Gertrude knows that of all the eligible princesses she was chosen for the magic running golden in her blood.
She adds status to the royal family even without doing anything, but she wants to contribute something of her own, so she’s turned her talents to the magic of statehood and ceremony. It feels different, but not really; she’s just healing on a larger scale.
--
It’s easy to be a rogue, the younger brother of the king, who instead of invading other countries dreaming of conquest helps shore up Denmark’s defenses against its own dead. In this borderland between life and death, Catholic and Protestant, past and future, if the average citizen never sees a zombie, wight, or wraith, all that means is that the Danish royalty is doing its job.
No, what really feels strange is when one of the countless gods Claudius has been praying to with plenty of bitterness and not much hope actually answers him, and he finds himself a cleric of Mask, the better to send his brother to hell.
--
Hamlet’s father never wanted him to be a bard, but he could no more deny the song in his bones than he could refuse the crown in his future, and indeed, Yorick said he was a natural.
Then came that night on the watchtower when churchyards yawned and swallowed him whole, and he found he’d made a pact with – in truth he knows not what, only that it is Forbidden and a problem. But he was dealing with these powers fine, just mad enough to not have to use them, until he smelled a rat in his mother’s closet and poor Polonius had his soul burned from his body – he hadn’t even known he could do such a thing.
--
Laertes gets the Storm Lord from his mother’s side, and the Aasimir heritage from his father, and neither of them has ever felt particularly noteworthy; even training in France to become a warlock has been an article not of faith but of fact. When he is told of his father’s death, his tears burn on the way down his cheeks and he has no idea if that’s normal, and the only person he could have asked about it is gone – maybe he even said something about it while Laertes wasn’t listening.
He makes his oath with himself and consults no god.
--
She is already losing bits and pieces during the funeral, alternately staring and breaking into wild inappropriate laughter, but always rocking in her pew. When she runs out of plants that she knows are not the flowers she claims, she remembers what her mother used to tell her about tempests and knows for certain that a river is nothing compared to a cliff.
She throws herself into a thunder which teaches her ballads and epic poetry and how to prophesy the fall of kings, and she wakes up somewhere else with skin that always glistens as though wet, a resolution to never wear shoes again, and far more comfort in her own body than she has felt in almost a decade.
--
Horatio has always been a man of letters, soothing spells to stay still for long enough to sketch out their structure before he thanks them for their time and lets them go on their way again.
He is used to interrogating sentence structures, but when he arrives at the edges of a story in the making (Hamlet’s story, and therefore his, though he knows he’s meant for a supporting role) he turns his attention to picking apart the way these tales are told. Not all bards sing: all he needs is context and a steady voice to give them something with a happy ending, an ending that makes sense.
The Majesty of Buried Denmark (Hamlet D&D verse)
She adds status to the royal family even without doing anything, but she wants to contribute something of her own, so she’s turned her talents to the magic of statehood and ceremony. It feels different, but not really; she’s just healing on a larger scale.
--
It’s easy to be a rogue, the younger brother of the king, who instead of invading other countries dreaming of conquest helps shore up Denmark’s defenses against its own dead. In this borderland between life and death, Catholic and Protestant, past and future, if the average citizen never sees a zombie, wight, or wraith, all that means is that the Danish royalty is doing its job.
No, what really feels strange is when one of the countless gods Claudius has been praying to with plenty of bitterness and not much hope actually answers him, and he finds himself a cleric of Mask, the better to send his brother to hell.
--
Hamlet’s father never wanted him to be a bard, but he could no more deny the song in his bones than he could refuse the crown in his future, and indeed, Yorick said he was a natural.
Then came that night on the watchtower when churchyards yawned and swallowed him whole, and he found he’d made a pact with – in truth he knows not what, only that it is Forbidden and a problem. But he was dealing with these powers fine, just mad enough to not have to use them, until he smelled a rat in his mother’s closet and poor Polonius had his soul burned from his body – he hadn’t even known he could do such a thing.
--
Laertes gets the Storm Lord from his mother’s side, and the Aasimir heritage from his father, and neither of them has ever felt particularly noteworthy; even training in France to become a warlock has been an article not of faith but of fact. When he is told of his father’s death, his tears burn on the way down his cheeks and he has no idea if that’s normal, and the only person he could have asked about it is gone – maybe he even said something about it while Laertes wasn’t listening.
He makes his oath with himself and consults no god.
--
She is already losing bits and pieces during the funeral, alternately staring and breaking into wild inappropriate laughter, but always rocking in her pew. When she runs out of plants that she knows are not the flowers she claims, she remembers what her mother used to tell her about tempests and knows for certain that a river is nothing compared to a cliff.
She throws herself into a thunder which teaches her ballads and epic poetry and how to prophesy the fall of kings, and she wakes up somewhere else with skin that always glistens as though wet, a resolution to never wear shoes again, and far more comfort in her own body than she has felt in almost a decade.
--
Horatio has always been a man of letters, soothing spells to stay still for long enough to sketch out their structure before he thanks them for their time and lets them go on their way again.
He is used to interrogating sentence structures, but when he arrives at the edges of a story in the making (Hamlet’s story, and therefore his, though he knows he’s meant for a supporting role) he turns his attention to picking apart the way these tales are told. Not all bards sing: all he needs is context and a steady voice to give them something with a happy ending, an ending that makes sense.