The Night the Carnival came to the Homeworld.
Sept 5, 2022 17:10:32 GMT
doctornolonger, sonorous, and 2 more like this
Post by Anastasia on Sept 5, 2022 17:10:32 GMT
This is a little narrative I cooked up not very long but I quite like it. May have a few typos of grammar errors sorry.
enjoy this Fanfic Paradox (or Faction Fanfic).
It is set sometime before House Paradox became Faction Paradox.
It was a dark night like any other. The streets of the Citadel empty bar a few members of the Watch and one or two late workers. It was still and quiet as always. The Dust which had laid undisturbed for generations stayed still as it always had. The city, ancient and older than almost all of Creation, sat tall and impressive.
Then it came. First the Music was Heard. Beautiful yet without rhythm a Cacophony of noise. Then the red glow of torches, the Light filling the horizon like blood. Then they emerged from the Shadows, their faces dressed in bone. They danced a dance never seen before in all of the Houses History. They danced like the fire of their torches. They writhed and slithered like a many eyed snake. They paraded through the City, Drinking and using the most perverse mind altering substances from across history. The people fled in fear. The Watch who were charged with protecting the city fled in terror from the Cacophony. and as they danced and filled the streets with an unnatural Shadow, the sky seemed to shimmer and move in time with the music. The laughter the like of which had not been heard since the days before the Anchoring filled the great bridges and places of the pseudo gods which ruled history. And the Carnival continues.
Those who hid but could not flee told a tale that on that night the Leader of the Carnival with a woman robbed in a fabric which billowed with the impossible light of Magic. And that said leaders themselves briefly appeared to possess only one arm, which arm no one could say.
The Spectacle, so antithesis to the Houses own still and Rational, shook the world to its core. News spread across the Homeworld about the depravity of the revelers.
Throughout the performance an altar was erected covered in the writhing form of the Carnival’s Participants.
And at one bell past the middle of the Night, a time several lesser species associated with witchcraft, the Leader of the Carnival ascended with their irrational partner and sacrificed a beast which they claimed was the ancestor of the leader themselves. The blood of the beast spurts from where the simple carving knife severed its head, pouring down the altar and bathing the revelers in the red fluid which once gave it life.
And the Carnival’s fuel increased. The passions and excess, the theatrics and depravities increased. And the Cacophony spread.
Across the Homeworld the Dance spread. Followers of Paradox took up the patternless movements and spread fear across the world.
The Leader of the Homeworld felt fear for the first time yet their guards would do nothing but cower. For none of them could conceive what was happening.
From the ruins of a fallen House a new one was built: a House carved of Bones and walls plastered with flesh, a House for the Revelers, a House of Paradox.
And when dawn broke and the Carnival ended.
The Homeworld was changed forever. The streets were scared, the windows of purest diamond shattered and blood had been split for the first time in a hundred million years. The Homeworld had felt fear. And that feeling would stay with them for the rest of their existence.
I was inspired when during the Book Club of the War I read in the Faction’s article when it described them as doing thinks because they saw it as a Carnival, I had also read “Christmas on a Rational Planet recently and it also described the irrationality spread by Cacophony as a Carnival (can’t be a surprise seeing as Cacophony is called the Carnival Queen) and I wanted to take those bits and combined them into this.
enjoy this Fanfic Paradox (or Faction Fanfic).
It is set sometime before House Paradox became Faction Paradox.
It was a dark night like any other. The streets of the Citadel empty bar a few members of the Watch and one or two late workers. It was still and quiet as always. The Dust which had laid undisturbed for generations stayed still as it always had. The city, ancient and older than almost all of Creation, sat tall and impressive.
Then it came. First the Music was Heard. Beautiful yet without rhythm a Cacophony of noise. Then the red glow of torches, the Light filling the horizon like blood. Then they emerged from the Shadows, their faces dressed in bone. They danced a dance never seen before in all of the Houses History. They danced like the fire of their torches. They writhed and slithered like a many eyed snake. They paraded through the City, Drinking and using the most perverse mind altering substances from across history. The people fled in fear. The Watch who were charged with protecting the city fled in terror from the Cacophony. and as they danced and filled the streets with an unnatural Shadow, the sky seemed to shimmer and move in time with the music. The laughter the like of which had not been heard since the days before the Anchoring filled the great bridges and places of the pseudo gods which ruled history. And the Carnival continues.
Those who hid but could not flee told a tale that on that night the Leader of the Carnival with a woman robbed in a fabric which billowed with the impossible light of Magic. And that said leaders themselves briefly appeared to possess only one arm, which arm no one could say.
The Spectacle, so antithesis to the Houses own still and Rational, shook the world to its core. News spread across the Homeworld about the depravity of the revelers.
Throughout the performance an altar was erected covered in the writhing form of the Carnival’s Participants.
And at one bell past the middle of the Night, a time several lesser species associated with witchcraft, the Leader of the Carnival ascended with their irrational partner and sacrificed a beast which they claimed was the ancestor of the leader themselves. The blood of the beast spurts from where the simple carving knife severed its head, pouring down the altar and bathing the revelers in the red fluid which once gave it life.
And the Carnival’s fuel increased. The passions and excess, the theatrics and depravities increased. And the Cacophony spread.
Across the Homeworld the Dance spread. Followers of Paradox took up the patternless movements and spread fear across the world.
The Leader of the Homeworld felt fear for the first time yet their guards would do nothing but cower. For none of them could conceive what was happening.
From the ruins of a fallen House a new one was built: a House carved of Bones and walls plastered with flesh, a House for the Revelers, a House of Paradox.
And when dawn broke and the Carnival ended.
The Homeworld was changed forever. The streets were scared, the windows of purest diamond shattered and blood had been split for the first time in a hundred million years. The Homeworld had felt fear. And that feeling would stay with them for the rest of their existence.
I was inspired when during the Book Club of the War I read in the Faction’s article when it described them as doing thinks because they saw it as a Carnival, I had also read “Christmas on a Rational Planet recently and it also described the irrationality spread by Cacophony as a Carnival (can’t be a surprise seeing as Cacophony is called the Carnival Queen) and I wanted to take those bits and combined them into this.
