Here's a rough draft of my character's personal Tale.
Now there, you want to know who I am and where I'm from? Well, that's a long story, on account of how I'm awful far from home, but we have time. Sit down, brother, sit. Let me tell you a tale.
I come from a place you probably never been to, a place called Haiti. I was born, oh, some years ago, me and my brother born into the world together, but my ma, after we was born, all the energy went right out of her when it went into us, and she lingered for some time on the edge of death before the good Baron guided her through to the other side. So it fell to Papa and Memère to raise us. Now, back then things were getting pretty bad already, but none of us were any the wiser living in our own little world, and the world seemed no bigger than our island of Hispaniola, and the furthest shores of that may well have been foreign lands when I was a youngin'. Memère was a respected woman, a leader and mambo, and a she taught us good, said that our family was favoured by the spirits, and she taught us to be dutiful and keep to the old ways and traditions even in a modern world - a humble sèvitè was to be my role, and I embraced it.
Me and my brother, we started off the same, although he swears he was born first, and we got a lot of the same in us, but we quickly found our callin's were different. He was always hotheaded, eager for a fight, looking to prove himself. When the time came, it was no surprise when he picked up a rifle, or which Loa favoured him.
For myself though, that wasn't my way. My brother had a great love for putting holes in things, but I had always been a lot more keen on patching those holes up. Not that we were at odds! Far from it. Lots of the things he went to put holes in wanted to put holes in him right back, and he appreciated a man who could let him get back into action a bit sooner. We were a team, and after the Bombs, we were a beacon of hope in the darkness.
Even then, though, I wonder if he wasn't already starting to see me differently. Did he think himself my better? Was he jealous that, for all his skill, he couldn't do what I did? He always did seem more concerned with the things that were missing than the things that he had - ah, but I get ahead of myself. He was competitive, yes, but I have to believe that back then, it was innocent, good natured.
The fact was, though, even then, we I had something, he wanted it too. Most times, he'd be fine with sharin' - what's mine was his, and often enough what's his was mine, and that worked for us on account of how close we was. But that approach didn't work so well when it came to women.
When I met Rose-Merline, I fell hard. But my brother, he saw in her the same thing I saw, and he couldn't abide the possibility that she might feel the same for me. I can't say he took her - she was a strong woman, and no man's to take. I believe to a certain extent what she fancied in each of us was also present to an extent in the other, but he still went beyond what is right, he turned her heart against me with stories and dishonesty while I was away tending to a sick relative, and when she chose him over me it broke my heart, but I accepted it. So long as she was happy, I thought to myself, I would try to be happy for them, even if it was hard, and I would find a woman of my own. On the day they married, I cried as my brother smiled. On the day they gave birth to their son, I was there.
But a rift had formed between myself and my brother. He feared that I would find a way to steal her back. I feared what he would do if I once more found myself with something he wanted, as the rumours he started back then still lingered. Once, he went into a jealous rage at hearing that I'd visited his wife and my nephew while he was away, and he was away a lot since the family life had done nothing to cool his blood and there were still battles to be fought, and he struck me, and from then on I no longer traveled with him. I had settled down to become the village doctor, and traveled with him only rarely from then on.
The two of us, once beacons of hope in the darkness, split apart, and our individual lights were much dimmer than the light once we'd once made together. Fear had found a place in deep in our hearts and settled in for a nice long stay. We argued at our Memère's funeral, which is what had convinced me to stop going off and settle down to care for the village in her place, and that arguin' was something we shouldn't have done. Not long after that is when things started going south with our health, for both of us. The coughs began, blood on our handkerchiefs, and each day we seemed to grow a bit weaker. My brother spent weeks reading the signs, trying to discover the cause, while I spent weeks studying what was happening and trying to find a cure. He claimed to have more success than me - the disease didn't respond to anything I tried. Even the great might of Loco couldn't seem to change it. But my brother decided that the cause was clear.
When we had been born, we hadn't been given our own body-souls, our own gros bon ange - little angels, those we had, but we were born with a vast emptiness as well. Instead, we'd taken our mother's - it had flowed from her to fill that emptiness, and it was what cost her her life. It had passed from her, to us, one gros bon ange across two bodies. Neither half could survive on it's own, and the longer we'd spent away from each other, the worse our symptoms would grow. He begged me to accompany him on each of his trips, he argued that the world needed us to be its light once more, and we need to be that light to keep us both strong. For my part, I begged him to stay with his wife and child and care for his family, and that the people of our village needed us here, to protect them and care for them, and that if his wife and child was killed by horrors while we were off saving strangers, how long would our light burn then with a broken heart? But we were stubborn, both of us. Stubborn we were born, one and the same in that way, and stubborn we remain to this day, and I don't imagine it's going to change.
But the illness progressed. We grew weaker every day. And the light of hope faded in the eyes of the people that were around me, and I doubted whether I had made the right choice.
I wonder if my brother was having his own doubts, and dealing with them the only way he knew how? With violence. Because Rose-Merline was growing increasingly discontent with their relationship. He spent longer away, and rumours reached her that he wasn't exactly faithful. I believe my nephew spent more time with me than with his own father. When he was home, she didn't say nothin', but no one with a discerning eye could help noticing the bruises, and worse, that I ended up seeing. She hated when he was away, and the wondering if he'd ever come back or if he'd die out there, and she hated when he was around, she confided in me.
Eventually, she had enough.
She said she was leaving him. He fumed, and shouted, and the argument carried into public and lasted for days, and then she did something he couldn't abide. She said that not only was she leaving him, but she was taking their son. She was leaving, to live with her family, and she didn't want to see him any more, and she didn't want him around their child.
I don't know what happened next, to tell the truth. Whether the rage and hurt are what brought the monsters, and the monsters done the violence, or whether my brother did the violence and its what brought the monsters, but in the end she was dying, bleeding, in my parlour, clutching her boy to her breast, begging me to take him away, to keep him away from her husband, and outside the howls of fell creatures echoed as they did their work on the innocents. And I saw my brother, far away, swinging his blade, firing his gun, killing monsters and people alike, shouting the names of his wife and son.
I did what I could for her. I told my nephew to hide. And I then I went outside to do my part in the fight.
We met at the crossroads. It's always, ultimately, at the crossroads where these things happened. My and my brother. Both of us covered in blood, both of us with anger in our eyes. He demanded I tell him where his wife and son were. I told him I couldn't do that. That I'd made a promise. He said that everything, all of this, was my fault. He blamed me for stealing half of his soul, and his wife, and his child. He said that all I'd ever wanted was to take things from him, things he'd earned. He told me we couldn't go on like this, that it was our separation that was creating the darkness in the land.
If he could not convince me to obey him, to do as he wished, to give him back what was his and rejoin him as his servant, then he would have no choice. He would kill me, and take back the half of our mothers soul I had stolen, from her and him in equal parts, and then he would burn brightly on his own, and his wife would love him once more, and his child would be with him forever, and I could no longer ruin everything that he had accomplished.
I am no coward. But I could not fight my brother. I had made a promise, a promise I could not fulfill if I was dead. But my brother was exhausted, and angry, and he did not expect me to have been prepared. When he collapsed, unconscious, I fled. I returned home to find that Rose-Merline had crossed over while I was away, and I made a prayer to the lord, and Legba and Baron Samedi, and then I took her son from his hiding place, and I left.
I fled to the other side of the island, the other side of my world, and my brother... my brother followed me.
So I fled across the waters, to the swamps of a ruined country, to find safety in the comfort of people who were not too different from ourselves but who were far enough away that we could hide forever.
My brother followed me.
We fled to Mexico, across the water and then the land, and he followed, and now I find myself here.
Every day I grow weaker, faster now. I do not know how much longer I can live this way. But I cannot give up. I cannot go back. Perhaps, if I were to kill him, he is correct, and I would be whole once more. His pursuit would end, I and my nephew could go home to our families once more.
But I cannot kill my brother. His blood is my blood, and his spirit is my spirit.
I cannot do it. My light burns dimly. But I still must do what I can. And so... so here I am. Trying to find safety in the wastes. Trying to shine, however faintly, in the darkness. A fools errand, I'm sure. But what other choice do I have?
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Topic: Black Waters OOC Thread - Deadlands: HoE Campaign (Full!) (Read 8761 times)