WHITE SNOW, BLACK STEEL Chapter One: The Runaway Train
‘Fear no more the heat o’ th’ sun Nor the furious winters’ rages; Thou thy worldly task hast done, Home art gone, and ta'en thy wages. Golden lads and girls all must, As chimney-sweepers, come to dust….’
Sunday March 27th @ 3:30pm EST Liminal Station IV, Garlemald (Instance 1) Timeline: Roughly 1-2 weeks before before 6.0 MSQ event “A Frosty Reception”
Garlemald lays in a blackened husk. What was once prosperious villages have given to blankets of frost and reclaimed by the wilderness. The agents of STELLAE have arrived in Ad Turres Albas, a suburbian town nestled by the main railroad into the capital. A frozen ghost town, the residence seemingly spirited away. The agents head towards the Station to see if they can find any of the missing residence.
OOC Info: We are still accepting new members if you’re interested in joining this story line, send me a DM if you’d like to join us. Please have Garlemald unlocked.
I wonder, and I seethe. The fury keeps me warm - She keeps me warm - but I wonder.Will it feel any better for him? For my Wolf. When he stands in the snow, overlooking the corpses of the men who took everything from him, one day - the people who carved himout - will it feel any better?
You’re certainly no less hollow.
You have, perhaps, less to hold onto, than before.
Before, you had the fury. The goal. The pursuit. Hunger.
Now… it’s just the howling wind, and the fury whose fire is all that’s left in the hollow places. Resentment and anger, where soft, feathered things once dwelt.
Like this place - where the intensity of the cold freezes a body so swiftly that there is no hope of recovery. A vast, frozen wasteland painted in final moments of horror and pain… forever icebound, and on display.
A graveyard in which the dead scream at you silently.
They will never know peace.
Sure, they deserved it… but it doesn’t bring back those they slaughtered in kind. I, too, carry frozen moments in time within me. Moments of horror, and agony. Humiliation, and loss. An entire family. A culture.
Lost.All of it lost - when I die, it will all be gone, becauseIwill never have children. Nor a… legacy of any sort.
There is some bitter joy in that, at least, the Garleans now know a cultural extinction as well. They, too, knew the taste of hopelessness and terror that they inflicted on so very much of this star. Not just to me, no. I fought for my family and lost… like so very many others.
I don’t often care about others, anymore… but I hope we all have less nightmares, now.
I wonder, and I seethe. The fury keeps me warm - She keeps me warm - but I wonder.Will it feel any better for him? For my Wolf. When he stands in the snow, overlooking the corpses of the men who took everything from him, one day - the people who carved himout - will it feel any better?
You’re certainly no less hollow.
You have, perhaps, less to hold onto, than before.
Before, you had the fury. The goal. The pursuit. Hunger.
Now… it’s just the howling wind, and the fury whose fire is all that’s left in the hollow places. Resentment and anger, where soft, feathered things once dwelt.
Like this place - where the intensity of the cold freezes a body so swiftly that there is no hope of recovery. A vast, frozen wasteland painted in final moments of horror and pain… forever icebound, and on display.
A graveyard in which the dead scream at you silently.
They will never know peace.
Sure, they deserved it… but it doesn’t bring back those they slaughtered in kind. I, too, carry frozen moments in time within me. Moments of horror, and agony. Humiliation, and loss. An entire family. A culture.
Lost.All of it lost - when I die, it will all be gone, becauseIwill never have children. Nor a… legacy of any sort.
There is some bitter joy in that, at least, the Garleans now know a cultural extinction as well. They, too, knew the taste of hopelessness and terror that they inflicted on so very much of this star. Not just to me, no. I fought for my family and lost… like so very many others.
I don’t often care about others, anymore… but I hope we all have less nightmares, now.
I wonder, and I seethe. The fury keeps me warm - She keeps me warm - but I wonder.Will it feel any better for him? For my Wolf. When he stands in the snow, overlooking the corpses of the men who took everything from him, one day - the people who carved himout - will it feel any better?
You’re certainly no less hollow.
You have, perhaps, less to hold onto, than before.
Before, you had the fury. The goal. The pursuit. Hunger.
Now… it’s just the howling wind, and the fury whose fire is all that’s left in the hollow places. Resentment and anger, where soft, feathered things once dwelt.
Like this place - where the intensity of the cold freezes a body so swiftly that there is no hope of recovery. A vast, frozen wasteland painted in final moments of horror and pain… forever icebound, and on display.
A graveyard in which the dead scream at you silently.
They will never know peace.
Sure, they deserved it… but it doesn’t bring back those they slaughtered in kind. I, too, carry frozen moments in time within me. Moments of horror, and agony. Humiliation, and loss. An entire family. A culture.
Lost.All of it lost - when I die, it will all be gone, becauseIwill never have children. Nor a… legacy of any sort.
There is some bitter joy in that, at least, the Garleans now know a cultural extinction as well. They, too, knew the taste of hopelessness and terror that they inflicted on so very much of this star. Not just to me, no. I fought for my family and lost… like so very many others.
I don’t often care about others, anymore… but I hope we all have less nightmares, now.
A very old post of mine from 3.0 with screenshots of Garlean titles from the Great Gubal Library has gained quite a lot of notes recently. The information in that post has now been outdated for some time, and also contained some errors. It’s a bit annoying that the way Tumblr works means I can’t really edit the original post in a meaningful way so I thought I’d make a new and more comprehensive one instead, with the relevant page from the lore book.
If you want a more simple reference, the FF Wiki’s page on Garlemald has a written list, but I wanted to post this as it contains some additional information not listed on the wiki.
