Open Mingle ~ Summer Concert

[saxsongs]

🧙 WHO: Anyone & Everyone
⚔️️ WHAT: Outdoor Summer Concert
🕒 WHEN: Saturday, July 23rd
🗺️ WHERE: Camelot, an outdoor stage that was made for this
⚠️ WARNINGS: please warn in the threads if needed!

SUMMER CONCERT

The Stage

A stage has been concstructed in an open field near Camelot, with permission and all. There are seats for those who do want to sit during the concert but also places in front of the stafe for those who want to stand. Of course people are welcome to sit on the grass as well. Anything goes.

Backstage

Backstage this time is a rented out business building near the field. Any performers are provided with their own rooms and mini fridges with drinks and snacks they might need. The building is close enough to the stage for performers to leave just a few minutes before their turn on the stage.

The Bar

There is a summer bar with a hawaii theme. Louis is there to be your bartender and sometimes a friendly native comes to help when he needs a break. There are both alcoholic and non-alcoholic summer-themed drinks that you can buy. Water bottles are given for free so you can stay hydraded.

Comments

[luciing]

[ Although he wishes to remain in her high regard, as well as having the honor of having a place within her heart, he will not deflect this blame. There is no excuse, no explanation he can give to ease this, and so he doesn't mince words: ]

No. These were my actions. [ It would be easy to place the fault upon the gods of his world, but that would be far from the truth. All knew that the gods and Crystal would select the next king, but neither gods nor Crystal directed Somnus' blade that day, made him point it at his brother or fight him with all of the other nobles watching. While the Astrals made the Prophecy, rarely did they ever directly intervene or guide, unless the circumstances were dire. Perhaps... that was part of the problem. If they had placed more trust in their chosen and allowed them to know why it was happening from the start, perhaps things would be different.

But that's not what happened. Somnus had spilled the blood of his own brother that day, even before the Crystal repelled his presence. ]

Before all present, my brother succumbed to the Scourge. Unbeknownst to all, he did not eradicate it from others, but somehow [ He pauses on a term, uncertain. It's likely Somnus himself does not know exactly how it works. This is the gods' doing, the blessing they gave him, part of a greater fate. ] absorbed it into himself.

On the dais of the throne, the Crystal rejected him... which made me king. I slew him, but the Starscourge granted him immortality. For the blight that was concentrated within him, I exiled and imprisoned him... and erased his name from history.

In turn, the gods revealed my calling.

[silvergarden]

[Rinea bites her lip. Fratricide. This knowledge of his character hardly fit with the man she knows... but then again-- the words he'd once spat surface in her memories. Ruinous woman. Such rage was not so unpracticed, then, was it?

She looks down. Her unhappiness is palpable-- who could be pleased to hear such things? -- but she doesn't pull away. The fact that he speaks of these actions at all is testament to a changed will, or at least an uncertain one.

Somnus is long dead. The stakes for which he craved the throne are long gone. The gods did not provide bold counsel. He simply remains, forced to reckon with his own actions by way of facing his slain brother. "There is nothing that I have done of which to be proud"... Perhaps the quiet countenance Rinea has come to know is borne from years of reflection on this very subject.]

Your calling?

[luciing]

[ He fears this may only become more unpleasant for her to hear. The deep kindness of her heart is open to all, even to those who are undeserving, and his focus returns to her face, watching her for any sign that it is too much for her to hear at once.

Unlinking his arm from hers, he takes her hand instead supporting her palm with the underside of his between them. With his other, he cups over her fingers. He answers: ] The Prophecy, the Revelation of Bahamut, …the leader of our Astrals.

[ At dawn, Lucis was founded. At dawn, it will come to an end. Long live thy Line and this Stone divine, For the Night when All comes to Naught.

To this day, he recalls receiving the god’s words. To merely stand within Bahamut’s presence had been nearly crippling, each spoken word reverberating through his mind with all the impact of a volley of arrows. Men had not been made to stand near the divine, much less channel their power or shutter it for thousands of years. All who encountered the gods were taxed (the Oracle, most of all).

To a mere mortal such as he, Bahamut— the Draconian— is power overwhelming. No protest would be met without stalwart rejection or punishment. ]

To house and guard the Crystal, to submit ourselves to the Ring, to await when the True King would be born, and to facilitate his final sacrifice.

The gods gave bestowed the Ring, which would be passed down through our Line. [ The hand that is atop of hers has a faint shadow of a ring upon his middle finger, where faint, lightening-like scars travel beyond his hand, disappearing up his arm beneath his dark cloak. Although only a shadow of what they once were, each use of the Ring left devastating burns upon the wearer, draining their life. Somnus’ visage is not youthful for the purgatory into which he was pulled, but for the reason he died young. Founding the kingdom, establishing its roots, and paving the way for a dynasty to last two thousand years meant he had to be ruthless against the Scourge. It proved effective; it was necessary, and the Scourge was successfully pushed it back to echos of what it once was.

But he was not the only king or queen whose life ended in sacrifice— all after him succumbed to the same fate, all forfeited themselves for the good of the world, necessary to preserve the future of it. They all died too swiftly, too young, he witnessed them all, their souls gathered into the Ring… where they would wait for the the end. ]

In life, we were to give all to the kingdom and world. Only those worthy could bear its divine light, and after death our souls and power were collected into it, allowing it to gather might— power enough that, at the end of the Prophecy, would be used to rid the Star of blight and herald the dawn.

[ At last, he finishes: ]

That is the task of our family. [ The profound gravity of their fate causes his voice to lower, reserved and accepting of their fate. ] For the future of our Star… [ For those that come after them, for the greater world, for those that deserve a chance to live on the light without fear of the night—

And he believes in this; he must, because what is one man or kingdom compared to the entire world? When even now, it remains strangled of light and mankind survives by but a thread? ] Our souls are forfeit.

[silvergarden]

[Oh... Suddenly she's devastated. The knowledge slots everything she knows about him into place. The stoicism, the detachment, and yet his benevolence... All of it makes sense for a man bound to greater good.

What a pitiful family. What a noble person. What a tortured existence. How long he has held onto the hope that it all will mean something? Somnus has been made into an existence more than mortal-- and yet, here he stands, miserably human. The violence he visited upon Ardyn was hardly rewarded. Rinea doesn't need to fret about morality or unearned glories: he is being punished enough.

She turns her face to his again. She's still grieved, but there's something devoted in it.]

May you rest a spell with me.

[Rinea takes his scarred hand in both of hers.]

...My Somnus.

[She raises it to her lips, and kisses it.]

[luciing]

[ In the end, both throne and kingdom had been a means to an end— to protect the crystal, to gather strength, to provide the souls necessary— an end in which their world would be saved, and all life would know light once again. Yet none of what his family endured, or currently endures, deserved to suffer like so. The one at fault for starting it all, ignorant or not, is none other than himself. He can endure this charge, too, if it means they will not cross the Bladekeeper himself and suffer a worse fate, and a part of the reason why he never speaks of this is that he deserves no sympathy for his own actions. By seeking the dawn and their world’s salvation by the gods’ fate, he perpetuates the suffering of his family and himself; by the same action, he will bring that suffering to an end.

If only it could have just been him to be punished for betraying his brother, for killing the Oracle… But no. It is all of his line, it is the world being enshrouded in Night, all slowly, pitifully dying until they fulfill the Prophecy. Some have tried to find other means— but pieces are missing, and it is too late. Each second that passes results in tragedy, in more corruption of their world. There is no other course but this. He wishes it were so. But there is not.

With her gesture, Rinea gives is not quite pity, but understanding, acknowledgment that he has been in pain, himself, without excusing him. That is more than enough, and as her lips find his fingers, pressing them to the faint scar, it’s all he can do to not kneel before the depths of her heart. ]

Rinea…

[ His voice betrays a new emotion she’s likely not heard in his voice before: vulnerability, revealing a man crippled with guilt and powerlessness.

What else can he say but this: ]

Thank you.