ANOMALY DETECTED

[indigo_league]

Who: ANYONE AND EVERYONE
Where: ANYWHERE AND EVERYWHERE
When: NOV 25TH to 27TH
Summary: GET IN HERE AND MINGLE
Rating: BUT PLEASE MARK YOUR THREAD CONTENT ACCORDINGLY
Log:






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III

[desirestruth]

I thank you for your concern, but they won't be of any threat to me.

[Naeva isn't...truly worried about that, but she'd been drawn in by the sort of solemness this place has--and found Vierna simply as she wandered through. She'd been meaning to leave her be until she spoke, actually, sensing that she might have been intruding.]

[noamuth]

Suit yourself. Anyway, if they're not objecting to your presence yet, they probably won't unless you start blaspheming against Lolth or something foolish like that.

[She sighs - whatever she was seeking in here, it has eluded her - and stands, straightening her clothing as she does so.]

Welcome to House Do'Urden, I suppose.

[desirestruth]

House...Do'urden? [She thinks she's heard that before but it's late and I'll check her threads with jarlaxle later, but given Vierna's appearance and the sound of that language, she's fairly certain she can place her in the same world as Jarlaxle and Kimmuriel. Interesting.]

I don't mean to insult them, nor your Lady Lloth [Out loud.] but these seem to me defenses primarily concerned with the living. That's all.

[noamuth]

My family's estate. The eighth noble house of Menzoberranzan, for a time.

And they are defenses concerned with threats to the house. Any rival house that would pose a credible threat would have priestesses capable of raising undead, and likely wizards able to create war constructs.

[desirestruth]

...A more common ability in your world, than mine.

[She is contemplating this, and the jade driders.]

They're quite prominently placed.

[noamuth]

[A shrug.] My mother was proud of them.

[desirestruth]

Are you?

[Because that does change how polite Naeva has to be, right now.]

[noamuth]

Personally? I always thought they were a little ostentatious, when I thought about them at all.

I spent a lot of time in here when I was younger. After a while one gets used to them.

[desirestruth]

Ostentatious is a word for them.

[Hideous and gaudy are the ones she'd use. But she's come closer to the main part of the temple, curiously.]

A lot of time in the temple? [...] You have a deep reverence for your goddess, then.

[noamuth]

[It is not as large as some temples in the city, but still, more than spacious enough to feel impersonal. Almost every available surface is decorated in spider motifs, some more subtle than others.

Vierna is... at peace here, if a little melancholy.]

I was a noble daughter of my house. My religious studies began early - and my sister was a capable teacher. [A dangerous teacher to disappoint.] Or perhaps I was just a better student than mistress. I wasn't able to instill any particular piety in my brother, while he was in my care.

[desirestruth]

[Something about this fills Naeva with a deep unease, and not just because of the plays Vierna and Jarlaxle put on, or because she is decidedly not a fan of spiders. Then again, piety is a foreign concept to her, framed like this.......

Maybe Jarlaxle's mother was an outlier, despite everything he said to the contrary. Naeva desperately wants to believe that to be true.]

You have a brother?

[noamuth]

Three brothers - though Nalfein died in a raid on another House the night that Drizzt was born, so we were able to keep Drizzt. [So no, not an outlier. She at least is not going to admit their other brother's role in Nalfein's death - perhaps by now she can acknowledge what Dinin did without fear of reprisal in another setting, but to state it in a chapel of the goddess who would have received the sacrifice still feels dangerous.] And Briza had already been weanmother to Dinin and myself and Maya, so it was my turn to raise Drizzt.

[desirestruth]

Infanticide? Again?

[Naeva almost snarls it, a faint whisper she clearly hadn't meant to say aloud, but her fangs are briefly very visible. She can't understand how these mothers can do this. No, she doesn't want to.]

...Were you already an adult, then, when they entrusted you with the raising of a child?

[noamuth]

If you are referring to Jarlaxle's performance, it is the same rite.

And yes - by custom, weanmothers are junior priestesses of the house, so I'd finished my initial course of study at Arach-Tinilith by then. I believe I was eighty-four? [Which is still a couple of decades short of adulthood as measured by most elves except the drow, but to be fair, Vierna does not actually know that.] I went back to study for the high priesthood once he was old enough not to need constant supervision.

[desirestruth]

...It seems to me a bloody and evil ritual with no tangible purpose besides pain.

[Oh, her voice went very flat for a second there, before Vierna brought up ages and Naeva desperately wishes for like. A conversion chart. Something. Why even are elves.]

Old enough to not need...hm. [She has to cut herself short. What can she say that is not blaming Vierna for decisions she had no part in? Her temper serves no purpose here.]

[noamuth]

The Underdark is a harsh place. The Spider Queen requires that her followers be able to weather senseless violence and loss. [She says it very matter of factly, then softens as she goes on.] ...I was relieved that we did not have to give up Drizzt, though.

[desirestruth]

[DEEP INHALE. Do not yell! Do not yell!

She wants to yell a lot.]

...That much, at least, is stroke of fortune.

[noamuth]

A mixed blessing, perhaps - his heresy lead to the fall of our House. [She shrugs.] But perhaps my mother's ambition would have done that without the excuse of a wayward male. She hadn't much head for politics, and we'd reached a position where that sort of thing matters.

[desirestruth]

His...heresy?

[Surely, talking about Vierna's brother will make Naeva less angry than talking about her mother! Nothing about this can possibly go wrong!]

[noamuth]

[Vierna looks at her sharply. Naeva's been obviously disturbed by most of what she's heard of Vierna's family's religion. There's no way that she'll be pleased by the answer to that question.

On the other hand, she did ask. And Vierna can hedge a bit, perhaps.] He subverted a ritual raid on an enemy force - and he was clever enough about it that none among his patrol realized what he'd done. We only discovered his actions when trying to discover why Lolth had withdrawn her favor from the entire House.

By rights, our mother ought to have sacrificed Drizzt then. She had some hope that his behavior could still be corrected, and put our House's best warrior to the knife instead.

The substitution... didn't help. It just cost us our weapons master and made Drizzt flee the city entirely.

[desirestruth]

[Vierna wasn't wrong. Naeva's expression doesn't change this time, but her eyes do take on a literal glow to them. She is quiet, for quite a long time, upon hearing this. Her mind is...racing. She cannot stay silent forever. And what good would it do, to decry these actions as evil? No one thinks of themselves as monsters.]

...Had such sacrifices regained Lloth's favor, once lost, before?

[If it had--if this was a desperate hope for survival--it's not better, but she can comprehend that need. If it hadn't...

If it hadn't, what hold did their Spider Queen have on them that wasn't fear?]

[noamuth]

[Vierna meets that glowing gaze levelly, her own expression stony. It's not a time in her family's history she relishes, but she refuses to be intimidated or shamed over it, either.

The question is met with a shrug.] Sometimes it works.

[desirestruth]

...What a sorrowful decision to make.

[She sighs a little. There's no real heat to it--she hasn't meant to be intimidating in her anger, she's just not aware of how her Face Looks, honestly.]