A figured given the season that we should have a thread for posting in-character confessions. I should be posting one sometime later this week.
The bazaar hungers and the filled door is always hungry for more.
The handwriting on this confession is neat and small. The actual confession is in code, but a common enough code – a Caesar cipher to be precise – that it’s more a stylistic choice then impediment.
“I confess to jealousy of the dead. I am jealous of their life on the surface, of the light on their skin. I am jealous of their life of peace and measured days. I am jealous of the memory they take, the private jokes shared in the silence. I am jealous of the private war waged on their behalf, of the risks I take for their honor.
It is a sin to be jealous of the dead, for I know of the fate for them. It is a sin to be jealous of the dead because my people fight against the hunters and the dark that surround to remain alive. It is a sin to be jealous of the dead because life is precious.
I confession to the sin of disloyalty. For the privilege of living in this city and having my appetites tolerated, I serve its masters. Despite my promise of service, I have led London’s colony fall into near revolt. I have let servants of the Uttershroom sing their poetry. I have help uphold bargains with Fingerkings. I have prevented the Admiralty from carrying out their duties in their protection of the deeps. I have kept company with revolutionaries and spurred the royal family. For we have misled and defied the masters.
This is a sin because of I have broken trust with my sponsors. These sponsors help me survive and survival is paramount. Because I have broken their trust not for my survival, or to advance the cause of my people.
I confess to the sin of love. For love is a trap that feeds this city. Love is a snare that binds me to this doomed city. Love is what led to commit the previous sins. Love has caused me to forget my station, my place on the great chain, my people’s curse. Love has caused me to value another over my survival.
The sin of love is self-evident and does not require explanation.
My greatest sin is regret, for I have none for everything I’ve confessed.”
OOC: This one is from Evensong
The handwriting on this minute scroll is small, rough, and smells vaguely of cheese.
"Oi confess to disloyalty, a broken contract. Oi have no remorse in doing so, and likely never will. Oi betrayed my employer not out of hate or loathin’, but outta fear for what he was doin. His work of late was monstrous, his actions fiendish. I hoped it was a snuffer that stole 'is face, but no. It really was ‘im doin’ these things. Snatching drunks off the street, stealing clocks, orderin a massive pile of brass and markin down places where devil associates frequent. To these, I turned a blind eye, but no more. Oi saw what he did with all this, and it still gives me chills, knowing such a monster hid among us for so long. And so I stole a copy of 'is plans. Gave it to the folks at St Fiacre’s, as they seemed trustworthy enough to put 'n end to all this. But 'til that ‘appens, Oi will keep watchin’ ‘im. Takin’ notes. Waiting."
The words have been scrawled untidily across the back of a page of sheet music. The song was La Marseillaise. Apparently it was something of a spur to memory for the confession’s writer?
“There was a Spanish Diplomat. This was back on the surface, mind, and I was a little younger, then. Anyway, he’d decided to spend some time living in Marseille, for whatever reason. I didn’t ask. I rarely did ask, on things like this. That wasn’t my job.
“…Maybe he liked staying there for the same reasons someone else didn’t. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
“Not that anyone will read this and care, though – isn’t that the point of these secret confessions?
“In any case, we were asked to get rid of him, by the owner of the house he lived in. The house had become a den of sin, and the landlord feared his reputation and his family’s would be tarnished. So that’s where we came in. The Diplomat had to go, and it had to be his own choice to leave, thanks to his status.
“Luckily, one of the girls he’d been with told us something useful: the Diplomat was a superstitious man. So we joined his household – I was a serving-boy. Except when I wasn’t. When I wasn’t a serving-boy, I was the girl in white, seen here and there in the house with no explanation, and the cause of things being broken or moved when no-one could have touched them, surely. I was the strange noises in the night. Sometimes I was even the voice in the Diplomat’s bedroom, calling him to account for his sins – that was the best one, the trickiest, and it was just as well that I was small and flexible, because I had to fit myself into a tiny space and stay there for hours. He tore that place apart looking for me, but he never found me.
“He started getting twitchy after a while. And then I got up into the attic, above his room, and made the tiniest hole in the wood between, so I could drip pig’s blood down onto his pillow and his face while he slept. We sealed the hole after, so he didn’t know where it came from, and it was the last straw. He fled. To a monastery, I heard, later, so the ghosts of his sins couldn’t drag him to Hell.
“We got paid, and moved on. And you know? The only part I’m sorry about is that the haunted-house rumours spread, and the man who hired us couldn’t ever have lodgers there again. We did too good a job, maybe.”
edited by Eglantine-Fox on 11/2/2016
The handwriting on this note is in irrigo, flourishing yet orderly. Not only is it in code, but in several codes. And for some reason it’s tied to a crooked cross.
"Perhaps this is foolish of me, to deliver such matters to the very heart of the one who might see them quenched. But I would not have come this far without a degree of foolishness myself. I was once a petty, violent brute with noble lineage. I am a seeker of higher knowledge, drowning in my own ignorance. And I confess that I have not yet decided what I will become"
"My past has no bearing on my history here. I was but another leg-breaker and pickpocket, working his way up from the gutters one job at a time. As I did so, I took pains to earn the favor of the great and powerful-I sang for Mr. Wines, silenced the Uttershrooms for the Ministry of Decency, betrayed a terrorist to Hell for the pleasure of their patronage. I fostered relations with devils and spies, even as my greed abated as my fascination with the Correspondence’s mysteries deepened.
It all began when, in a twist of fate, Mr. Chimes welcomed me to his entourage. It had been such a time since anyone had spoken of my family, and I have long since accepted that my daughter is long dead no matter what that useful imposter may have said; I am done with sentiment. In time I hunted the Vake, because I began to miss the certainty of purpose that came with avenging a loss and sought to test my skills against the greatest predator of the Neath. Many dreams, much sailing and a scuffle near the Boatman later, I quietly put my quest to rest when reality itself stymed my efforts. It was through it I realised my dream of truly allying with the Masters was impossible, when my whimsy had earned me Wines’ tacit approval yet tasked me with slaying Veils. But then, knowing what I know now-perhaps learning to play their games was what endeared me to the Masters in the first place"
"It’s ironic, really. That as my bonds with the Masters deepened, that I began to question whether their offer was worth my time. Curiosity smothered my greed as my fortunes advanced; I became obsessed with dreams of lacre, and the hidden practices of the Rubberies. I learned, in time, of how man might be liberated from his form and become something more. Something greater"
"One Neathmas, I dreamed of a long road. I dreamed I flew in sunless skies, and listened to the Masters’ cries. The Kingdom of the Judgements opened to me. I spread my wings, and left the world of my birth to seek the treasures that lay beyond it. How agonizing, to be reconfined in my waking hours! How I saved and scrouged to acquire M_____s’ B____, only to find I could not partake of its’ efficacy!"
"I sought answers in the Nadir. To my horror, the abhuman mind the Bazaar blessed me with shriveled under that place’s cold light. I sought answers elsewhere. I co-operated with a reptilian gentleman of note, and with the Glass communed with those who rule in dreams. I quested for the essences of the Mountain of Light, and I partook of both her raw lifeblood and a refined delicacy strained with several others. I exploited a member of the Calender Council’s predicament, to secure a dream where I might hold a city ransom and perhaps curry favor with the greater powers in the Neath. And I won the grattitude of a brilliant Machine by aiding and abetting its’ pawns"
"All this time, I had entertained becoming the Masters’ equal. But it was a member of the Council who showed me the truth: That the Sun will never relent its’ vigil, that the greatness I earned was a betrayal. But there is another. The anarchists I once scorned have a patron in the High Wilderness. The breaking of chains is not an end, but a means"
"Mere days ago, I told you one last story. I sincerely hope you find the secrets framed in black and gold worthwhile, for even an empty promise may sustain a man imprisoned in darkness. You would know that best of all, I suppose. All I know is that I must leave this planet"
"And so, If I’ve anything to confess-it’s a fond farewell"[li]
edited by Hattington on 11/2/2016