but a strange light in the sky was shining right into my eyes

[singmod]

JANUARY 2024 EVENT

PROMPT ONE — THE AURORA: NASCENCE: Following the strange dream at new year, a three-day Aurora takes place. During which, Interlopers discover a possible ally in the mysterious woman heard in the static and heard in the dream — potentially earning new abilities.

PROMPT TWO — ADUST: The Interlopers find out what happened to the owners of long-destroyed Milton House in the form of hauntings.

PROMPT THREE — THE VISITOR: Interlopers find themselves with an unwelcome visitor — a shadow doppelganger here to make everything absolutely worse.

THE AURORA: NASCENCE

WHEN: January 13th - 15th.
WHERE: Everywhere.
CONTENT WARNINGS: potentially disturbing dreams; dreams of being burned alive; some minor supernatural horror; some minor ‘ghost’ horror/hauntings; death of npcs in various ways including suicide, murder or exposure to elements.


In the middle of the month, it happens. A herald. The noise starts: faint at first, but then growing louder. An ethereal, high-pitched chorus of sounds difficult to place. There’s a kind of electrical buzzing with it all, a low, endless hum punctuated with cracks and pops. The sky is alive with sound, and with it comes the swirling streaking of colour against the inky black of night: The Aurora has come.

Much of what happened previously happens again: Streetlights, illuminating the town’s roads; lights in stores and homes will come alive, buzzing and flickering at times. Previously abandoned cars will turn on, their headlights blaring. Electronics that had previously seemed broken flick on — and whilst there are no broadcasts available on televisions, and the radio waves only drone on in static, both only occasionally blaring standard emergency broadcasts. Any computers and phones will turn on, but will have no internet or reception. Instead, Interlopers may find texts and emails — many of them unsent. The everyday lives of their users stored within, now readable.

There are still some instances of the ‘ghosts’ from the previous Auroras, but they are now only faint outlines, and far fewer in number. However, whilst the Aurora would usually only last until the next morning on sporadic nights over the month — this time it will last for a full three days. The world is plunged into darkness, a seemingly endless night with only the Aurora to light the skies.

On the second night of lights and noise, a voice calls out to you: static-like, and distant — as if someone speaks over a radio. A woman’s voice. It is the same one you’ve been hearing for a few weeks now, but finally it is far stronger than the scant whispers of name and the word ‘help’. She is far clearer now.

“You.” she says. She may whisper your name, too. “I see you.” You’re unable to speak back, the communication is only one way. She sounds upset, but there’s something more… a kind of wonder, perhaps.

”It’s not just a regular aurora borealis, but then you probably worked that out already, haven’t you? It’s so much more than that. Everything is… changing.”

”I don’t know how you can go back. But— but I can help. Maybe. Maybe I can make this place easier, somehow. I need help, but I’m stuck—” There’s frustration in her voice for a moment. ”It took from you. Took you away. It doesn’t always have to take. We can take, too. Sleep. I will help you take back. You will survive this. You will not go into the Dark. This is not the end.”

You have no idea what that means, for the most part. But you might just end up taking the chance and doing as the woman asked, even if it’s difficult with the noise and light with the Aurora. Sleep, and a dream may come to you.

FREE RUNNER: The colours of the Aurora dance around you in your dreamscape. You dream you are a magnificent stag, galloping through the snowy woods with ease. You seem to go on and on, never tiring, never slowing. You feel like the wind, or perhaps the very wind itself carries you. Not once do you stumble or fall, even when the snow is thick and deep, or the ground is shaky and uneven beneath you. You feel free.

When you awaken, you feel the most refreshed you’ve ever felt since you first came here. For the final day of the Aurora, you are bursting with energy and even when the lights in the sky fade — that revitalised feeling within you remains. There’s something within you that understands: you are the Free Runner. The ground will yield beneath you, your energy will not desert you, the wind will carry you.

LIGHT BRINGER: The colours of the Aurora dance around you in your dreamscape. You dream of sitting by a lonely campfire in the mouth of a cave at night, warming your hands. As you sit, a strange feeling comes over you, a desire to reach out to the flames. And so you do, reaching with both hands into the fire — gripping at the white-hot embers. It burns you, and for a moment there is blinding hot pain as the fire suddenly explodes around you, consuming you whole. But the pain soon stops. The fire doesn’t burn you. No, you have become the blaze — your body warmed. You burn bright enough that the darkness around you turns into day.

When you awaken the next morning, you feel warmed and comfortable. As if even the coldest of winters couldn’t reach your bones. The warmth remains even when the Aurora ends, and you are left with the innate understanding:you are the Light Bringer. The power of flame is at your very fingertips. You master the light, life, warmth.

AURORA CALL: The colours of the Aurora dance around you in your dreamscape. You dream you are standing in the very sky itself, at the Aurora’s height. Colour and sound twirls around you, within you — and you feel it curl into your body. Your head fills with noise, a chorus of voices calling out, snippets of conversation echoing within you. A woman’s voice calls to you, it is the same voice that spoke to you before you slept: “Don’t you understand it now? We are all connected. The Aurora connects us.”

And you do, you do understand it.

When you awaken, you feel connected to the world around you. To the very people who live amongst you. You feel less lonely, a kind of kinship with others. You have heard the Aurora’s Call and you have answered it, unlocked a connection with your fellow Interlopers. You will be heard.

NOTHING: The colours of the Aurora dance around you in your dreamscape, but only for a moment. The edges of your vision begin the blur with black, slowly closing in until everything goes dark and you fall into a deep, dreamless sleep. You awaken, and although you feel rested, as if the dreamless darkness has helped you feel a little more ready to take on the day — nothing else about you has changed.

ADUST

WHEN: From mid-month to month end.
WHERE: Milton House.
CONTENT WARNINGS: fire; house fire; death of a child/children; hauntings; ghosts; mental manipulation; illusions of burning/being burned; potential injuries via falling/unstable building collapsing.

There is a reason why it is advised to avoid Milton House other than the simple fact that it’s a miracle the house is still standing. Once one of the largest buildings in the town of Milton, it is now a former shell of what was once a fine and grand house. It has lain in ruin for many years, dilapidated and host to a great deal of fire damage.

While he is in town, Methuselah will not speak of the place, but he often looks sad when it has been brought up in conversation. “A great tragedy.” he will say before falling into a pensive silence. “A blackened mark on the town’s memory.” He does not wish to say much more of what happened: sometimes there are things that are just too painful. He will continue to advise the ruin is left alone, out of respect, and the fact that the place is a danger.

Of course, advice will not stop anyone from attempting to get into the ruins and exploring the house, even if it is in fact highly dangerous.

The sounds of voices and whispers may be enough to pique anyone’s interest. You're sure you heard something, maybe you should go to check it out?

It is true in the fact that the house itself is incredibly dangerous structurally: floors and stairs may give way and you’ll find your foot (and half of you) falling right through the floorboards. Damp and rot that have long since set in, and it will be dangerous to breathe in. But you’ll find that the house itself is pretty ordinary: this was once a family home. Just about the entirety of the house and its contents aren't salvageable, but you’ll be able to find out a little about who once lived here.

There are faded, half-destroyed photos that show a family of five: a father, mother, and three young children all under the age of ten. The father with warm, beaming smiles, the mother has kind eyes, the two oldest boys with toothy grins much like their father, the younger girl looks shy, wanting to hide against her mother. They look happy. Just a typical family. In a world where so many strange things are happening, it feels so strange to look upon these family photos and around this home to realise that they simply lost their home in a house fire.

But as you hold a family picture, or some half-destroyed trinket: a toy, a shoe, a book, a vase, you’ll find the item will suddenly catch alight, bursting into flames in your very hands. The flames do not burn you, and as you discard the item, it will fall to the floor as if nothing had happened.

Then, it comes to you. Here and there. Different sensations that stop and start suddenly: the house groans and creaks around you; the smell of smoke enters your nose; the sound of fire cracking and popping with a roar fills your ears; the sensation of heat against your skin; the clawing and suffocating feeling in your lungs that makes you cough and choke; the sounds of terrified shrieks of children echoing above you. Feelings flood you: fear, panic. When you next turn around, the entire house is aflame around you, and you can’t tell if this is real or if you’re reliving some terrifying memory.

You need to leave, get out of here. For some, it will be what comes naturally. You’ll have to fight through the flames and escape the house before it burns down completely around you. You’ll have to fight your way out, find an exit not already consumed by flames — through a window, perhaps. Crashing out of the house and into the snow, you’ll look back and see Milton House just as you entered it: nothing more than a half-burned ruin.

But for others, there will be another pull. You are drawn upstairs, to the screams of children. You need to get to them, to help them, save them. You will battle through the flames, heading towards the ruins of what was a child’s bedroom, or towards the bathroom. Inside either, you will find a figure cowering, engulfed wholly in flames: one in the bathtub or one in the closet. You recognise them as the two sons from the family pictures.

Mom. They will call you. Or Dad. They weep, terrified of the flames. I’m scared, I’m scared. I want the fire to go away. Help me. Stay here.

The tragedy of Milton House is before you. More than just a fire. What is more tragic than the death of a child? What silences voices? Breaks spirits? Leaves one helpless to act in the wake of such a passing?

There is something to be done here. You are not so powerless. Calm the child. Offer gentle assurances. They will get out. They are safe. You are there for them. You will stay. Embracing them will set you alight. Too hot. Too bright. It will hurt, but you won’t burn. But don’t let go; holding them will eventually calm them down enough for the flames to grow dim, to slowly ease their spirits to rest.

Soon enough, the flames will go out and the child will disappear, leaving you alone in a decaying, dilapidated room.

In the churchyard of Milton, there is a family grave by the name of Barker. Three lie within it: Thomas it reads, and his beloved sons, Patrick and Christopher.

THE VISITOR

WHEN: The month of January.
WHERE: Everywhere.
CONTENT WARNINGS: erything absolutely worse.
THE VISITOR — CONTENT WARNINGS: supernatural beings; dream-related horror/disturbing dreams; doppelgangers; themes of depression; themes of self-harm; themes of isolation; potential themes of suicide.


It seems the dream of the New Year and the Aurora dreams are not the only odd sleep-related instances occurring this month. You first notice that something is off when a strange dream pulls you from sleep. The dream may feel like any particular dream you have, whether it be a usual nightmare or strange concoction your brain has conjured up for you this night. Maybe it’s a dream you’ve had before, maybe it’s a new dream entirely. But no matter the dream, there is one thing that is odd about it. In tiny moments within the dream, you notice that there is something different, something that feels out of place. Something is there that shouldn’t be.

A figure, tall and silent, entirely made of shadow stands lurking in the background. It looks human, but there is not much more that you can really describe further. It is a sad, unsettling presence.

When you awaken, eyes bleary from sleep, and you look about the room, to the bottom of your bed, for a half-moment you see that figure standing there silently. That unsettling sadness permeates the room, and after a few seconds of blinking and sitting up — the figure disappears. Perhaps it was just some trick of the mind, some half-awake illusion.

But the next time you sleep, it appears again. The same figure, the same emotions surrounding it. And when you awaken, it stands at the bottom of your bed once more. Only this time, it lingers, and you find yourself staring down the figure before it disappears once more.

Over the next several days, the presence continues to linger more and more. It stands silently in the corner of the room of your home; it hovers by the window, staring out into the snow; it stands in the middle of the road as you go about your business. More and more, it is there. Always standing, always watching — silent and sad.

No one else seems to notice it, only you. And over time, the shape of it seems to change — the vague, undefined shape of it slowly shifts into something you recognise. The same hair, the same height, the same way it holds itself: it is exactly like you. A perfect doppelganger, a second shadow. And with it, it exudes an oppressive sadness, a particular kind of loneliness. It is suffocating, bleeding into you.

It makes you withdraw from the world around you, from the people around you. Perhaps you stop spending time with others, retreating into solitude. You hide from others, keep to yourself. You find yourself not sleeping at all or perhaps sleeping too much. Perhaps what little you already eat becomes nothing. The shadowy doppelganger draws ever closer to you, close enough to touch you - ever hovering at your shoulder. Its presence bores down on you, making you feel small and more and more alone even with its ‘company’. No one else can seem to see it but you, mentioning it to others will earn odd looks, or even concern. It seems you and your double are alone together.

Hopefully, those around you will notice the change in you. How you stopped reaching out, how you’ve stopped taking care of yourself. Hopefully they will see something isn’t right and reach out. You are doomed to the doppelganger's company otherwise.

However, those around you can push the shadowy double away, and can break its influence and hold over you. Genuine care and concern for you will have it shrinking back. Perhaps it is a kind word, perhaps it is the gentle but insisting coaxing to eat. Perhaps it is an attentive ear to listen to your thoughts, to how the presence has made you feel. Maybe it is even the simplest of touches, an embrace or the holding of a hand, the grip of a shoulder. Continued connection with you will slowly have the visitor’s power diminish.

And hopefully it is done before it is too late, or it may be all too easy to fade into the Long Dark.

FAQs

THE AURORA: NASCENCE

1. Aurora Feats are now unlocked! Please see the following page for more information. Aurora Feats are completely optional.

2. Interlopers will only receive ONE Aurora Event. The only time this is available is this month. After January, players will have to wait for the next Feat round for another chance at an Aurora Feat.

3. This Aurora will last a full three days. It will be a period of only night.

4. For more information on the ghostly loops seen during the Aurora, see this previous event, under 'The Aurora: Aftershocks' prompt.

5. For new players who would like a little extra context regarding the woman can look at December's Tales From The Northern Territories, under the 'New Happenings in December' section.

ADUST

1. Characters will not be physically burned in the fire, but only feel as if they have been. The effects of this illusion will last a short time after they're out the house before they will fade.

2. The only real injuries characters can sustain will be from fall damage, or if the floor gives way and their feet go through, etc. whilst in the house.

3. The children cannot leave the house. They will be too scared to leave. In addition, they are tethered to the house, given that this is where they died. Simply being calmed/comforted is the best way to help them and they will disappear after that.

THE VISITOR

1. An Interloper's Visitor can't be seen by anyone but the Interloper themselves.

2. The Visitor can be spoken to, but it will not speak back. It cannot be interacted with and is intangible.

PLOTTING POST

Comments

[flanerie]

"What a curious mind," Lestat thinks, unaware that even this is transmitted by his undisciplined new talent. There's no especial derision in the thought, compared to how he thinks of most humans. He's more and more taken with the (perhaps dashing?) stranger lurking at the edge of human closeness.

"An annoyance?" He thinks, purposefully. "I'd have thought a night watchman would appreciate a gift of silence. Isn't it convenient to speak like this, unheard and unobserved?"

"But I suppose there's no accounting for matters of taste," he says aloud, cocking his head and strengthening his smile. "Although I do rather like yours in music. That was you, wasn't it?"

Unprompted, Lestat hums the first few bars of the song leading into the lyrics, and with eye contact uninterrupted, he croons: "Ain't nothing like the real thing, baby."

He has an excellent singing voice. It's among the talents he retained, despite the wound to his throat, and he's glad of that. He doesn't know what he'd do with himself if he was reduced to the rusty creak of a neglected cabinet or the glottal throb of a bullfrog.

[moralabsolutism]

"I might appreciate if I could control it. But I can't and I don't need every single person out there knowing what's inside me. I'm no open book to be read at someone's leisure." He preferred to just remain an anonymous mask: no background, no human name, nothing that could make him a real person to anyone else within the town.

Rorschach felt embarrassed as Lestat sang to him, caught in such a human moment as to realize the strange Frenchman been able to hear that as well, the music he'd listened to decades ago when he'd been younger. Sometimes that felt like an entire lifetime between then and now. "Those thoughts were meant to private!" He snapped out hard enough it felt almost like a mental bite when the words hit Lestat's mind.

He was back to the aggressive rat terrier part of his personality. Sometimes, it was easy for him to fall into anger, to view everyone with the suspicion that they might be an enemy instead of hoping against hope that he could possibly trust them. Right now, he felt a burning sense of fury that Lestat was able to hear everything he was thinking.

cw: animal hunting (referenced)

[flanerie]

The vicious snap of Rorschach's mind reminds Lestat of precisely that sort of dog, as well as the especially disgruntled heavy-shelled turtles of the Louisiana swamps. All bite and carapace, so difficult to unhinged from their shells and turn into what he understands to be a delectable soup.

He might like to do much the same to Rorschach. Wriggle him out of his high-buttoned coat and peel back the mask, then set him to simmering in a broth of indulgence. What sort of flavours might he eke out of a properly softened Rorschach?

The last time he saw Rorschach's teeth, he retreated. This time, he flashes his own, his smile as hard as it is shining.

"Then it seems you're in need of an education in taming them," he thinks, almost unbidden, the whim striking him in an instant, "The book shut, the door barred. Is that what you'd like, my little snapping turtle?"

[moralabsolutism]

He was not amused to see Lestat's irreverent personality coming out. Rorschach was a serious person. On occasion, there were signs of dry humor or a little bit of softening around the edges when he was around those he'd come to care about here. But for the most part he was rather like a porcupine, sharp quills bristling out from every angle in an attempt to stab people.

There was almost the mental equivalent of a growl before Rorschach managed to rein himself back in, feral though he was. He wondered if Lestat would be so quick to use his charms on someone if he came down and kicked him in the teeth. It was quite a tempting thought.

"Do you ever take anything seriously?" Rorschach asked, ignoring the pet nickname he'd apparently been given.

[flanerie]

"You think I don't take you seriously?" Lestat asks, playfully, and drops his gaze towards the building, scanning it for handholds. If Rorschach made his way to the roof, it stands to reason Lestat can do the same. He hasn't decided if he will, yet, but it's a consideration.

"I take you more seriously than the bleating lambs we find ourselves surrounded with," he thinks, his mental voice smooth and at ease. "I wouldn't offer my help so freely to just anyone."

"But you're at liberty to forge on unassisted, of course." He lifts his shining eyes back up to Rorschach. "No need to render a verdict in the moment. Only consider it a proposition, one like mind to another. Because I think perhaps we are of like minds, in our ways. On that account, you may consider me as serious as the shadow of death itself, Mr. Rorschach."

[moralabsolutism]

Just when he thought he had Lestat figured out, the other man always ended up making him feel as if he was trying to hold onto an eel. The image he had of Lestat always ended up being slippery and wriggling out of his grasp anytime he tried to tighten his grip. He didn't like that.

Then again, Rorschach not liking someone because of their personality was just a day that ended in 'Y'.

He didn't move forward or make any attempt to draw closer. But he also didn't make any moves to leave and continue on with his usual patrol. "I'm still not sure I trust the kind of help you'd be willing to offer." Lestat came on very intense a lot of time and Rorschach tended to shy away from that kind of personality. He was reminded very strongly of Ozymandias in those moments, the way the man could be suave, charming, and your best ally...or your worst nightmare as he'd come to find out.

[flanerie]

"If you did, I'd think I'd been wholly incorrect in my estimation of your instincts." Lestat means it as a compliment, and he even means it genuinely. While it's rare that he enjoys being challenged, that's largely because most challenges are tedious, levelled at him by men who are far less than his equal.

Rorschach is not his equal. Few are. But circumstances have conspired as they have, and Lestat's lowering in life has seemingly been the uplifting of the strange, cantankerous man perching like a hissing alley cat above.

"What could I do to earn your trust?" He asks, most of the guile emptied from his eyes as he studies the shifting patterns of Rorschach's mask, allowing their undulations to draw his gaze this way and that. "Or does the question itself prove how little I ought to be trusted? After all - is it not only the untrustworthy who ask such things?"

"So perhaps we should not think in terms of trust. A better question - what guarantee could I give you over me, that you would know I couldn't take advantage of you?"

[moralabsolutism]

"You're smarter than you look," Rorschach finally said. Had he meant for that to be actually heard? Not entirely. But it came out anyway, his thoughts no longer just left in his own mind for him to react to. Lestat had seemed foppish and bit of an idiot up to this point to the vigilante. Now he was beginning to see that there was more to the Frenchman than the superficial charm and good hair. Again, he felt that eerie sense of being faced with someone similar to Ozymandias in temperament and overall nature.

He let the next part go through his usual rambling inner way of talking. "Last time I trusted someone like you, smart, handsome, and charming, he set me up for a murder I didn't commit. Funny thing was he'd been completely trustworthy up to that point for almost twenty years. So I have a feeling I can trust you as long as I'm useful to you. And when I'm not, then I'll know this relationship has run its course. Like when you shoot a racehorse when it breaks its leg."

[flanerie]

Lestat smiles at the compliments, tilting his head so his golden hair spills carelessly over the ridge of one shoulder. He likes being told he's intelligent in a relatively uncomplicated way. It's difficult to be properly appreciated for one's cleverness when one is also charming and handsome, noble traits that tragically overshadow the sharpness of the mind behind them.

But now Rorschach is properly informed about who he's dealing with, and walking himself to precisely the conclusions that serve Lestat's purposes. His affinity for the man only grows by the moment.

"Aren't all relationships that way?" He asks, light but truly sincere. "People take advantage of one another until their use comes to an end...though not all ends as are dramatic as that."

He's obviously intrigued, the emotion slipping through the words only to be reeled back in like an overcast net. A story to ask after another time, unless Rorschach continues to be so wonderfully forthcoming.

"And I doubt you'd fall for the same trick twice." If they're being honest with one another, and it seems they are, Lestat won't insult him by pretending he's incapable of betrayal. "Perhaps you would be the one to deliver my coup de grâce when I am of no use to you."

cw: gory death reference

[moralabsolutism]

He saw Lestat preen like a vain little peacock at his words. He clearly enjoyed attention from people and Rorschach knew he must not have high standards for who showed him that if he'd settled on Rorschach as a companion to enjoy the night with. He could be honest enough with himself to admit he was hardly anyone's first choice when it came to social interaction.

"I don't kill people for not being useful to me. Only when they commit evil acts. As long as you don't do that, I have no reason to put you down like a rabid dog." Quite a vivid image there and one that had haunted the vigilante for ten years. Guard dogs chewing at a bone that wasn't animal in nature...and their owner just as down in the dirt as they were before he'd split his head open with a cleaver.

"Until then, you have a measure of my trust." Not the full amount, of course, Rorschach didn't trust anyone that much. But Lestat had been very honest with him in this conversation. It was hard not to be when their thoughts could slip from their minds involuntarily.

[flanerie]

A literal glow is not an ability Lestat possesses, despite occasions where he's been compared to that first illustrious rebel of the dawn himself, the great and terrible Morningstar. He manages to approximate one by sheer force of pleasure as he beams up at Rorschach as if he's been given a gift of incomparable value.

"I am only wicked to those who deserve it," he tells him, and he means this as truthfully as he means his current goodwill for the strange and violent man perched above him. It's only that his measure of what is deserved is, no doubt, not the same measure Rorschach takes of the world and the wretched sinners in it.

He shouldn't be intrigued by the man's promise of violence against him, but have not all of those he's taken into his closest confidence visited harm upon him? There's an intimacy to hatred, to wrath, that hews close to the brighter passions of the soul.

Lestat very carefully does not imagine what Rorschach's mouth might look like, or if his teeth have the jagged set of a dog himself when his lips pull back in a snarl. They're coming along well. No need to upset that particular apple cart before its time.

"I'll strive not to transgress," he thinks, instead, "May I join you?"

[moralabsolutism]

Again, there was that charming part of Lestat's personality, something Rorschach had never possessed in his entire life and never would. His upbringing simply hadn't equipped him with the social skills to be able act in such a manner and get people on his side by simply being himself. He didn't mind all that much, not when he tried to keep social interactions to a minimum as it was. Still, he tried to be on guard, and not get sucked too much into Lestat's orbit. If he did that, he might grow less suspicious and lose the edge that had kept him alive for so long.

He wasn't sure he believed those words. There was something about the ambiguity with which they were said that made the vigilante wonder just who was deserving of his wrath. He doubted Lestat would give him a straight answer if he asked. For all that he'd been truthful up until now, there was some things that most people weren't willing to discuss with another that they didn't already know intimately.

"Sure," he said at the question of Lestat joining him up on the rooftop, also giving an nod. He was a bit curious to see if Lestat could even get up onto the roof. If he could, it would tell him something else about the man. Not everyone had the same level of physical capability someone like him or Edward had, roofhopping as often as they did. But Lestat had been a bit of a surprise up until now was it was, so he was prepared to adjust his expectations once again.

[flanerie]

Lestat rubs his hands together in a show of warming them, though he doesn't have need of it. As long as he takes a modicum of care to remain bundled, one minor advantage of his not-quite-living state is that the remaining energies that animate his flesh seem to resist the cold a touch more readily than mortals. He's once more, to his disapproval, capable of frostbite - but his joints stay fluid at temperatures that would make others lock up.

Or perhaps that's simply something that's always been true for him, the same way he's always been quick and strong. His blessings didn't start with the gift foisted upon him.

All of this is only to say that when Lestat begins to scale the wall, taking what he thinks must have been Rorschach's path up windows and ornamental projections, he does it with assured grace. He boosts himself up at the top and swings onto the rooftop's edge almost insultingly easily, dangling his legs over it like a boy as he looks out over the view.

"It is better from up here," he says, not even out of breath (for what does he need of the air?), "You have quite an eye for landscapes."

[moralabsolutism]

Rorschach watched as Louis ascended. He made it look easy in a way most people wouldn't have been capable of. Easy, yes, that was the word that suited this man well. He looked like the type that had things come to him simply by virtue of being handsome, charming, and strong. Was this a European thing? He wondered, thinking of how Ozymandias, German by birth, had always gotten whatever he wanted simply by virtue of being smart enough to get it in whatever way he say fit. What a shame that mind had turned twisted and cruel in the end.

There was a stray thought that slipped by as Rorschach watched Lestat near his own perch. "So very much like one another. Ozymandias would get along well with this one." But there was nothing else besides those few sentences that slipped out and Rorschach wasn't sure he'd even projected that outwards, still trying to get a handle on this strange curse of his.

Rorschach agreed. "Why be on the ground when you can be up here?" He'd spent the better part of his life climbing up and down buildings as he patrolled New York City night after night. While the buildings here weren't nearly as spectacular, there was still something to be said for the view.

[flanerie]

"The king of kings?" Lestat returns, catching only the fleeting impression of Rorschach's thought, more feeling than words themselves. He laughs lightly, shaking his head, the mane of his golden hair flashing under the moonlight.

"You assign me grand compatriots," he teases, knowing that Rorschach refers to some man of the same name, not the man himself - unless he's quite mistaken about Rorschach's age, of course. "Traitors and fallen kings. I would make a good court hanger on, don't you think? Fetch me a cap with bells, and, well - "

He looks at Rorschach sidelong, tipping his head, and admires the flow of shadows across the sunken topography of the other man's obscured face.

"But I think I prefer your company," he adds, after a moment. "And what better throne than this? The very perch of the angels of justice."

[moralabsolutism]

He realized Lestat had picked up on the stray thoughts that were still coming from his head. "'Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair.'" He quoted from the poem Adrian had taken his moniker from.

"Former superhero I knew went by that name, which tells you something about how he views himself. He enjoys being rich and famous almost as much as he enjoyed saving people. You two would get along, assuming your egos didn't immediately make you butt heads. You remind me of him a lot. Of course, he turned out to want to destroy the entire world in the end, so make of that what you will."

There was a soft, contemptuous snort from the superhero. He glanced over at the man currently sharing his company. He was an easy person to get along with. There it was again. That word 'easy' when he considered Lestat. It certainly made it harder to keep up his guard around him. "I'm no angel." Just some idea brought to life, a misunderstood concept of justice that had been formed out of a mind that couldn't bear to think all the horrible things that happened in the world were mere random chance. It all had to fall into good vs evil, black vs white, always allowing him to see things in absolutes.

[flanerie]

"I would never want to destroy the world," Lestat thinks, quite earnestly, lifting his hand to sweep it over the view before them as his gaze lingers on the distant forest, "Everything beautiful and hideous...I have never understood being able to despise it, whatever there is to be endured here."

He sighs, for a moment almost sounding content - or something else, more esoteric and unfathomable, linked to whatever it is that lurks below the easiness that comes so naturally to him.

"Perhaps I could have persuaded him to appreciate it." This 'superhero', whatever that might mean. The word evokes a slight nudge of recognition, but no more. It's not what he lingers on as he pivots, as he seems prone to, back to Rorschach himself. "And I would not be so certain you are not an angel, Mr. Rorschach. Not a fat-cheeked cherub, no - something far more terrible. Revelation and purpose. A pillar of flame in the night."

[moralabsolutism]

Rorschach listened and was glad to hear at least in that way Lestat differed from Adrian. "Besides, if you attempted to wipe out everyone, there would be no one left to pay any attention to you." Don't think Rorschach had noticed he'd been deliberately sought out each time he'd run into Lestat. He knew he wasn't anyone's first pick when it came to companionship so clearly Lestat wasn't all that picky when it came to whom he spent his time with.

"The Biblical kind then, who told those they visited not to be afraid of the great and terrible forms they appeared to them in. Six wings and many eyes. 'Each of the four cherubim had four faces: the first was the face of an ox, the second was a human face, the third was the face of a lion, and the fourth was the face of an eagle'", he quoted from scripture and by memory. Yes, that sounded far more like an apt comparison to him, he who always seemed to inspire terror in the Interlopers just by his very presence, even when he didn't intend to.

[flanerie]

Lestat grins at Rorschach's assessment of his love of attention, shamelessly pleased to have been seen. Why should he act ashamed for following his nature?

If he knew Rorschach's deeper thoughts, he'd disagree most fervently, and in a way that Rorschach would surely disapprove of. As much as Lestat craves attention seems to be nearly as much as Rorschach shuns it, which is one of the very reasons he sits on this roof listening to the rolling flow of his recital of the qualities of angels.

"Exactly the kind." He'd reach out to touch Rorschach's shoulder now, if he thought he'd come away with all his fingers attached and unbroken. He settles for leaning forward, hands anchoring him to the edge of the roof, face thrust out like a ship's figurehead. "I was desperately afraid of angels when I was a child, you know. Angels, God, devils - anything that could see the state of my heart."

"That's one of the things you must guard yourself from with a gift like this. That fear. Anything you're frightened will be seen will make itself seen. You must believe you can make your heart a shadow cast on your ribs...or that you don't care what anyone knows about it."

Finally, some of that advice he'd promised. He likes to keep his word when it suits him.

[moralabsolutism]

He turned his head just a little to look at Lestat. He looked quite a bit like an angel himself, the kind the Renaissance painters had created, all beauty and classic features. Then again, that had also been the description of Lucifer in Paradise Lost, so perhaps it was best he kept his guard up around this one. Lestat's next words only confirmed that suspicions for him.

"I'll keep that in mind. It's been such a long time spent talking only to myself for days on end without ever actually holding a conversation with another soul that unfortunately having my thoughts project outwards comes easier to me than I would like it to be. Most of the time, if I'm not talking to myself I'm writing them down." Lestat, for all his occasional flippancy, was smarter than he looked. It was hard not to be taken in by his charms, even for someone as used to suspicion and paranoia as Rorschach was.

[flanerie]

Paradise Lost has inspired some of Lestat's most beloved paintings of the Devil. He even found himself compelled to read it, in time, and found the character of Lucifer profoundly relatable. Rorschach may already be able to suspect that Lestat would take the comparison as a delightful compliment.

"Isolation weakens the barriers of the mind," Lestat agrees, swinging a foot idly outward. "It is familiarity that breeds control...or is it contempt?"

He laughs a little at himself inside his mind, the feeling of it transmitted into Rorschach's thoughts as Lestat smiles in silence. Another demonstration of the possibilities at hand.

"Your thoughts seek out companions. To cure them, expose yourself to company from which the mind recoils from communion."

[moralabsolutism]

"I never thought of it much that way. Isolation.....it's a way to keep from getting hurt sometimes." Rorschach was someone who felt things far more deeply than he'd like and not forming connections helped to keep his heart from breaking over and over again as it would have been warranted to do otherwise. He paused for moment. "Not that I expect you to understand that much. You seem like you'd rather perish than be left alone for any true length of time." It was interesting how the two of them, with their complete opposite personalities, could get along so well.

"Great. I'll just find all the Communists in town and spend my time around them," Rorschach said with a dry sort of humor. There was only a few people Rorschach truly did not get along with in town but maybe Lestat had a point there. If he could learn to control his thoughts around those he despised, perhaps it would be easier to do with those that he actually could get along with.

[flanerie]

Lestat does abhor loneliness. Rorschach receives a brush of wry acknowledgement from Lestat on the subject, the prelude to a digression that never comes - because Rorschach has moved onto invoking another topic that surprises Lestat into a genuine laugh, his head cocked in amazement.

"Communists?" Lestat says aloud, in the gleeful tones of someone about to indulge himself in some light unpleasantness at the expense of a pitiable other. "Here? Among us? And so uncommonly close-lipped? Why, I would have imagined this a fertile field for recruitment - they do seem to thrive where the masses huddle."

He cares not at all for human politics, and didn't even when they ought to have been of great import to him. But they have made for amusing gossip at social engagements, and one can't avoid hearing about such things on the radio.

[moralabsolutism]

"Two so far," Rorschach said, the usual intense vocal growl present in his speaking voice now more prevalent in his telepathic one as he talked about a subject that made his anger rise up within him. His disapproval was clear. "Sure they will seduce those here to their cause or more shall come now that they have a homing beacon here." In Rorschach's insane paranoia, it perfectly made sense, the way that he often saw patterns when none were actually there.

The snow had begun to fall again around them and Rorschach shivered, brushing some of the snow off of his clothes that was beginning accumulate on him. He'd been suspicious of Lestat ever since the man had arrived. Yet slowly but surely the man was winning the gruff, socially awkward superhero over with his personality. He was still trying to keep a distance between himself and the others here but once again someone else was worming their way through his defenses.

[flanerie]

"Seduce?" Lestat rolls the word off his mental tongue with a different sort of pleasure than he typically would, so taken is he with the image Rorschach paints of nefarious organizers and the hapless proletariat. "With what? The promise of even greater immiseration than already besets us?"

Lestat is a man who likes his finer things and the spoils of his unearned wealth, and he has no love for Madame Guillotine. To the extent he has class consciousness, he is quite conscious of his class.

He decides to refrain from teasing Rorschach that he might have thought him sympathetic to the cause, if he had not been informed otherwise. He doubts it would go over well. Judging by his tone, it might even end with Lestat swiftly decamped from his perch on the roof, and he'd hate to interrupt a beautiful moment such as this with an unsightly tumble.

"It seems it falls to sober minds to steel our fellows' hearts against the Bolshevik's wiles," he says, instead, leaning over his knees and smiling boyishly out into the night. "Who are these treacherous infiltrators?"