RP:A Pinch of Ginseng and Soul Bonding

This is a Necromancer's Guild RP.

Summary: Teen girls bond over soul bonding

House Dragana

Towering over the abyssal forest, the dark mass of House Dragana is no less eerie than the vegetation, or lack thereof, in which it stands. The mansion's outer perimeters are flanked by the twisting trees and there are no gates to prevent the seemingly less desirable denizens of the forest from trespassing upon the property. A sleek, obsidian walkway runs from the house's entry to the path. The only source of light without comes form wrought-iron lanterns that are placed on either side of the walkway, spaced perfectly from one another. Within them, an eldritch glow of a deep, verdant hue flickers. Those brave enough to approach House Dragana's doors will be greeted with iron knockers bearing blackened skulls, their eyes set with emeralds that glow with the same light from the lanterns. Within the house's walls, there is no shortage of decadence. Only the most elegant of furniture is placed throughout its rooms. A grand staircase of blackened wood leads to the upper levels, where rooms for those that reside within the house can be found. Midway up, the stairs split to the left and right, spiraling upward. Here, there is a landing with a set of double doors that leads to a large ballroom. The lower level of the house plays host to a dining area and kitchen, though rarely used, a grandiose library filled with grimoires and tomes, and a small museum of artifacts collected by the house's residents. Though there appear to be no candles to light the way, an ethereal glow floods the innards of the house, providing ample reading light - undoubtedly arcane in origin. Dark magic is weaved into the house's existence as a measure of protection.

Shishi :: For the past month since returning to Vailkrin, after the Nights of The Living Dead Girls, Leralynn’s evenings have ended one of two ways. Either she leaves the laboratory at House Dragana, traverses the familiarity of The Dark Forest, stops at The Hanging Corpse for dinner and retires to The Thorne Estate, or, as is the case today and the more common one overall, the blonde half-elf never makes it out of the lab. She has buried herself in her studies over the last thirty days, seemingly on an impatient mad dash towards a guild promotion. Gone is the girl disinterested in anything that wasn’t practical necromancy practice, in her place is the familiar sight of The Orange Witch at a workstation in the Dragana lab, one of Quintessa’s volumes open in front of her, with potion components scattered about and successful concoctions dotting the countertop. She’s burnt out to say the least and at this very moment her head is nestled in her arms atop the textbook and she is catching 40 winks. Her icy skeleton hasn’t been replaced, so the only familiar she has with her is an undead dormouse waiting patiently with a piece of charcoal in its mouth, near some scribbled notes on scattered sheets of paper. One can tell she’s really knocked out here as some drool soaks into the pages of the book of toxins and potions…

Quintessa hadn’t been back in Vailkrin long, maybe a couple of days, so the diligence of Leralynn had gone seeming unnoticed- that is until her return to House Dragana proper allowed her to discover her most promising student in a state much like she’d put herself in many times before. The changeling haunted the threshold of her lab, watching the Orange Witch sleeping on her book either in an attempt to gain its knowledge through osmosis or trying to gain some much needed sleep. With a soft smile cracking the pale complexion of Quintessa’s face, she assumed it must have been the latter as slow steps brought her closer to the girl. The dark fae comtemplates speaking to wake the half-elf up, but a better idea popped into her mind as her cloaked form drifted past her. Taking a place at her laboratory station, Quintessa began to light her cauldron fire and flame under a wire gauze that supported a beaker. While the flames heated up her equipment the poison master began to crush up ginseng in her mortar and pestle, mismatched eyes searching her shelves for the next ingredient. By the end of it she had added theobromine powder, yerba mate, and Rynvale coconut oil. Quintessa worked loudly as she does so, hoping her activity will rouse Orange from her sleep in time for the potion to be presented to her. “You awake yet?” The dark fae asked as her ice-magic chilled the contents in a separate glass beaker, a single cold-blue eye flashing back at her through raven locks. “This mixture will give you energy.”

Shishi :: Leralynn must feel fairly safe inside this manor as her sleep seems heavy and peaceful, and it takes more than one loud rattle of ceramic and glass to pull her out of slumber. Her rousing is heralded by a telltale little slurp of saliva before the girl lifts her head and wipes at the corner of her mouth with the back of her hand. Cursed, oceanic blue eyes, inherited from her father, blink away the weariness as she gathers in her surroundings and remembers where exactly she knocked out. She watches her teacher complete the brewing process and nods, replying weakly, “A-aye…” She accepts the beverage with two hands from her seat and gives it a sniff, probably more to take in the aroma than to suss out any foul play, and takes a little sip. Orange lets out a little satisfied sigh and shifts the container to one hand, rubbing at her cheek to get rid of the indent in the skin left by it begging pressed against an uneven surface while she slept for some time. “Thanks…” She eyes Quintessa and then glances back towards the tome she had used as a pillow and the potions beyond it on the table, “I’m nearly through that book... “ the changeling might notice that one of the completed concoctions on the counter is detailed in the final fourth of the textbook. The teenage witch wrinkles her nose as she says, “After that is just Black Tides basics… I think.” Her usual effervescence is gone, though maybe she’s just not a morning person. Nevertheless, the girl doesn’t wait very long to a response about her progress, instead immediately projecting what’s been weighing on her onto her teacher, “Have you been alright since the Trees?” She blinks at her own question and quickly adds, “Gwah~, I mean has anyone come after you?” That’s not what she means, “I’ve been safe here...”

Quintessa appraised her student with amusement as she snapped her fingers, the simple action causing her magical flames to snuff out of existence before her delicate digits reached for a nearby stool to sit upon as Leralynn spoke to her. “Good,” Quintessa said as she nodded along, “Just in time for my next volume to come out.” Her voice teased the younger teen. In truth she hadn’t finished it yet, but the chapters on antidotes were gathering information quickly in her spare time- what little she had. Quintessa was about to suggest that Orange was ready to move onto the Black Tides when the mention of the Holy Trees drained the emotion out of her face. Her false correction does little to remedy the empty feeling inside of the fae, but she cleared her throat with a nod and said. “Right… Um, yes and no…” Quintessa was distant and hesitant when she spoke, mismatched eyes dropping to the floor before she continued. “Khitti knows it was me.” She allowed the revelation to linger in the air for a moment before she stood from her seat to clear away her laboration station, throwing her voice over her shoulder as she spoke once more. “But only I have been outed as a criminal- I would never give you and Kanna away no matter what they did to me. Either way our involvement with the Holy Trees is over, and I’ll never ask you to do anything like that ever again.” Quintessa couldn’t help but feel guilty for involving Leralynn in the first place. “However, like I promised, I can start teaching you the basics of Soul Binding whenever you want… But I won’t lie, it does concern me a little what you intend on doing with that knowledge.”

Shishi :: Leralynn’s face goes through a whirlwind of expressions while Quintessa speaks. First, at the book launch announcement, Orange’s eyes widen and her mouth drops open in fear of another month of ingredient mixing. Even this wallowing has its limits, apparently. “Gwah~...” Then the changeling moves onto the fallout from the attack on the trees and the Orange Witch puffs out her cheeks and breaks eye contact with Tessa, glancing sideways at nothing in particular, “So no one knows I killed those guys…” It isn’t particularly difficult to infer that Orange doesn’t have any hangups about what the necromantic trio did to the two holy trees, but the casualties that resulted in the process are a different story… “ Third Quintessa brings up Soul Binding lessons and an excited grin accompanies the return of oceanic eyes towards the half-hag, though that smile is quickly replaced by a flattened expression when her motives are brought into question. She takes another sip of the energy drink and fidgets a bit with the cup, contemplating how much or little to tell the Dragana girl. “I have an idea…” She blinks and quickly backtracks, “I mean, I don’t want to like become a lich or anything!” With that clarified she repeats, “I have an idea… about getting rid of our curse…” She puffs out her cheeks and second guesses the idea of telling this to Quintessa, but she pushes forward after that slight hesitation, “Or at least Blue’s… and sealing it in something like a phylactery…” For an ordinary curse, this seems like an unnecessary method, but if this were an ordinary curse, surely the family would be rid of it after five generations, but here we are and Orange clarifies again, “It’s definitely alive…” That probably complicates things…

Quintessa stared at the half-elf in silence, clearly thinking hard about something though the Provectus Malus was nearly impossible to read. After a moment sapphire and topaz eyes shimmer in the light of the lab as they refocused on her student, a new luster showing in those orbs as she parted her cracked, dehydrated lips to speak. “You mean the curse that afflicts the Dragana bloodline as well?” It was a rhetorical question; Shishi had already revealed this to Quintessa once before, but Orange's motivations of containing it interested the changeling quite a bit. Now more than ever, Quintessa was glad Larewen’s plans on turning her never were fulfilled. “I suppose it could be done- assuming it’s some kind of spirit or soul inside of him…” The changeling, ever scientifically minded, turned to raid Larewen’s bookshelf, a long finger tracing over the spines of the books until she found the one she was looking for. “Does your father know about your plans?” Quintessa set the tome on the surface Leralynn had been using and flipped through the pages, not looking up as she spoke to her. “Sealing this ‘curse’ into an object could potentially rob him of his magical powers. I don’t fully understand their nature, but judging from the way I’ve seen him fight I would assume no mage taught him those abilities.”

Shishi ’s daughter perhaps doesn’t give the answer that Quintessa is expecting about the curse’s attachment to the Dragana vampiric bloodline, which can also be traced back to her father. “Not exactly…” She goes into a somewhat lengthy explanation of The Eldritch Cabal’s Obsidian Pool and her brother’s journey within it. How the Pool had joined itself with the curse on Yellow, and how that merger of the family’s curse and The Black Pool was what infected Larewen and anyone she had sired since Orange’s brother attacked Green. For good measure she tosses in some references to the unbelievable bloodlust and cries for violence that only those with those accursed eyes can hear. It is complicated to say the least, and she only scratches the surface of both the Dragana infection and the Shishi family curse, but this much should suffice for now. The girl shakes her head, “He doesn’t know…” In her family she is the only one gifted with any magical ability outside of the shadow manipulation granted by the ‘curse’, so she is in the unique position to make use of the arcane to attempt to rid her clan of this murderous burden. “It will,” she says flatly in regards to Shishi losing his abilities. “I don’t want to tell him before I know better about if it will work or not…”

Quintessa‘s attention on the words written before her faded away as Orange explained the best she could about the curse that Shishi was affected by and how it came to exist in the first place, and her mismatched eyes remained intently plastered upon the girl as she continued speaking. “Amazing…” Quintessa murmured to herself, wishing she could get her hands on the Cabal’s culmination of knowledge. Perhaps if she could get close to Tenebrea somehow… The changeling pushed her ambitious ideas away, trying to remind herself that she was helping a friend- not trying to get yet another leg up on her enemies. When it was made known to Quintessa that Shishi didn’t know about this scheme and that it would strip him of his powers, the tall woman sighed loudly. “Well, that complicates things a little bit.” It would be much easier to just study Shishi directly in her lab, but if she had to hide this from him then she would need to study the curse in other ways. “Can you take me to the Obsidian Pool?” Might as well start at the source. “Assuming we can seal this curse away, there might be a way we can contain it in an object that can be wielded to achieve a similar effect of his abilities. It might not be the exact same, but this way it’s not a complete loss. Then again, if this entity is particularly powerful, sealing it away might be our only recourse in the end.”

Shishi’s daughter flinches when asked about going to The Black Pool, “No!” She shrinks in her seat after that quick outburst, “I mean… I misspoke… We had the curse on us before we ever went into The Pool. It just... changed when Yellow went in there.” It is likely that Leralynn would have had the same reaction whether or not she thought the Pool held some answers. She and the rest of her family have a deeply rooted fear of that place, and it was a point of contention between her father and Quintessa’s supposed sire. “Going there might help with what is affecting Green…” she narrows her eyes slightly, examining the changeling, “...and you, but I don’t think it will help Blue… ” The relationship between The Black Tides and the abilities granted by the family’s curse has long been confirmed, evident in the hostility that magic has towards those with the accursed eyes. “If we have to look at the source… we need to go to the Plane of Shadows.”

Quintessa seems disappointed to be denied access to the Black Pool but she doesn’t press the issue, knowing that this quest would likely have an open-ended solution. “Green…” The changeling trailed off thoughtfully, dangerously close to confessing that she was only a usurper and not a Dragana at all. Maybe the Orange Witch had already noticed that Quintessa no longer was surrounded by an aura of undeath- the changeling had certainly stopped trying to pretend by now. “The Plane of Shadows?” Her attention snapped back to Leralynn and the dark fae girl furrowed her dark eyebrows, “Great.” Quintessa notoriously struggled with shadow magic, though she went to great lengths to get better at it and hide her lack of talent. With enough hard work the changeling had mastered the shadow-step, but opening a portal to the Shadow Realm was still beyond her ability. “Well, we might have to reach out to -my- master Khitti Herzegler for that. She’s the go-to in the guild for the Black Tides, which won’t be a problem, I know I can count on her to help me.”

Shishi :: Leralynn might have been able to pick up on the lack of undead aura if she weren’t completely burnt out and just now coming out of a comatose-like state. The ginseng just doesn’t do enough for that level of perception. She takes one last sip. It is for the best that she doesn’t notice yet as that might be something she has a hard time keeping from her father, whom the ‘fact’ that Tessa is a Dragana matters very much to. “Aye. That place is at the heart of all of it. For sure.” The planning earns another little smile from The Orange Witch, but once again it is wiped away shortly afterwards when Khitti is mentioned for the second time tonight, “Even after the Trees?” She puffs out her cheeks again and wonders if the same forgiveness will be extended to her by Herzegler as was given to Quintessa if it comes out that The Orange Mask was predictably donned by its namesake…

Quintessa nodded her head solemnly but she seemed confident that Khitti would still support her. “Yes. I spoke to her for a while about it afterward. I explained why I went after those trees- that a giant insectoid gifted me the knowledge to defeat Gevurah in exchange for cursing them with that sap. I did what I did because I was convinced I had to do it to survive- but that’s all rubbish. I know that now. Khitti knows that deep down I can do so much more with my power than feuding with foreien nobles and making deals with evil god-like beings, and when I tell her I need her help breaking a curse she’ll be proud of me… or something.” Quintessa blushed at the fact that she might have left slip that making Khitti proud was somewhat important to her, at least enough to mention accidentally, but she recovered quickly and continued speaking. “And as it happens, when I mention that breaking the curse means he loses his powers, she’ll be somewhat more motivated to help, I’ll wager.” Quintessa flashed a cheeky smile. “We’ll just leave out the part about using the cursed soul to fill a magical item.”

Shishi’s daughter is in no position to judge anyone about the desire to make a necromancer role model proud. As has been established time and time again, the blonde half-elf takes her position as The Sin Eater’s successor very seriously. Gevurah is mentioned and Orange turns up her nose at the very thought of the inferior disciple of Vakmatharas. The insectoid and the true goal of the attacks on the Holy Trees are were Leralynn’s knowledge starts to become deficient, so she files the mention of The God of Undeath as something to look into on her own at another time. Khitti being motivated by Blue losing his wicked powers intrigues the teenage necromancer as this smells like gossip, “Ah~? Is the Umbracryaestor not a fan?” Of course when Quintessa intimates that the sealing of the curse soul will remain their little secret, the fifteen year old nods and smirks at her teacher, “Aye~”

Quintessa snickered at the question of Khitti not being a fan. “I think she’s just ready to see the end of his streak- and just you wait, next tournament I’m going all the way this time and I’m going to beat him.” Beating Kasyr, the man that had knocked her out of the Titan’s of Winter Tournament, had reinvigorated her, even if she had been in disguise while she did it. Nobody had to know the truth of her accomplishment for it to get to her head. “Breaking the curse is unrelated… “ she assured bashfully, moving the bookmark between the pages she was reading before closing the tome. “But we’ll still consider this project your intro into Soul Binding. I’ll work closely beside you and guide you through the process.” Quintessa was truthfully excited about this request; she had yet to perform a real soul bonding before. So far it had only been researched from Larewen’s books, but she pretended to know what she was doing anyway. “Have you thought about what you’d like the object to be?”

Shishi had said something like that to Leralynn before… That Quintessa was destined to be the next Titan of Winter, or something like that, but Orange hadn’t paid it much mind. She nods and smiles though when the changeling assures her of that outcome. Besides Terra and the Drow, the teenage witch doesn’t know many that actively root against her father in his gladiatorial bouts, so maybe she’ll pry a bit with Khitti when they meet up for this little project.. The blonde tilts her head and sets her empty cup down next to the textbook on the tabletop, “Great~!” she looks excited as well as the false Dragana invests herself in this curse sealing quest. Then the question of what the object should be puts the young necromancer into deep thought. She had known a lich personally for quite some time before he was released from his undead, but neither she nor her family ever was able to pinpoint what his phylactery was. It was either a chest found at the bottom of The Black Pond in The Dark Forest or the chaotic Wand of Mordant Flame which is now held by Leralynn’s father. “I never thought about it… Hmm… I’m not sure…” Her mind races over the possibilities… There was a trinket given to her by Maladroit… or maybe they could craft something totally new. Even potentially reusing the dark flame wand is a vague possibility… Then she can’t help it, the long days catching up with her again, the girl fights to stifle a yawn and loses. Through the end of it she begins to speak, “Do I have to pick right now?”

Quintessa || “Not at all,” the changeling responds with a smirk, “In fact the longer you think about it the better. If you’re anything like me when I was your age, you have a list of things you’d like to see made. I’ve made the sword I always dreamed of owning, and I’ve designed really cute magical boots and goggles, but I still have so many ideas for magic items- most of which I can’t even use.” A small giggle escapes her. “I’ve taken to watching those around me and thinking about the best ways I can optimize their abilities- I’ve been doing this with you too. Your talent for summoning undead? I haven’t seen such creativity. You get necromancers in this guild and they want to summon zombies and skeletons- I know, I’m a hypocrite, but seeing the sticky undead you created was inspiring for me… But that’s a conversation for another time. Give your project some thought- How we want to utilize the curse, and I’ll get in touch with Khitti and try to organize a field trip into the Plane of Shadows.”

Shishi :: Leralynn puts on a prideful smile at the complement of her Necromantic abilities. This is where her and her father’s personalities diverge. She is immensely prideful and ravenous for the recognition as a worthy heir to The Thorne Estate. It is in this very area of expertise that her idol focused their lessons on, to obviously tremendous effect. The girl’s recent desire to reintegrate into the Necromancer Guild was for the selfish reason of snapping the curse’s hold on her father and perhaps the rest of her family, but now it might not seem far fetched that once that deed is done the title of The Necrophidius might be in her future, with Vivus Nex as a stepping stone. Learning that she inspired Quintessa with her magic is a surefire way to appetize The Orange Witch into going on that path. “Aye aye~.” She looks to the tabletop, her notes and note-taking familiar, the textbook, and the various potions she’s whipped up. She closes the book, sweeps up her things and the slightly decaying dormouse into her bag, and starts to clean up the workstation. She’s been reinvigorated by this bout of planning and following the instructions out of the volume of toxins and the like seems distasteful to her once again. Practical necromancy, summoning and resurrection, and productive field trips are back on the menu. Speaking of menu, “I’m going to go have dinner at The Corpse and think about this… Want to come?” There is a sweet smile that comes with the motion of pushing some errant hair out of the way of her face…

Quintessa gave Shishi’s daughter a content smile as she said ‘Aye aye’ and she began to drift off in thought. What kind of abilities could they replicate? Could the Black Tides really be used to give yourself shadow-spider legs? If you put Shishi’s power in an amulet you might be able to achieve something like that- “Huh?” Quintessa almost doesn’t hear Orange speaking to her again, but with a blink and a quick refocus of her blue and hazel eyes, the fae girl gives Leralynn a slow nod. “You know what? I -am- hungry for some eyeballs. Lemme grab my cloak.”