[ PERMANENT. ] a (k)atch-all log for kenos

[dawnlord]

WHO: Set ( redsoil ), Bondrewd ( dawnlord ), Drizzt ( twohand ), et. al
WHAT: i actually can't stand month-by-month logs so i'm gonna crush my boys into one perma-log for anything outside of events
WHERE & WHEN: Listed in comment headers, or under the cut.
WARNINGS: General warnings for violence, vulgarity and unethical science. Will update/comment with warnings!


I struggle so hard w/ month-by-month logs, so y'all have to deal with my weird organization...

— [MARCH | SET] GOT NO SHAME, GOT NO PRIDE

Comments

[sterngaze]

[As Set flits around the temple’s initial chamber, running hands and eyes over the ruined and mangled works of devotion within, Liem wonders if the god will find something in his examinations to explain his mysterious feeling of familiarity with the place. Is that not why they had journeyed all the way here, through that strange and frightful wood that had fought them every step of the way?

But he is not a god, and he does not expect the melancholy that seems to afflict Set when he is confronted with this desecration of the divine. His attention is plucked away from the relief in font of him to return to the other man, observing him as he traces fingertips over the curves and lines still gracing the stone. The horror dawning over his face makes Liem’s brows snap together.]

Set? Do you know this place—?

[His words fall on deaf ears. Heedlessly, the god turns and beelines straight for the inner chamber, with Liem in close pursuit, following Set to where the enormous, decapitated statue still awaits them. And that sense of motionless, held-breath presence swells as they go deeper, making the hair on the back of Liem’s neck prickle with each hurried step he takes over the worn stone.]

[redsoil]

[ He might feel something, for running off with nary a hint as to what drives him forward, but Set is not a creature who regrets, nor feels guilt. As a divinity, he is driven by nigh-hypocritical values and urges, a need to command and serve, a desire to bestow his might upon others as one who exists above them — and someone, who seeks friendship, company. An intensely lonely individual, destined and fated for such things. Driven, in this moment, from Liem's side into the depths of the temple.

The sound of his passage is silent and swift, and he vanishes into shadow and silence.

Within the temple, rays of moonlight cast shimmering, soft-silver relief upon the walls and floor. The scent of incense grows sharper, older, sacred. Energy coalesces within, beckoning anyone around deeper, into the waiting embrace of the inner sanctum; to the belly of it all, where Set has preceded Liem by mere seconds, yet those seconds are enough for him to have reached a conclusion ( no, he cannot reach a conclusion yet, he must observe and seek — ).

There, he stands before the great statue of an unknown female figure. Without head nor arms, her identity ought to be unknowable. Ought to be lost to time, and violence, but Set's arm reaches up. Up, toward the lovingly-carved folds of cloth, and he holds the facsimile of draped gown between his fingers — looking, for a moment, like a young child clutching at the hem of an adult in wonder. ]

— Isis.

[ He sighs her name, something raw and tempestuous building within him. Though his mouth moves, the language that comes out is lyrical and ancient — some sort of prayer, perhaps? Stricken as he seems to be, his mind links to Liem's effortlessly, a boundary felled by the myriad of emotions that have begun to rise within him. Careless feelings, as dangerous and scalding as a force of nature, chaotic and dark ( adoration, homesickness, rapture, despair, wrath and love all at once ).

His mind collapses into naught but the raw vibrancy of unfettered emotion, wordless and within intellect, rolling like a stormfront as he tries to sift through a million thoughts and emotions at once. Like someone who's just been given an infinite puzzle, and cannot rest until it's solved, even without all the pieces. It's chaos, and it dives right into Liem's own mind with adoring, hungry familiarity. ]

[sterngaze]

[Liem's feet take him quickly through the familiar surrounds of the ruined temple, drawing him deeper until he is standing once again in the inner sanctum, staring at Set's back as the god touches the folds of the giant statue's gown. The air here feels heavier than in the antechamber, pregnant with a power that has lain undisturbed for centuries. It weighs on his lungs and sticks in his throat, lending the scene before him a hypnotic air.

Though the defaced statue holds no meaning for him, the significance with which it was created has not disappeared. It only lies hidden.

For a moment he lingers at the edge of the room, still caught up in witnessing Set’s revelation. Of Isis he knows barely more than a name and title. It would not have occurred to him to see her here; but for Set, her likeness must be a reflection of family, for better or for worse. And still, the reasons for the temple’s presence here in Kenos remain a mystery, to anyone except perhaps Yima.

He feels Set reach for him an instant before his tempest engulfs his mind, boundless and unrelenting. He has to force himself not to flinch at the stinging, biting wildness of him, has to resist the urge to shut his mind up tight and force him out. In the face of Set’s hungry, savage curiosity, the covetous wind of his affection, the scouring sand of his anger, the billowing dark of his loneliness, Liem is a steadily-glowing candle that resolutely refuses to go out.

He walks forward to stand beside the red-haired god, joining him before the statue of Isis, and there, he reaches for his hand.]

[redsoil]

[ The temple's presence is a mystery. That it is here is enough for now, but what it means is what throws Set into disarray — why the room shudders briefly as the rot beneath his feet begins to seek him. Time and violence and the elements have broken stone into its most raw, diminutive form, and whorls of sand eddy and drift around his feet as he holds to the figure's draped robe with his fingers. As if he can feel the texture of her gown once more, as if he can stop the myriad of emotions he feels — not entirely towards the temple that he must remain objective of, but towards the image of his sister.

It is not quite like Isis's bold fashion; her elegant shift, the bare swell of her breasts at night when she used to gallivant through the temples and palaces and gardens in pursuit of him for one or many annoyances. The way he used to perch high atop the arches and splay in tiny alcoves waiting for her to pass before doubling back on her, to wait for her to come in exhausted and irritated while he lounged in her rooms eating all her sweets. The way she looked at him in the hall, centuries after their foolish, stupid days spent together with naught but hatred in her eyes — how she had chosen not to help him, but to turn all her loathing upon him alone.

He hates her so much.

He misses her intensely.

Thrown into corners of multiple minds, because he feels so much, because he is so big and grand and demanding of them all, he pours into Liem's most immediate and most powerfully. The drop of his weight upon the other man ( lean on me, he had said ) heralds Set's yielding to that vow between them, his fingers twining through Liem's as he turns into his person and pushes his face into his hair. Set's heart thunders, erratic as someone caught between panic and rapture ought to be. He cannot think, he cannot breathe.

He catches at the dark edge of the last petal of Yima's flower within his soul, and grinds it between his fingers until her scent, her power, begins to well within him and cool the frantic spread of his thoughts and feelings. Yet, even as the darkness spreads, he holds Liem aloft like a candle, against the full press of the cold. At the foot of the broken statue, he folds his arms around Liem's shoulders tightly, and shivers as the rush of madness leaves him in place of tranquility. ]

I thought, this could have been so many things. A hint to the Lady's identity among them, but. This is Isis, Liem. My older sister, Isis. I can prove it —

[sterngaze]

[Against the storm of Set’s wrath and grief and love and rapture, Liem can only stand firm, gripping his hand as sand eddies and whirls about them both. He cannot truly grasp from whence the enormity of Set’s emotion springs, and so, he simply lets the other man clutch at him and lean his weight against him, offering the solidity of his presence and companionship against the chaos that has descended upon them both.

As the god rests against him, Liem’s other arm lifts to encircle his waist, a tentative embrace from one who is not accustomed to extending such things. But when the storm of feeling abruptly abates in the face of a surge of cool, dark tranquillity, his grip only tightens.]

This iconography is hers, then?

[Despite the relief they had seen in the antechamber, Liem would not have thought to associate this place with the Queen of Miracles. But for Set to be so certain, perhaps this temple hearkens to his own home, on his world, rather than Golarion.]

Another relic of Earth, but in Highstorm’s lands instead of Springstar’s. I wonder what it could mean…

[redsoil]

[ Liem keeps his promise, as a friend who will let Set lean upon him in a time of need. His need is obvious, right now. Without Liem, he would have no one to speak to about the madness that brews inside of him, nor anyone who he could contemplate meaning and consequence of the temple's presence. Nor, most importantly, what to do about it. How to inform Kenos of it, who to inform of it, or perhaps, what to withhold. He knows he will need to tell a few people of its contents, but the location and future of the temple are for him.

And Liem, honestly. ] Yes. I was not entirely sure, with the procession of priests upon the fresco. But, I have seen it with my own eyes. The real procession of her faithful and the objects they carried — the sistrum, which accompanied the ceremonies of her worship, the ladle with which she would scoop sacred waters. And the snake, which — she tricked Ra once, over a snake.

[ He holds Liem, holding his hand as he pours against him and tries to sort out sentiment from words. Emotion from intellect. ]

It is this, that was the deciding factor.

[ Now, he points to the statue. The identity stolen, arms and face destroyed — removed to hide who she is, or simply lost to time and decay? Set points not to the space where her face would be, but to the particular knot tied in the draping fabric, just under her breasts. The shape of it something he cannot deny as hers, for she had pioneered it and all her followers had come to love the ruffled drape of mantle and cloth. ]

It is called the tyet. I have seen her wear it for centuries, and all her records have her depicted with it. Why is it signs of my home here? Where is yours? Are there more pieces of other worlds in the Beyond, do you think?

[sterngaze]

[Being the support upon which Set leans is easier now that the bloom of Zenith energy from inside him has calmed the storm of madness his confused emotions had whipped up. Liem lets his eyes wander the statue’s ancient contours as he stands there, entwined with his companion amid the spears of moonlight, listening to him speak.

It is rare enough for Set to volunteer information about his home and his family, and Liem is ever eager to hear more about Egypt’s pantheon from the god’s own mouth. He rests against him, one side of an arch against another, following the pointing finger with a curious gaze when Set indicates the knotted cloth at the centre of the statue’s chest.]

I don’t know. Sometimes I find things in Kenos familiar, but the names that people give them are different.

[He thinks of Hayame, describing the centaur gathering in Alenroux: People who looked like her own kind, but were not, and who did not know her words or her home. That has often been his own experience, when spying things that quickened nostalgia in his chest.]

When I was in my own country, reading about the Queen of Miracles, the symbol she was associated most with was drawn thusly, though it was also described as a knot. [With one hand, he traces a shape in the air: Up, around in a loop, and down. Across in a steep curve, resulting in a symbol like an ankh with long, droopy arms.] I have found the occasional relic of my world in Highstorm’s market, but its cultures and languages are strangely absent.

I think the possibility of more shrines in these woods is worth entertaining, given the presence of those you’ve already found. Though, combing the Beyond for more would prove challenging.

[redsoil]

That must feel —

[ How would it feel? To hear something familiar, but not quite so. To be so close to something, yet so far. Honestly, he feels a little like that, standing in this temple; the imagery is that of his sister, but the architecture is not at all of Egypt. It resembles Springstar's culture more, that of the world of Helles. The Greeks. They, who would one day overtake his lands and peoples and combine their histories and faiths and culture into one overarching era. He'd read about it, at someone's not-so subtle hinting.

He folds along Liem's side, until his head can rest atop Liem's own. Forming that arch, yes. The one he had spoken of. The emotions still roil within him, but the ferality of them has been soothed, pressed flat by a thumb that worked out all creases and left naught but that kindly, empty calm with him. ] That is the same symbol, yes. When we write it, it looks just as you describe. The tyet and your symbol for her.

[ There is something companionable, to find his likeness among Liem's world. To know that their realms are not so distant at all, and that the Set that Liem has read of must be him, too. Evil, sinister, but nonetheless himself. To think that somewhere, he and Liem inhabit the same place, even if they have not met, or will never meet, is soothing. It rings of Meridian's bold vow, the audacity of those who seek to succeed in such a vast and endless task. ]

It would prove challenging, and not impossible. Worth our time, too. It could prove a good foothold for Springstar eventually, if we need to strike Highstorm. The Church might enjoy the knowledge of Springstar culture being found in lands that are not 'of Springstar'. Depending on what you and I want to do about this. From here... we would at least have another point of entrance into the Beyond.

[ A flicker of thought, before his mind smooths out into calm again. Silent contemplation, as he feels out the energy of the shrine, the urge that had brought them into the depths to behold the statue of the once-unknown figure. ]

— I am with you, on this. However we want to play it out.