The Falkovnian Embassy, Quartier Publique, Port-a-Lucine; March 11th, 770, 3:29 PM
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Falkovnian Embassy was located in the Quartier Publique, the central district of Dementlieu, home of sweeping boulevards, beautiful parks, elegant statues, and of course, public buildings by the dozen. Here the great and good of Dementlieu rode in carriages or walked with sticks and parasols, while mounted gendarmes padded through the streets. Beautiful fountains sprayed water into the air, which shimmered in the late winter light. Spring was in the air, the world was beautiful, and all was good. Or so one would believe after a quick walk down one of the Quartier's beautifully swept streets.
The Falkovnian Embassy itself would win no praises for architectural vision or elegance of form. It was undeniably a pretty building, painted white and with carved scrollwork bearing the Hawk of Falkovnia above the doorway, and a set of statues up atop the facade. Despite that though, it would be difficult to call the Embassy anything else but a short, stout fortress. A very pretty fortress, with painted shutters hiding the metal bars upon the windows, and delicate carvings to offset the solid, oaken construction of the door. For all it's prettiness though, this was not a building you would want to attack with anything less than a cannon.
The reception area had a similar feel to it, gilt and tassels upon a very businesslike sword. The two soldiers guarding the door were dressed in the dark brown uniforms of Falkovnia, trimmed with silver braid and shiny metal buckles. The longswords and hand-crossbows at their sides were singularly free of such fripperies however. The officer on duty, a lieutenant by the marks on his shoulders, greeted you with a look of cautious reserve. He looked to be about his mid-twenties in age, a fresh-faced youth with brown hair and a hint of fuzz on his cheeks.
"
Guten tag." Prof. Lessard said with an amiability he probably didn't feel. "We'd like to speak with Ambassador Vedarrak."
"Do you have an appointment?" The officer said with just a touch of frost.
"I'm afraid not, but tell him that Eisenwald, Lessard, and Mournswaithe are here to speak with him. I'm sure he'll be willing to see us." Lessard said.
The lieutenant looked them over, then with a slight shrug, said. "I shall go and ask."
A few minutes later, the young officer returned, looking faintly bemused. "The Kommandant shall see you immediately."
Behind you, one of the two soldiers muttered something under his breath in the shared tongue of Lamordia and Falkovnia.
LamordianOne woman already, why not two?. The other soldier snickered, but suppressed it as the lieutenant gave him a frosty glare.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Knock! Knock! Knock!
"Come in Lt. Jaeger." Some thing's hadn't changed a whit in nine years. Marcos Vedarrak's smooth, accent-less voice was one of them. The fresh-faced lieutenant opened the door, and without a wasted word, ushered you inside. The room turned out to be Vedarrak's private quarters, a quietly-decorated chamber with a few couches, a table, and a liqour cabinet against the wall.
"Tomas, Lia, Remy, it's been years." The Falkovnian too, had changed only a little. Marcos Vedarrak was still a man of average height, shorter than both Tomas and Remy by far, though broad-shouldered and musculars. The years had been good to him, and if he wouldn't see fifty again, he was still muscular enough to do the precise cut of his uniform justice. There were some wrinkles at the edges of Vedarrak's eyes now, and his hair had gone a kind of slate-grey, but that was to be expected. His icy, pale-blue eyes were the same, however, as was the onyx ring on his fingers. Vedarrak also now wore a decoration on his chest, a plain metal ornament fashioned into the shape of hawk, painted black and with silver outlines. "You haven't visited, you haven't written, I felt as though I'd been quite forgotten."
"Friends of yours?" The
other person in the room asked. She was a very beautiful woman, an icy valkyrie of the north. Her features were perfect, if chill, with brilliant, nearly-white hair done up in a complicated arrangement down her back. She was dressed in pale blues and whites, contributing further to the image of frozen beauty, with a blue fan in one hand with which she demurely fanned herself. Only the valkyrie's eyes gave lie to the perfect illusion of ice, dark, sea-blue eyes, rich and liquid and fathomless, eyes which could steal a man's soul. One could fall forever into eyes such as that.
"Comrades-in-arms would be a better way to put it." Vedarrak said with a brief smile towards this cold beauty. There was an amused tone in his voice as he continued. "We fought together some time ago. In a very real sense, we owed each other our lives back then, at one point or another."
"More than friends, then. How very martial." The woman glanced at you casually, though something told you that a lot was contained in that lone glance.
"Indeed. Gentlemen, Lia, if I may introduce the Duchess Marie-Claudine von Auerbach. Marie, let me introduce you to Prof. Remy Lessard, Prof. Lia Mournswaithe, M. Tomas Eisenwald," Here Vedarrak paused. "And I fear I am not acquianted with the fourth gentleman. In any case, Tomas, Remy, Lia, tell me what brings you to my humble abode?"
Eglise Sainte-Madeleine, Quartier Marchand, Port-a-Lucine; March 11th, 770, 3:29 PM
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From the outside, Eglise Sainte-Madeleine's was neither imposing or terribly interesting. It was a plain grey chapel, barely visible above the shops and houses that surrounded it. Rain and the elements had worn down the outer walls, mottling the stone with streaks of grime. What looked like the beginnings of decoration had long since been given up on, leaving the church half-finished and uneven. It didn't even have proper windows, making do with small stone slits filled with cheap glass. Only a tall stone spire on the left side of the chapel offered the place any pretense of grandeur - and only a table full of knickknacks and tickets spoke of any life in the place.
"It isn't the fifth day, so there aren't any services in Dementlieu," Richard quietly mused, turning his Helpful Informational Pamphlet over in his hands as if it were some kind of foreign artifact. "Even so, it just, it just seems wrong to charge people to enter a church."
"The Eglise attracts far more tourists than parishioners," Thierri explained, casually holding the door open for everyone, though the way the group was walking prevented him from trying to shut the door in Cyrus face. "Eventually they wised up and decided to cut their losses."
"I, I still don't understand why that is-" Richard began, ducking slightly as he stepped through the doorway and in to the church. The pamphlet, unread, slipped through his fingers and landed on the brown tiled floor.
What lay within the chapel proved far more magnificent than the exterior. The stonework inside had been finished, with carefully carved alcoves and stone pedestals lining the smooth cut chapel. The simplicity of the interior seemed to grant it an ancient feel, in opposition to the run-down look you had seen from the outside. Two massive chalices flanked a stone archway, leading to the stairway down. Ornaments lined every wall and alcove as far as the eye could see. Huge chandeliers swung from the domed ceiling, as large and bedazzling as any you had seen in a noble's abode. At the very end of the chapel hall stood the altar, a massive affair, with the shield of Ezra emblazoned in the air above it. Here, inside, was all the finery and elegance that benefited a cathedral. What made this place unique was that the decoration was not made of gold, or silver, or stone, but human
bone, carefully arranged into holy adornments.
"As I said, unique," Thierri smiled, with the look of a man who had just revealed a magic trick.
"And it's said that when the people couldn't afford to finish the chapel, Louis Caillaud saw Ste. Madeleine in a dream, telling him to take her sacred bones to use for the altar, as they would be holier than all the gilt and silver in the world," Cerise said in hushed tones, with an almost obscenely large grin on her face. "And once that was done, the faithful offered their own bones to be used after they were dead, so great was their devotion to Ezra..."
"That's what the pamphlet says anyway," she continued, louder, giving Richard a cheeky nudge. "I also heard they just stacked them up here because everyone was out of room to bury people. Of course, this place is tied into the catacombs, so you'd think there'd be plenty of room to just shove more bones into piles down there. No one wants to be buried down there, though, so maybe they all thought being a decoration would be better.
Or maybe someone just stole some bones while no one was looking to spruce the place up. But isn't it
great? I bet there's all kinds of fantastic ghosts crawling all over the place and
oh shoot I forgot you're Mordentish!" Cerise clapped her hands over her mouth, her grin turning to one of mortified laughter as she backed away from where Richard was still staring at the macabre display before him. "I was just kidding about the ghosts! And I'm sure these were all volunteers and they were totally fine with being up here like this!"
Richard didn't seem to hear her. He stood silent, shaken and awestruck by the vision before him.
