Sgrios Mass: The Haunted Mansion of Loures
The Temuairian capitol of Loures is home to thousands
of Mundanes and a handful of lucky Aislings. Mingled together are the
living, the legends and the living legends. Here we can find an exciting
assortment of lifestyles, from the portly noble to the gaunt beggars.
Dotted along the cobbled streets are every manor of housing, from squats
and hovels to garish mansions and estates. Despite the wild contrast
between prosperity and poverty, there stands, to this day, one empty
manor along the wealthiest boulevard that not even the lowliest urchin
in the coldest days of winter would dare to occupy.
For, it is known to all that this home is haunted by
the ghost of a lover twice scorned; once in life and once in death.
During her life the house was a paradise; a kingdom in which all
material wishes were granted and the luxuries of the land were
experienced in all their splendor. Even the dreamer must awaken to
reality eventually, though, and it was revealed that her husband -- an
esteemed merchant trader -- had been most unfaithful to her when he was
killed in a duel with his paramour's husband. Alone and without means to
maintain the lifestyle of which she had grown accustomed, she turned
the blade of a silver dagger to her breast and ended her life in a fit
of anger and resentment.
Her spirit refused to leave the halls, and seasons
rolled by without anyone willing to cohabitate with her hostile antics.
It was during a brutal storm that a commoner sought refuge in the
mansion. Just until the rain clears, he told himself as he rubbed his
frigid fingers together. It didn't take long for the ghost of the
spurned lover to come upon him, as she intimately felt the halls as an
extension of her form; the house taking the place of the body. But
looking upon this broken man she felt not anger, but pity and bade him
to stay. And so he did, living happily in the home, bringing it back to
glory with his hands skilled with carpentry and the labors of a working
class life. But one day he failed to return - the halls remained empty.
Days passed to double-moons, passed again to deochs. With each cycle the
spirit grew fierce and angry, for she had once more been abandoned.
Love can make slaves of us. When we fail to speak as
the masters of our emotions, we are then in thier control. Abandoned, in
this story, is just a matter of perception. For, the man did, indeed,
love the spirit and he cared for the manor as he would have cared for
her warm body should she have been alive. But he did not abandon her,
nay. When the guards took notice of his residency in the house which was
known to be a possession of the kingdom, having no heir to inherit it,
he was detained and imprisoned. For he, too, was broken hearted and died
a lonely, pitiful death in the cells beneath the castle.
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