About VelasVelas
RESISTANCES:
REFRESH: Someone feels deeply moved when they
Durance: Sage (+2 Mind, Academia)
Bonds:
Bond with a PC: Thusiax has seen Velas perform, perhaps at the Library with Sages. Velas is otherworldly, compelling, difficult to approach, and yet, one wants to approach him. Equipment:
Core Abilities:
ADVANCES
Velas was selected from the ranks of drow child singers by the sweeping eye of the inverted Telescope, and summarily ripped away from his parents and placed in the Interview Rooms, where he was selected among other children as an experiment to replicate the lost arts of ancient elf-singing, attested to in certain texts. Where other children died, their larynxes filling with blood when failing various tests of sonic sagacity, Velas survived. After being released to limited freedoms, singing long forgotten poetry in the halls of the University, Velas was spotted by Alights-Gently-Upon-The -Ocean, a notably eccentric and cruel patron of the arts and a high ranking aelfir of Amaranth. Velas’ durance was rapidly shifted to becoming a pet in the cold aerie of the high elves, being trained to be a diva of the torture-operas, where he would eventually be sacrificed. The aelfir of the University were consternated to lose their prize experiment, but Velas was far more miserable, pondering his fate as dying songbird. Then he became angry. He began to research drugs, poisons, mishaps that befell opera singers. He was careful in his library searches; the aelfir did not discover him. However, he noticed another singer, noticing him. It was several months away before his grand and final performance when he met with the glittering, towering drow diva Thielinel. He had an idea, he said. She knew what he was considering, she said, in quiet, yet resonant tones—escape, or murder, or both. Why not, she suggested, make it grand? THE RITE OF GRACE:
: And thus, Velas began to slowly increase Alight’s drug regimen, and brought the aelfir in to see rehearsals of the torture opera more often. After subtle hints, deep immersion into the art, and, of course, more drugs, Alight was convinced. He would join Velas on stage as the killer, to slay Velas, in the role of the Ornate Swallowtail. As the orchestra brought to a crescendo, their duet rising and the poisoned knife was gripped in Alight’s hand, suddenly ripped off their mask and costume—revealing themselves to be the Ornate Swallowtail, and took their own life onstage. Velas continued the aria alone as his former master thrashed and foamed as the poison took hold. The shock and applause from the audience was deafening. Velas bowed and bowed again, taking armfuls of flowers from the roaring aelfir and drow. He wept with triumph. He had turned a murder into a suicide, and they -loved- him for it.
Thus ended Velas’ durance.
THE RITE OF FURY:
:
”You are freed now,” said Thielinel, after the Ministry had accepted Velas’ grand exit from Amaranth as a suitable rite of grace. ”Where will your blood and fury take you?” Velas knew his target, and there was no dagger, no drug at all needed. Masked and hidden, he re-entered the Interview Rooms, slipping through the University with familiar ease. This should have been my durance, he thought. However, his time in Amaranth had bought him skills. After hours, with guards bribed or lulled to sleep, he stood before the most dangerous, talon-clawed denizens of the Interview. And sang to them a song of vengeance, of blood-lust, of maddened destruction. Let your keepers see you for the monsters you are, he sang, in body, voice, and flashing eyes. He watched as the twisted beasts hurtled themselves against their prisons, leaving bloody prints and scratches until the crystal walls finally cracked and alarms began to ring. They flowed around Velas like a rain-swollen river of hatred and anger. As he heard the shrieks of guards and then, more satisfyingly, the hoarse moans of professors awakened to find their entrails suddenly not within their bodies, he moved carefully to release drow children from other cells. Just a few. Not all would survive their release. Some would spread the tale, though, even as they died. THE RITE OF VIGILANCE:
: For Vigilance, Velas was taken to the Works, and told to follow a Magister of the midwifian variety.
Velas was rather through with taking orders. So far, the Ministry was his to sculpt as he saw fit. He would test that. Rather than tracking the Midwife, he strode to a hulk of rattling, clanging machinery, refining raw spireblack and impregnating it (ha, he thought) onto sheets of metal for unknown purpose. He began to pirouette before the hulk, the gutterkin and rushing drow ignoring him at first, then began a beat in counterpoint to the machinery. Tick-tick-clank. Tick-ticktik-clank. It became infectious. People stopped to watch. He began a wordless, deep false-bass throat tone, resonant and full of overtones. More people gathered. He became hypnotic, dazzling, magnetic, as a thick crowd coalesced, and finally, the Midwife drifted through the crowd, entranced, twitching. As the performance ended and Velas let the spell end, he nodded to the Midwife. ”Some hunt,” he said. ”I build webs.” She was not amused.
THE RITE OF COMMUNITY:
Velas was unsurprised to be plopped into the loving care of the Midwives after that. He didn’t care much for religion, and didn’t think much about caring for young either, but he respected their caring for their broods, and the scientific way they gave each the right dosages and vintages of blood. If they culled some defective eggs, so be it. He also learned to respect their swift discipline—harsh, yes, like the aelfir, but they also took the time to explain things. Velas learned much of the occult while working with them. His joke on the Midwife Magister was not forgotten, and he wound up stuck in a literal spiderweb for some time—the haughty young singer eventually joined in with the Midwives to laugh at himself. THE RITE OF TENACITY: :
After a month, that Magister and other Midwives brought Velas to the catacombs. Easy, he thought, I’ve starved for longer. But he was wrong again. ”Our friend believes himself to be invulnerable,” said the Midwife Magister. ”Such greatness should be shared. Sisters. Drain half his blood for our eggs. Should he perish here, it will not have been wasted.” Velas, to his credit, fought back, but they held him down and exsanguinated him anyhow. He lay there, spots before his eyes, certain he would die within a few hours. However, he eventually saw -things- approaching him—wriggling, blind things, like a cross between a rat and a maggot. Slowly, slowly, they moved toward him, scenting his blood. At that moment he thought very little at all. No-thought sustained him. As one began to fasten onto his arm, suckling at the clotted wound, he grabbed it with his other hand, and bit down into the wriggling thing, eating its moist, jellylike flesh. As he smashed each one in turn and chewed on the one in his hand, he began to hum. He had been miserable in Amaranth, but he had thrived. Here, he ate rodent-grubs in the dark…and he would survive. For three days he hummed and breathed in the dimly lit space, and he ate well. THE RITE OF SAGACITY:
”Not many have returned from this party,” said the Magister with an upturned eyebrow. He was a fellow singer who had taught Velas code-songs from the Instrumentalists, which intrigued Velas, but he sought something…stranger. ”It isn’t the main party—it’s an offshoot. And it’s where Oone is supposed to be. Whatever she is.” Velas looked insistent. ”Very well. A Carter will accompany you and take you to the entrance.” . Velas nodded, grateful. Sometime later, Velas found himself deposited at the gate of The Sunset Fete, an ‘offshoot’ or perhaps even a cancerous outgrowth, of the Endless Bacchanal. Reality swirled as he entered the party, and he found himself instantly toasted by all kinds of warped beings, blood-witches, fellow idols, pets, madpersons… It’s like the Interview Rooms all over again, he thought, feeling giddy, but free. After some eons, or seconds? he did find Oone. She was a drow after all, but one so thick with ghosts that she appeared to be in a haze of people. He never did ask if she had killed them all. Together, they became the center of the party for some time, singing from hoary and forbidden texts, or bawdy saloon tunes, or something that sounded like human machines going haywire. He was sad to leave and promised to return, but he had a Spire to turn upside down.
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