weep not for the memories

[brushoff]

WHO: Everybody!
WHERE: all cities
WHEN: March 4 - March 6
WHAT: it's a catch-all log, sucka! Tag here and thread around for the Dorian Ruins Everything Guilt Extravaganza part of the overall March plot. Please check out this ooc post for details!
WARNINGS: Traumatic memories. Possible talk of murder, death, blood, other nasty things. I'll try to update if the warnings needed but please use content warnings if it gets super nasty!

It starts off on March 4th, the early morning before the sun's even risen. You know those weird mirages that were hanging around the day before? Well now it's getting a little personal.

These mirages come and go seemingly for no reason. They might stay for a minute, they might stay for an hour. The images vary between person but the unifying factor is that the mirages consist of people the player characters have hurt, whether people in-game or from their homes. Whether they murdered them, slandered them, or even had a petty little argument, the unifying factor is the guilt each character feels towards or about this mirage. After all, you know you hurt them somehow. You know their existence somehow makes you feel guilty.

Another unifying factor? The creepy way these mirages just seem to stick to you. They'll follow you if you try to leave, staring you down with their creepy unblinking mirage eyes. And whoops: everybody can see said mirages. Hopefully you're not being stalked by someone you and somebody else both know, wouldn't that be awkward?

Have fun confronting your traumatizing past and/or wondering why your buddy's got some creepy ghost guy following him, imPorts!

( ooc: this is a catch-all log! Make starters of your characters getting haunted by their creepy mirages, have other people react to said creepy mirages, ???, profit. Hit me up on the ooc post if you have any questions! )

Comments

5th!

[burlyboy]

[ By now, Magnus has seen a few people with apparitions following them around, so this whole thing isn't really a true surprise, but what is is the sight of a ghost with a wolf's head. He doesn't really comment on the miserable looking soul sitting on the bench at first, just drifts over, unable to resist getting a closer look to see what the hell had happened there.

It's not great. In fact, it's pretty grotesque, and Magnus is the sort of fellow who's seen enough grotesque imagery in his life to keep him up at night, sometimes, but they usually stopped short of this sort of thing. Finally, his gaze is drawn down, away from what had once been a mutilated corpse, and towards the wretched figure beneath him. ]

I don't think he's going to kill you, [ he says, simply, trying to gauge the size and strength of Theon, trying to figure out if this corpse had, at one time, been his doing. ] But it doesn't look like these things go away, either.

[reek]

[ Theon might have the strength to create something like that, but gruesome apparition wasn’t a crime of his own hand. Truth be told, Theon hasn’t even seen Robb Stark in this state until now, but he knows that his actions helped to make this mutilated corpse. If he hadn’t have been so interested in proving himself to his father, he might have been there by his friend’s side. Perhaps he could have done something to stop this.

At the sound of Magnus’s voice, Theon only grips at his hair harder, tightening in on himself. Sitting here in misery while the symbol of all his grief and mistakes hovers over him is not how he expected to spend his time. ]

He’s been following me for two days.

[ His voice is strangled and choked, and he seems to be struggling to speak. It really is a lot to handle. ]

Nothing I say is enough to make him leave.

[burlyboy]

Maybe it's not about what you say. Maybe it's about what you do.

[ Magnus considers the situation before him before having a seat. He's willing to chat this out with whoever this guy is - he certainly can't just leave him - so he may as well make himself comfortable in the process. He's obviously dealing with some demons, and if he doesn't talk to anyone, he seems apt to just depress himself to death. ]

I mean, I'm no ghost expert, but usually their idea of reparations are a little less talky, a little more do-y. Can you think of anything he'd want you to do? Minus killing yourself which, putting it out there now, super off the table.

[reek]

He would want to kill me himself.

[ He says it as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world, as if every other imPort surely knows his crimes and the people connected to them. If he were in any normal state, he would know better, but he believes that Robbwind is meant to act as a neon sign for all his misdoings. ]

It’s his duty. He would be given no other choice.

[burlyboy]

[ Magnus certainly doesn't know the context to this whole hullabaloo, but he doesn't doubt that whoever this guy is would want to kill whoever he felt was responsible. Hell, Magnus would want to murder the shit out of anyone who did that to him, and he feels he would be perfectly justified in doing so.

But the kid's still saying three different things, and he would be given no other choice doesn't sound like the sort of thing you'd say about someone who would single-mindedly pursue the bloodthirsty lead of avenging their own death. ]

Okay, that would be his duty. But is that what he wants? Those are two totally different things.

[reek]

No, they're not.

[ Theon looks frustrated. It’s difficult to explain the workings of Westeros and the North to someone who has never lived such a life, but it’s all Theon has ever known. Some things sound unfair, but what good does complaining about them do? He’s spent ten years not complaining about being punished for crimes that belong to his father. It isn’t as if anything would have changed. ]

He would want to do what his father would have done, and it would have been his duty to do so. Whatever other feelings he may have harbored would have meant nothing.

[ It’s really a pretty emotionally complicated situation when you really think about it. If Theon weren’t so upset, he might ask himself if Robb would have really been able to follow through with it. ]

[burlyboy]

Maybe when he was alive.

[ When you're dead, Magnus figures, your priorities must change. Death'll do that to a man. Things that are done just because that's how they've always been done probably means very little to the dead - or so he figures. He's never been dead enough to speak from personal experience, but he knows enough to know that trauma changes you, makes things that used to feel complicated feel simple, makes things that used to feel simple complicated. It's all just a part of being alive.

Or, well, dead. With a wolf head sewn on your neck. Hard to miss that one. ]

I obviously don't know the whole situation with... that. [ He gestures at the ghost, the gesture just casual enough to seem disrespectful. ] But it's something to think about.