very kind of you,” Roen murmured in reply, his eyes still leveled heavy on the Black Queen of Orisia. He felt her hand twitch on his elbow, watched the way her face turned and her eyebrows quirked, as similar as his did whenever the inexplicable occurred, and met her slightly questioning, almost accusing gaze. Between them, silent communion passed. It was in the searching of eyes, the subtle shifts of weight, the pregnant pause between them, but in that brief moment, volumes of sentiment were exchanged. They should return to Orisia, but didn’t have to immediately; someone had tried to kill her in Kadia, and was liable to try again; he was worried, and she had forgot, for a moment, what it was like to be afraid. In the end though, there was really only one sentiment that mattered: he loved her, and was glad to travel with her, if only to see her smile more, even if were only once more, even if it were for somebody else but him. “Yes,” Roen sighed, finally turning his head to look at Koji, who was regarding him with narrowed focus. Oh, the Emperor was a clever man, of that there was no doubt, but Roen wondered if he was clever enough. While it was the Outsider’s decision that he and Irene accept, it was Irene’s caprice that willed it. She, not Roen, smiled with the compunction to journey and adventure to another nation, and it was she, not the Outsider, who should be more deserving of striking chords and wanting friendship. Koji felt a kindred bond with the Outsider, and unfortunately demeaned himself with the comparison. The two were not alike, and if they were, it was in the single quality of intensity they shared concerning the conquest and subjugation of their ambitions. But that was where their paths diverged. Roen had but one satisfaction in life, and it was not in the accumulation of wealth, land, or power as it could be grasped politically or socially; his satisfaction was in the possessing and possession of the darkling beside him. Common ground between the Outsider and Koji began and ended with the Black Queen of Orisia. “We wouldn’t be imposing though, would we?” Roen asked, putting on smoothly the facade, the vanity of the gentleman sage, pairing wisdom and feigned charm for the sake of social amenities. Oh, the mask was a beautiful thing, he had learned much and more from the Orisian Queen, this monster. He knew how to be urbane, how to be thoughtful and considerate; he knew how to blend in. I am one of you, the gentleman sage said with his generous words and weighty gaze. I am human. Drawing nearer to his chosen, Roen shared his attention between the two, queen and emperor both. Oh, he was jealous that she deigned to smile for Koji, unhappy that she would prefer to be in company with the emperor than alone with her tormentor, but he was willing, oh so willing to concede these little things, and settle on being a voyeur of joy rather than the dealer of. Roen raised a hand and touched Gabriela’s on his arm, his warm, labor-calloused fingers running across her small, creamy knuckles, settling there atop. So long as he was close to her, so long as she was ever on hand, Orisia and the Black City - the world itself - could wait. A smile was worth a thousand subjugated worlds; a moment of joy, a thousand-thousand. This was the sum of his worldly ambitions, not the tired words spoken in dusty rooms. “Philippe is fit enough to travel, I think.” Then, something strange happened - Roen’s voice colored. His face, so stern, grew softer by degrees, as if the merest mention of the baby lightened the burden of himself. Real pride seeped in, and the eagerness he displayed now grew not entirely feigned. “We can show the little prince off,” he told Gabriela, conversational, almost - but not quite - delighted. “He loves attention, that one, it’s hard to say where he gets it from..,” He trailed off, teasing his chosen with the implication. Then, back to Koji. “We’d be delighted, Your Majesty. I have never seen your lands.”

Still interested.

“The indelibility of sentient rights goes without saying, but what right do you have to interfere with regional laws?” Roen rolled his shoulders with affected indolence. He was leafing through the papers handed to him, but was quick to set them aside with clear and abject indifference. “None. You squandered that potential clout by asserting individual sovereignty and objecting to your man’s tax proposal. I’d be careful of that one, Titus. He had nerve enough to insult me, the devil only knows what else he’s capable of.” Flicking his gaze to Chastity and turning his head, Roen favored the old, grizzled man with a half-smile, which was as close the Outsider ever went to a real one, and spoke with the same urbane tone of voice he had just used to lambast their host beside him. “Expect me in Inns’th, Sir. I want a good look at these Shadowlands. I stand committed to the safety and prosperity of the realm.” And the expansion of my influence, Roen thought, but prudently kept to himself. Rather, he leaned back in his seat and twisted his body enough to cast a furtive glance over his shoulder, a discreet inspection of the door Oscar and his wife departed through. Closed, with no sense of an approach. Privately, the Outsider lamented the absence of his chosen, the Black Queen. Though only a few minutes have passed since her departure, he felt the loss of her most keenly. Her political acumen was needed, almost as much as her presence. He wanted to touch her, and cool his warm, feverish hands on her cool alabaster skin. These thoughts - the discomfort of fever, the pain in his palms and wrists - distracted him from the conversation at hand, at least until Tynes went full tilt into a discussion with Titus. Lifting his attention and turning his head, Roen leveled scrutiny on Tynes from afar, and while the fiend didn’t necessarily share the majority of the man’s viewpoints, did not disagree enough to raise a dissenting voice. He could almost see Tyne’s thoughts writ clear on his face, the hesitance to commit to paper restrictions that could potentially put a handicap on his ability to adequate protect his interests if not his people. Succinct and to the point, Tynes finished, but not before turning Titus’ words back on the emperor in a way that provided some amusement to the Outsider, though he would be damned before he showed it. Instead he hummed with gentle agreement, and then turned his head towards Raveena as she began to speak, lacing her slender fingers together and resting her chin on them. Quiet still, Roen gave her the benefit of his time and the respect of his silence, and let her speak about the King Odin, the Terran Government, and most all that fell beneath its umbrella. She was incorrect, of course, there were no regents sitting at this table insofar as he was concerned, but that did not give him the right to cut the diminutive woman off and correct the narrative. Instead, he let her finish, and while she wrought a picture Roen wanted to believe in, it was a fantasy he didn’t have enough faith to buy into. Civic pride notwithstanding, he simply wasn’t a citizen of the Terran Government, and could not expect to have the same rights or privileges of those who were. That, and he was a murderous monster with delusions of grandeur, but that was much besides the point. When the empath finished speaking, the Outsider raised his voice. “Let me take you the ruins of Palgard, Lady Raveena, so that I may show you what human rights the millions of souls there possessed. They had but one, and that was to die en masse, slaughtered by a man you would call regent. You will not find Palgard on the Terran map, nor will you readily find those that remember the million of souls that resided there. But I remember..” He leaned back in his seat. “Or perhaps you would like to visit the ruins of Biazo City, and show me what human rights you can find in the dusty dead and the echoes of the lives they led. Let us find the constructs its citizens were turned into, and ask they-who-are-no-longer-alive what rights they had before they were made into but stone and magic. Or let us find Biazo’s refugees and ask them what rights they were aware of when they fled from war.” A pause. “The answer will be the same. The answer will be ‘death’. We will ask and they will say, ‘We had the right to die’.” Roen scrutinized the men and women of the table, regarding each in turn. “King Odin isn’t at this table, we are. We would be better off to remember that.”

I’ll have a post up in a day or two, wait for me.

IT IS TIME TO STOP

If you need help with anything, or if you want to throw some ideas around concerning Role Play, I'd be more than happy to show you around and get your feet wet. It is good seeing familiar faces.

No, that Roen retired about six years ago. I'm the new Roen. The process is a bit of a cross between Doctor Who and Dread Pirate Roberts.

Satisfaction, contentment, the consolation of spirit, these were things the Outsider yearned for, but had never received. An animal, a beast of want, desire and need, it stalked the halls, lands and cities of men with a nameless hunger and unquenchable avarice, seeking but never finding that which might sate. Except, there had been a change over these past years and the turning of a decade, a shifting of a monstrous paradigm. Lately, the need had been named, the hunger, tamed. In the years it had spent on this world and among these people, it had found a thing to satisfy and a someone to possess - it had found, strangest of all, a woman to love. Madly, deeply, unconditionally and wildly, the Outsider was monstrous and knew no other way to love than monstrously, and when now it stalked, it stalked for her. Tonight was no different. With the dissembling guise of the gentleman sage to distract or otherwise deter those it approached from acknowledging they stood in the presence of something other, it stayed after the conclusion of the meeting to talk more personally with those it otherwise had no inkling of. Their wants, it addressed, their moods, it gauged. Attending to the future with both the thoughts and the actions of the now, it did what it could to impress upon those it cornered the necessity for cooperation, and thought of the Summer Isles and the family it had taken for itself with every promise it gave and every threat it made. And with those it felt comfortable enough to do so, it took their conversations to other, more personal matters, such as its investigations concerning the attack on Irene Gabriela Du’Grace. It was not idly that the Outsider broke bread with these men and women who called themselves Lords and Ladies; what it did, it did for its interests, and there were no interests more paramount than those that concerned the sum of its worldly ambitions. “Were you in Kadia for the emperor’s wedding?” It would ask, casual even as it watched their hackles raise with the mention, the dire knowing. We know what you did, their eyes would say, narrow or wide, scared or uncaring. We know what you are. It shrugged at all these looks, the beast, and asked the follow up with the affected indolence of the unconcerned: “I’m looking to return something to this man. Have you seen him?” And he would show them a full three-dimensional rendering of Rowan Knight, the man who had attempted to assassinate the Queen of Orisia. It didn’t matter that it came from a hololithic display the Outsider produced from its trouser pocket, courtesy of the Black City’s technicians. It mattered only that none recognized the image itself, hovering between beast and mortal like a pale ghost. For hours the Outsider did its mingling, until at last it could endure the social amenities anymore. It longed for love, it longed for family, and so at last pulled itself away to wander other halls and stalk other minds, thinking to itself only of cold and loving hands in its own, and the sweet, fresh scent of its newborn son. It longed so much for these things after so long without that it felt less the beast of need it was and more the man it wished to be, and it was he that walked with lighter steps, with kinder strides closer, closer to what he wanted, what he needed. As the sum of all his worldly ambitions and wants spoke in worried tones a wonder for his whereabouts, Roen had to contend with the amusing duality of Irene’s words traveling to him from two different sources, one esoteric and the other mundane. She spoke his name and he heard the words, borne on the wings of simple albeit powerful magic; enchanted, none could say his name without being heard by the monster, and ever paid the first seven words for the privilege of speaking it. Yet he was close enough to catch the tease of her voice from afar and down the hall, accented and exotic, carrying through the air to delight him in ways nothing else really could. It quickened his pulse as well as his pace, while the romantic in him could not help but make sure he was adequately presentable with roaming hands and fastidious gestures. Unsurprisingly, he found her in the company of another. Of course he couldn’t find her alone, not her beast of burden. They simply could not be alone with one another. Resisting the urge to utter something trite, like how speaking of devils inevitably summoned them, Roen went instead to Irene’s side with the quiet simplicity of a well-known lover, and after giving Koji the briefest of acknowledgements, gave her the full of his attention. “There you are,” he murmured softly, already feeling the press of her cold, already able to bask in it. He wanted to touch her, to kiss her, to assert all the dominion over her the long hours had stripped away, but he couldn’t, wouldn’t. They were not alone, and he had to be mindful. “I was looking for you, but I see Lord Koji has been keeping you company.” Just a small touch, he reasoned, a hand going for hers, their fingers brushing, a lick of fire against cold, nimble marble. Holding hands was simply too erotic, so he settled painfully so for a gentle brush, to have just a touch, a taste; here was his named avarice, here was the inconsolable rage. Roen turned his head and flicked his eyes away from Irene, looking at Koji, now. Another outsider, just like the devil was. A presence that forced himself into the talks. Roen was not so naive as to think he had influenced Koji to take the initiative to do so with the advice he had given to the emperor before hand, but he was proud of the man all the same. It was ever a delight, seeing such naked ambition in others. “I’m not interrupting anything, am I?” He asked, brows quirking albeit only slightly, touched by mild amusement and a measure of teasing. The gentleman sage, yes, he knew how to make his harrowed, handsome face perform, to compel others with the ghastly charisma of the beautiful and the dangerous. He looked from one to the other, his tail swaying, the cross at the ting jingling with the vague, vague gesture. “What are we plotting?” Another tease, a gentle prodding, but there was no mistaking the quiet accusation lurking beneath the playful words, the smolder. No, he never liked to leave her alone, this devil. There was no satisfying his rage.

Cheers darlin' Here's to you and your lover boy Cheers darlin' I got years to wait around for you Cheers darlin' I've got your wedding bells in my ear Cheers darlin' You give me three cigarettes to smoke my tears away And I die when you mention his name And I lied, I should have kissed you When we were running in the rain What am I darlin'? A whisper in your ear? A piece of your cake? What am I, darlin? The boy you can fear? Or your biggest mistake?

Everyone likes Volcano. Then they broke up, and now he sings it alone.

I had all and then most of you Some and now none of you Take me back to the night we met I don't know what I'm supposed to do Haunted by the ghost of you Oh, take me back to the night we met When the night was full of terrors And your eyes were filled with tears When you had not touched me yet Oh, take me back to the night we met

She takes you in with her crying eyes Then all at once you have to say goodbye Wondering, could you stay, my love? Will you wake up by my side? No, she can't, cause she's gone, gone, gone.