[OPEN] a violent crack of atoms where all light comes in [general & event prompts]

Mages. If a priestess can pull him out of death, it makes a kind of sense that a mage can pull him out of his world to a place he’s never heard of, a realm he has not agreed to serve, at the will of rulers who demand it.

Yet the mage does not seem unkind, and the silks fit perfectly. Silks! Even as a king himself, Jon has not worn many of them. Sandals are equally new to him, a Northman all his days. He knows his mother must have been some southron woman, but there must be little of her in him, for how little he is used to the ways of the south. The chance of knowing died with his father, and Jon no longer thinks of her, wonders about her, as often as he once did. In the days after they had made him King in the North, he had wondered if she would hear, if she would be proud, if there’s some chance that she still lives. But moons have passed since then, and it has faded from his mind as workaday matters and the coming war have taken its place.

The mages had let him look at the picture, but he has no idea what it meant, and the finer points of what they tell him are equally baffling. Still, eventually they lead him to the living quarters.

roommates/wandering/dining hall

He begins to feel half a fool in the silks and sandals, but though he looks as unhappy as he feels, he wanders about nonetheless. If he is to be a prisoner here for the time being, no matter how valued, it would be good to know his fellows.

When he meets people, his expression brightens — a little. His smile is thin and sad. In the dining hall, he can be found over a plate of roasted chicken glazed with honey, mashed roasted turnips with butter, and a compote of apples and blueberries. In his quarters, he can be found sitting on the edge of his bed, seeming lost in thought until he notices the interruption.

In all cases, he begins with, “I’m Jon Snow. And you — where did they take you from?”

Or he may notice the difference — or the similarity — between the symbols embroidered on his own tunic and that of the person he’s speaking to. Like some kind of sigil, he’ll warrant, but none he has seen.

”What’s it mean? Do you know?”

training yard

Gods, a sword… and no one stopping him from using it. It’s no Longclaw, doesn’t even have an edge on it, is the weapon you give a boy of four years, but once Jon has it in his hand, he begins to feel better than he had.

He takes a few strikes on a training dummy. Longclaw is lighter than this wooden blade, but not a sword to use if you don’t mean to kill, so the greater weight is still familiar; he still uses this kind of blade to keep himself sharp.

If there is pleasure in what he’s doing, and skill, there is also the frustration of being trapped in a place he didn’t choose by people he didn’t offer to aid, and there is the power of a man who has killed half a hundred others by the sword. The blade may break, with the way he’s attacking his silent foe, or the dummy itself might — and he won’t care unless it does.

When it breaks, when he has killed his straw enemy and knocked it to the ground, he stands looking down on it for a moment, his expression as ferocious as it is cold. Then he seems to catch himself, and anything vicious, any battle lust, goes out of him. He looks contemplative; he looks dismayed.

Eventually, he notices someone watching him, and he turns to them.

“You have any training? It’s better to spar with a partner.”

baths

He bathes early, or late, or when it otherwise seems unoccupied. When he does it, he chooses a deep pool, disappearing under the water to rinse his hair and feel the warmth, and seldom letting much below his shoulders be seen.

But it can be seen now and then: his chest and belly are riddled with deep, ugly scars, more than half a dozen of them. They look recent, and only partly healed; one of the worst is right over his heart. He tries to dress quickly, but if he sees someone staring, he has no choice but to stare right back. He hesitates to speak, but eventually, he capitulates, and does that too.

“— Someone tried to kill me,” he explains.

wild card

(Jon can be found in and around the castle in any public area, and can easily be convinced to play a game, visit horses to see what the horses of Thorne are like, etc. etc. I’d love it if someone who has been able to travel and see more discusses the world with him a bit.)

Edited 2022-04-28 01:49 (UTC)

At nearly any given time, from the wee hours of morning to the darkest of night, Mat is very likely on his way to or from the bathing chambers. Since he first arrived, they've been one of his favorite spots. The luxury is still overwhelming to him.

But of late, he's been making it a point to take his watery repose when there aren't likely to be too many others around. He shares a room, and it's hard to get privacy for any length of time. And some things require privacy. Such as practicing the simple techniques Lady Yennefer has so far taught him, to increase his control over his channeling. It's not something he likes to be seen doing, and it's something he needs to be relaxed and at ease to do in the first place. The baths have seemed the best spot.

Besides. The baths were where he first channeled, months ago.

Only on this occasion, they are not empty. There's another young man in the process of either dressing or undressing. And while Mat does stare a bit, it's only because that is a very pretty fellow. And not one he knows. A new arrival, then? But ah...yes, he can see why the man thought he was staring. Who cares about scars? Live long enough and everyone ends up with their own collection.

"Well that's unfortunate. I've had a few someones try and kill me, miserable experience. But no one's likely to do that around here. You coming or going? I can fuck off if you were looking for a solo bathing experience."

Jon pauses, then half-shrugs.

“Coming. It’s all right.” No one has made any vows, but he supposes they must all be brothers now here in Thorne, whether they will it or not. Too much is communal for it to be otherwise. In recent days, back at Winterfell, he had grown used to having his own rooms, his own bathing tub, but it is new. Slipping back into the old ways is only hard because he hadn’t made the choice to do so, and because anyone would wonder about these scars. It’s normal. What happened when he got them is not, and the idea of trying to explain them makes him feel more than half a fool.

The other man is around his age, or a little younger, and seems amiable enough. Jon begins to slip out of the breeches they’ve given him, and slip into the water, and without looking up, he adds, “A few someones?”

There must be a story there. A story about someone else’s adventures and narrow escapes might take attention away from his own failure.

Mat nods and settles in on a bench to undress himself. He rarely wears the outfit he'd been first given, preferring the fancy black coat with brocade that Rhy had secured for him, and the matching trousers and boots. But he wears a pendant with the Wheel of Fortune on it, and it stays on even as he undresses for his bath.

No magic practice tonight, but that's alright.

"Well, if we want to be very accurate, it was a lot of somethings and one someone. Very long and confusing story, really." So much so that Mat doesn't think any one person here knows all of it, from start to end. There's just so much to try and put into context for anyone not from his own world.

Which is literally every single other person here.

"The extremely short and simple version is an army of awful monster-men attacked my village, and I had to flee. The road was not kind and there's all sorts of shifty folks about. I ran afoul of one."

Mat folds his clothes and sinks into the warm pool, keeping a polite distance. He's well used to sharing baths, but he's not entirely lacking in manners.

"Then I found myself here. I'm Mat, by the way. Been here a couple of months."

Now that they’re both submerged, Jon is a little less politely circumspect; he listens to the story with interest and looks at Mat once it’s done.

A village under attack, and fleeing by the roads: that means he is likely lowborn, which is not a mark against him. It doesn’t necessarily mean that he comes from the sort of world Jon does, either, but it’s a suggestion that it might be a little closer than some.

“Don’t think most farmers could withstand something like that… where I come from, most little villages are farming villages, if they have the luck to be.” In the mountains up near the Wall, where the clans live, perhaps less so. “How does this place compare?”

"You are a smart and observant one!" Mat grins, leaning back against the edge of the bath. Light but it never fails to feel amazing!

"A farming village is precisely where I come from. At the foot of the mountains. And this world is very close to mine, actually." He knows that's not the same for most, but much of it is familiar.

So things have different names - Mages instead of Aes Sedai, spell casting instead of channeling - but more or less all the same broad strokes are there. Just the fact that this other fellow uses the word 'village' - as though it's common to use where he hails from - inclines Mat to think maybe he's from somewhere more familiar. He doesn't bat an eye at 'monster men', either.

"Mine's bigger, though. Thorne's a big country here, but from what I've seen of maps, all of it could fit in one corner of my country. There's only three or four cities in Thorne's borders, and smaller settlements. But that's all."

Compared to the sprawling land of Andor, which housed countless cities and towns and villages, it's tiny. Or looks so on the map, he's never seen any of Thorne outside of the castle town's walls.

A slow nod. He doesn’t react much to being called smart and observant: he has tried to be careful all his life. He has tried to notice the things that people are choosing not to say. As a boy, he tried to do well at his lessons and to surpass Robb in the training yard. But these last years have made him more and more aware of all the things he doesn’t know, and the things he thought he knew, but was wrong about.

“The land I come from, the North… it’s the largest of the Seven Kingdoms… well, the seven that were. A lot of land, a lot of trees But we are much like Thorne — only a few cities in the fields and forests and mountains. A castle, that’s familiar enough. There have always been hot pools at Winterfell, but nothing like this.”

A pause, and he realizes he’s forgotten something. He inclines his head slightly. “Forgive me. I’m Jon Snow.”

"Seven? We have fourteen, but that is...often subject to change." Mat makes a scoffing noise. Folks are always at war with other folks, and trying to take their piece. None of it has ever had anything to do with him, he'd grown up in the ass-end of Andor, backing up to nothing and nowhere else.

"But yeah, same for me. Or the part of Andor I come from, anyhow. Lots of land, lots of trees and fields, small villages and a few bigger towns further from the mountains. The nearest castle is a ways off, though. Things are different, here, but...it's close enough I wasn't wandering about in shock."

Mostly. Seeing so many men just...channeling, normally and without anyone caring, had been a lot to get over.

"Good to meet you, Jon."

A slow, rueful shake of his head at the first part. “It has been much the same for us. I wish I could say that the wars had been far from us in the North, but it wouldn’t be true, no matter how little most Northmen care for southron affairs. So much is different down there — I’m told. I was brought here from a journey, my first journey south of the Neck.”

He acknowledges the greeting with a half-smile and another little nod. It’s hard to smile, under circumstances in which he feels a little like a prisoner, but harder still to be unkind to a man who might be a new friend. “And you.

“If so many things are the same here, what’s different?”

"Yeah? I was taken off the road, too. Hell of a thing, isn't it? And the welcome association leaves a great deal to be desired. But...at least this world isn't actively at war right now."

Honestly, as far as Mat's concerned, that's a very large positive for this place. Granted, it may all fall apart, but for now...

"There's tensions, and Thorne doesn't like the Free Cities and I think the feeling's mutual, but no one's rattling swords at the borders. Which is one difference. And magic...it's different in my world. Not everyone can channel it, it's not something you can just learn. You have to be born with the ability to tap into it. Doesn't have much place in daily life like it does here."

The specifics do not need to be shared at this juncture. They're confusing anyhow, and it generally results in headaches on both sides.

Rey had barely been in the room before taking off after being led here the first time, but now she sits cross legged in the middle of the too-soft mattress, a few items that eager Thornians gave to her laid out in front of her. Nothing is a weapon, which gives her some anxiety, but even without the Force she can still defend herself.

When Jon speaks she looks up, pressing her lips together for a moment before replying.

"I'm Rey. I was... I was in a jungle, before I ended up here. You?" She's learned that saying planet names is hit or miss, and even if it wasn't she wouldn't want to speak of the Resistance's base. Not when she knows Kylo Ren lurks these halls.

“A jungle!” Surprise and interest cross his face.

He would not have chosen this situation, but the others all seem to be from such different places so far, the kind of places he has never had the chance to see. He would have given much and more to see them when he was a boy, if things had been different.

Now… well, he had been leaving the North for the first time, and he is not sure that he would have survived it. That he will survive it. But he isn’t sure that he will survive this, either; survival is never assured. If everything comes out as he would wish, he’ll still never have the chance to see a jungle. He will still owe his service and his presence to his home.

“I was on the road to Dragonstone, to meet a queen. To ask for her aid. But I was a few days out from Winterfell — that’s the castle of my father’s people. My sister holds it now.” A pause, and he adds, “Is it much like a forest, your jungle?”

What he was saying was far more interesting than her jungle, but she smiles briefly, nodding her head.

"Similar, I think the trees are different, and it was hot and wet all the time. What is Winterfell like? And a queen? What does that make you?" When Rey had been young there had been a few stories of queens and knights on old holos she'd salvaged, though with such a vast galaxy it was impossible to tell if the stories were actually true or just fantasy.

He doesn’t know what it’s like to be hot and wet… except in a bath, or one of the hot pools you sometimes find in the North. A forest as warm as that would be a strange place.

But it’s when she asks more that his expression falls, becoming inward and reflective. “Winterfell is the seat of House Stark. It’s a big place, a little like this… and thousands of years old. The Starks have ruled the North for as long.”

He begins to falter especially here — his own name is not Stark, and he isn’t sure how much more to say. Well, the sigil on my clothes gives it away, doesn’t it. Might be they will not think I’m a braggart and a fool.

“My father, my trueborn brothers, they have all been killed — so I am King in the North now, to serve my people.” He speaks without any evident pride. “But it doesn’t matter here. Anyone might say they are a king, and it means nothing if they’re the only one saying it. What’s important is that I am a Northman, through and through.”

Edited 2022-04-30 23:44 (UTC)

She immediately feels guilty for prying as to what he was when he speaks of his father and siblings deaths. She's never had siblings, but she knew what it was to lose people close to you.

"I'm sorry, none of that sounds like it has been easy." She hesitates to say anything about her own loss, but then it's never been easy for her to even admit what had happened to her parents.

"My master was a princess. Her home was destroyed, so she became a general. Titles may not matter so much here, but what you do with it will."

It had not been easy. He feels a sense of longing for what was, sometimes — some of what was — and a sense of resignation for what is. Yet a war is coming, and the North must win it, and that asks more of him than only resignation and doubt.

Easier to speak on Rey’s princess.

“Aye, that’s all you can do.” He has learned this much from wiser men around him. “Your master?”

He leaves aside for now that a woman had become a general. It is not such a surprise, after time spent among the Free Folk, and not so much of a surprise that she had also been a princess, after learning of Aegon’s sisters as a boy. But he wonders if Rey was her servant, once, and if she was, why she’d say master and not mistress.

It's only when Jon echoes the word back at her that Rey realizes how it sounds.

"Teacher," she corrects, with a tilt of her head. "She actually hated it when I called her master, but... It was a tradition, with the Jedi." She had considered it a term of respect, more than anything. She knew the different ranks of the Jedi; Padawan, Knight, Master, but how one attained each rank was unclear to her, and was never touched on within the sacred texts.

That makes him frown too.

“Where I come from, we have maesters. They are learned men who study their craft at the Citadel down in Oldtown… they learn healing, and the ways of the natural world, and they care for the ravens. They may stay at the Citadel to teach and study, or they may be sent to a lord’s castle to teach his children and keep the library and heal his people.”

A pause, and then his expression becomes more ironic.

“A prince has become a maester more than once, but not one of them would become a general. I also learned to fight from a master-at-arms. But I don’t know what your Jedi are.”

The way he describes the maesters sounds a little like the Jedi in some ways, they had once been renowned for their scholars. It doesn't surprise her he has never heard of the Jedi, however.

"They've all but died out in my time, but once they were warriors and peacekeepers across the galaxy." She's hesitant to call herself one, after speaking with Anakin. The shine of the title has dulled a little, between him and what Luke had taught her.

He frowns, perplexed.

“The galaxy?”

He has not heard of it. People here are from other worlds, and the way she speaks of these Jedi makes him think that “the galaxy” must be a broad swath of space, bigger than the North, perhaps bigger than the Seven Kingdoms. Perhaps a whole world.

He understands, at least, how a warrior can be a peacekeeper, or try to be.

Oh so he was from a primitive civilization. Rey had gotten the sense this place in general didn't have a firm grasp on the cosmos, but Jon clearly was from a place more similar to here than she was.

"Um... Bear with me, this might sound strange," she replies, shifting around on her bed. "You know how when night falls you see the black and the stars in the sky? That is a small part of the galaxy. There are endless galaxies in space, and the one I come from is far from here, where it's common to use special ships to travel from one planet to another."

[OOC note: The reason I’m really late to this event is that my household just spent the last couple of weeks dealing with likely COVID: it was rough and left me with little mental energy for RP. As a result, I’ve plotted nothing in advance. I’m making a belated plotting post comment over here on the off chance that you want to work out some things related to signs or request a different memory than the ones I’ve listed here or something like that!

I am not especially invested in which of these are in-person Thorne things and which are Horizon things, except that the resurrection is definitely Horizon.

Jon’s Emperor sign will usually be over his heart.]

Edited 2022-04-28 04:54 (UTC)

Jon is younger than he is now: perhaps eighteen, with a rounder face and a sparser beard. And he is with a number of other people: two older men, several boys his own age, and a young boy with a sweet face and dark hair like Jon’s. They are a family group, put together on a chilly day, but the way Jon addresses one of the older men — “Lord Stark”, not “Father” — makes it clear that he’s a little apart from the others.

Jon has found a stag and a direwolf, of a kind not seen near Winterfell for several centuries. They died fighting each other in the woods. There are pups… fitting, for the sigil of House Stark is the direwolf, and the direwolves are the same in number as Lord Stark’s trueborn children. But there’s no pup for Jon until he finds the runt of the litter.

Jon looks much younger than he does now: his face is rounder, his beard a sparse thing. His look is more careful, more guarded, and he hesitates. He is making an important visit before leaving the only home he’s ever known.

A young boy lies unconscious in a bed as a tense, distressed red-headed woman watches over him. The boy bears a family resemblance to Jon, but the woman does not. When Jon enters the room to say an affectionate farewell to the injured child, the woman radiates hostility that doesn’t seem appropriate to the situation. It’s clear that she’s the reason, at least in this moment, for any guardedness or hesitation on his part.

His father’s wife has always wished that he was somewhere else.

Jon is 19. He wears head to toe black, and it’s of a rough, scruffy sort, the uniform of a soldierly brotherhood without much money. He does not look especially well-groomed: his thick dark hair is loose and getting longer, and his beard is still thin.

He is out on his first ranging with the Night’s Watch; eventually, he gets involved with his first real fight with other living people. The group he’s with has tasked him with killing a young woman he’s captured — but he can’t do it, no matter how he tries to steel himself to make the kill. Her hair is like flames, and she cajoles and taunts him.

Jon is about 20 or so. He wears closet-fitting black leather garments and is, for a man actively in battle, relatively clean and well-groomed. The other men in black around him seem to look to him as a kind of leader. They are fighting to protect a fortress that backs up against an enormous wall of ice.

He is part of a hopeless battle against the Free Folk, who greatly outnumber his group, the Night’s Watch. He knows the Free Folk well, because he had infiltrated them some months earlier. One of his opponents is his former lover, the one he couldn’t kill when he met her.

His protege, just a young boy, has no problem killing her now.

She dies in Jon’s arms on the bloody, corpse-strewn ground.

[Note: More than most of the other options, Jon will not react well to involuntarily sharing this memory.]

Jon is perhaps 21, contemplative, in a meeting of black-clad men in a dark mess hall. They are having an election: speeches are given in favor of various candidates, as the brothers of the Night’s Watch prepare to choose their Lord Commander. An ancient blind man with a gentle manner presides.

At a certain point, Jon’s friend stands up and, to Jon’s visible mortification, proposes Jon as a candidate. Jon looks like he wants to sink through the floor and vanish; one of the other candidates shows clear hostility towards him, the kind of hostility you don’t want to see from someone who might have power of life and death over you. Opposing him in the election isn’t going to improve their relationship.

There is a tie in the vote, until it’s broken by the blind man, and Jon becomes the new Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch.

Jon and a small number of other men, mostly Night’s Watch but also some Wildlings, take a boat from ships anchored offshore, into the Bay of Hardhome. All the remaining Wildlings north of the Wall have gathered there, and Jon means to offer them passage through the Wall, and relative safety on the Night’s Watch’s lands south of the magical barrier — his lands, as Lord Commander. He knows what the Free Folk are running from, and now that he has the power to make it happen, the Night’s Watch will help them rather than continuing to oppose them.

At first, the main trouble seems to be thousands of years of hatred, mistrust, and strife between the two groups, and Jon is only able to convince some of them that his offer is earnest.

It turns out that the greater problem is a surprise attack by the White Walkers and their army of relentless undead soldiers. This is what Jon means to protect the Free Folk from, and he’s too late. A massacre follows — one in which the Night’s Watch and the Free Folk are on the same side. It begins with barking dogs, then screams that die into an eerie silence.

When it ends, because there’s no one left for the White Walkers to kill, Jon sees the Night King for the first time.

- Speech to the Wildlings (cw strong language, no violence): Jon attempts real diplomacy for the first time in his life, to modest success.

- Attack by the White Walkers: Jon does not expect to survive his one on one encounter with a White Walker, because they are known to shatter steel swords. However, he learns that his sword is special. Although he survives, he ends the encounter in a narrow escape. He is injured, defeated, horrified by what has just happened, and terrified of what he now knows is to come: fighting an army of 100,000 dead.

[Note: This is my strongest rec for other players to choose. It’s no problem to duck in and out of various parts of the sequence: skip the diplomacy, or focus on only the diplomacy and not the fight with the White Walker, or etc.]

The images are quick, visceral, and make her nauseous. Hundreds, thousands of men dying to those--creatures, all the focus on a young man fighting for his life. There's so much to take in, even if she doesn't want to see it. This is War, the war her mother had always feared. And once it's finished and she's left panting in the sand of her domain, head pounding and heart breaking, she only barely manages to keep the contents of her stomach down.

So it is that her own memories pounce on Jon's mind, perhaps spurred on by what she's just seen.

The airfield is on fire. Ares’ attacks are relentless, mixing magic and raw strength to pummel her into the earth. He gives her no room to breathe, to think, to anticipate his next move. She is only reacting, only barely keeping up with everything he throws at her. She hears the screams of the German soldiers in the distance, collateral damage of this fight between gods, and there is nothing she can do. Ares was not bluffing when he said he would destroy her, this she knows. One moment of weakness, and he will kill her where she stands. Then, all would be lost. She cannot let that happen. Will not.

He pins her to the earth, his magic too strong for her to break. Her attention is drawn to the sky, to a plane, the one holding the bombs that could kill millions of innocent people. She strains against her bonds, but to no end. Ares cackles, taunts her, goads her about the mortal man she has come to hold so dear in so short a time—and the plane explodes.

Diana has known physical pain before, but it is nothing compared to the pain of her heart being sundered in two.

She screams, power surging through her, the bonds finally broken. Her rage finds an outlet on the soldiers unlucky enough to be nearby. They fall before her, weak, mortal, flawed, and all she knows, all she wants, is vengeance against them, this war, against Ares--

The thought stops her before she drops a tank on Dr. Maru, helpless and cowering before her. Diana makes the choice to stop herself, reeling in her deep, unfathomable power. No one is innocent, and it is a bitterness on her soul to know it, but she will not kill a defenseless person, will not step over that line Ares drew before her.

Still, the damage is done. Steve Trevor is dead, the German forces tremble before her, and she holds a new weight on her shoulders. She knows now why Hippolyta prayed her daughter would never learn to fight; it is a heavy burden to take a life, and Diana has already taken many today. Rage has been tempered by grief, by acceptance, and she fuels her killing blow with all of it, every hurt and hope she has. Ares falls, obliterated by the power of Zeus, King of the Gods, her father, a debt payed five thousand years too late.

It’s a strange thing, to go from his room in Thorne to Hardhome. He does not wish to be there. He must remember it, must speak of what he saw, must never let anyone forget it until the Dead are defeated for good and all… but he would forget it if he could.

He had survived, but he had failed. Night’s Watch brothers had been lost fighting to save the lives of their ancient enemies. Free Folk to whom he had promised safety had been massacred. The White Walkers and their foot soldiers had come on the gathering like a storm, and they had brought a real storm with them. Jon remembers other things, things no one can see — the ice on his face, the sharpness of his broken rib. How he had walked from Eastwatch to Castle Black after the ships had landed. At least Stannis’s ships had not been lost, but in the end, the king had not needed them.

It is a relief to see something else, until it isn’t.

He watches a young woman fight. Some of the things she’s fighting, he doesn’t recognize. There is her clear anguish at the explosion in the air, and there is her strength… strength to kill an enemy, and strength when he sees her make a choice not to. The battle is more difficult than anything he has faced: smaller numbers, but harder by far than his own fight against a White Walker.

She puts everything she has into it. She wins. She is tall and lovely: a warrior princess, or a goddess. When it ends, he finds himself face-down in some sand — sand! — with the worst headache he’s ever had in his life.

He groans, turns his head, and she’s there.

“Don’t think I’d want you for an enemy,” he says, mildly, his low voice soft and cracking.

She can hardly open her eyes for the pain behind them, and wonders if sleeping in the Horizon would give the same results as sleeping in the true world. But she doesn't get the chance to let her mind wander further than that, because a voice, familiar only because she'd just heard it in the memory, speaks out from beside her on the sand. Diana makes her eyes open despite the pain, and yes--it's him. The young man from the memory.

She exhales harshly, meant to be a laugh. Her mind and body are still reeling from his battles, and she doesn't much feel like moving from the shore yet.

"I wouldn't want you as one, either." Mortal he may be, but he's got skill with a blade and with leading others. She closes her eyes briefly again, gathering herself. "What did you see?" There's less caution in her tone, more exhaustion; she's seen so many things these past days, and learned others have seen moments of her own life, too. This world is incredibly strange.

He shakes his head sleepily, dizzily — not a refusal to answer, nor a statement that he saw nothing, but his need to take a moment to find the words for it — to collect the images. And in the meantime, there is the pain in his skull and the grit of sand against his calloused fingers. A beach.

He speaks slowly — troubled, remembering mostly images, and always, always, her dauntless fight. His voice is rough and low, as if there was sand in it, too.

“There was an explosion in the sky. Whatever it was, it pained you. Then you didn’t kill a woman you might have killed… she was cowering. Then a long fight against a man.” He hesitates. “A god, aye?”

Diana winces as he speaks, but not from the pain in her head; no, this hurt is from her heart, her soul, the cracks left in them by what he describes. She can see it now just as clearly as the day it happened, and the grief hasn't yet begun to fade.

But she keeps this all inside, closing her eyes against it. When she opens them again, she wants to shut them once more for his question. But she makes herself answer, again sounding tired.

"Yes, he was." Was, because she had killed him. Ares, the God of War. Her brother. It had been the only way--she's already accepted as much, though it isn't any easier to bear. He could have been her family, if only his heart and mind hadn't been so twisted by rage and hatred. "I killed him." Despite it all, there's pain in her voice.

“Did he deserve death?”

His impression, from what he saw of the fight, is that he did. And it’s hard to think that the young woman was in the wrong. She had shown mercy in battle. She is dismayed, now, at the death of her enemy. This is no one who sees glory in killing.

“I’m sorry, I don’t know what to call you. I’m Jon.” He pauses, wishing his tongue felt less dry in his mouth. “Jon Snow.”

After he says it, he begins a laborious process of rolling over, until his back is on the sand and he faces the sky.

Deserve death? Who is she, to make such a judgement? How could she? Ares had earned punishment for his crimes, there is no doubting that. But only the King of the Gods could pass such a sentence on another god. With Zeus gone, had that power fallen to her? She can't even begin to think about that right now, so she just sighs and says: "He did." She doesn't sound happy about it, and probably never will be. She'd rid the world of an evil, but will never stop wondering if there was another way.

She finally manages to sit up, but only because she forces herself to do it all in one go. That is a mistake. She groans, pressing her palm against her face as if that will help. It most certainly does not. Peeking at him from between her fingers, she offers: "Diana of Themyscira." Give her a second, then: "Well met, Jon Snow." Sort of. She wishes she didn't feel like she's been hit over the head by Artemis, but it is what it is.

In Jon’s quarters, a great white wolf has just raised his head, and Jon himself has just sat up with a loud gasp.

He is perhaps 22, and he is pale and cold. It’s not hard to see why: while the blood has been washed off of him, stab wounds cover his chest and abdomen, all over the front and side. There is a particularly cruel-looking one over his heart.

He pants, shudders, looks around him in terror. A man and a woman, both older than him, rush into the room; Jon stumbles and trembles as he tries to get off of the table. Someone wraps him in a blanket and talks to him.

He knows that he was dead. He knows that he shouldn’t be here. Being dead felt like nothing. “I tried to do the right thing, and I got murdered for it,” he says, weeping.

Later, someone helps to stitch up his wounds and dress him, and he goes outside to see his living friends and allies.

[Note: while this is primarily for Harrowhark💀, it’s open to others too. The bathing prompt above, outside of the event prompts, is the “easy mode” version of this one. Jon will downplay what happened if he can, because it was incredibly traumatic; this is a prompt where he can’t.

In this one, the Emperor sign is on his upper arm, like a tattoo.

By necessity, this is a Horizon prompt.]

Edited 2022-04-28 07:35 (UTC)

When the vision comes to him in the Horizon, it startles him twofold: what he sees, but also who. A face he recognizes from months ago. One of the many who vanished. He and Jon were not close, but they were acquainted. Geralt had liked the man well enough—or more accurately, he'd not found anything of the man to dislike.

In the moment, Geralt is too distracted, too caught up in other memories filling his head, to seek Jon out. Then Rinwell disappears. Ciri and Jaskier, grieving. His heart aches. The memory slips to the wayside, buried beneath the weight of all else. Not until he returns to the Horizon, a week or so into his trip through the desert, does he see the snowy peaks of his own mountains, his wolf that lurks in the front, and is reminded of the same white wolf he'd glimpsed.

He doesn't mean to stay long. He rarely does, when he's sealed in a cave meditating out there. But he finds himself searching, an instinctive push for answers. Jon is not in Cadens any longer; he'd have heard if so. Geralt knows of a small handful who returned, and their place is not always determined by where they last were. Makes sense. They're not so much returned as re-summoned.

His wolf follows him while he walks, bearing scars across its fur and matching gold eyes. He can't find a domain, but eventually—a glimpse of shaggy dark hair, a familiar build.

Geralt stops a few steps behind the man. Calls his name. "Jon."

(Perhaps in return, Jon has glimpsed something of Geralt's, too. He isn't certain. Sometimes the memories go both ways; other times, one of them is spared. It'd be difficult to recognize him from childhood—neither his hair nor his eyes match himself as a boy—but once the white locks grew in, the yellow eyes, it'd be equally difficult to mistake him for anyone else.)

The memories, all of them, had been like an assault, and no matter what he had done to avoid seeing any more of them, they had come and come and come. Most of what he had seen had not been familiar, in that it had not involved people he had seen around Thorne. But he has come to understand that those people are in the world somewhere.

Beyond that, the Horizon is the only place that feels like home, though it is not his home. He finds forests in it, mountains, like a vivid dream. He thinks that he would like to hunt a rabbit, and he sees one racing through the trees up ahead. Walking about while hunting has always helped him clear his head, so he follows the rabbit, without much intent of killing it.

It darts away when someone calls his name.

“How long have you been following me?”

He says it before turning, but he looks over his shoulder, and then —

He does recognize the man, who he’s sure he’s never met. You’d remember a warrior like this.

“You know my name. How?”

He does not add that he knows the man’s name, too.

His wolf stops, too, when Geralt's caught Jon's attention. His gaze settles on the other man. That's him. The dark hair, which he recognized from behind. The dark furrowed brows, which he definitely recognizes from the front.

"I haven't." This is the truth. Geralt was searching for Jon, but he wasn't following him. He makes a gesture in a loop with a finger. His tone is wry. Otherwise flatter than a pancake. "Place is a circle."

Not especially vast, either. Two people walk long enough, they're bound to run into each other.

In any case. He finds no reason not to be upfront.

"You were here once," he says. "Some months ago. You likely don't recall. I caught a glimpse of you when the memories fucked with everyone. Realized you must have returned."

He frowns at the explanation — how he had been more “encountered” than “followed” — then acknowledges it with a little nod. He means to open his mouth, say All right, not followed, then, Geralt — but the rest of what the other man says stills him. For the moment, he sets aside what he knows about what this man was like as a child, and what he knows about his time in a village where he’d had to kill a number of people.

He answers with a long, perturbed stare, then speaks.

“I don’t remember a thing.” Hesitation, while his jaw works. “You ‘caught a glimpse of me’ — what did you see?”

He can tell one thing: Geralt is no threat to him at the moment. They must have been friendly enough in this time Jon can’t remember. The man could have attacked him, hurt him, lied to him here, though Jon would not have been without his defenses. Geralt still might do any of those things. But so far, he shows no indication that he means to.

"I know." The answer comes simply. There are very few who return with their memories intact. He's been looked at as a stranger before. And he can't imagine what it's like to be told you existed once in a place you don't remember ever being.

He closes the distance between them: a few steps, but not too close.

"You were on a table. You woke up, seemingly from death." Does he understand what he saw? No. But— "I won't ask, in case you're wondering."

Geralt, as a rule, prefers not to be privy to people's secrets unless it's relevant to him or a job he's working. This is neither. What he does know is that Jon smelled human then and he does now, too. That memory—whatever happened on it, it's unsettling solely because men in his world do not return from the dead intact. Unchanged. But whatever the details, he doesn't need to know them right here and now. He suspects they're not ones Jon is inclined to share.

Jon and his sister Sansa discuss battle strategy before a fight he fears he will lose. Their opponent is her abusive husband, who currently owns their family home and is holding their youngest brother hostage. Jon knows that he doesn’t have enough men for this fight, but also knows that the weather could turn at any moment and make their situation even worse.

Sansa wants him to do things differently, but is unable to suggest any other options. She does not believe they’ll get their brother back alive. Jon wants to protect them both; she doesn’t believe he can. She implies that she’ll kill herself if he loses the approaching battle.

Immediately following this, he goes and asks a beautiful woman all in red not to try to resurrect him again if he dies in the fight. She tells him that she’ll try anyway, and they discuss her god. Jon isn’t pleased with her answers.

Edited 2022-04-28 07:37 (UTC)

Jon, aged around 23 and looking much as he does in Thorne, fights a battle against Ramsay Bolton’s forces. He begins by making an emotional mistake, baited into charging out alone too early in an attempt to save the life of his youngest brother. It fails — the boy dies at his feet, and Jon is stranded, nearly having to face the entire enemy force alone. He chooses to face death as bravely as he can.

His troops save him from that fate at the last moment, but what follows is a bloodbath in which Jon loses most of his control and humanity, becoming feral and bestial. He walks and fights with a heavy limp after his horse is killed under him. He kills a lot of people, swinging his sword like some people swing a bat. He’s almost smothered under a pile of bodies, but pulls himself out. His own strategy is turned against him, and he nearly loses the battle itself, saved only by last-minute reinforcements secretly called in by his sister Sansa.

He pursues her monstrous husband back to Winterfell, and Jon’s ally, the last living giant, breaks down the gate, ending the possibility of a siege Jon wouldn’t be able to win. Although he has now lost the battle, Ramsay kills the giant in an act of cruelty, and Jon — exhausted, furious, covered in mud and blood — nearly beats Ramsay to death in retaliation for everything that has happened that day and in the days leading up to it.

He stops only so that he can give the kill to Sansa.

[Note: Feel free to have your characters experience any segment of the battle! There is some overlap in these videos, btw.]

Jon, looking much as he does in Thorne, sits in the great hall of a castle. A long table is in front of him, a great fireplace with direwolf motifs behind him, and a tall, pretty redhead — his sister Sansa — sits next to him.

The room is full of the Northern lords that their family used to rule, and seem as if they will rule again. This is their first meeting since House Stark retook Winterfell and the North in the great battle where Ramsay Bolton was killed. It’s an awkward meeting, in some ways, because many of these lords refused to support Jon and Sansa in their cause. They have come to swear fealty.

Jon wishes to convince the lords of the seriousness of their situation: the Night King is trying to get an army of 100,000 undead soldiers south of the Wall, into the lands the Starks have ruled since time immemorial. The group meeting in this room will be humanity’s first line of defense.

To his surprise, the lords acclaim him King in the North — a position he has no claim to. It seems like a triumphant moment, and it is, but it’s more complicated than that for him.

Someone sharing this memory might be able to find out why.

[OPEN] a violent crack of atoms where all light comes in [general & event prompts]

THORNE - EARLY DAYS

baths

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

ROOMIES

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

MEMORY SHARE - THE EMPEROR

ANOTHER SELF: GHOST (cw: wild animals who died gory deaths)

FAREWELL, BROTHER (no special content warning)

MEET CUTE (cw: a skirmish, etc., possibly some adult language from Ygritte)

DEAD LOVE (cw: battle scene with intense graphic violence)

998TH LORD COMMANDER OF THE NIGHT’S WATCH (no major warnings)

HARDHOME (cw: intense zombie war violence and gore)

tw; war imagery, death mention

those content warnings remain for the rest of this thread

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

RESURRECTION (cw: nudity, graphic open wounds)

setting the actual meetup early may

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

THE EVE OF BATTLE (cw suicidal ideation, mild discussion of Ramsay Bolton)

BATTLE OF THE BASTARDS (cw everything: intense violence and gore, sadism, child & horse death, etc.)

KING IN THE NORTH