The Blooming of a Daylily

Started by The Dark Raven, March 26, 2013, 08:26:19 PM

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The Dark Raven

Update 22 Sept 2013:
Request thread consolidated here:  https://elliquiy.com/forums/index.php?topic=18675.msg8903873#msg8903873

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Anne of the Thousand Days [VAN] - A bit of a twist on the history of Tudor England.

Ever the hard-to-get woman, Anne Boleyn grew up in the courts of France, groomed as a lady-in-waiting that any Queen would be glad to have.  The younger daughter of Sir Thomas Boleyn, she was called back to England when her father began to gain favor with Henry, the King.  Installed as one of Queen Katherine's ladies at court, she joined her sister, Mary, who already shared the King's bed.  As Anne began to charm the court with her wit and beauty, so Henry's attentions cooled to both his lady-wife and Mary Boleyn, who was sent home to Hever Castle in disgrace.

This would be Henry and Anne's story.



Deus Vult [unrated]

On a research trip to the Middle East, a college professor travels around the major battle sites of the Second and Third Crusades, despite the distinct feeling she is being followed.  This is a feeling she has had every time she has been in the East, and she has learned to ignore it.  Nearing the end of her travels, she heads to Cyprus to catalogue the final holdings of the Templars during the Crusade and the burial place of the last King of Jerusalem.  On arrival at Lefkosia, she is abducted by a group of men, and awakens in the tomb of King Guy of Jerusalem, with a man looming over her. 



Amor Vincit Omnia [VAN]

The unforgiving shores of the British Isles are at once dangerous and breathtaking.  So much more so for a young woman who travels there alone, with a history she isn’t sure if it is safe to forget or remember.

(Akin to my old Firelight story, but that can go many ways in negotiation.)



Sweetbriar [VAN]

Thrust into a world of beauty and luxury, an orphan girl finds that beauty is not always what it seems and as the walls of the world crumble around her, she finds love in the unlikeliest of places.




General Settings:
General fantasy (in the vein of Lord of the Rings or Game of Thrones)
Historical (Ancient, Medieval, Renaissance, Victorian)
Steampunk (including the Bioshock universe)

Les Miserables


***
(And my old request thread that I am totally ok to play more of.)

Historical Settings I Enjoy: Tudor England, Renaissance Italy, Crusades (England, France, Holy Land), Ancient Rome, Ancient Egypt, Regency England/Empire France/Revolution era (Colonial) America, Romantic era, Victorian era, 1920s-1930s America

Themes I Enjoy: Lost/Forbidden love, Ghost stories, War, "Alternative" history, Reincarnation, Adultery, Incest, varying degrees of BDSM

Please reply in PMs, and not here, as this will be where I update my musings.




Now the plots...


1. The Lion and the Rose

  • Rating: Up for grabs
  • Plot: The king is dead.  Long live the king.  The kingdom in chaos in the wake of the old king's death, the heir to the throne must find a queen to bear his heir, and keep political ties secure.  Possible incest (negotiable).
  • Setting: 1500s England (stylistically), fantasy
  • Looking for: a male character (the new king)

2. I Will Find You

  • Rating: Light
  • Plot:  A shameless romance.  Looking for a very stylistic feel and the star crossed lovers feel of Romeo and Juliet, though I am no Shakespeare, or a bit of a Cinderella story.

    A young woman of no great means (perhaps an orphan or a maid) is thrust into the strange world of the London (or Paris) scene--larger than life balls and parties, chivalrous young men and beautiful young ladies--out of her element as she is told at the last minute that she must try and fit into the world of satin and crystal.  Terrified, she is dressed in finery and set loose at a ball where she knows no one and certainly nothing of the finer points of city living.  There, while trying to stay out of the way, she befriends a man who seems to be as out of place as she.  At the end of the night, she leaves him to return to the life she normally leads, and he to his.

    The story would take place a few years later, when she is a little older and wiser.
  • Setting: Romantic era England or France
  • Looking for: a male character

3. Firelight...is Just a Memory

  • Rating: Light to NC
  • Plot: Life is difficult in times of great distress, especially for those who haven't the means to survive on their own.  Such is the lot of a young woman, the only child of a man not so frugal with his money.  The man, landed in debtor's prison, cannot work the land surrounding the farm, and the parcel is being foreclosed.  A gentleman of great means is in want of an heir, which he is willing to contract for.  Arranged by solicitors, they meet at a secluded, secret place to protect their privacy and his social standing (for she has none).  Her convalescence is arranged once she is known to be pregnant, and a proctor hired by the gentleman assigned to the girl.  It was a simple trade--the child for a living, and a promise to never come looking for the man or child.

    Six years as a governess to the same family, and the girl has been notified the child she has been tutoring has had an offer of marriage and that her services will no longer be needed.  They arrange for her references to be distributed, and she is hired by a household on the rough shores of Wales to care for a rather difficult child while her father tends to business.  It is not said what the father does, or of the whereabouts of the mother, which scarcely made a difference.  It was a situation, and she would be well provided for.
  • Setting: Romantic era to Victorian era
  • Extra Notes:  I plan to insert diary entries into this story, to give insight to the young woman's feelings.  I would love to see someone willing to let the Lord share his own in a similar manner, but it is not required for the story, just something different.
  • Looking for: a male character; a long term, literate writer who is familiar with the flow of period romances and is willing to stick with me


Check my A/A | O/O | Patience is begged. Momma to Rainbow Babies and teetering toward the goal of published author. Tentatively taking new stories.

The Dark Raven

#1
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The Governess



Orphan schoolgirls, more often than not, found themselves in untenable positions once grown out of the sheltering, strict charity schools that seemed overfilled with urchins forgotten or lost, forever to be indebted to their class. Others were fortunate enough to have a quick wit and the capacity for education that it took to escape the dingy halls and obtain paying positions as country schoolteachers or governesses to the young girl children of the lords.

At the tender age of eighteen, Miss Katherine Gardiner had been two years a teacher at the charity school she’d been raised in from the age of seven.  She knew everything they could teach her, but she wanted more, her rampant curiosity and tendency toward the fantastic never leaving her, even in the oppressive austerity of her childhood. 

Hired as a governess to a child in the almost-wild parts of Britain, she settles into a routine before the master of the house returns from his business abroad, bringing with him the odd mystery and fire only a man can.  Timid and reluctant to share with such a foreign thing as a man, let alone her employer, she cannot but wonder at his persistence to crack the careful facade she has built all her life. 

But he is a man with secrets, as is the solid old manor he calls his own with each reverent touch and word, save hidden unguarded moments when she catches him watching the third story gallery, always swathed in darkness.  What hate could he hold for a home he so seemed to love, and what danger could it do when she found herself hating his absences and his grand parties that disturbed their late night talks by the fireside, long after the child and servants were abed?

What of the strange knockings and ghostly screams in the dead of night?









The Jewel of the West Indies



She heard his voice in the darkness, even though it was light enough in her prison.  As light as Jamaica had been, but never as warm.  Always cold, and even more so here, locked away from everything that was warm and hale and loving.  All she had were the four whitewashed stone walls, a slatted, nailed up window, and the drunkard nurse he’d left her.

She turned, eyes far away, though her lips smiled a shy recognition at his voice, nevermind it was harsh, mocking, unloving.  Beside his voice, she picked out another she knew, sweet like nectar, and the shrill one of the nurse.  All besides the humming lullaby in her head.  Gently, she melted into his embrace, even if she was the one that had embraced him, tucking against his tall, strong form, his heartbeat lulling her to calm.  She heard him then, as his arms wrapped protectively around her.  His little demon.  Watery eyes darted around her, and focused on the little pale thing hanging away from her, as if she were a cur...dressed in white.  A despairing, feral cry tore from her lips and she stretched out of his hold to claw at the girl.  She was the one.



It had not always been so for the madwoman in Fairfax Rochester’s attic.  She was beautiful and witty, even if she was a mere planter’s daughter.  Doted on and coddled, Antoinetta Mason had the rare fortune to catch the ear of a Lord Rochester all the way to England.  Her father and brother arranged her marriage to the man’s son, all without her.  It simply wasn’t done any other way.  And there was her mother to consider.  The woman had been ill for as long as she could remember, and she was desperate to comfort her.  The woman had gone mad at the news.  Perhaps she’d been mad for far longer.

The man she was to marry came to the islands on business, and they met scarcely once before they were married and sent off.  She adored him, even despite his cold or perhaps staid English manner.  He spoke little of business, and even less of England and their future.  He felt himself trapped in the duty of marriage, but she loved him just the same.  Maybe one day he could see she meant to make him a good wife, no matter how they might both feel trapped at times with the lack of freedom.  He was a good man.

The bargain struck by Lord Rochester and old Mr. Mason for the girl’s fortune neglected to mention the madness of the girl’s mother, or how fiercely protective Antoinetta was of the woman she’d been named for...the woman whose madness she had inherited but had yet to show in anything more than frustrated bouts of temper.  They laughed it off as the frustration of a young woman to little in bed and too much out in the sun of the day.  She wanted to travel with her husband, see the world, see England, but as much as he seemed insatiable for her, he was indifferent at turns.  Jamaica, Barbados, the Continent...all seemed a separating of the two, until he finally consented to take her to England and his new inheritance--Thornfield Hall.

She had become Lady Bertha Rochester of Thornfield Hall almost overnight, but something was wrong and had been for a long time.  She had felt it slipping away as they travelled as she had wanted, his eyes growing distant, paying more and more attention to the chorus girls at the Opera when he thought she did not see.  That alone could drive a woman mad, and it prompted her to cling more tightly to the man she called husband in the dark.  But Thornfield Hall, once to be only a bauble to be lusted after, now their prize as his father had breathed his last, was at once her prison and her tomb...to be forgotten behind stone walls as he fled what he called her madness.  He hated her and hated her father and brother for ‘deceiving’ him and locked her away with the sot of a woman to be her jailer, to make sure she would live out her torment, her mind broken for the man that had surely captured her heart.









Hazel and Honeysuckle



Old stories and new, alike, tell ancient stories of the Round Table and the Grail, some even straying to tell tales of the knights on their own, but none so poignant as the tale of gallant Tristan and his Isolde. 

Given to journeying from Arthur’s court, Tristan gave his services to his relative, King Mark of Cornwall, a just and honorable man without a wife.  His was a warrior’s court, undoubtedly, as the Cornish were a martial people, as were many other tribes within and without the lands of Britain.  Even after the catastrophe at Badon. 

Only when there was no fair and hale court led by Arthur to return to did Tristan settle fully at his kinsman’s court, vowing to become as much a boon to this king as he had been to Arthur, pledging fealty to him and going off to the courts of Ireland to pass word of Arthur and settle disputes in Mark’s stead.  At the court of one of the Irish kings, there was a tournament held, the prize the king’s own headstrong, wild daughter.  Thinking to win for the glory of Cornwall, Tristan agreed to the terms, knowing Mark to be too old to best some of the younger Irishmen.  Tristan had been cut from another cloth.



The Irish lass, called Isolde, was one to march to her own drummer, having outlived one marriage proposal and she quite intended to outlive another, the master of her own person.  Secretly, she entered into the tournament, but was found out the day of, and confined to her room as punishment, with her maid.  She would not know the outcome, nor have any touch on her own destiny, until after the tournament had been concluded and she was presented to her suitor.

Check my A/A | O/O | Patience is begged. Momma to Rainbow Babies and teetering toward the goal of published author. Tentatively taking new stories.

The Dark Raven

#2
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Sangreal

Galahad, son of Lancelot, was the perfect knight--destined by fate to find and protect the mythical Holy Grail.  Stories have been written about all the worthy knights of Arthur's Round Table and of Camelot itself.  None worthy for the most sacred of tasks but a young man born of deception and lust to be sinless and devout, his prize the eternal watch of the most precious of objects.

But what if our perception of the Grail over time immaterial was wrong?  What if the Grail was not a thing, but a person?  What if the gallant Galahad is forever fated to follow the precious Grail through time itself to protect her?  And what happens when she finally comes face to face with him?





The Blood is the Life: A Dracula Roleplay

They say this new electric light is a wonder, and as we behold it now, who are we to question it?  It illuminates and burns brightly like fire, but it does not dim with time, it does not flicker and wane, so unlike the gaslight in the streetlamps and the candles that grace our tables at dinner.  This mysterious man who has brought fire so much like Prometheus is an unwitting purveyor of the new and unimaginable.  The bringer of this newfangled electricity.  He is new, an unknown.

But, no.  His face is not unknown to me...to me alone.  The sight of him shakes me to the very core, with the promise of memory and a kiss.  Nightmares, bloody and inflamed dance in their wake--my waking.  The demonstration is one filled with others, the well-to-do, electrical light, moving pictures, grotesques and carnival oddities, but all I can see is him.  Why, I cannot fathom, but I cannot dare seek.

Perhaps he will find me in my dreams...

Check my A/A | O/O | Patience is begged. Momma to Rainbow Babies and teetering toward the goal of published author. Tentatively taking new stories.

The Dark Raven

#3
Spoiler: Click to Show/Hide


After the Gold Rush


Some came seeking riches untold, others as a way to disappear and hide from the law, most just got swept up in the whirlwind.  Gold fever, they called it.  Some came for other reasons entirely.  One woman came to reinvent herself, armed only with a Colt revolver and a shadowed past.  She was born Susannah Rose Davies on the shores of Wales, come west as a girl when her parents were too unwell to care for her.  Raised "back East," as the Americans called it, she grew up to privilege and wealth, fell in love and came to the frontier with her fiance, only to be thrown into a whirlwind of jealousy and death when confronted with her husband-to-be's family.

The young man's death in an Indian raid saw her a widow before she was even married and she grieved, the young man's brothers with her, even as they vied with each other for her attentions.  One took it upon himself to seek her out, and she fell for him as hard as he had for her, but his remorse over his brother's death and the guilt laid on him by a jealous brother drove him away.  Drove the family apart entirely.  And yet she stayed, hoping he would return and make good his offer of marriage.

But years passed and she waited, fending off clumsy attempts at proposals from the brother left behind, who made a name for himself in the city and wanted to share it with her.  His newspapers boasted of gold and riches far away, that drew the faceless mob.  His attempts to cheer her to a life where news travelled fast only made her mind turn to the man that had left her behind.  And she left at dawn the next morning, as heartsick as the man that had left her.

Following the news of the gold strikes, she travelled by horse and train to the boomtown, calling herself Anna Rose (Rosie, to those that asked), and found herself quickly ensconced at a local gambling hall as a faro dealer and all around good luck charm to the establishment.  How it came about, she could only guess, but there she lost herself, becoming one of the faceless mob that so turned his stomach.  But only a place like this was wild enough to hide her broken heart and allow her to begin to live again.  She knew he'd never return to her.  It seemed his guilt was too great to bear.

But news travelled fast in the little town that seemed just far enough away from the mountains that reminded her of all she had lost, that there was new blood in town, another man looking for a gold claim, lawman, or outlaw, no one knew.  Only when he stopped for a drink and a song at the Midnight Rose did she have a feeling the man was more than even he would tell.


Check my A/A | O/O | Patience is begged. Momma to Rainbow Babies and teetering toward the goal of published author. Tentatively taking new stories.

The Dark Raven

#4
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Hear the Wind Blow

She was the love of his life and they'd planned out every detail of their forever since they were children.  His big dreams of the city and success.  Her dreams of making him a wife and giving him a family.  Everything working right, marching toward their happy ever after.  His career blossomed and thrived, even when he spent time tucked away with her, and she soon told him that they two would soon be three.  It was idyllic, really.  Until it wasn't.  Until it was too late, and they slipped away from him in the embrace of death.  It wasn't his fault.  It wasn't anyone's fault.

And he, too, slipped away, in a way.  The grief was too heavy a burden to carry alone.  So he left everything they had built for a somewhere else.  Anywhere else.  And ended up here.

And even out here, her passing touched one or two.  One more than the others.  They had all been children together, and spent days playing in fields when they hadn't a care in the world, but circumstance had drifted them apart.  Only when he appeared one day did she realize all that he had lost, and though she was a fool, she found herself regularly at his door, a friendly face making sure he ate, didn't drink too much, slept more than once a week.  More and more often she tucked in on him, more often than she would have realized.

Maybe more often than was smart, but certainly not often enough to turn heads, was it?

Check my A/A | O/O | Patience is begged. Momma to Rainbow Babies and teetering toward the goal of published author. Tentatively taking new stories.