[The inner workings of temples and places of worship Kaz has only ever memorized on a technical level. He’s had to use the churches in various places as points of entry in the past, which has meant studying their outline and design, knowing the social hierarchy and hours of operation. He breaks them down like he does any other building or home, with a dispassionate critical eye. Each one’s design and function says just as much about the society in which it sits as it does the architects who construct it.
The largest cathedral in Ketterdam was known as the Church of Barter, built on the plan of the god Ghezen’s hand. The cathedral itself sat upon the great palm, each of its five extended fingers accented with smaller chapels at each fingertip. To reach the top of the cathedral one has to head upwards through a variety of chapels stacked on top of one another like sweetened cake fillings, each commissioned by a separate wealthy merchant family, each preening like peacocks over their placement being higher than another.
Perhaps some of Ketterdam’s citizens truly believe in the god of commerce and industry. To Kaz it seems a lot more performative than anything else.
Ara Vana seems different to him, but then again, she also serves in a house of worship. If Kaz ever bothered to get to know one of the servants of the chapels in his own backyard, perhaps he’d find similarly devout beings.
Perhaps not.
Kaz may not follow her faith, but he at least respects that Ara Vana seems to be genuine in them.
He strolls alongside her through her city’s streets, cane moving in tandem as he walks as another limb. His gaze studies the area discreetly, soaking it in as he does any place. Entrances and exits, windows and ledges. Where secrets may hide and what shadows float at night. He notes how the people move and look, what gazes stare upon their faces and what animals scurry through the streets for scraps. Where it looks like power might congeal and how the outskirts feed into those paths. It’s a map of movement, intersecting to form a place of pleasantry or potential battlefield. He never forgets the latter, no matter how quiet the former.
His own voice is raspy, like a bag of broken marble pieces jostling together, leftover from what’s been used to make his exterior. It’s never been called particularly pleasant to hear, adding fuel to those who consider him made of demon fire, but it’s low and not threatening when conversing with her.]
Sounds like what most who have a home do, doesn’t it? There are layers within any society, units that start large or small and grow in one or the other direction. How stunted those rings of expansion are varies, depending on the person and situation. I’d say it’s less paradoxical and more reciprocal, since usually, the larger community around a home still impacts what goes on inside to some degree or another, and vice versa.
[His life and experiences in Ketterdam are extremely influenced by the city’s values and norms, and it bleeds through to his smaller family unit in the Slat, which in turn impacts how they interact with Ketterdam. Even so, there’s room for some individuality, as his home in the Slat is very different from a rich mercher’s home, and while both overlap in some ways due to sharing parts of the Ketterdam experience, they don’t in others.]
And just like the larger world changes, so does any parallel world and the person or persons within it can.
[He glances over, quirking up an eyebrow.]
Has your temple’s faith changed much over the years?
[ They walk next to each other in a companionable quiet that isn’t total silence, the way total silence eats and devours and disrupts, but filled with the sounds of life. Breathing, his, hers. The gentle thud of his cane and their uneven strides, hers slow by default, his keeping up by willpower alone. She thinks, he isn’t the type to back down, even if given the chance. It might be so, the chance is no opportunity to him, but mockery. She watches him out the corner of her eye, the dark palette of his clothes making him blend into the Edonian night easily, while her dark grey robes do the same, only the lighter hem of her undergarments drawing pale lines near the ground, around her sandal-clad feet. No one else in the whole empire are allowed to wear these particular shades of grey. They’re sacred. They sanctify the person wearing them.
Protection, in a way. Recognition, in another.
Darker hues are strongly associated with the mythological darkness in her faith, it is associated with permanent death, with destruction and with evil, though evil is a many-nuanced thing. When he wears it, however, she thinks – the darkness has found a star and the star wears it, so that it must submit. It must bow down. It must be backdrop, not foreground.
Ara Vana likes that. She likes him, and while she feels with many people, since Gharan – few have resonated. In that, the silence has been a lonely place. Something different from the homes he is talking about, the places where one is not just at ease and safe, but not alone and that is what sets it apart from the larger world.
It makes Ara Vana wonder whether she has made the larger world her home for too long, her duties and her role in her community, at the temple and in the streets, but carved out no real safe space for herself. The Mountain Mother is supposed to fulfil that role, but the Mountain Mother let people have each other.
And for a while, Ara Vana had. But as with everything, having is a temporary notion. She swallows hard once and looks at him as he asks his question, meets his raised eyebrow with a twist of her mouth that shows her displeasure. How much she can tell him, she isn’t sure, but since they won’t listen to her within the temple institution, maybe she must look out. Maybe she must look to the stars. Looking straight ahead again, she says, slowly, the darkness of her own voice matching his: ]
It used to be steady like the drum. One beat always expecting the next, following certain patterns and rhythms. Recognisable, even when the melody changed. The past few years…. [ She can’t make herself talk about the Companion priestess behind her back, even as she knows what she is doing is wrong and against the Goddess’ wishes. She is still too faithful to the only home she knows. ] The only problem with our beliefs is that they are dictated by human hands and human hands err.
[ She knows this intimately as a scribe to the temple, chronicling the myths and legends, the laws. She knows that one mistake in the writing can change the meaning of a paragraph, a whole piece. She knows additions can say more about the scribe making them than about the Mountain Mother’s history.
As she knows that removing a whole sacred ritual from the book is a woman’s doing, not the Goddess’. Ara Vana may not have joined the priestesses’ ranks with the ambition of becoming Companion herself, though with time, she decided she would see it as an honour to be chosen, but neither is she the petty girl who simply wanted to own herself, at whatever cost.
She believes now. To see someone who does not… To see her control the very direction they’re steering in? It belittles and belies everything Ara Vana believes in. ]
[There is little about Kaz Brekker that isn’t manufactured, right down to the surname he stripped off the side of a machinery piece. A crow might be his calling card, but for animals of legend, he’s resonated with that of a griffin. Not because of the animal parts themselves per say, but rather, because of the concept of picking parts of a being that would be of the most use, and molding them together to make something more. For a long time Kaz had thought he’d left behind everything he’d once known in Ketterdam’s harbor once rising from death’s barge. That he was nothing but picked up parts left scattered in the streets, elements he fit and molded about himself that might not have healed properly but served him well. Ketterdam herself is his mother, profit his father, and they combined to craft a crooked man whose sharp edges none dared touch for how harsh they cut.
He hadn’t set out to found a family. Kaz had spent several years on the streets alone as a child, content to survive without ever having anything else to lose. It was only at twelve when he saw the man responsible for his family’s death, saw the enormity of what he was up against, that Kaz set out to form an army. He found those with talents that were being squandered, he listened to shadows that others let slip away, he put a knife in the hands of those who were hurt and taught them to be dangerous themselves. He renovated a building so it did not leak and provided safety in which to sleep. All of this he did with revenge in his mind.
Somewhere along the way, he found people who believed in him for more than that.
He found people whom he had reason to live for more, too.
It doesn’t strip away the petty spite for him, but he’s learned how to bend his angles to not shed the blood of those for whom he cares. Even if his Crows, those he’s closest with, have spread their wings to stretch out beyond him these days, he carries them all with him. He has new fledglings in his nest, he has a whole city to take back and distribute power within. A country, even. Perhaps more than one. Miles to go, brick by brick, a never ending fight. He doesn’t know what he might do if he stops. He doesn’t think he can now.
It isn’t how he’s made.
He notes the tone change in her voice when she speaks.]
That they do, Priestess. Hands err, they fumble. They take practice working with, and not many find the time. And that’s being charitable, thinking only on the people who let things slip by accident.
[He’s been asking questions of her, both out of genuine curiosity to know the area better from her perspective and learn about her, and because Kaz’s default is often to focus on anyone other than himself in discourse. He can tell though that this is a topic that is weighing on her heart, from her expression and the vague details she shares. It brings about a protective flash within him, the familiar spark of his ever-burning inner flame to not let people stand alone like he had so long ago. He likes her own fire, even if she has a much more gentle surface manner in wielding it.]
Often the best way to steal a man’s coin purse is to tell him you’re after what’s in his other pocket. [He raises a shoulder in a shrug, a little stiff from the long day. He can't wait to wash some of the grime away, at least that which settles on the surface.] Not that I’m attributing any malice to your people, and sometimes, changes that come from mistakes aren’t for the worse. Just in a larger sense, I’ve come across enough times where people feigned ignorance or ineptitude when there’s something more beneath it.
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no subject
The largest cathedral in Ketterdam was known as the Church of Barter, built on the plan of the god Ghezen’s hand. The cathedral itself sat upon the great palm, each of its five extended fingers accented with smaller chapels at each fingertip. To reach the top of the cathedral one has to head upwards through a variety of chapels stacked on top of one another like sweetened cake fillings, each commissioned by a separate wealthy merchant family, each preening like peacocks over their placement being higher than another.
Perhaps some of Ketterdam’s citizens truly believe in the god of commerce and industry. To Kaz it seems a lot more performative than anything else.
Ara Vana seems different to him, but then again, she also serves in a house of worship. If Kaz ever bothered to get to know one of the servants of the chapels in his own backyard, perhaps he’d find similarly devout beings.
Perhaps not.
Kaz may not follow her faith, but he at least respects that Ara Vana seems to be genuine in them.
He strolls alongside her through her city’s streets, cane moving in tandem as he walks as another limb. His gaze studies the area discreetly, soaking it in as he does any place. Entrances and exits, windows and ledges. Where secrets may hide and what shadows float at night. He notes how the people move and look, what gazes stare upon their faces and what animals scurry through the streets for scraps. Where it looks like power might congeal and how the outskirts feed into those paths. It’s a map of movement, intersecting to form a place of pleasantry or potential battlefield. He never forgets the latter, no matter how quiet the former.
His own voice is raspy, like a bag of broken marble pieces jostling together, leftover from what’s been used to make his exterior. It’s never been called particularly pleasant to hear, adding fuel to those who consider him made of demon fire, but it’s low and not threatening when conversing with her.]
Sounds like what most who have a home do, doesn’t it? There are layers within any society, units that start large or small and grow in one or the other direction. How stunted those rings of expansion are varies, depending on the person and situation. I’d say it’s less paradoxical and more reciprocal, since usually, the larger community around a home still impacts what goes on inside to some degree or another, and vice versa.
[His life and experiences in Ketterdam are extremely influenced by the city’s values and norms, and it bleeds through to his smaller family unit in the Slat, which in turn impacts how they interact with Ketterdam. Even so, there’s room for some individuality, as his home in the Slat is very different from a rich mercher’s home, and while both overlap in some ways due to sharing parts of the Ketterdam experience, they don’t in others.]
And just like the larger world changes, so does any parallel world and the person or persons within it can.
[He glances over, quirking up an eyebrow.]
Has your temple’s faith changed much over the years?
no subject
Protection, in a way. Recognition, in another.
Darker hues are strongly associated with the mythological darkness in her faith, it is associated with permanent death, with destruction and with evil, though evil is a many-nuanced thing. When he wears it, however, she thinks – the darkness has found a star and the star wears it, so that it must submit. It must bow down. It must be backdrop, not foreground.
Ara Vana likes that. She likes him, and while she feels with many people, since Gharan – few have resonated. In that, the silence has been a lonely place. Something different from the homes he is talking about, the places where one is not just at ease and safe, but not alone and that is what sets it apart from the larger world.
It makes Ara Vana wonder whether she has made the larger world her home for too long, her duties and her role in her community, at the temple and in the streets, but carved out no real safe space for herself. The Mountain Mother is supposed to fulfil that role, but the Mountain Mother let people have each other.
And for a while, Ara Vana had. But as with everything, having is a temporary notion. She swallows hard once and looks at him as he asks his question, meets his raised eyebrow with a twist of her mouth that shows her displeasure. How much she can tell him, she isn’t sure, but since they won’t listen to her within the temple institution, maybe she must look out. Maybe she must look to the stars. Looking straight ahead again, she says, slowly, the darkness of her own voice matching his: ]
It used to be steady like the drum. One beat always expecting the next, following certain patterns and rhythms. Recognisable, even when the melody changed. The past few years…. [ She can’t make herself talk about the Companion priestess behind her back, even as she knows what she is doing is wrong and against the Goddess’ wishes. She is still too faithful to the only home she knows. ] The only problem with our beliefs is that they are dictated by human hands and human hands err.
[ She knows this intimately as a scribe to the temple, chronicling the myths and legends, the laws. She knows that one mistake in the writing can change the meaning of a paragraph, a whole piece. She knows additions can say more about the scribe making them than about the Mountain Mother’s history.
As she knows that removing a whole sacred ritual from the book is a woman’s doing, not the Goddess’. Ara Vana may not have joined the priestesses’ ranks with the ambition of becoming Companion herself, though with time, she decided she would see it as an honour to be chosen, but neither is she the petty girl who simply wanted to own herself, at whatever cost.
She believes now. To see someone who does not… To see her control the very direction they’re steering in? It belittles and belies everything Ara Vana believes in. ]
no subject
He hadn’t set out to found a family. Kaz had spent several years on the streets alone as a child, content to survive without ever having anything else to lose. It was only at twelve when he saw the man responsible for his family’s death, saw the enormity of what he was up against, that Kaz set out to form an army. He found those with talents that were being squandered, he listened to shadows that others let slip away, he put a knife in the hands of those who were hurt and taught them to be dangerous themselves. He renovated a building so it did not leak and provided safety in which to sleep. All of this he did with revenge in his mind.
Somewhere along the way, he found people who believed in him for more than that.
He found people whom he had reason to live for more, too.
It doesn’t strip away the petty spite for him, but he’s learned how to bend his angles to not shed the blood of those for whom he cares. Even if his Crows, those he’s closest with, have spread their wings to stretch out beyond him these days, he carries them all with him. He has new fledglings in his nest, he has a whole city to take back and distribute power within. A country, even. Perhaps more than one. Miles to go, brick by brick, a never ending fight. He doesn’t know what he might do if he stops. He doesn’t think he can now.
It isn’t how he’s made.
He notes the tone change in her voice when she speaks.]
That they do, Priestess. Hands err, they fumble. They take practice working with, and not many find the time. And that’s being charitable, thinking only on the people who let things slip by accident.
[He’s been asking questions of her, both out of genuine curiosity to know the area better from her perspective and learn about her, and because Kaz’s default is often to focus on anyone other than himself in discourse. He can tell though that this is a topic that is weighing on her heart, from her expression and the vague details she shares. It brings about a protective flash within him, the familiar spark of his ever-burning inner flame to not let people stand alone like he had so long ago. He likes her own fire, even if she has a much more gentle surface manner in wielding it.]
Often the best way to steal a man’s coin purse is to tell him you’re after what’s in his other pocket. [He raises a shoulder in a shrug, a little stiff from the long day. He can't wait to wash some of the grime away, at least that which settles on the surface.] Not that I’m attributing any malice to your people, and sometimes, changes that come from mistakes aren’t for the worse. Just in a larger sense, I’ve come across enough times where people feigned ignorance or ineptitude when there’s something more beneath it.