Lucian Rothchild

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IamLEAM1983
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Lucian Rothchild

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Name: Lucian Rothchild
Age: 1025 years old
Gender: male
Species: Void Weaver

Strengths: being both a Squid, a mage and an inventor, Lucian has a varied skillset that he's learned to largely ply in the pursuit of tracking down Revenants, as he calls undead or etheric Weavers, as well as rogue Abominations. A Necromancer doubling with a Mentalist and complemented with a focus on elemental fire as used in arcane firearms, he's very much made a name for himself on the surface as some sort of Victorian Ghostbuster and debunker in cryptids and mythical creatures diverse.

At least, as far as his original public used to know. For most people, he was a wizened-looking eccentric combining just enough English phlegm and Oriental mysticism to create what felt like an exciting and tolerable brand of hokum. Calling him for a cleansing was considered similar to holding a séance, two hundred years ago. It was all spooky and guaranteed fun – until he found something.

His love of Shakespeare's gloomy climaxes being to blame, he's very much elevated the Rothchilds into a sort of Buck analogue sans persistent tragedies. Standing at the head of a long line of sensitives, he doesn't so much investigate crime scenes based on tangible evidence as he does with etheric scarring, the unfelt puncture holes in the fabric of the material world left by the recently departed. “Etheric Forensics” being a relatively ignored field of view thanks to the impossibility to tell a shyster apart from a decent Diviner at the onset, Lucian was able to go further than simply poke around cordoned-off locations, looking for bits of imprinted woe on household objects.

His advanced age be damned, he's developed the first generation of tools that would make the HPD's Forensics department and serious ghosthunting outfits band together to try and steal them from him. Instead of trusting mundane instruments to complete paranormal tasks, he's trawled every available tome or grimoire in order to create originally steam-powered firearms that would only hurt aggressive shades and ghosts, as well as more physical tools designed to take to those who have gone beyond death in particularly despicable ways. Vampires need not apply, he's far more concerned with the occasional undead Weaver or reanimated corpse serving as a proxy for Amaxi or one of Her Brothers.

Tapping into Necromancy as well as his own gradually unraveling life signs, Lucian is also capable of projecting his skills into an outwardly powerful manifestation of his will. He can, essentially, temporarily exist as a ghost, provided his body is being tended to in the meantime. This allows him to walk the Shadowlands and, in extreme cases with several days of preparation, spook troublesome ghosts into a more obedient mindset by displaying the sort of poltergeist chops only ancient souls could display. Ten minutes is his maximum window, astral voyages being excessively taxing on the mind if one ventures too far out too quickly.

Otherwise, Lucian's knowledge of the Black Speech is largely encyclopedic, at this point. He refuses to speak it as a point of principle and would only accept to guide a fellow crusader in its general understanding of how dangerous this idiom can be. Similarly, his natural telekinetic abilities are largely a footnote, the most he does with them typically involving the recalling of his ghost detector-slash-flashlight-cum-walking cane with an artificially created gust of wind. He generally has grown far too respectful of surface-dweller abilities and limitations to consider trusting every little gesture to his willpower.

As far as Abominations are concerned, he's managed to create other advanced steam-era weapons that can be used to rend their already feeble atomic bonds apart. Most of them are vulnerable to all weapons equally, but Rothchild's ordnance is especially suited to the task of neutralizing them on the atomic level.
Weaknesses: Lucian might be a forgotten authority in the field of the active removal of invading spirits, he still is old. Amaxi having officially forsaken him long ago and his efforts at embracing other life-sustaining creeds having only alleviated his degradation to a degree, he still is a bit on the feeble side. He tires easily on the physical level and couldn't be expected to solve every situation with only his brains and none of his tools. Like several other elderly, Rothchild tends to have vastly irregular sleep patterns and unpredictable levels of sleep quality. He'll sometimes pull all-nighters with the energy of a young twentysomething, only to give it another go a few weeks later and crash shortly after 10 PM. Micro-naps are more frequent with him than restorative lengths of sleep. This gives the illusion that he's always up and about, but his tea times typically switch to impromptu naps.

As can be expected, his senior status also plays with his mind to a degree. He now forgets new names and faces if he isn't given cause enough to care about remembering them, and can sometimes put plans together and forget these plans' reason for being halfway through their elaboration.

In practice, this contributes to the sense that he's a sort of absent-minded old bean, a slightly awkward gentleman who needs his created family as a support structure. As can be expected, this is an obvious sign that he's about to pass the torch. His old patents were carefully filed away, and the Rothchilds are sitting on an impending rights-related dispute. Some believe the Void Weaver's devices should be marketed or presented out to threat-deterrence or security companies to be adequately modernized, others value the gained mystique of the family name and would rather enshrine those old tools, present them to a museum for safekeeping and public display.

On a more concrete level, there's also the fact that Lucius isn't much to look at if you remove his steam pack and its connected “ghost rifle” or steal away his “Shadowlands goggles”. He's far more used to fight things that stand in place and look scary or that express their power through physically manageable means than anything as outwardly threatening as an armed mortal packing the latest Human-Karthian SMG design. He can handle psychological assaults the same way others might bullet wounds or blade slashes, but would be a bit stuck if a target of his chose to possess a freshly deceased former linebacker or a departed Chimera...

He might be an exorcist without the associated religiosity, but nobody needs an exact list of organic, tangible things that could kill someone with the muscular and skeletal degradation of an eighty year-old. He's metaphorically whaled in on ancient shades like some sort of ectoplasm-specialized Chuck Norris analogue, but wouldn't be worth much in even a fairly mild tussle.

Appearance: as said above, the Rothchilds are a bit similar to the Bucks, on the surface level. All are a little off-kilter, all seem to see more than they actually do see, but they also don't quite have that classically haunted look. There's a bit of the early grave in each and every one of them, but also a remarkably strong lease on life. If the Bucks are beset by calamities throughout the generations, then Lucian's constructed family has become used to the idea of invading the calamities of others, sharing their pain for a few acute and difficult days, and leaving satisfied. They've all seen Death on an up-close and personal level, but haven't come out of it looking doomed or cursed. The end result is the sense that Lucian is an old soul, and not just because of his attained centuries. Not even because he opposed Amaxi in the early days of the current rebellion.

Big, clear eyes brimming with grandfatherly empathy aren't terribly common in Dalarath, and they made the man that was originally called Lulroth stand out in the crowd. With a blue-green sheen and a set of wrinkles that suggest perpetually endured exhaustion paired with a bit of stubborn mirth, he's generally stuck going with burgundys, plums and browns as his base sartorial palette. On a day-to-day basis, he'll wear whatever happens to be contemporary and fashionable for senior citizens, from his active days' stovepipe hats and Victorian suit-and-tie combination paired with a fur-lined riding coat; to today's store-bought two-piece ensembles. As an active “etheric hunter”, however, he tends to default to the first outfit, as his first and best set of gear was designed to be most comfortably worn using clothes that were fashionable in the late eighteen-hundreds. The rifle's power pack is designed to be hidden underneath the longcoat, and his goggles retract into a housing that is strapped to his stovepipe hat. His custom-made undead and living-repelling holdout pistols fit snugly into holsters that the longcoat also conceals. As he didn't feel the need to reiterate on proven designs, he never thought of adapting his tech to the concept of head-mounted nightvision goggles or modern tactical rigs.

As explained below, his created lineage has no defined race or point of origin. As a result, his adoptive children, grand-children and great-grand-children have melded together into a strong mulatto or metizo undercurrent. This reflects in his chosen Flesh Mask, which he's created to display the sharp features of a Caucasian descent, paired with rich and slightly Eurasian lips, along with a burnished skin that never so much tans as it goes into slightly deeper café au lait shades. As expected, he's somewhat stuck displaying a long beard that reaches down to his navel. He keeps his white, paired off with an entirely bald pate, and sometimes artificially shortened with the addition of carefully masculine braids.

It stands to reason that if his blueprints are ever patented, not only would etheric defense receive a significant technological step up, but others would be able to create less conspicuous versions of the same basic hardware. Showing up to solve a case or lend a hand as another member of the “Top Hat Brigade” thankfully only makes Aidan Drake roll his eyes and only impresses the living. The dead, especially the ancient dead, tend to not have enough references or general presence of mind to scoff at how overdressed this tentacled spiritualist can sometimes appear to be.
Behavior: having come into English society from a place where murder most foul is a daily occurrence, Lulroth never really did more than pay lip-service to the stolid and bloodless countenance demanded of the average “proper” gentleman. He stands ramrod-straight when required and can display a brisk economy of movements, but he also is like Nereus in how smiles come easily to him. In general, you get the sense that most Rothchilds speak largely with their eyes and less with their mouths. Lucian might not divulge much of what goes on in his head, but he doesn't hide his mental processes with the same dilligence as Archie. Polite denials of having any current problems are typically a roundabout way of confirming someone else's suspicions and asking for assistance without breaking the illusion of adult self-reliance. Similarly, that economy of gestures is usually expressed in excessively clear and emphatic ways. Lulroth resting a hand on your shoulder and giving you a questioning look tends to convey more honest concern than any sort or verbal expression. If a shoulder squeeze is a hug, then a hug, however gentle, means he deeply and truly cares for you. Also a bit like Nereus, he is a rather tactile fellow, never hesitating to reach out and touch someone he's speaking to, even if they happen to be complete strangers. It always feels respectful and it never intentionally intrudes in anyone's personal space. Lucian's managed to touch supernaturally tormented shut-ins that had it worse than Preston on their first contact, his simple handshake meaning more than the simple opening and impending statement of business terms.

On a day-to-day basis, he feels like the wizened patriarch of the bloodline, the one rampart that prevents the family sensitives from turning into Miz Cleo analogues. He teaches the very same respect he's learned for the Afterlife, and does so simply, truthfully and without artifice. That means he keeps all of his abilities and most of his past on the down-low, despite the fact that he seems to have imposed a vague sense of old sorrows carried forward, in the stronger ones he teaches. The truth is that while he does carry the loss of Mary White, his human companion from Dalarath, especially close to heart, he's also exposed himself to the pain and suffering of families that had been had by shyster psychics and sham séance conductors that exploited the Victorian craze for “ghost lanterns”. He's also exposed himself to the sometimes hazy and frustratingly inset discomfort of lost shades or insane ghosts. His list of personal woes is fairly short, considering his years, but he's brought belated relief to many others, following his escape, or broken the hearts of people who were clinging onto the hope for some good news. He knows emotional turmoil quite well, to the point where he wouldn't have much to be surprised about if given a detailed historical case file about the Bucks and Samoset. He'd prove able to empathize on both sides and to understand how thorny the underlying issues are. He isn't a therapist or a psychiatrist, but has learned to keep ties with both professions. Some cases have ended in intolerable heartbreak for certain clients, and that would warrant professional help. Others have concluded with a cultist tied to a straightjacket and sent off to Bedlam or Parkhurst. His personal index contains a short list of therapists and clinical psychiatrists he's trusted with the truth of his occupation, and to whom he refers certain cases.

The hardest part about what he does, he'd confess, is someone else projecting onto you. You've ridden their house of a seemingly unremovable visitor, and they happen to recognize their own culture or intelligence in you. You've shown kindness and professionalism where the local cops would have stuck them on a waiting list – so now they cling to you. It gets especially hard when someone reminds him of Mary or of one of his former staff in Dalarath. There's a few facial types that bring out a bit of a forlorn stare in him, paired with a few skin tones that remind him of secret laughter in that old underground mansion, the pitter-patter of secret feet skittering around in the cover of darkness, only to be spirited away as soon as some self-important Squid comes by to check and see if the city's star Choir leader is still suitably dedicated.

Having been unable to father children with Mary because of their advanced age, he instead took to adopting his entire chattel, bestowing the name of Rothchild on each and every one of them once he took to the surface. They all shared in the trauma of returning home to some or of being taken away to an even stranger land. Explaining their supposedly shared blood was a stretch when some looked like England natives, others had a Latinate cast and he even had harbored a few displaced dark-skinned South Africans, but it was nothing that conjured money, airs of apparent authority and a dedication to eccentricity couldn't fix. He'd always deeply cared for what Dalarath called his chattel but he called his staff, to the point where it was easy enough to pass for a returning Indian governor with hired help fitting of a globe-trotter. Finally able to educate and employ them, he essentially gave rise to a racially indefinite bloodline in which absolute inclusion is law and racism is an anachronistically nonexistent concept. While Rosa Parks was still being ushered to the backs of buses, the controversial Black Rothchilds of American descent were tutored by the family, for the family, ending up with knowledge equivalent to the sort of postgraduate education several Whites would have killed for. If employment couldn't be found outside of the Rothchild circle, then there was always something open within it.

Today, the Rothchilds are a sort of invisible dynasty where each man is his own, but everyone yearns to contribute to the whole. You won't find blatantly obvious family businesses, as even contiguous lines of psychics or mages operate independently. You won't find huge motherlodes, because everyone maintains their own finances. They haven't left hugely storied marks in History, and the only way to even have an inkling of the family's bigger picture is to have met Lucian personally. He feels much more like a sort of sensei the paranormal warriors of the family can consult for assistance than like the head of anything financial, much less social. It takes a fair bit of business-card collecting to put the pieces together and to realize that you're looking at something that's much more solid than any corporation.

You're looking at a family. Not in the Mafia sense, not in the “ill-fated clan” sense, but rather from the perspective of people who have discovered a common hook, a shared ability, and chosen to develop it to its fullest potential. They make their lives out of easing the pain of others, and it takes a lot of common effort for that generic a concept to bring together something that resembles a family trove. You'll also find doctors, teachers, artists or even distant entrepreneurs with ties to the core family – and they all pitch in in their own way.

This casual secrecy allows Lucian to lead a mostly mundane twilight and for the family name to avoid the limelight. As said above, it takes some sleuthing to realize that there's a few thousand people across America, France and England that are moving as one, sharing references and skills as often as possible. It takes a lot of patience to figure out why there's a spate of kids with that name who get dropped out of public school at a young age, spend years being homeschooled, and emerge with the same background as an Ivy League honor roll recipient. In goes the hopeful mundane, out comes the painstakingly trained practitioner or sensitive, ready to add a few bricks to the proverbial wall.

To put things bluntly, the Rothchild motto can be understood as meaning No Warriors, No Sages, Kings or Oracles. Only Citizens. Maximum social and personal responsibility is the family creed. We're all citizens alike – either in this life or the next.

Goals: Lucian believes that the best warriors to oppose the Others and his former peers are those who fully understand and respect the fabric of the surface world. Instead of training grunts, he pushes the family to train thinkers with firearms, philosophers with arcane powers or superhumans with acutely developed higher thinking abilities. He discourages political or religious alleigiances if they're made out of knee-jerk reactions or emotional responses. If the Void Weavers revered irresponsibility and recklessness, then Lucian intends to elevate personal responsibility as his descendants' shared tantamount virtue. Perfection is unattainable, of course, but maintaining high standards keeps one's ideals clean and focused.

If his former peers are forever trying to distill impossible and boundless Evil into something precise, he would rather try and forge a bloodline of people who, while still human and imperfect, would find themselves elevated by their relentless pursuit of nobility and clarity of purpose. Giving that a good and honest attempt matters more than anything to him, and he'd never fault a distant descendant of his for being stumped on philosophy and choosing a low-wage job. All that matters is having given it an honest effort, and of having found oneself in one's current activities. No job is an outright lie, but all jobs can be a lie to someone.

Considering, Lulroth has surprised friends and collaborators by expending as many accolades to the Biology doctorate who's just earned a fellowship in a prestigious research center as he would to the honest, yet shiftless teen who's taken to working at a Best Buy and sees no need to push his career further. If both men are equally happy and honest both with themselves and others, he has no right to criticize their choices.

Permissive but challenging, supportive and still singing the praises of earned independence, able to pair high standards with a lucid and flexible outlook on life, Lucian Rothchild is, in some ways, the best unlicenced Humanities or Philosophy teacher under and postgrad students alike could possibly hope for.

History: born in the year 1000, Lulroth was destined by birth to be a member of Dalarath's Lords, a policy-influencing subset of the Prelacy which is normally characterized by their attempt to find a functional compromise between the Others' sometimes self-destructive or contradictory edicts, and the needs of an isolated metropolis. Essentially the urban planners and sociologists of the Void Weavers, the Lords are among the few members of Dalarath's cultural elite who are given free range to observe surface-dweller trends and technologies. The main aim remains the identification of chinks in the surface-world's sociological or political armor, but survivability and productivity have demanded of the Weavers that they frequently borrow technologies or socio-political concepts from top-side.

As you can expect, being encouraged to assimilate as much of the slaves' conjoined cultures leads to striking differences, in regards to the general atmosphere in Lord Houses. House Lulroth, notably, would come to be known by the impressive aftermarket value of its slaves. Healthy, educated and showing relatively few signs of psychological scarring, Lulroth's chattel would trigger several mortal generations' worth of unsavory rumors. After all, the Void Weaver norm is located somewhere the generalized neglect of one's chattel, or its active abuse. They're canonically meant to be run or burnt through with gruelling work, and typically live short, painful and ungrateful deaths.

Except in a few Lord Houses.

Born of and raised by lifelong researchers, Lulroth never experienced the Void Weaver standard of absent parents and encouraged cruelty. Within his little palace's walls, the rules of what was then typical Medieval serfdom were reproduced, albeit on a smaller scale. House Lulroth willfully employed and paid fishermen, essentially slaves given room and board within the family's little compound and provided constant access to private loading and fishing docks. Some were kept as staff of the family, and all more or less recreated the environment you'd find in a typical lord-of-the-manor's keep. Other aspects were less standard, such as how the House maintained the ancient Greek policy of employing full-time teachers. The end result was a Void Weaver tended to by human, selkie and anthro hands and taught to by the Late Middle Ages' best in abducted coastal monks and scriveners.

As can be expected, Lulroth had to learn to live a double life rather quickly. In private, he could reveal himself to be quick-witted and analytical and extended both friendship and love for his staff. In public, the expected abuse he needed to be seen dispensing required of him that he brief the hardiest of the men on his staff and teach them how to put on a slightly theatrical, if convincing display from time to time. Some practice enabled him to grow skilled in the art of simulated torture, and for some slaves to develop rather uni-directional acting capabilities. It would always be easy enough for him to deliver painstakingly rehearsed blows or to simulate pulling the teeth out of the mouth of a young food thief. Perform the right gestures and recreate the right chunks of bone, blood and enamel at the right time, and his regular public displays soon turned into private magic tricks he rehearsed with some of “his” children – ostensibly those born of his staff – as soon as some accident or the natural loss of some teeth left a convenient gap that could be put to use publicly.

For most of his adult life, Lulroth lived as a cavern-dwelling sociologist of sorts who was stuck simulating monstrous urges. Still being a Void Weaver by blood, he still did feel his species' innate connection with the Others, but it was a concept and an occasional occurrence that either puzzled or disgusted him, depending on the situation. That opposition and his constant posturing soon led to a generalized emotional fatigue that had him spend a few generations tuned out of Dalarath's politics and affecting a sullen and perennially exhausted demeanor. When he wasn't researching for the purposes of supposedly finding more ways to prove the superiority of Squids, he was usually sleeping his efforts off – both in order to consolidate his notes in the Darkhallow and to generally escape from what increasingly felt like a trap of sorts. As much as he was surrounded by people who respected him and even came to greatly appreciate his presence at times, he didn't feel a strong connection with anyone. At the very least, it was easy enough to say he'd doubled down on pleasing Harrogath. His staff and close friends couldn't be fooled, however; the researcher was growing steadily more depressed.

Then, some thirty years before Meris' arrival, somewhere around the late 1400s, a fortuitous catch changed things. While the Orkneys were in the later years of their initial Norwegian rule, relationships with Scotland and England had already been established long ago. While James III of Scotland would come to claim domain over the Hebrides, his initial visiting party was beset with terrible weather, in the winter of 1468. The king and his staff survived the trip to the archipelago unscathed, but the head of his personal staff, a Scot by the name of Mary Ross, was lost in the squall. As far as the surface world's history goes, she was quickly presumed dead. Mary herself, however, would tell an altogether different tale...

Thrown overboard thanks to her admittedly poor knowledge of maritime safety, she was quickly introduced to strangely alien hands who dragged her inside an air pocket. Even as the dark and cold of the deep seas pressed down against her, the waters stayed clear. The horror of descending to previously unknown depths and of finally seeing her captors' faces by the glow of strangely luminescent plants soon gave way to the confusion of being thrown into the slave pits. Very few people spoke English at all, and all looked to be in terrible condition. All she'd remember would be the notion of not having been forced to suffer for too long. The next tentacled face she saw smiled at her and ordered for her strange and chilly manacles to be removed.

A few months passed, then a year. Ross had realized she wouldn't be returning home, and Lord Lulroth's simple demands clashed with the care and consideration he otherwise displayed. His other slaves bred with one another, so she was tasked with educating the young mothers. All the same, her master had curious requests that wouldn't make sense to her until later. In an age where wet-nursing was considered normal and even expected, Lulroth forbade any mother under his service to pass their children along to one another. It'd be years before she'd realize how swapping teats could occasionally allow for the transmission of various diseases.

When she wasn't tending to the mothers and young fathers, she had to educate new arrivals on the household's demands. As with wet-nursing, she quickly understood why Lulroth kept the hardier folks covered in bruises he'd willed into being. House Lulroth was a world all unto itself, and Dalarath was another. To survive – for all of them to survive – they had to play an occasionally cruel game. That meant disappearing and living underground whenever other dignitaries visited, or suffering the rare indignity of sleeping in sham “cells” the Lord had carved out of the cavern wall. Everyday life meant pretending like you were miserable, and everyone quickly learned that to do otherwise when the Lord wasn't alone was foolhardy. The staff's real sleeping quarters were placed in the higher levels of the manor shaped out of flowing stone, too far out of sight of any visiting Squid to be seen or to warrant attention.

Eventually, the headmistress couldn't hold herself back. Where she came from, she explained, kings had audience days in which they'd listen to their people's dalliances. Couldn't he ask his Augur to put an end to these charades if they frustrated him so much? Lulroth, letting go of decades of repressed frustration, lashed at her, clothed her in the gaudiest of all slave costumes, and dragged her through the residential quarters and slave markets. She'd seen and understood so little and still dispensed so much, she was shocked by the sight of how desperate her master truly was. He'd long since come to hate what he had to work on, and also loathed who and what he was working for. To be fortunate, for Void Weavers, was more of a burden than a blessing.

For years, Mary didn't know what to reply to this. All she could do was offer her ear and a cup of strange Eastern herbs infused in hot water – one of the master's favorites thanks to one of his Indian slaves. She listened and consoled him as best she could, knowing that Lulroth couldn't keep working against a king's ransom of cultures, tales, idioms and mindsets he'd come to not only love, but to be famished for. He wasn't studying the surface world with intent of destroying it anymore, but rather because he had the secret and sinful desire of one day being able to be a part of it. All that Ross could do involved giving her master the slightest of pushes, saying that he would have to choose, one day. No man could spend his life serving hateful powers while embracing the strength of peace.

A trip to the market proved to be the tipping point. Mary purchased contaminated fish, the cooks preparing it in blind trust of its quality. The Squids being used to the sea's worth of parasites, Lulroth didn't suffer much in the aftermath of that meal, but he did lose five of his closest staff members, including three children. Mary came close to dying, as well. A few tense days of religious confusion were spent, which ended with Lulroth letting loose in his office, shattering every piece of Void Weaver paraphernalia he owned. Driving himself asleep with moss wine and with a few focusing words on his lips, he stormed the Darkhallow with intent of finding all that he'd always told the Prelacy was not meant to know.

The Squids' constructed space is a Non-Euclidean whorl of rooms and eras, times and places imaginary and remembered, all clashing and all largely used as a repository of secrets and lore. Digging for Delmar the Revered's presence took figurative centuries within those suspended hours of fitful rest, but the Apostate's Halls were teeming with scrolls and books dating back to the times that had seen the burnished and olive-skinned men of Hyperborea begin their quest towards arcane hegemony. There was a time in which the Void Weavers had seen the sun and stars, in the early years of their infancy, but the forces of Magic had been torn away from them, replaced with the vile secrets of the Mad Arts. The one the texts called the Apostate had seen the years that had come before the Others had breathed upon the Weavers' infant forms and bestowed Madness upon them, and he knew all that They loathed.

Lulroth, postulating that this would include some life-saving medical scriptures, devoured the scrolls for what seemed like further centuries, committing them all to the hazy memory of his unconsicous mind. He awakened with new knowledge on his lips, particulates They had always dismissed because of their restorative properties, but which he now actively sought. Mentally-assembled foods were prepared and distributed regularly to the invalids, regular efforts bringing Mary's temperature down and purging her of the blight she'd carried. Somehow, Mary saw through his efforts to remain composed when she woke, their mutual fondness and love becoming something so deep and obvious that there was no need to elaborate on it. Already old, he never did find the strength to carry her into bed, preferring instead to hold one of her hands during quiet reading evenings.

Publicly, Lulroth remained the same as he'd ever been. Privately, however, he began to have to fight against his own peals of mysteriously ill health, taking them as sure-fire signs that the Others had finally caught on to his treachery. Where his situation differed from the rest of the dissidents, however, was in how he could always find some remedy or technique to preserve his health or prevent further debilitating effects. House Lulroth also operated on the unspoken knowledge that Mary and the master were together, as well, which did bring a few happy changes to the general proceedings.

Previous to declaring his love to Ross, Lulroth had only been an Anglophile of sorts, and had only dispensed distant care towards the descendants of his staff. He couldn't afford to raise a multi-generational staff, so he'd been forced to break a few families in the past. Following his having fallen in love, however, House Lulroth became a tightly-knit unit that gleefully confused the boundaries between master and slave, the Weaver and his entire staff eating at a communal table, swapping workday stories and various anecdotes. He got up to refill plates and mugs depending on who asked, and even started imparting what he'd learned to the children who were old enough to be expected to having joined some sort of trade or school, back on the surface. The love he felt for Mary seemed to bloom outwards, basic care turning into profound personal investment in the sort of lives that would only have warranted a kick or an unkind word out of anyone else.

As could be expected, other members of the Lords took notice. Lulroth's slaves were ungodly expensive thanks to their staggeringly good health and rapidly expanding knowledge base, while their health, physical integrity and basic strength made them several times more effective than any abused bag of bones. They did briefly turn into a hot commodity, but the more Lulroth extolled their virtues, the more they became prohibitively priced – requiring of other slave-owners that they abandon their entire chattel in exchange for one fairly dangerous child. All the better, then, as Lulroth was more than willing to buy his people back at no charge – without relinquishing the ever-so-needed help he'd obtained in the transaction...

Soon, Lulroth became one of Dalarath's small coterie of Lord Slavers, leading the group's directing rates and expecting standards to fairly impious levels. Nobody else could reach his levels of marketed excellence, which in turn led to Lulroth leaving the slave business altogether after suffering strong advisories from the Chamberlain. By then, however, his faith was beginning to be brought into question and was starting to attract the attention of the city's Arbiters – and of the Augur himself. He still didn't know that he'd happen to find a sympathetic ear in the person of the man who would soon become Nereus, husband of Meris.

Feeling some sort of noose tighten around what he'd honestly come to consider as his family, he and Mary scrambled to find some assistance. First came the discovery of Respite Point and of Delmar as a living community leader, then followed by whispers from the Architect. He told the couple to stop worrying, and to simply keep doing what came naturally. When the time would come, He said, they would be presented with the ability to blind them all to the truth – safe for one. Lulroth was shown a vision of himself holding some sort of shaft aloft, on top of which rested a globe of light. Drawing on her time spent studying Latin under King James, she took to calling him Lucian, after lucent.

At first, nothing changed. More sleepless nights were endured, more lies were uttered and more gnashing of teeth took place. It went on for long enough that he soon felt forced to hide those he now almost fully considered as his children, in his moss-wine cellars. The purchase of a former caravan guard named Hakan proved to be the sign he'd waited for. Hakan was no ordinary slave; born and bred in Respite Point, raised by Delmar and the other rebel Squids to serve as a spy and assassin. He'd been planted in the market's slave population to inform Lucian of the Point's existence and location, in order to let him offload all those which he knew wouldn't be likely to survive potential violences to come. The group also promised it would support the Lord now that his true intentions were known to them, as it had further dissident Prelacy members standing ready and able to fortuitously dispel any rumors about Dalarath's slave king being impious. What wouldn't be known by the ears of the Faithful would be less likely to be known by the Others Themselves.

Lucian came to realize that he'd been preparing the logistics of some sort of insurrectionist group, cultivating its brain out of the generations he'd spent studying the surface world. Hakan would provide the first sword-arm, but further visions from the Architect showed how the first true weapon of the rebellion would come from the least expected of sources.

While Meris suffered under her initial masters, disquieting rumors began to spread amidst the prelacy, replacing those of the slaver king's lack of religious diligence. A cult was taking root under the Others' very nose, and its dissenting members could be anywhere within the city's structure. The only one who could still be called pure, as far as the fanatics were concerned, was the Augur.

If only they'd had come to know just how wrong they'd been...

The years that were marked by Meris' regency were prosperous and, at least, apparently pious and fervent ones. Stories of mass pillages led on the surface became common and news reports delivered by criers and scouts painted the picture of a world that was falling prey to the Weavers' cleansing influence, bit by bit and at an ever-increasing pace. The Others seemed to gorge on all the exuded hatred and the rites and rituals blossomed, to the point where historians would later claim that Dalarath had never been so grandiose. Several of the little aspects of this new decadence went on unnoticed, but were the work of the arm of the rebellion that acted as a think tank of sorts. Medicinal gardens became common and the practice of using land-based Brine Pools were re-introduced. Hunting on land became more common, the briefly exiled Arbiters choosing remote forests and easily co-optable myths and legends to hide their presence while they sent venison, fruits and vegetables back into the abyss. Slave markets dipped into near-disuse even as reponsible healing practices became common.

Ask the Lords, and they'd tell you they'd finally figured out how to marry the surface-world's practicality with the Others' demands. Dalarath, it seemed, had finally achieved perfect balance.

The rumor mill never quieted down, however, and the rebellion remained an ever-present background threat, now dubbed the White Brotherhood. Meris having since made her rule an integral part of the city's political makeup, her and Hakan's influence allowed for the creation of strange magic-enabled Weavers who could flit between shadows and listen in on sensitive information, while eluding capture and occasionally killing their way out of binds in curiously bloodless ways. Efficiency wasn't a terribly pious way to go for murderers, but the top-heavy build of the usual Arbiters soon found a supposedly worthy opponent in the person of lithe figures dressed in white robes and cloaks who took to their rare killings in surprisingly personal ways.

In essence, the White Brotherhood was the part of the rebellion that Lulroth, Hakan and Meris had created to be the noisy, anxiety-generating boogieman that would enable them all to work in safety. First, health was said to breed better slaves and personal investment; better minions. Sympathetic slave market officers taught new arrivals to walk and talk “submissive and devoted” and to relentlessly flatter the egoes of their masters. If they were told to stop, they'd been shacked in with sympathizing Weavers. If not, they had to keep going. Eventually, if they didn't generate causes to receive harm too often, they'd turn their owners into supporters of the cause.

With healthcare and a pivotal sector of Weaver society both significantly altered, Lucian then worked towards establishing a network of Squid fishermen who were paid to act as a sort of Underground Railroad – fortuitously “losing” their accompanying slaves in surface squalls or to drowning incidents. Being unable to pick-and-choose surface points without attracting further attention, they tended to leave their ferries, ethnicities be damned, along various European coastlines. As a result, Lucian's English emerged very early on as the slaves' lingua franca. This would engender several “fish-out-of-water” stories.

Unfortunately, that last project caught the Chamberlain's eyes. Determined to bring an end to the Augur's newfound Reformist streak, he opted to fight fire with fire and used the Black Speech to crush the wills of a few Squids he'd expected to be sympathetic to the White Brotherhood. Creating his very own double agents, he soon obtained detailed reports of the rebellion's plans. Some households were already hard at work using their spare time and the Mad Arts to assemble weapons of which Lulroth carried the knowledge from the Darkhallow, ready to introduce the populace to firearms a good two hundred years ahead of schedule. Usurping the Architect's repeated advice to simply keep going, the Chamberlain planted the seeds of incipient chaos in Dalarath, and waited for his opponents to make their move.

As he suspected, the city's ever-so-convenient crop of recently-trained healers pronounced the Consort's pregnancy to come to term a few days past Dar-Larath's Apex. Meris gave birth to Chonogorroth – later known as Chauncey McConmara – in the privacy afforded by her and Nereus' created alcove by the palace. Lucian and Hakan were on call to take the infant, which was growing at the expected blinding speed common to newborn Squids, and spirit him out of Dalarath. The plan was to entrust the child to a family of former slaves somewhere in Scotland which was being fed tremendous amounts of wealth through the Weavers' ability to generate precious metals at will. The boy would be instructed and kept safe for as long as possible, as well as allowed to emerge as a counter-force for any remaining sympathizers to the Others. The White Brotherhood would have its own Augur, connected to the Architect through Chonogorroth the Speaker's own dreams. All that was needed was for Nereus to simulate Meris' ritual murder and to pass their child as a stillborn. If all went according to plan, the two adult Weavers and the selkie would be part of the last major wave of departures, before outright revolt was called into being.

The worm was in the fruit, however, and the Chamberlain received the supposedly stillborn infant in the company of someone no-one had planned for : Chauncey himself, or rather Chauncey's body, his soul subsumed and rendered powerless even as the conniving wretch had latched the most dogged of their former zealots' spirits into that new body. Nikolaas Buck saw through their boy's eyes, and publicly denounced Meris, Nereus and Lulroth as frauds.

While Meris and Nereus had no luck, the White Brotherhood had sensed the change in the wind, and had enough time to inform Lucian of his need to leave Dalarath posthaste. Feeling like the worst of traitors, he ordered his surrogate family to pack their bags and to follow him to one of the English Brine Pools. They all emerged in the cold winter waves just West of Swansea, Wales – one petrified and self-disgusted old man and his entire dynasty of equally horrified cosmopolitan humans, theriomorphs and anthros.

The only hope any of them had was to contact the Scottish insertion point that had been destined for Chonogorroth and direct them to transfer control of their funds to Lulroth. While more deceit was being weaved in a first few English coastal towns and Lulroth couldn't do much more but curse the Chamberlain behind a fist he'd press against his mouth, Meris and Nereus had it even worse – their survival resting on the Augur's quick thinking and apparent rejection of the roane he'd so loved.

Forced to lie to her, he claimed he'd always intended to use the rebellion as a launchpad for a widespread dissemination of the cult of the Others on the surface, and that orchestrating everything, from their love to their plans, would bring Dalarath out of its centuries of seclusion. They now had the means to influence the world, as oppposed to simply sitting there in the hopes that They would take pity on them. He essentially claimed that all that Meris had really taught him was how to take action.

Burying his disgust, Nereus took what could have been his son under his wings, and ordered the city's Arbiters to bring him Meris' head. He didn't have the time to spare a wink or a nod or some sort of code, hoping beyond hope that she'd see he was protecting her by betraying her. He was giving her a chance to run, to fight back – while he was preparing himself for another life spent upholding another set of lies. They hung heavily on him, moreso than the original ones, as his efforts had granted him Amaxi's highest of favors. Finally cured and promised with Her protection, he'd enjoy centuries of guaranteed safety, the Chamberlain's craven efforts at undermining them earning him only a continuation of his post as Nereus' toady.

In the meantime, Lucian had to build everything from scratch. It involved every bit of subterfuge he'd come to hate, every scrap of skill at manipulation and willful enthralling his people were so skilled at. The Rothchilds were born out of his efforts, Lucian initially taking a page out of Mary's own history and claiming to have old ties to the English ruling body in Scotland. A Scotsman without the brogue and with the education of a true-blue aristocrat, he made a bit of a splash in England's House of Lords, initially claiming St. Andrews, Scotland, as his port of call. The names, birthdates and origins changed from era to era, until the Victorian years saw Lucian Rothchild the Seventh return from Pakistan and the Indies, decorated as a Colonel. Establishing himself in London proper, he'd turned into a fairly commonplace urban aristocrat, the kind of man who kept a small staff on call and a myriad of outside connections. Little did anyone know that Lucian claimed paternal links to thousands of people by this point – if not by blood, then by emotional and duty-driven ties. Meris wouldn't be surprised to hear that her former co-conspirator had survived and managed to do well by himself and his staff. All the original members were gone, either lost to the Brine Pool or dead from old age in the decades that had followed.

As promised, Nereus had taken a page from their initial plans, and started to implant cultists and other such zealots in various key urban centers. Riding on the era's wave of Spiritualism, he'd found easy prey in the bored nouveau riche who wanted to be spooked by pretty much anything, provided their routines be briefly up-ended. Scrambling naive minds turned out to be a rather profitable tactic, if not for one niggling detail...

Of course, Meris was carving her own swath through her former lover's agents, and the Architect had long-since planted his own man into the mortal plane, in the person of George Gammell. Lulroth, however, was tackling the problem in decidedly new and extremely Victorian ways. Being part of those lucky few who had studied under Meris' guidance, he'd been able to unlock a latent understanding of via within himself. Not being much of a mage, he still did understand that he could channel the World's Breath into apparatuses destined to finish whatever his two distant co-conspirators couldn't finish. Sometimes, a cultist or a Weaver lingered on past its death, the end result being a shade of considerable and terrifying potency. Sometimes disguising his services as distracting little tricks and bringing the full brunt of reality onto the ordeal at others, he started grooming the Rothchilds into remarkably sensitive, if not at least perceptive paranormal investigators. All ghosts could prove to be dangerous, but one that had unfinished business and was determined to kill or drive mad in order to achieve it, however, was something else entirely.

What started in the late seventeen-hundreds as an attempt to consolidate his knowledge of his chattel's descendance became a cross-referencing network of men and women from all walks of life, all contributing to the emergence of an old ideal the Lord had found in some of Plato's works – a Citizen, someone aware and able to confront the evils of the world in as rational and informed a means as possible. The more communication technologies improved, the more old scrying techniques were pulled out of the muck after centuries of repression, the more the Rothchild bloodline came to focus on that singular goal. Lucian would occasionally cross paths with Meris during an investigation, or collide with one of Gammell's sympathizing fellow Abominations, surprise would usually give way to a bit of slightly regretful relief, as if bumping into her reopened old wounds and an old sense of guilt he hadn't managed to get rid of. Everything had been going so well and they were saving so many – how could he have known that trying to spirit slaves out of Dalarath would turn out to be too much, too soon? Even the Augur hadn't seen it coming, he whose entire job in Dalarath centered around foresight!

Today, Lucian feels, perhaps erroneously, that he no longer deserves Meris' respect or friendship. The fact that she hasn't withdrawn those two never ceases to humble him, but there's also the fact that he now has other concerns. He used to be able to affect the sort of exact spot in one's twilight years where you can still run with a good fifty pounds of equipment on your back or keep watch into the wee hours of the night if you're sufficiently prepared. Britain's premier non-religious exorcist has legally died well over two hundred years ago, but his name and legacy live on. He now coaches the newer generations of his family's quirky and sometimes slightly death or Afterlife-obsessed branches, as if feeling forced to groom Ghostbusters with an impeccable social conscience or universal soldiers with the patience and clarity of weather-worn stones – all the better to sort out certain spirits' confused ramblings and bring them peace or to spend decades unfurling a cultist cell's web of lies to land precise and rehearsed strikes.

All he can hope for is that the current core of the family will soon be able to lay down its weapons and stop carrying the nature of his people and of his own existence like State secrets. As can be expected of any passionate intellectual who desires further personal development as well as some amount of peace in his final years, the true end to what he calls the Weaver Wars is what he'd like to witness before dying.

Past that, he'd say, he has nothing else left to give away or otherwise impart. He's given everything already, from his name to his home, his former brothers along with countless lives – to the point where he'd say that the core family's affected eccentric wealth is nothing but a shell. He considers himself as spent to the core, like a patch of soil that's given everything to more deserving trees. Coming to Hope allowed him to maybe start one last cycle between the nineteen-forties and the present day, but he acutely feels that he's nearing his last hurrah.

All that he has left, in essence, is the hope that it'll be worth it.
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