The Telling of Siduri, the Blossomed Cast Down

A fictional character Telling. Meet Siduri.

"You want to know why they cast me out? Ha! Sit, then. Listen. Children of the Night does not tolerate mistakes—only corpses."

I was Blossomed, third in rank, my veins thick with the ichor of kings. My ship had once cut through black waters under a moonless sky, my crew silent as the dead they would soon become. I ruled the night like a shogun rules his lands—absolute, merciless. But power is a blade that cuts both ways.

"They called it 'breaking the Masquerade.' As if we are not all monsters beneath our silks."

It happened in Babylon, beneath those hanging gardens where mortals whispered of gods and demons alike. A merchant's daughter—clever thing—had caught my eye. Not for hunger, no… for conversation. She spoke of stars and tides like she had charted them herself. And I… I grew careless.

"She saw me feed."

A slip of the wrist, a splash of crimson on her pearls. Her scream was short-lived (I made sure of that), but witnesses are harder to silence than one throat. The Ladder's enforcers came before dawn. Their verdict was swift: Exile. Stripped of rank, severed from the blood-bond that had sustained me for centuries.

"Do you know what it is to wither? To feel your petals curl inward while your roots rot?"

I wandered then—a ghost in my own skin. The other factions sneered at my disgrace; even the Grave Dancers turned their masked faces away. But exile is a forge as much as it is a tomb... and fire reveals truth faster than time ever could.

Then came The Dark Masons Lodge. They found me half-mad in the ruins of an abandoned ziggurat, carving curses into stone with my fingernails.

"Siduri," the Mason-Keeper rasped, "you build or you break here."

And so I built.

Not ships now—no more proud vessels to cleave through mortal seas—but something far more enduring: secrets laid brick by brick in shadow-mortar.

The Lodge understands what Children of the Night never did: power isn't just blooming atop gilded stems; sometimes it's knowing how deep your roots can go when buried alive.

So here I remain among these stonemasons of eternity—bitter? Yes.
Cynical? Always.
But free? Ah… perhaps freer than I ever was before.

Would I return if given choice?
Let me answer thus:

A blossom plucked does not regrow.
A name struck from scrolls cannot be rewritten.
And this scar across my palm where they burned away my sigil?

It aches less each night... but never fades entirely.

Now leave me be — these stones won't carve themselves,
and unlike men or vampires,
they at least keep their promises."

Visual

Fierce Babylonian captain with olive skin drained to moonlit pallor, black hair cropped short and wind-tangled, dark kohl-rimmed eyes full of cynical fire, layered silk robes over a sailor's wiry frame, scarred palm where her sigil was burned away.

Faction: Children of the Night · View the Gallery · Listen in the Songbook