Mothman
A moth, and also a man
There is a legend passed from mother to child. From friend to friend amidst the schoolyard. Whispered in passing to scare away travelers, or simply spoken aloud to remember the horrid events of Manna Carina. Written about with embellished details, with excess drama and suspense to sell to curious passersby. The tale of a woman overcome by a curse that turned all around her away, that forced her into solitude and brought an entire village to near extinction. Even now, a rumored few hundred years after the terror that was the Witch of Nascoto Verita nearly ruined the beautiful seaside town that is Manna Carina, nestled between the end of a vast mountain range and a sprawling forest, the people of the port town continue to speak of the woman.
Minor details of the Witch will vary, depending on who is telling the story. Some say she was a gorgeous siren, who's beauty could turn the eyes of even the most loyal and spoken for men. Others claim she was nothing more than a ugly girl playing the part of a menace. Perhaps the blacksmith would recall that she had two sisters, while his wife might stand firm that it was a brother and a sister. Even the woman's age was up in the air in many retellings of the story; was she a young, innocent girl? Perhaps a grown woman who faced such trials? Or, nay, some wicked old hag, truly befitting the title of 'witch'?
Nevertheless, the story has, and likely always will, recount a woman who disappeared without a single trace from Manna Carina. She'd a family, a fulfilling life, and wasn't known to be ill. She was with child; the first between her and her husband. Close friends knew nothing of her sudden absence, nor did her family and husband. Not a soul throughout the busy streets, bustling with life that zigzagged through Manna Carina, seemed to have so much as a clue as to what might have happened to the woman. She'd hair of a jet black color, with blue eyes. She was generally recalled to be on the shorter side, but it was one of those details none found worth mentioning.
Despite weeks of searching, her family and friends never found so much of a sliver of her existance. It was like the woman had been wiped off the face of the earth. Her shoes, clothes, and belongings all remained in her home. If she'd left of her own volition, she would do so with nothing. No money, no food, not even her boots. If she'd been robbed, kidnapped, even, her captors had only taken her. Her family was of little import; a simple lineage comprised of jewelers and woodworkers. Their shop still stood within Manna Carina, though had fallen into the hands of another man who used the cursed history behind it as a surprisingly effective advertisement.
But I digress. With heavy hearts, the conclusion was eventually reached that the woman had perished. Whether she had walked herself into the ocean and drowned, or been captured by some monster of a man who'd broken in via a window or something of the sort, they could never be sure.
Months passed, seasons changed, and the hole in the family left by the woman's disappearance was never quite filled. Though, just as the wounds of their loss began to heal, they were met with something far more surprising than the fact she'd vanished in the first place.
She returned.
After being missing for over a year, she one night appeared back in her bedroom. When morning came and her husband walked past the open door to see the bed filled, he could do nothing but scream out in shock. His beloved, believed to have vanished from the world without a trace, was resting in her bed as if nothing had ever happened. He rushed to her side to stir her awake, though when the woman did open them, gone were the irises of gentle ocean blue, replaced instead by a crimson red hue. Despite the change, her husband, overjoyed, wrapped her in embrace and showered her with love.
But she did not return his kindness. Despite the ring still on her finger, she instead simply stared at the man, before looking around the room as if it was some sort of foreign sight to her. Whatever had happened to the woman seemed to have sapped her from her memories, as she'd no recollection of the man who's hands were tight on her shoulders, the room she awoke in, or even of herself. Her husband put this together quickly, though it was a sorry sight to see him desperately ask her questions in an attempt to jumpstart her mind into recalling her life. Though, with each question, the woman simply nodded her head, her eyes, which now bore a glass-like emptiness to them, locked onto her husband all the while. She did not speak, responding with shakes of her heads and nods, even when her husband wrangled her family into their home to show the strange sight, hoping desperately it might bring the woman he remembered back.
But alas, their efforts bore no fruit. The silent woman only looked to her lap in what seemed to be frustration after being bombarded with question, childhood memory, fact about her... All things that did nothing as far regaining her memory was concerned. This continued for days, with the husband even preparing his wife in fine gowns to take around Manna Carina, hoping that the spot of their first kiss, the place they held their wedding ceremony, something, anything, might bring back the woman he loved, instead of the husk he had been delivered.
Eventually, the husband's patience, broken by reaching dead end after dead end, showed a crack. Upon bringing the woman back home after another day of travel about Manna Carina, he slammed the door to their home behind him in a fervor.
"Why do you not speak, damn you? You... You vanish for months without a trace, and now you return in this sorry state...!" The man cried out, approaching their dining table and placing his palms on it, looking down at the wood with a pained stricken countenance.
It was his aging mother to first attempt to console him. "Dear, we don't know what happened to her, perhaps-"
Before she could finish, the husband turned, slamming a fist on the table. "What does it matter!? It was better she stay gone, if my heart must be teased with her return! If the woman I married, who was to be with child, one now completely absent from her, is no more, if she won't return to us, then I care not for this husk that God has delivered unto us!" His words, laced with venom, didn't seem to bother his wife. She stood, hands folded in front of her, with that same look of sorrow on her face. As if she could tell how desperate this man was, and that it was her fault that he was so frustrated. Her husband crossed the room and grabbed her by her collar, tugging her close to him. But not in the way of how a lover might pull one close for an embrace, no, he wrangled her like a bully might grasp a schoolchild to shout at them. "Speak! If nothing else, let me hear your voice, damn you, let me hear that you're truly the woman who I wed! Speak of what happened to our child, of what happened to you, for all that is holy!"
Silence hung over the room as he beckoned her to speak. The black-haired woman opened her mouth once, shut it, and repeated that process a few times. Eventually though, weak, barely audible words escaped her.
"I... Am sorry. I... Don't know what to say."
Her words were sincere enough, but just as she spoke them, the air around her grew heavy, as if some invisible force was at play. The woman's hair fluttered behind her, her gown doing much the same. Moments later, there was a great hole punched through the stomach of her husband. He released his grip on her, the woman falling to the floor and looking up to see what had happened. There was no weapon, not in her hands, and not in her husband's torso. But he had been pierced straight through, gasping out in pain as he stumbled backwards, falling against the dining table. "...You... You couldn't... My..."
But something seemed to snap within the black-haired woman, upon feeling some presence bore a hole within her husband. Things finally clicked. Her previously empty, robotic expression was replaced by one of shock, before she called out her husband's name as he fell to the floor. His mother rushed to his side with a scream, before looking to the black-haired woman, fallen to her knees, but without a speck of blood staining any part of her pale skin or fanciful dress.
"W... Witch. Witch!" The words fell out of her mother-in-law as if she was testing them, staring down at the woman who had killed her son. That the woman she once called a beautiful match for her only son while braiding her hair for her wedding, was truly such a fearsome kind of being that Manna Carina only knew of through rumors. That these wicked witches travelers spoke of were real, and that one had found its way into their gentle little port town.
Events following her husband's death vary from retelling to retelling. Some say her mother-in-law, too, fell victim to whatever strange force surrounded her as she cried out that her husband's death wasn't her fault. Some say her mother-in-law fled immediately, but that many in the group that returned with her to survey what had happened met a similar fate as the black-haired woman attempted to speak in her defense. When news broke out to Manna Carina as a whole, though, whatever her bodycount might have truly been by then, one thing was decided on for certain.
The woman's voice struck down any and all around her. Her pleading to those who captured her only managed to make a few others fall to their death from wounds that the black-haired woman couldn't possiblity have dealt with her bare hands alone. To combat this, she was gagged. From then, she became harmless. The woman's muffled cries and groans that there was some misunderstanding, that she wasn't the one doing this to these people, wasn't enough for her voice to strike others down, it seemed.
The village decided her fate quickly enough. They were not savages; they would not kill this woman in front of the family she once knew. But with her voice seeming to draw death to those who heard it, she couldn't possibly be kept in the village. Instead, it was decided she would be kept within a 'prison' of sorts, though not a common prison for rogues and bandits. No, her voice might claim their lives then, too. No, she was instead transported to a mansion long since abandoned. One that belonged to a noble family back in the founding years of Manna Carina, but was eventually phased out of use thanks to how far out in the forest it was. It became inefficient to travel so far into the forest and back to Manna Carina whenever a visit called for it. The mansion, while worn and decrepit, was still a roof that could remain over the black-haired woman's head for her final hours. She would die in the most comfort that Manna Carina could offer her, and they would be entirely rid of the witch's influence. Should they have simply embraced their savagery and burned her alive? More than likely. But the port town's mayor at the time had remembered her family well, and simply couldn't bring himself to kill the witch in such a way.
One would believe that the tale would be called the Witch of Manna Carina, but instead, it was named after the abandoned mansion she now dwells within. Nascoto Verita. A once flourishing example of the time's thriving architecture, now overrun by weeds, ivy, and rats. It thrived centuries ago, and was in an utter state of disrepair now. With a great stone wall, topped with spikes lining the entire property, once the gate was locked with chains and chains bound by enough locks that one woman breaking or picking all of them was near impossible, she was captive. Her life would end within the next few weeks, due to starvation, and Manna Carina would turn her into nothing more than a tall tale to tell for years to come.
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Hi everyone! This is a small tale meant to world-build for a medieval/fantasy RP I would love to work on with someone, with an OC I've wanted to revisit for a long time; the Witch of Nascoto Verita. As for what I'm looking for from others and their role in this world, I am extremely flexible. Perhaps you might play just a curious traveler chasing this rumor and wishing to prove it true or false for good. Maybe a rouge, invading this abandoned mansion without any knowledge of the Witch of Nascoto Verita. A noble with high ambitions, hoping to rebuild the mansion, etc. etc. Whatever your heart desire, so long as their path crosses with the Witch of Nascoto Verita, we can make it work!
Spoiler alert, she's lived ever since being imprisoned in the mansion.
For the folks interested, please do send me a PM and we can toss ideas back and forth! My vision for this world was something akin to DnD, where sorcery and such might exist, but probably belong to more practiced, high ranking people. Elves, dwarves, and other races entirely are totally on the table as well. If you're interested in writing with me, a few things to toss out there:
- My name's Besdy, but you can just call me Mothman.
- I work a human resources job that, this time of the year, gets a bit hellish. I won't pretend to be the most active person on the Earth, but can guarantee a post a week at the very worst.
- While the tale above might be considered a writing sample of sorts, I am happy to supply other samples if need be.
- When it comes to the Witch, I am happy to provide a CS with as much (or as little
) information regarding her, what really happened to her, why her voice kills people, etc. etc. at your request.
Minor details of the Witch will vary, depending on who is telling the story. Some say she was a gorgeous siren, who's beauty could turn the eyes of even the most loyal and spoken for men. Others claim she was nothing more than a ugly girl playing the part of a menace. Perhaps the blacksmith would recall that she had two sisters, while his wife might stand firm that it was a brother and a sister. Even the woman's age was up in the air in many retellings of the story; was she a young, innocent girl? Perhaps a grown woman who faced such trials? Or, nay, some wicked old hag, truly befitting the title of 'witch'?
Nevertheless, the story has, and likely always will, recount a woman who disappeared without a single trace from Manna Carina. She'd a family, a fulfilling life, and wasn't known to be ill. She was with child; the first between her and her husband. Close friends knew nothing of her sudden absence, nor did her family and husband. Not a soul throughout the busy streets, bustling with life that zigzagged through Manna Carina, seemed to have so much as a clue as to what might have happened to the woman. She'd hair of a jet black color, with blue eyes. She was generally recalled to be on the shorter side, but it was one of those details none found worth mentioning.
Despite weeks of searching, her family and friends never found so much of a sliver of her existance. It was like the woman had been wiped off the face of the earth. Her shoes, clothes, and belongings all remained in her home. If she'd left of her own volition, she would do so with nothing. No money, no food, not even her boots. If she'd been robbed, kidnapped, even, her captors had only taken her. Her family was of little import; a simple lineage comprised of jewelers and woodworkers. Their shop still stood within Manna Carina, though had fallen into the hands of another man who used the cursed history behind it as a surprisingly effective advertisement.
But I digress. With heavy hearts, the conclusion was eventually reached that the woman had perished. Whether she had walked herself into the ocean and drowned, or been captured by some monster of a man who'd broken in via a window or something of the sort, they could never be sure.
Months passed, seasons changed, and the hole in the family left by the woman's disappearance was never quite filled. Though, just as the wounds of their loss began to heal, they were met with something far more surprising than the fact she'd vanished in the first place.
She returned.
After being missing for over a year, she one night appeared back in her bedroom. When morning came and her husband walked past the open door to see the bed filled, he could do nothing but scream out in shock. His beloved, believed to have vanished from the world without a trace, was resting in her bed as if nothing had ever happened. He rushed to her side to stir her awake, though when the woman did open them, gone were the irises of gentle ocean blue, replaced instead by a crimson red hue. Despite the change, her husband, overjoyed, wrapped her in embrace and showered her with love.
But she did not return his kindness. Despite the ring still on her finger, she instead simply stared at the man, before looking around the room as if it was some sort of foreign sight to her. Whatever had happened to the woman seemed to have sapped her from her memories, as she'd no recollection of the man who's hands were tight on her shoulders, the room she awoke in, or even of herself. Her husband put this together quickly, though it was a sorry sight to see him desperately ask her questions in an attempt to jumpstart her mind into recalling her life. Though, with each question, the woman simply nodded her head, her eyes, which now bore a glass-like emptiness to them, locked onto her husband all the while. She did not speak, responding with shakes of her heads and nods, even when her husband wrangled her family into their home to show the strange sight, hoping desperately it might bring the woman he remembered back.
But alas, their efforts bore no fruit. The silent woman only looked to her lap in what seemed to be frustration after being bombarded with question, childhood memory, fact about her... All things that did nothing as far regaining her memory was concerned. This continued for days, with the husband even preparing his wife in fine gowns to take around Manna Carina, hoping that the spot of their first kiss, the place they held their wedding ceremony, something, anything, might bring back the woman he loved, instead of the husk he had been delivered.
Eventually, the husband's patience, broken by reaching dead end after dead end, showed a crack. Upon bringing the woman back home after another day of travel about Manna Carina, he slammed the door to their home behind him in a fervor.
"Why do you not speak, damn you? You... You vanish for months without a trace, and now you return in this sorry state...!" The man cried out, approaching their dining table and placing his palms on it, looking down at the wood with a pained stricken countenance.
It was his aging mother to first attempt to console him. "Dear, we don't know what happened to her, perhaps-"
Before she could finish, the husband turned, slamming a fist on the table. "What does it matter!? It was better she stay gone, if my heart must be teased with her return! If the woman I married, who was to be with child, one now completely absent from her, is no more, if she won't return to us, then I care not for this husk that God has delivered unto us!" His words, laced with venom, didn't seem to bother his wife. She stood, hands folded in front of her, with that same look of sorrow on her face. As if she could tell how desperate this man was, and that it was her fault that he was so frustrated. Her husband crossed the room and grabbed her by her collar, tugging her close to him. But not in the way of how a lover might pull one close for an embrace, no, he wrangled her like a bully might grasp a schoolchild to shout at them. "Speak! If nothing else, let me hear your voice, damn you, let me hear that you're truly the woman who I wed! Speak of what happened to our child, of what happened to you, for all that is holy!"
Silence hung over the room as he beckoned her to speak. The black-haired woman opened her mouth once, shut it, and repeated that process a few times. Eventually though, weak, barely audible words escaped her.
"I... Am sorry. I... Don't know what to say."
Her words were sincere enough, but just as she spoke them, the air around her grew heavy, as if some invisible force was at play. The woman's hair fluttered behind her, her gown doing much the same. Moments later, there was a great hole punched through the stomach of her husband. He released his grip on her, the woman falling to the floor and looking up to see what had happened. There was no weapon, not in her hands, and not in her husband's torso. But he had been pierced straight through, gasping out in pain as he stumbled backwards, falling against the dining table. "...You... You couldn't... My..."
But something seemed to snap within the black-haired woman, upon feeling some presence bore a hole within her husband. Things finally clicked. Her previously empty, robotic expression was replaced by one of shock, before she called out her husband's name as he fell to the floor. His mother rushed to his side with a scream, before looking to the black-haired woman, fallen to her knees, but without a speck of blood staining any part of her pale skin or fanciful dress.
"W... Witch. Witch!" The words fell out of her mother-in-law as if she was testing them, staring down at the woman who had killed her son. That the woman she once called a beautiful match for her only son while braiding her hair for her wedding, was truly such a fearsome kind of being that Manna Carina only knew of through rumors. That these wicked witches travelers spoke of were real, and that one had found its way into their gentle little port town.
Events following her husband's death vary from retelling to retelling. Some say her mother-in-law, too, fell victim to whatever strange force surrounded her as she cried out that her husband's death wasn't her fault. Some say her mother-in-law fled immediately, but that many in the group that returned with her to survey what had happened met a similar fate as the black-haired woman attempted to speak in her defense. When news broke out to Manna Carina as a whole, though, whatever her bodycount might have truly been by then, one thing was decided on for certain.
The woman's voice struck down any and all around her. Her pleading to those who captured her only managed to make a few others fall to their death from wounds that the black-haired woman couldn't possiblity have dealt with her bare hands alone. To combat this, she was gagged. From then, she became harmless. The woman's muffled cries and groans that there was some misunderstanding, that she wasn't the one doing this to these people, wasn't enough for her voice to strike others down, it seemed.
The village decided her fate quickly enough. They were not savages; they would not kill this woman in front of the family she once knew. But with her voice seeming to draw death to those who heard it, she couldn't possibly be kept in the village. Instead, it was decided she would be kept within a 'prison' of sorts, though not a common prison for rogues and bandits. No, her voice might claim their lives then, too. No, she was instead transported to a mansion long since abandoned. One that belonged to a noble family back in the founding years of Manna Carina, but was eventually phased out of use thanks to how far out in the forest it was. It became inefficient to travel so far into the forest and back to Manna Carina whenever a visit called for it. The mansion, while worn and decrepit, was still a roof that could remain over the black-haired woman's head for her final hours. She would die in the most comfort that Manna Carina could offer her, and they would be entirely rid of the witch's influence. Should they have simply embraced their savagery and burned her alive? More than likely. But the port town's mayor at the time had remembered her family well, and simply couldn't bring himself to kill the witch in such a way.
One would believe that the tale would be called the Witch of Manna Carina, but instead, it was named after the abandoned mansion she now dwells within. Nascoto Verita. A once flourishing example of the time's thriving architecture, now overrun by weeds, ivy, and rats. It thrived centuries ago, and was in an utter state of disrepair now. With a great stone wall, topped with spikes lining the entire property, once the gate was locked with chains and chains bound by enough locks that one woman breaking or picking all of them was near impossible, she was captive. Her life would end within the next few weeks, due to starvation, and Manna Carina would turn her into nothing more than a tall tale to tell for years to come.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hi everyone! This is a small tale meant to world-build for a medieval/fantasy RP I would love to work on with someone, with an OC I've wanted to revisit for a long time; the Witch of Nascoto Verita. As for what I'm looking for from others and their role in this world, I am extremely flexible. Perhaps you might play just a curious traveler chasing this rumor and wishing to prove it true or false for good. Maybe a rouge, invading this abandoned mansion without any knowledge of the Witch of Nascoto Verita. A noble with high ambitions, hoping to rebuild the mansion, etc. etc. Whatever your heart desire, so long as their path crosses with the Witch of Nascoto Verita, we can make it work!
Spoiler alert, she's lived ever since being imprisoned in the mansion.
For the folks interested, please do send me a PM and we can toss ideas back and forth! My vision for this world was something akin to DnD, where sorcery and such might exist, but probably belong to more practiced, high ranking people. Elves, dwarves, and other races entirely are totally on the table as well. If you're interested in writing with me, a few things to toss out there:
- My name's Besdy, but you can just call me Mothman.
- I work a human resources job that, this time of the year, gets a bit hellish. I won't pretend to be the most active person on the Earth, but can guarantee a post a week at the very worst.
- While the tale above might be considered a writing sample of sorts, I am happy to supply other samples if need be.
- When it comes to the Witch, I am happy to provide a CS with as much (or as little
) information regarding her, what really happened to her, why her voice kills people, etc. etc. at your request.
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