The misty chill of Ishgardian dawn finds you bleary-eyed in your bed, having woken with a start to sharp, relentless taps at your third floor window.A Gyr Abanian falcon stalks your balcony, poised to strike the glass again when it senses your thrashing and opens its beak to beckon you with its piercing shriek.A steely glint in its eye inspires your obedience and urgency as you throw wide your windows and the bird flies in, a parcel tied to its leg. Inside is a sealed missive, but the card on top slips from your grasp as the bird pecks at your knuckles, drawing blood- the card reads, "Abraxas prefers gingerbreads, please be aware; he is given to biting if not rewarded thusly."You sigh, call downstairs for a tin of gingerbread, and snatch at the parcel before the falcon is tempted to FEAST at your hand again.
You arrive at the appointed hour, having reached the grounds through a tree tunnel opening up like a maw to the east of a cul-de-sac, dense and dark in the choke of night.The air here is peculiar; alive and crackling with static, an ozone-like quality and a vague foreboding, as if you have forgotten something of grave importance or lost something precious.It sinks low in your belly as if weighted by stones.The stillness all around you bids your teeth itch, for there is a marked lack of sound, no stirring creatures, nor the whisper of wind, but a cold kind of quiet.You reach for the polished knockers on the imposing front door of the manse, hoping to banish that terrible silence with the sonorous knock of metal on wood.The door swings open, as if by a phantom command, and the emptiness of the house beckons to you.After a hard swallow, a lump of something stuck sludgy in your tightened throat like a burr, you...
>> step into the parlour <<
>> descend to the cellar <<
>> Admire the Rose Gardens Round Back <<
>> Dare to Trespass upon the Lord's Bedroom (NSFW)<<
>> Obey the Dark <<
You step lightly into the dark and dim, something drawing you just down the hall, past a corner, through another set of ornate doors carved from sturdy lacquered ebonwood and the first thing your eyes drift to is a portrait hung sentry over a grand but cold hearth.The eyes of the man depicted radiate an aloof disdain not uncommon in Ishgardian nobility, but it is the small, nearly imperceptible lilt of melancholy in the slope of his brows and the set of his mouth that arrests you most.If you hold your breath and close your eyes, a mad part of you, the long-buried self of your winsome childhood that believed all of your mother's cradle tales, hears him weep.You gaze upon it and you know this is the Lord of the house.
Vicomte D'Artagnan de Cotard
Wounded Knight | Misanthrope | Caustic Romantic
Aliases: Vidame, The Carrion Lord, The Knight of Flowers
Nameday: 32nd Sun of the 10th Umbral Moon (October 31st, Aged 32)
Race and Ethnicity: Ishgardian Elezen
Height: 7'0"
Occupation: Mortician | Funeral Director | Alchemist | Botanist
Sexuality: Pansexual, extremely heavy male lean
Gender/Pronouns: CIS Male, he/him
Languages: High Ishgardian, Classical High Coerthan, Common, Draconic
Astrology: ♏︎ ☼ | ♋︎ ☽ | ♑︎ ↑
MBTI: INTJ
Enneagram: Type I
Residence: Thornweald Grange | Pillars South End | Gardens District | Ishgard
Voice Claim: Sam Reid's Lestat
>> Perhaps a turn back would behoove you, coward <<
>> descend to the cellar <<
>> Admire the Rose Gardens Round Back <<
>> Dare to Trespass upon the Lord's Bedroom (nsfw)<<
>> Obey the Dark <<
Something insistent beckons you deeper, further into the house and you heed its call with little regard for your own sense of self-preservation.More fool you.You find the cellar door easily enough, left unlatched; an invitation.You push the door open and wander into the manor's eager maw, unaware of its teeth.Pity.As you descend the rough hewn stone steps, the stagnant air grows colder, sharper, and the fetid stench of moulder and wet sets you to sneezing as you push further into the cold, into the dark.You grope in the folds of your pockets for a light source and its glow, though dim and flickering in the oppressive black all around you, comforts you as you step around racks of wine and happen upon something that coaxes an odd, sort of sickly grin across your face.It seems you have found your prize:A well of secrets, spilled sticky-sweet across a page, blood and ink and venom.
Concerning The Lord...
Rumour and conjecture ever loom over Lord Cotard’s head like a guillotine; some consider it rather suspect that house Cotard was on the brink of utter ruin, financially and socially, before their youngest son, freshly twisted and maimed by the kiln of war, returned to Ishgard and turned their fortune around, miraculously, in less than a year.Some say a lean season of bloody conflict in Coerthas gave rise to a fruitful opportunity for D’Artagnan to refill the House coffers tenfold, abandoning their centuries-long business in florals and agriculture in a truly baffling about-face that set parlours across the Pillars aflame with gossip and conjecture, for the Little Lord soon had a chokehold on Ishgard’s burgeoning industry of death and burial.Seemingly overnight.And if that weren’t dubious enough a curiosity, some few incendiary whispers in billiards rooms and smoke-filled cardhouses gave Lord D’Artagnan a newer sobriquet, a more dangerous one, an epithet with teeth: Ishgard’s Carrion Lord, coffers stacked high as the bodies in his basement morgue.As for the rest. The truth. The details?You may need to call on him if curiosity compels you.
Hooks
Knight of FlowersBefore Ishgard fully submitted to a lean season of bitter war, its tourney culture was rich and storied. Before D'Artagnan was sent to the battlefield, he competed in tourneys under the moniker The Knight of Flowers, given his family's business in botany. Perhaps you remember tales of the young knight who fought valiantly at tourney, near undefeated, so, so many years ago.The Carrion LordSeemingly overnight, the youngest son of the Cotard family returned to Ishgard after a great family tragedy, maimed and debilitated from an incident with a wyvern. Some say he returned to a broken home, coffers pilfered barren after his older brother's defection from war. In a matter of months, House Cotard no longer grew flowers for sale, their various floral shops shuttered for good. Scandalously, cardhouse whispers indicated that Little Lord Cotard had taken an interest in mortuary science and burial rites, which soon became the new family business.But. From where did he get the first bodies he tested his alchemical formulae on? How did he establish a chokehold on Ishgard's dead seemingly overnight? Perhaps you've heard folks in the Brume whispering low about a Carrion Lord offering coin for... it's best not to say.Gentlest Caress of DeathD'Artagnan is a mortician and alchemist by trade, but by the Halonic authority vested in him care of being a retired Temple Knight Commander, he is able to conduct funeral rites, give eulogies, and direct funerals.Has he buried a beloved of yours? Though he is sour in his day-to-day, D'Artagnan takes his job as a steward of the dead very seriously, and he does soften for the grieved. Has he given you words of comfort during a wake? Has he held your hand casket-side? Does he know your beloved dead?
>> Perhaps a turn back would behoove you, coward <<
>> step into the parlour <<
>> Admire the Rose Gardens Round Back <<
>> Dare to Trespass upon the Lord's Bedroom (nsfw)<<
>> Obey the Dark <<
You decide, in a rare stroke of brilliance, that you needs must take your wanderings out of doors.You do not understand that as the heavy air in the house grows more oppressive, bearing down on you with an invisible yet crushing weight, it is the manor's way of purring low in its throat.A pity you never joined your father on his hunting trips.Else you'd acutely recognize the unmistakable rumbling of a hungry beast waiting for the perfect moment to bear down on you with its terrible jaws.But before they can snap shut, you throw wide the doors leading to the back garden and the air clears, just a bit.It is beautiful, this scene laid before you like a honeypot, lush, well-maintained, perfectly, meticulously manicured by an expert hand.The Lord's hands, you surmise.Clever little morsel.The roses are the loveliest you've seen, a rainbow of perfect blooms, untouched by blight and thriving in the cold.You rest on a wrought iron bench and admire them quietly, thankful for a moment of gentle repose.And why not?Their beauty is so arresting, you hardly notice the tendrils of shadow creeping in your wake.
Character Inspiration and Aesthetic
>> Perhaps a turn back would behoove you, coward <<
>> step into the parlour <<
>> descend to the cellar <<
>> Dare to Trespass upon the Lord's Bedroom (nsfw)<<
>> Obey the Dark <<
A tender, but persistent thrum invites you upstairs, your heart hammering in your chest as you mount each step.The boundaries of your body, the very marrow of your bones, they fight to contain something swelling within you, it is humming delight, a salacious whisper, it is a kind of kiss as your fluid steps lead you to a room at the end of the hall, the doors a pair of open arms welcoming you into a simmering hot embrace.Within is a bedroom. The most intimate room of the house, no? Sleep, repose, the comfort of personal effects lain haphazard as if recently in use.You can smell the faint jasmine lingering on the linens of the Lord's bed, as if it had known love recently.Curiosity and lust are brothers here.You run your fingertips over the thick, sinfully plush furs on his bed, and a sudden sharpness makes you recoil in pain, cradling your wrist in your hand. Something has bitten you.You look at your fingertips in disbelief.They are beaded with blood.
CW: NSFW Content
Please understand that D'Artagnan is a heavily nuanced and complicated man with multiple facets, multiple faces, a variety of dispositions, desires, and needs, which sometimes conflict and read as messy.Speaking succinctly, he leans dominant and prefers to top, but that is not a hard and fast rule.ERP is not default and never an expectation, nor a requirement. It is entirely dependent on dynamic, story beats, and plot.With him, I explore themes of caustic romance and a dense, dark, heady kind of sensuality which can and often does include BDSM and D/s dynamics.