Naven Tlin'orzza

(under construction, only very rough rambling ahead)

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aesthetic quotes

“This is the thing that troubles me, for I cannot forget Carcosa where black stars hang in the heavens; where the shadows of men's thoughts lengthen in the afternoon, when the twin suns sink into the lake of Hali; and my mind will bear forever the memory of the Pallid Mask. I pray God will curse the writer, as the writer has cursed the world with its beautiful stupendous creation, terrible in its simplicity, irresistible in its truth--a world which now trembles before the King In Yellow.”
― Robert W. Chambers, The King in Yellow and Other Horror Stories

~

"And you're not used to being loved. You're used to people being attached to you, or being fond of you, or depending on you, not loving you, not really. So I think it doesn't occur to you that it's something that might actually happen."
― Ann Leckie, Ancilliary Mercy

~

"And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."
― Antoine de Saint-Exupery, The Little Prince

~

"What am I in the eyes of most people — a nonentity, an eccentric, or an unpleasant person — somebody who has no position in society and will never have; in short, the lowest of the low. All right, then — even if that were absolutely true, then I should one day like to show by my work what such an eccentric, such a nobody, has in his heart. That is my ambition, based less on resentment than on love in spite of everything, based more on a feeling of serenity than on passion. Though I am often in the depths of misery, there is still calmness, pure harmony and music inside me. I see paintings or drawings in the poorest cottages, in the dirtiest corners. And my mind is driven towards these things with an irresistible momentum."
― Vincent van Gogh

~

"Maybe each human being lives in a unique world, a private world different from those inhabited and experienced by all other humans. . . If reality differs from person to person, can we speak of reality singular, or shouldn't we really be talking about plural realities? And if there are plural realities, are some more true (more real) than others? What about the world of a schizophrenic? Maybe it's as real as our world. Maybe we cannot say that we are in touch with reality and he is not, but should instead say, His reality is so different from ours that he can't explain his to us, and we can't explain ours to him. The problem, then, is that if subjective worlds are experienced too differently, there occurs a breakdown in communication ... and there is the real illness."
― Philip K. Dick

~

"O Me! O life!... of the questions of these recurring;
Of the endless trains of the faithless—of cities fill’d with the foolish;
Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?)
Of eyes that vainly crave the light—of the objects mean—of the struggle ever renew’d;
Of the poor results of all—of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me;
Of the empty and useless years of the rest—with the rest me intertwined;
The question, O me! so sad, recurring—What good amid these, O me, O life?

Answer.

That you are here—that life exists, and identity;
That the powerful play goes on, and you will contribute a verse."
― Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

backstory

When she met and fell in love with his father, his mother forsook both Lolth and the Underdark to be with him, an Astral elf. Together, they lived in a cabin two days’ walk from Baldur’s Gate. however, a society so generally hostile toward her place as a wife and mother wore the love out quickly, and after 3 children, she left to never return. A few years later, heartbroken and drunk, his father left too and Naven watched him go while his siblings slept. 

He and his younger brother and sister, Drinn and Lillis, stayed in their cabin for a few months, until they ran out of food. Then Naven led them into the city, using his clever 12-year-old mind the whole way to try and come up with a way to earn money. They were immediately distrusted as drow children, two of whom had their mother's red eyes.

They lived on the streets, scraping by with tips from the little street performances they put on along busy thoroughfares, for 4 years. Sometimes, they would sneak into opera houses and halls, and climb into the rafters to watch the real professionals. Until one day, they were picked up by an aspiring young entrepreneur who claimed he owned a real theater and wanted Naven in it.

He only took Naven at first. The man, a Regis Baskerville, said that if Naven performed adequately enough and made the theater enough money to pay for room and board for all three, then they could join him in his attic room.

Naven had no formal training and though he had potential as a performer, it needed to be honed. He was restricted to minor roles and only allowed to perform privately for Lord Baskerville for a year, then three. The theater, which was already struggling financially, got more income from the bordello adjacent to it, which Baskerville also owned. Both operated under the single name of The Bell Tower, and those who worked and lived in the building permanently were known as the Birds or Doves. In his third year there, to make ends meet, Naven became a Dove. 

He didn't mind the work and got high praise from the women who hired him. He treated them like people. He avoided men due to his own hidden sexuality as well as the feelings he had for Regis. In a single year working as both actor and Dove, he made enough for his siblings to move into the attic with him.

The first time he did take a contract from a man, it was his fourth year and money was extremely tight. The man had seen Naven perform several times and claimed he could never take his eyes off him. Still determined to make sure his siblings had all they needed, he accepted. His inexperience, however, led to the man demanding a refund. Regis threw a violent fit, both due to the sum of money lost and, unknown to Naven, due to jealousy. 

In the middle of that same year, the theater struck gold in the form of a play Naven wrote himself. Fine print in his contract meant that Regis owned anything written in and for his theater. So when it made record profits, the jealous rage vanished and abruptly, Naven was his favorite again.

Naven spent the next several years in an unhealthy romantic dynamic with Regis. Regis called him "his Swan," and hired him out to himself as he pleased, without pay, citing the continued tolerance of his siblings, who still had no personal income, as adequate compensation.

Naven's play did well for several years, though he never even had a part in it, and Regis used all the proft to refurbish his family manor and renew his personal wardrobe, as well as outfit the home with staff that he'd lost when the family went under years ago.

when sales for that play slowed, Regis renewed his deal with Naven: he would write a new play for him per year, and that was all Regis required to keep his siblings on. Naven, however, would need to continue working in the theater and the brothel to support himself. Regis called it the "fairest deal he'd ever be offered in this city." so Naven, only 22 and still a country boy at heart, accepted.

that contract would hold him in that tenuous position for the next thirty years. in that time, he made a few close friends among the other Doves, watched others come and go, continued to perform well in his position, and his siblings would also become employed by the same establishment despite his objections.

as a human, Regis grew older quicker, but kept Naven on his arm like a prize whenever there were people around to look. despite this, nobody knew his name or that it was him behind the theater's successful scripts. despite the scandal of it all, Regis eventually wed a noblewoman and with their fortunes combined, he relocated The Bell Tower to a more opulent part of the city, to a larger, grander old theater hall. he became more particular about the performances, holding them to impossible standards and hastily firing anyone who couldn't meet them.

one of those people was drinn, Naven's younger brother. he was a meek, clumsy man with a stutter; he could play anything that required deft hands, but he froze under scrutiny. he'd worked for years in the theater's sets and made one fatal error that resulted in a portion of the set collapsing during a public performance. nobody was hurt, but Regis took it personally.

Naven's time and attention after that was divided between his sister in the theater, his brother on the street, and the odd things happening in this new theater - doors opening or closing on their own, items disappearing and reappearing where they shouldn't be, footsteps and whispers in the night. at the same time, Regis brought in his son, erwin, for him to begin learning how to run the shows.

erwin was a spoiled child and a temperamental man, worse than his father. he treated the performers like property, to be used and discarded as he pleased. Naven, sharp and eloquent as he was, knew how to keep his head down and stay out of trouble. others weren't so fortunate. 

it was just after Regis died at the age of 78, the day after the funeral, when edwin went through the theater demanding everything be changed. he wanted to turn the classic theater into a showstopping stage, insisting on gaudy and shocking performances as the new road to profit. he gave a personal tirade to Naven, whose scripts were no longer performing the way they once had.

but Naven (burntout, tired, worried about his brother who had gotten a job in a mining town two days away, and about his sister who was working herself ragged trying to earn money for her wedding to her sweetheart, a young courier, AND about his friends among the Doves, some of whom had gone mysteriously missing) could not bring himself to write anymore. his inspiration was spent. so edwin had him barred in his attic room until he produced something, and told that if he didn't have a first act in a month's time, his sister would be put out to the street. followed by Naven himself the month following.

in the dark days that followed, he got no sleep. the strange poltergeist incidents were strongest in the attic. strange voices and sounds surrounded him when he tried to trance. after four days, he had a break, snapping at the shadows and sounds, demanding whoever was making them eitiher show themselves or shut up and let him rest because he *had to write*. that was the night he found a loose floorboard in the corner under which hid the source of the voices: a dusty leather-and-twine book simply titled The Carcosa Scripts.

the language within was, at first, illegible. but the more Naven attempted to read it, the more he could. he found them to be scripts for a series of plays that were so profound and powerful, they left him sobbing for hours. 

they inspired him. his pen began to write, almost on its own. he met edwin's deadline not with one act but two.

production began immediately, while he finished the third act. rehearsals went miraculously well, but during the first showing, a wealthy member of the audience had a heart attack at the climax of Act 2.

the next time, however, everything went just fine. the play was an immediate success, for which edwin took all the credit. the night after he attended a banquet awarding him with membership into the Players' Guild, his horse threw him through a window and he broke his back, paralyzing him from the waist down.

a number of years passed after that in an uneasy rhythm. the injury left edwin in a wheelchair but no less tempestuous and doubly bitter. he became more like his father than ever, his arrogance traded for temper and perfectionism. he no longer lorded threats over his staff; he just did what he might've threatened to do when they didn't meet his expectations. 

half the staff was fired over that time, and another seven went abruptly left town, so edwin claimed. and still, accidents plagued the theater and only the theater it seemed. the brothel was doing better than ever. the theater was floundering. edwin eventually fired all of his organizational staff and started from the ground up.

Naven, the oldest remaining employee at that point, was placed in sole charge over productions. he was to be director, scriptwriter, casting manager, and composer all in one, with a steep raise in pay and an upgrade from the attic room to a small office that would double as his bunk. lillis was demoted to working full time in the brothel instead of on the stage, and the attic was emptied so it could be renovated into rental rooms. 

Naven initially balked at the changes and the new workload, claiming it impossible for a single person to handle, but edwin insisted that if he did this, both drinn and lillis would see monthly stipends sent directly to their hands so long as the success lasted. knowing she loved performing on stage, Naven negotiated for lillis to be able to continue on stage and agreed to edwin's terms.

it became common for him to go days at a time with no rest and no food. he kept producing new scripts, but the quality declined. the plays were full of gimmicks and contrivances that meant nothing to him; but edwin was right. people paid for shallow and shocking entertainment far more than they did for lengthy dramas these days.

disillusionment took hold fast. for the first time in his life, he was glad edwin got all the credit for his plays.

he spent hours rereading his old manuscripts, longing for days when creation felt like stepping into an ocean and allowing it to swallow him up in art that meant something. The Carcosa Scripts haunted him like the theater ghosts, always in the back of his mind. That... that avalanche of emotion. That was the kind of art he wished to produce, and he wanted to be *known* for it, not to watch some wealthy nobleman grow even wealthier off the sacrifice of his work. 

in time, as Naven went through the trunks of things displaced from the attic, one was found that seemed much older than the rest and filled with moth-eaten costumes. at the bottom, in careful wrappings, was an elegant golden gown, hood, and a beautiful porcelain masquerade mask that captured him. the face was white, inlaid gold, the inside painted red. it felt lovely in his hands, perfectly weighted. 

it felt like it had a story to tell and he wished he could know what it was.

before he could find it, he learned of Drinn's death. the mine collapsed; he and dozens of other miners were lost in the dark. the owners made public speeches giving their condolences as if it wasn't their negligence that led to the instability of the tunnels. 

it was then Naven found out that no stipend had ever been sent to either of his siblings. drinn was penniless and given a pauper's grave, a nameless headstone in field of scores of other nameless headstones. and lillis had no idea what Naven was talking about when he mentioned said stipend to her; her and her husband's rent was only just met by his work at the post and hers at the Tower.

when Naven attempted to confront edwin about it, edwin all but told Naven to take his chances with winter in Baldur's Gate if he was so against their arrangement. he reminded him, however, that the contract they'd signed with his father gave his family full ownership of all assets produced and maintained on the theater grounds. if Naven left, he wouldn't even have the clothes on his back.

that night, the night of the first blizzard, Naven composed the first song he'd written for himself in a very, very long time. at midnight, he donned the golden gown and took the finished melody to the vacant theater, where he performed lyrics that hated and mourned. He called it Soliloquy and belted it out with tears for an audience only he could imagine, and at the end with a flourish, he pressed the cool porcelain mask over his face to hide his tears.

he woke up hours later with concerned actors hovering over him as he lay on the stage. the mask was gone, nowhere to be found, and since he'd never mentioned it to anyone, no one knew what they would even look for.

the next few years passed in numbed, sleepless grief. Naven's writing grew grim, but audiences seemed to love the dark spectacle of it all so edwin was pleased.  lillis' first half-elven child was stillborn because they couldn't afford a doctor. 

in those dark days, the seed of an idea began to grow in Naven's mind. an idea for a play. one taken directly from the pages of The Carcosa Scripts. if the people wanted dark... he could give them dark. if they wanted spectacle, he could give them spectacle. if he really wanted to, he could write them a play that would both amaze and terrify them... and call them all out as the overfed buzzards they all really were.

it took Naven ten years, but he finished it. his masterpiece. by then, edwin was in his 60s, and his own son wolfgang, a cold, unfeeling businessman, was well on his way to taking over the enterprise. wolfgang was already speaking of taking a more serious approach to the art than his father ever had, preferring stiff dramas to showmanship. that was Naven's opportunity.

he won wolfgang over to the idea first. a send-off for his father's retirement, a play that paid homage to the epics of old while providing the spectacle and scandal edwin so loved. to Naven's shock, wolfgang agreed and even fronted expenses for full cast and crew.

all the preparations flew by as if bolstered by magic and the force of Naven's resolve. he felt alive again, watching the artistry come together. lillis, the star of the show as per his request, tried to remind him, in vain, to sleep.

when opening day came, it was an evening to remember. wolfgang had hosted a gala in his father's honor in a banquet hall, to which none of the theater performers were invited save Naven, who spent the whole time stewing over the opulence he was forced to watch all while lillis's family was struggling for their basic meals. he plastered on a mask of frivolous courtesy, and awaited the opportunity to make them all squirm in their seats.

then it was time for the show to begin.

the play itself was an eldritch behemoth of a thing, nearly four hours long, portraying nobles as debaucherous devils who drank the aged blood of the poor like wine, shone light on the depravity of the slums that they loved to ignore, and starred a poor woman, played by lillis, who made a bargain with a magic mirror and a mysterious man in gold, played by Naven, to be recognized for her beautiful voice only to be forced into being a marionette, a pet bird, by the noble who harvested her talent from her. it was not subtle and it was not kind to the audience it was written for, and in the silence that met the first act's close, Naven knew it was working.

it was halfway through act 2 that Naven started to notice things weren't quite right. the audience was, quite literally, entranced, and half the cast as well, with more becoming blank-faced automatons outside their roles with every passing scene and song.  they could hear, responded to directions, moved through the backstage with startling efficiency, but the banter, the comraderie that Naven had known for the last several decades was gone.

by the beginning of the third act, they were no longer performers. the entire cast, save for Naven, was behaving as if they *were* their roles. the audience responses had become explosive, outrageous beyond what the depictions merited. raucous laughter, wailed tears, hateful rage. it roared from the seats like thunder. the air, the doors, the very stage shook with it. 

Naven's Soliloquy of the Golden King was the climactic song of the night and despite everything, it was too late to stop now. he lost himself in the music, thinking of his siblings, his life, and his loathing for the people in the chairs below. 

he'd hardly finished the final line when the audience erupted. with applause that went on, and on... and on... people got up, out of their seats. they surged forward in a horde. they groped at the stage, tried to climb up, over each other until fights broke out. 

the cast fell to chaos too, lunging at each other, fighting over the attention from the crowd and trying to beat Naven back from the spotlight. from their mouths, a brittle black darkness bled, dripping to the floor, choking the air. Naven had nowhere to turn to escape, until his sister tackled him across the stage, demanding the attention and affection she deserved and striking at him with a prop dagger. dull as it was, she wielded it with enough force to plunge it into his ribcage.

amidst the pandemonium, smoke began to join the strange blackness oozing from the mob. the curtains had caught fire. but nobody moved to escape, except for Naven. or he would have, had the crowd not clung to him as he moved away from the stage where Lillis and the other performers were fighting and raving and singing at the tops of their lungs as the fire framed them in gold. trapped in place, he watched as fire spread, until he was struggling to breathe.

something in his own mind broke then. it was hilraious, wasn't it? this final act. they were all going to die here. he began to laugh, choking on smoke and blood.

he's not sure how he got out. but he did. the streets were chaos just like inside the theater, which had quickly gone up in flames like dry kindling, being such an old building. authorities and spectators alike raced about, someone pulling him clear of the theater steps and placing him with a small handful of others who'd managed to escape.

they were all like him. laughing. crying. murmuring, shrieking. stark raving mad. the blackness was bleeding out of the building with the smoke, drifting across the block like a cloud of night that made it more difficult to see by the minute.

not fast enough. when wolfgang was dragged out, his father in his arms, he called the guards the moment he laid those cold eyes on Naven among the others. he was arrested for arson and carted away to a jail. 

there, he awaited a trial that ultimately never came. he was placed in a local prison, where he would stay for twenty years. at times, his fellow prisoners and the guards would hear him sing so beautifully, they wondered how he'd managed to get himself put there. but then eventually, his ravings drove even the other prisoners to complain. he lowered morale, they said. he made them sad and afraid, speaking of life as fleeting whimsy, of the ease of death and odds of unexpected tragedy, of distant stars and more distant gods and the fragile souls of mortals as if he didn't have one of his own.

he was transported to an asylum run by Clerics of Ilmater outside the city, and there he remained for several more decades, a gibbering, muttering mess... until he was plucked by a strange ship and placed in a pod. and a mind flayer tadpole brought him the first clarity of mind he'd had in more than half a century.

The asylum Naven was sent to was called The Sanctum of Dolor Hill, originally an abbey dedicated to the god Ilmater. The sisters there, nuns and clerics under the watchful eyes of the Mother in charge, were tasked with caring for and treating the mental health cases sent to them. The owner, a man named Ercam Rhodar, had declared upon establishment that all who entered its doors would leave cured.

By the time Naven was admitted, however, the 300-room facility was at 8 times its capacity. 

Coming from prison as he was, a marked arsonist and mage, he was received with less decorum than even average patients. The staff were overworked and outnumbered. He was given a cold bath, a straight jacket, and a collar of Silence (the prison reports named him a disturber of the peace, prone to raving, a danger to the wellbeing of other patients) before he was deposited in a solitary cell - or a poor excuse for one, little more than a box the size of a closet, set at the end of a corridor out of the way.

He was quickly forgotten. The less "troublesome" patients didn't have collars and wrought chaos when untended, unfed or unsupervised. Naven, on the other hand, could not call for help. When he was hungry, thirsty, or needed to relieve himself, he had to bang on the walls and hope someone took notice. And if they did, then he'd have to hope they didn't just brush him off as trying to cause a racket without purpose.

Over the course of the first few months, he screamed his throat raw calling for aid only for the collar to absorb any sound before it could leave his throat.

A number of "revolutionary" new treatments were practiced at the sanctum, in the name of curing its inhabitants, including transorbital lobotomies and, in cases deemed too severe, mind-altering magical procedures from memory seals to complete reconstruction. Despite varying degrees of "success," the patients at best left these procedures entirely different people. At worst, they perished on the operating table.

During the events of the game, when assured by Volo that the bard could solve the issue of the tadpole, Naven attempted to hear him out, only for fragmented memories to surface when the man pulled out a lengthy needle and aimed it for his eye. A primal part of him remembered the electrotherapy, being rendered helpless, unable to move, unable to resist, laid out under harsh light. A masked man. The same needle.

He refused the offer from Volo and never approached the man again after that.

Two decades after his transfer, there was a shift in leadership. Rhodar died and management of the facility transferred to his widow, Ms. Anneliese Rhodar-Linde. 

In those days, things improved only slightly. Additional staff was brought on, with Ms. Rhodar seeking out members of the clergy to volunteer based on their creed, rather than purely medical professionals. Miraculously, 10% of the patients were reported cured and released in the next 2 years. Rumors would spread however that these statistics were fabricated for the sake of positive publicity. Whatever truly became of those 200+ "cured" patients was never uncovered. 

The rate of cured patients slowed to a trickle, but continued at a much better rate than previous recorded numbers. One by one, surplus cases disappeared, "cured" and released at best and transferred to other facilities at worst.

Though it never dipped back under ideal capacity, the changes lessened the immediate stress on both staff and inmates. The facility was divided into neat zones, to which a set team of sisters were assigned. Staff was encouraged to refer to their patients as Children, rather than using their numbers alone as was previously enforced.

Naven was, after 30 years, given his own room, with a door, and even a window overlooking the courtyard. He spent most of his days in a state of vacant inattention. The collar of Silence, as well as the binding of  his hands, was never removed, his violent history always the stated reason. And despite the minor improvements, there were still days that passed where his basic needs as a living person went unnoticed. 

He was also among a selected test group of patients who received a new psychological treatment, in which staff with specialized magical proclivity would delve into their minds and meticulously filter through, file, and seal away certain memories in a new attempt to foster mental healing, or at least the outward appearance of it. His already fragmented identity was broken up into even smaller pieces. 

The kindest person to him was an understudy to the Ward Mother of his wing, a young cleric who seemed to genuinely believe in the good the facility was trying to do. However, she too fell to treating the patients more like dolls than people. Things she was fond of, cared for, but not like one would a peer. More like the way one might care for a pet.

Still, she was attentive and gentle, which was more than could be said of previous tenders. She kept up conversation with him as if he could respond. It was something, if little more than a painful reminder of his lonely existence, trapped in his mind.