A black book - Morrighan's grimoire of pain

[Intemperate_Star]

*This plain black leather book appears to be both a journal and a grimoire of painful rituals. These rituals are beyond a sane imagination and many of the pages are stained with bloody fingerprints and smudges, as if the user had written when wounded. The handwriting is normally elongated and tilted, practiced as if by someone with a formal education, but at times the handwriting is crude and rudimental - as if someone in a trance or under a great deal of pain had desperately tried to write down visions or notes.
To further the creeping feeling that one should never read this grimoire, countless prints of ancient books and hand-made drawings depict the rituals therein written. The first page states a warning:*


"Leave this book alone."

[Intemperate_Star]

They were always around me, in velvet and tux... At the feasts that my father would throw or could foist in, behind the single lit window in the mansion across when I arose in the middle of the night from these nightmares. Theirs was the silhouette I saw at the distance, staring right at me before the lights were put out. They were the kind lady Elsa that sold candy at the corner shop and that chivalrous man that observed through his monocle at every socialite dinner... The maid that cleaned my room daily and left that strange scent of violets and poppies.
They watched me as I grew into a woman, patient like black cats on prowl. I never would have imagined, the darkest of secrets behind the bone-coloured veil at the Blackstone Estate.

That night I had wandered as ever - my father never quite liked me and my mother had died giving birth... At least, as far as I knew. My dad made a couple of paintings, art gave him some wealth and small relevance but it didn't last long - the love of such fortune, however, did. He was a commoner living the rich way: rotten, corrupted and vane... Always consumed by illusions of standards, too busy to raise his one child - but me? Well I didn't mind much. Though the other kids shunned me for being too curious, too dark and too intemperate, the grow-ups around me were ever-inviting. The colours and scents of my childhood were those of fine wine, of fox furs and silks gloves, drinking and dancing with Ladies and Dames. Why not? Who was there that could possibly stop me?
I found in the eyes of these people a certain acceptance of my rebellious sway... Of my innocent decadence.

It shouldn't surprise me that when they showed me the back room was also the day I first bled. My nanny had been there to embrace me, as if she had known I'd awake in distress... I was scared to my last wit that morning, with a black blood-like liquid dried up on the bed, as if poured on my gown and my legs. It was darker than mere dried-up blood, it was darker than oil or a charcoal. Melissa had looked me in the eyes like never before she had dare to, and she told me I that I was woman, that something quite glorious was about to begin. She took the black-bloodstained beddings and disappeared down the hall, leaving me alone to remember the nightmare I stirred from...

A bed of black and red poppies, my wrists bound aside by a whip of nine strands... I was holding both ends, though, as if I myself chose to remain in these binds. The razors bit deep, the pain overwhelming but also alerting the senses, making them open to... The myriad sensations that cursed through my veins. I screamed, I begged and I groaned, but as much as I dreaded the thousands of cuts this cruel whip was unleashing upon me... I yearned for each and every one of its strokes. A lash came to land in the right spot, and in the apex of all, that severed mad head laughed away. One, two, three... One, two, three... The droplets of blood fell from the tips of my fingers.

When the sun had gone down I found myself once again wandering the streets of our city, my feet followed a black rat until I arrived at that lustrous estate - Blackstone. The front doors were open, the sounds of live music distilled from inside. I walked in the glow of the candles - a moment of marble and gold with the feeling of carpet now muffling my steps. They were waiting for me at the main hall, with food and drink and a party beyond any I had known. At midnight they showed me their secret, behind the bone-coloured curtain that always was closed. Their playground, my initiation to the cult.

At first it wasn't willing, of course - to be born again is never easy. The child always struggles to remain in the uterus, unknowing of the wonderful world that awaits for it outside... But these Loviatans trusted our Maiden would show me the way, eventually... For was I not the child of the three-stains? One, two, three... One, two, three...
When they were done they gave me a new dress and told me I was free to return any time. They acted so casual then, telling me to pay attention in class and to say hi to my father... These everyday people - bankers, merchants and teachers, scribes, stewards and Ladies... I had known all their faces for years, yet I had never suspected. I walked out that rich iron gate and into the first rays of Sunrise - like many times before, only this time I took with me a great violent secret. They had let me go, but only in body - my mind was still arrested by this brand-new perspective. The attention they gave me, the sensations and control...

I came back for more that day after school. Out there I was no one - a mere loveless child that never fit in... But within Blackstone Estate I was so, so much more: the chosen half-blood of elf and of man - like the priestesses of our beautiful church. It hurt, it felt wrong, but the scents and the texture of leather invited, the climax rewarded, and the pain? At first pain was the price for the experience, it was merely a part that I had to endure for that fabled release at the end... But slowly it became the experience: the cuts that I hid behind long skirts, the sting of the hot wax and salt, the screams... It was a magical world that consumed the mind, possessing it in the loneliest of hours when I had to depart, when I had cello lessons or in the playground of the academy.
It was my special little secret hiding behind my long sleeves in the shape of cuff marks and bruises.

Weeks paraded before me - time was a blur and all that was normal was now but a game. I pushed one of the bullies at school down the main stairs and stepped on her then-broken leg for good measure. When I was confronted about it, I lied - an innocent smile is the craftiest of tools. When I was involved in an "incident" regarding a compass, again that sweet smile washed it all away... It was in those days that the nightmares returned, each night a new fragment of this horrible tale - about my mother, about how she'd died in unspeakable pain while giving birth to a child she was forced into carrying - forcefully taken, as she'd been, by her master: my father.
The night I entered this world all the candles blew out at the same time, and in my father's estate there echoed Her laughter... From the corpse of my mother, possessed and insane.
My father had warned the last of his servants that not even whispers could be spoken about this before locking himself in his studio and drinking away. He plead, in his haze, for his soul and his life. The room had been empty and peaceful, but in his fear he had promised to raise me, lest whatever had spawned me returned.

Years have now passed and here I stand in this new role - nevermore that spoiled aimless child that wandered the streets through the long night. I am a Kneeling One of the Church of Loviatar... For the world is a place full of torments. The best one can do is suffer the blows and deal as much pain back to the offender! True pleasure is won through great pain alone.
Endure, fear no more, and strive on.

So what is my name, you may wonder.
Well that is a detail you'll beg I reveal.

[Intemperate_Star]

This isle is ripe with opportunity. So much conflict clouds the air like the feeling one gets when walking into a room where a violent scream has echoed. The cruise here was... Disastrous - all the crates I was transporting are resting on the seafloor, and I have now but a few coins and this notebook. Of course I'll miss the dresses and commodities I had but... What truly pains me is the loss of my equipment. The blades, whips, shackles and books...
Better not linger in the thought. Yes, this situation is dire but this grief will make me stronger - if I meditate upon its meaning... Praise the Maiden.

Luckily the local bar has rooms for free - the cots smell but I will make it through the nights. As for food? Well there are plenty of gentlemen around and isn't the pain of false love one of Her favourite types? The one that transforms the self the deepest and stains the mind with the most subtle and beautiful of scars.
Still, I must find another means before they are on to my hunting ground - maybe join a caravan or accompany some mercenaries outside of the gates of this Cordor... The gifts I plan to give the Maiden aren't things I can perform with the folk around the city, after all. I must remember why I came here...

And find my way to the Underdark.

[Intemperate_Star]

Acquired a faerie-dragon's scale. Burn with sulphur and camphor, drive into the binder's arm, wrap in consecrated metal thorns and... More information needed. Ritual isn't complete. I need to find that Fey tome.
Do these creatures of laughter cry? Soon the blessing of the Maiden will be known to it.