an attempt to chronicle all of Morgan's lives -- or rather, all of her past lives. These will be the lives that are "static" i.e., exist prior to her incarnation in any game I play her in, at least in the WoD universe.
Morhosyn Tymestyl -- The Wild Rose of Summer, Lady of House Fiona aka: the first life.
Once upon a time, there was a faerie lady, sometimes called The Wild Rose, though she called herself Morhosyn... She was brave and beautiful, a skilled warrior, a superb lover and a talented artist. She sought excellence in all things and never backed down from a challenge -- there was no foe she was unwilling to meet, no battle from which she would run and no feeling from which she shrank. There was, to the Wild Rose, no greater evil than to run from the truth of oneself. Of all the things in the world, the Wild Rose wanted one thing more than anything else: she wanted to fall in love. No, not the tedious, pedestrian flings that passed for love among most nor did she want political love or the love of a friend. No, Morhosyn wanted the kind of love that stories were written about, the kind of love that songs were sung about. She wanted a romance so grand that it would be sung about and told in tales for generations. Unfortunately for the Lady Morhosyn, in addition to being brave and beautiful and talented, like many fae, she was also incredibly vain. She saw no one more beautiful, no one more talented and no one more courageous than herself in all of the land. No one could measure up to her and thus -- no one could win her heart. Many tried and some even came close but still, Morhosyn saw herself as above them and every romance turned quickly into a rivalry and in a heart where endless comparison has taken root, no love can truly grow. She had many friends and she still took lovers, trysts and dalliances and torpid love affairs that faded all too fast... Or were only ever about meeting base physical needs. Never did she find what she was looking for. Growing frustrated with the offerings of her own land, Morhosyn sought to find love elsewhere. Leaving the land of Faerie behind, she ventured to the world of mortals, seeking someone who -- if nothing else -- could acknowledge her glory and give her the adoration she thought might bring her joy. Many years passed and Morhosyn whiled away her time with many mortal lovers, breaking down their barriers and making them fall in love with her again and again, though every time she tired of them quickly and sent them on their way -- broken, empty and used. She was beginning to believe that she might never find her Beloved. It was in the depths of winter that something happened the Lady had never even considered: someone got revenge.
The trail of broken mortals that had been pricked by the thorns of the Wild Rose was long and bloody -- and even those with whom she'd had no dalliance were hurt by her capricious ways; children and spouses and friends who watched their loved ones wither, like plants with too little water or sun. It was one such loved one -- a child -- that sought to avenge herself against this tempest of briars which had turned her father into a broken shell of himself. She sought out magics and powers with which she might avenge herself against the monster who had destroyed her life. The Child was not magically talented nor was she particularly clever, but she did not need to be, for it was not only mortals whom the Wild Rosed had pricked and left behind bleeding and scarred. There was another Fae, the first of Morhosyn's loves, The Lady Caria Blackthorn. Long ago, the pair had been inseparable, enamored with one another for ages and though at first, their competition was playful, it grew into something far darker and more dangerous. For both Lady Morhosyn and Lady Caria were vain and both considered herself better than her partner -- more beautiful, more talented, more courageous... And so, love became rivalry and rivalry became the most bitter of hatred. With knowledge of Morhosyn's True Name and her Banes, Caria plotted the downfall of her former lover, using the mortal Child to her advantage -- for Morhosyn would never suspect such a creature capable of treachery, especially not one so foul. The Child caught Morhosyn, calling her out by her many Names and bound her up in a circle of salt and iron filings, binding her arms and legs with ropes woven from green hazel sticks and the thorny vines of roses -- grown by the sea and harvested beneath a stormy sky, just as the other Faerie had instructed her. And so, Morhosyn was trapped, helpless as a mortal babe, far from home and far from any who might seek to help her...
Many years passed and the Child grew into a woman. Every month, she added new ropes to Morhosyn's bonds and every month she refreshed the circle of salt and iron filings... And gradually, Morhosyn became resigned to her fate. She would be trapped here forever -- or at least, as long as the last bits of her magic held out. The Child didn't seek to kill her but eventually, it would happen. Eventually, the iron, salt, hazel and briars would complete their task and she would be no more than a memory on the wind. Eventually, the Child disappeared. Whether she was killed or simply ran away, Morhosyn could not know. And so, she was left utterly alone, so covered in thorns that even if it weren't for their magic, she couldn't have hoped to move...
It was what should've been the longest day of summer when Gwynn found the dilapidated cottage. It had been a long journey through the wilderness and when the sky had opened up overhead, he had been desperate for shelter. The lightning crackled overhead, bright and brilliant and it illuminated the shape against the moors -- a cottage with half-collapsed thatched roof and sagging walls. It would, he decided, be better than nothing and ducked inside. The cottage was dark inside and smelled powerfully of something that the traveller thought might have been blood, which set him on guard -- perhaps he might've been better off braving the storm... His eyes -- the blue of a cloudless sky at midday -- scanned the room, looking for the source of the stench and found, rusted to the floor... A circle drawn on the floor from a mix of iron filings and long ago crystallized salt. This was strange -- what was such a thing doing here? Was it the source of the iron smell? Was it in fact, not blood at all? But something lay at the center of the circle, what Gwynn took at first to be a pile of thorns and dead branches... Until he saw the long strands of copper hair intertwined with the plant life... And beneath that, pale white skin, covered in freckles, open cuts and scars. He cried out in alarm, shocked to see a body wrapped up in all those briars. The thorns had long since sunk into the flesh of whatever poor being laid there. He saw the briars begin to move and nearly jumped back in terror -- but he saw that it was only the figure drawing breath. Weak, pained breaths. Gwynn was sure that whoever was trapped in that circle, wrapped in those thorny ropes could not be human -- no human could survive something like that...And who would do such a thing to a human, anyway? No, it was certain that this was no human -- this was cleary one of the Tylwyth Teg, one of the fair folk. The iron filings and salt certainly made that much clear... And he knew that the fair folk were dangerous, he should certainly leave this cottage as quickly as possible for even if he freed this thing, it might hold him responsible for its imprisonment... Or if another one of its kind was responsible for its imprisonment, it might strike him with a bane as powerful (or moreso) than whatever boon he may gain by freeing it... But Gwynn was, at his heart, a kind person -- not gentle, no. But kind in the way that few people ever are... And it was clear that this faerie was suffering a great deal. The rattling breaths it drew in, the wounds that covered its skin... It stirred within him a powerful sense of compassion. He too had been trapped. He too had been tormented and he could not, in good conscience, leave without freeing the trapped faerie. First, he broke the circle -- stomping on the rust and salt, dragging it across the decaying floorboards until there was a clear path through it. It wouldn't do any good to get those briars off and leave the thing trapped inside that circle... And then, he set himself to the harder task: removing the vines. They were laid on heavy and the vines themselves were thick enough that he would have to cut them apart if he had any hope of removing them at all...
And so, Gwynn the Wanderer freed Morhosyn the Wild Rose from her bondage -- carefully peeling the years of thorns and hazel from her weakened and aching body. For a brief moment, the faerie considered striking out at this mortal, so full of anger and so long held captive that she no longer knew sense...But the moment she rose to her feet, intent on tearing into the foolish creature, her legs gave out beneath her and she crashed to the ground. Sense was not the only thing that Morhosyn lacked -- her years of captivity, cut off from the source of her magic, had weakened her body to near the point of death and even now, the effect of the Child's cruel bindings was upon Morhosyn. Even now, she could not access the powers which made her so formiddible in the past. She was, in all ways that mattered, at least for the moment, a mortal. It would take two summers for her to return to her former glory -- for her magic to return to her bones and fill her with glamour once again. And as the seasons passed, she lived alongside her rescuer. At first, because she had no choice, because she was too weak to care for herself, too weak to strike out on her own... But she found that a powerful fondness grew in her for Gwynn... And by the time she could have left, by the time she could have returned to Arcadia and gotten her vengeance on Caria -- for who else could have supplied the Child with such Names -- she found very little desire to do so, content to travel the countryside with Gwynn as his wife.
Morhosyn would not remain content to play mortal wife forever, however. She found herself longing for her home, found herself longing for those with whom she had shared bonds of friendship and family -- she even longed for those rivalries she had that were not Caria. And though she could have easily left him, or easily made of Gwynn a mere pet, a plaything... Morhosyn discovered that she couldn't bring herself to do so. She had, all this time, wanted someone who adored her and paid to her every compliment and saw her as the splendid being she was... And somehow, Gwynn had seen this in her even when she was at her weakest. And he had saved her life -- which meant she could not simply make him her toy. She owed him. He had not yet asked for the favor she had promised him, he had asked very little of her, in truth. Morhosyn wanted to give him something grander -- something worthy of the one who had finally tamed the Wild Rose. She wanted to make him her equal. The threads of fate do not take well to being prodded or manipulated, even in the most delicate of ways and what Morhosyn would attempt was not delicate in the least. Names and natures and Fates had always been...Well, not her best area. Morhosyn was beautiful and brave but she was not terribly clever. Oh, she was intelligent enough to get by, but she was not clever enough to play with fate and come out unscathed... Worse yet, there was no trace of magic upon Gwynn -- he was utterly and wholly mortal, with no fate on the horizon which lead him to some altered existence. He was meant to live and to die a normal human life. Prideful, selfish and desperately in love, Morhosyn stole this fate from him, intertwining it with her own so that as long as she lived he would live as well...And as long as he lived, she too would survive. Inextricably, their fates were knotted together in a snarl that could not be unbound. But Morhosyn had no idea the depth of the thing she had done, nor did Gwynn. All that they knew was that they were happy together, that at last they had found what felt like the other half of their soul....And in Morhosyn's eyes, a love worth telling tales of until the end of time. For some time, many decades, they were happy and completely unaware of the storm that was brewing on the horizon, for this was, after all, the dark ages, and the order of the world would soon be changed in such a way that what they had been in these happy days of sunlight and love could never be recovered.
The Lady Caria Blackthorn was not one with whom it was recommended to trifle -- beautiful, clever as a cat and cruel as a viper, the Lady Blackthorn had long ago had her heart trampled and, had for many decades, thought her vengeance had been served. The Lady Morhosyn had not shown herself in court in an age and no sign of her was seen anywhere. Lady Blackthorn sat smug in the knowledge that her rival, her former lover, had been destroyed -- wasting away to nothing bound in her bane and trapped alone in a lonely cottage far from the rest of the world... And so, when Lady Morhosyn reappeared, Caria had never felt so great a rage. And on her arm... A man of such beauty that it made Caria sick. She should have been dead! She should have died alone and trapped in the human world. Yet here she was! Thriving! Not only thriving but to all appearances, having achieved her greatest goal! It wasn't fair. It wasn't right! Here she was -- more beautiful, more clever, more courageous, more powerful and far more deserving love -- alone! Alone when Morhosyn had a beautiful man on her arm. One whom Caria had never seen. One that... no one had ever seen before. The two of the glowed when they were near each other -- a brilliant beacon of the purest love and adoration. They looked at each other with a simpering affection that made Caria's already bitter heart grow downright poisonous. Lady Morhosyn would not get away with this.
The Lady Caria Blackthorn endeavored to steal away from Morhosyn that which was rightfully hers and that to which she was bound -- she sought to make Gwynn her own, to break whatever contract bound them and make him hers. She didn't much care about Gwynn, truth be told, but that was not the point of taking him. The point of it was to hurt Morhosyn. To show that she, Caria, was still Morhosyn's better. That anything Morhosyn had, she could take -- because it should be hers in the first place and that Morhosyn had no hope of ever outshining her. It was even easier for Caria than she had expected as Morhosyn seemed to have almost no interest in pursuing their old rivalry, caught up in reconnecting with lost friends and lost family... And even making friends of lovers past... Ignoring Caria, of course, much to her chagrin. Perhaps, had the depths of their hatred for one another not been so deep, what happened next may not have ocurred. But the tale is set in stone now and cannot be changed...
When Lady Blackthorn stole Gwynn, it caused an uproar -- she had been cowardly and worst of all, she had been sloppy enough to get caught. Petitioning those of much higher station than her, Morhosyn had Lady Blackthorn exiled, banished to never return... And her wish was granted, so great was the evidence that Caria had left against her. Once again, the Lady Morhosyn and Gwynn were happy together. They lived in relative peace, forging a life with each other in the faerie courts. This was not to last.
She had never felt a pain this intense before, not even when she had been bound before had anything hurt like this. Her body was wracked with pain, spasming and jerking wildly. Something was very, very wrong. She railed desperately against the sensation -- against what felt like being ripped in two at the very core of her being, at the very core of her existence. Morhosyn screamed as she was remade as her fundamental nature was changed. Caria had intended to take away every last bit of what made Morhosyn Fae. She had discovered how Gwynn had come to be, how Morhosyn had changed his nature, to make him Fae instead of mortal and it was... Well, she thought the reverse was an excellent idea. The Naming was...difficult, far more difficult than she had expected it to be -- unmaking Morhosyn and tearing her being asunder and stealing all of her glamour was something that Caria could not quite do. So she settled for what she could do -- to separate that faerie soul from its body and set it wandering. To seal away the knowledge and memory of everything that Morhosyn had once been so that, should she find her way into proper existence once again, she would be forced to start over as a mortal. She couldn't bind every fate, couldn't bind every option, but she could force Morhosyn into being nothing more than a frail shadow of herself. And that would satisfy her. For now.
At the time of the Sundering, Morhosyn was still "lost" to her kinfolk, though she had again found a physical body and existed, none knew her nor could find her -- so deeply had she been changed. Gwynn would stay behind, taking the necessary steps to survive in the rapidly darkening world, hoping that he might find Morhosyn again. After all, if is still alive, then somewhere out there, she is alive as well. End The Brief Flash of Stardom: Gloria Kenner Centuries pass. The faerie soul that once had been Morhosyn Tymestyl has been lost in the deepest reaches of the Dreaming after the death of her last Changeling incarnation in 1684 -- she remembers little of herself, barely more than a fleeting dream... Gwynn has been lost as well -- whether he has stayed in the Dreaming without incarnation or been incarnated again without finding Morhosyn is unknown (and what happens to him is up to the ST.) In the year 1908, Gloria Kenner -- the first potential incarnation of Morhosyn Tymestyl in all of that time -- is born. Unlike her more modern incarnations, Gloria has no trace of Remembrance and no connection to her many, many lives across the multiverse. A particularly beautiful and charming child whose head was always in the clouds, Gloria had a lot of difficulty with her studies but little difficulty making friends. All through school she would be surrounded by a loyal group of hangers-on and, eventually, would make her way to New York -- seeking to become a stage actress and find love. Unfortunately for Gloria, she would find disaster instead. She found herself inexplicably drawn to a local gallery owner -- a startlingly beautiful woman who filled her with the most beautiful dreams, pushing her into perfecting her acting skill, pushing her into starting plays, pushing her into creating more than she had ever dreamed possible before. This woman, of course, was the Lady Caria Blackthorn -- in a new mortal guise. She had been waiting for centuries for her rival to reappear, knowing that their fates were now intertwined and that they would meet again and again. While technically, Caria was Rhapsodizing Gloria, her work was interrupted when Gloria was killed in the crossfire of prohibition violence. Dreams of Glittering Gold: Elizabeth Lockhart The year is 1945. World War Two is ending and the United States is entering a new golden period -- and in late November, Elizabeth Lockhart is born. Elizabeth is born into a well-off family -- her mother a homemaker and her father a scientist working in New Mexico on the project that became the Atomic Bomb. Elizabeth's early life is one of convenience and happiness, though she finds that she has strange dreams -- dreams that she can't explain. Sometimes, she finds herself thinking of people she's never met as though they were old friends. By the time she's a teenager, she's more at home in her dreams than she is in real life, never quite sure who she's meant to be, never quite sure who she wants to be. Elizabeth runs away to California in 1961. By 1962, she's met Caria and falls deeply, desperately in love with her and her "wife". The pair of them use her as a toy for the following three years before Elizabeth is drained by a vampire. The Short Sad Life of Maddie O'Brien Maddie O'Brien is born in the summer of 1970. Living in the Romero Hills neighborhood of Santa Marta, CA, Maddie's family is struggling deeply. The city is dying all around them and Romero Hills in particular is going to shit. There are no jobs, there is no money...And there is very, very little hope. Desperate to improve things for herself and her family, Maddie drops out of highschool to get a job working as a waitress. While working there, she meets and falls in love with a man named James Fenwick with whom she immediately moves in. Completely enamored with James, Maddie's life slowly narrows down to nothing more than being his girlfriend and she dedicates her every waking second to seeing to his "needs". She never has the chance to meet Caria in this lifetime, being Embraced by James and then dying in a Sabbat attack in 1989. Blue Ridge Mountain Tough: Morgan Kendrick Morgan Kendrick was born to Robert Kendrick and his wife, Mary-Anne Kendrick on October 25th, 1997 -- accessorizing from the moment she was born with her umbilical cord wrapped around her throat like a scarf, Morgan came into the world pale and barely breathing, smaller than she should have been and expected not to survive. But stubborn from the beginning, Morgan did what she would do many, many times over the course of her life: refuse to do what anyone told her to do. And so, she lived. By the age of five, it was clear that Morgan was going to be a nightmare for her straight-laced, Evangelical parents -- especially for her father, with aims of becoming a pastor. She was hot-headed, stubborn and eternally asking "why". When her younger sisters were born, Morgan would quickly become deeply depressed, feeling entirely unnoticed and unloved by her parents who had, up until now, been devoted to her. She struggled with the role of "big sister" at first, full of anger and jealousy at the two twin girls who now monopolized her mother's time. Robert had finally founded his Church and was rapidly building up a congregation, expecting Morgan, her mother and both of the twins to fall quickly in line with the image he sought to build. Morgan, ever stubborn, ever the individualist, did not fall in line. Having been plagued by strange and terrifying dreams for as long as Morgan could remember, she was something of a morbid child -- fascinated by fairy tales and horror stories alike, the darker the better -- and that morbidity fed into her creativity, driving her to become something of an artist...Though she'd find her true creative calling in fashion. Throughout her childhood, Morgan would spend summers at her Grandmother's house in New Orleans, finding the city to be full of endless wonders and that when she was there, her strange dreams seemed to quiet down. The claustrophobia that plagued her quieted as well and she could live her life. Unfortunately, like every incarnation of Morgan at the age of seven, things would go drastically wrong for her during a drive to an Awana meeting with her aunt Vivian. The storm, the visions, the screaming and begging for her aunt to please pull over because she didn't want to see Vivian die again... All of it would only lead to the car careening off the road and cartwheeling into the ditch -- Vivian snapping her neck as she was thrown from her seat and Morgan remaining trapped in the wet, nearly crushed sedan for eighteen hours before she was rescued. She would spend two months in the hospital, slipping in and out of consciousness as her body tried to recover from her massive injuries. It was at this time that the stress of maintaining his image as the Perfect Pastor would begin to wear on Robert Kendrick -- with his wife in mourning over the death of her sister and refusing his attentions, the pastor would turn his gaze to the only other "woman" in the house... Puberty and middle school were difficult for Morgan -- with the abuse at home and her increasingly visible "weirdness" as she drifted into goth and other alternative fashion, she was struggling to keep her head above water with her studies. The only thing that kept her from failing entirely was the threat of being kept for summer school and not being able to see her beloved Grandmother and go to the only safe haven in her life. In highschool, she would date the school quarterback -- Matthew Williams -- but the relationship would quickly deteriorate when, upon his first attempt to kiss her, Morgan's PTSD finally reared its ugly head, leading her to break his nose in her frantic attempts to push him away. When the Incident occurred in English Class when Morgan was seventeen, she was accused of cheating on Matthew... However, Morgan's father leveraged his considerable social influence in town to sweep everything under the rug -- painting a target on Matthew's back for raping the town preacher's little girl... Morgan finished highschool, but only barely scraping by. She would try multiple times to find a college that suited her and further her education, but she just couldn't find the right fit...and ended up working as receptionist for her father's church, unsure of what else to do with her life and not knowing how to support herself or leave the West Virginia town she'd grown up in. As Morgan had gotten older, her Grandmother's influence had waned -- especially as the older woman had begun to draw back from life with mortals (this due mostlyto Robert's increasing hatred of the supernatural and moves towards what he would become by the beginning of the game) and by the time she "died", Morgan hadn't seen her in over two years. When Morgan's Grandmother died, she was named the sole beneficiary to her grandmother's estate -- much to the outrage of her father. Finally seeing an opportunity to get free of what she'd been shackled to, Morgan immediately packed up to move to New Orleans and begin sorting out her grandmother's estate. |
The Many Lives of Miss
Morgan Kendrick...
