Rerun Notes + Interview
ooc. I wrote Salem in TOA from 2020 to 2022, so it's been quite a few years now. I know there are still some muns/muses in the group who interacted with him back then, but I'm resetting all relationships. Salem has just arrived at the monastery after fleeing Jugdral to escape the continued hostility against those once affiliated with the Church of Loptous. At the moment, he is a Golden Deer student because he desires some sort of structure and guidance in his life, but I intend to one day have him become comfortable enough with his dark magic again to be a professor.
For those of you who remember my Salem from ye Olde Days, I've changed my approach to writing him and my interest has shifted to the horror of dark magic use (inspired in part by Oosawa's depictions of what dark magic does to the victim's body), Salem's involvement in the atrocities committed by the Church of Loptous across Jugdral, the torture and stake-burning inflicted upon members of the Church in turn, and the desire to atone for his past sins, which is often at odds with his defensiveness and suspicion toward others.
I've written a completely new interview that gives a snapshot of how I intend to write him in TOA:
Scream. Anguish so that our kin may cease theirs, for their voices have clamored endlessly in the dark since their bodies withered in your flames—
Salem lifted his chin so that the hood of his cloak peeled back the shadows over his eyes, catching the glint of something glassy boring holes through him from one corner of the inn’s shabby ale room. The hour was late, and half of the lamps hanging from the walls had long burned completely out, which allowed the man on the other side to conceal his features in the darkness. Indignation burned in Salem’s chest. He clutched his thin fingers tight around his untouched cup and soothed it with silent prayers half-twisted into curses.
It had been days since he’d set off from Jugdral. He refused to call it fleeing, but even as a hard-fought peace settled over the land, it merely blanketed the war that continued beneath it. Sellswords became hunting dogs, not fed on table scraps but the flesh of every head hacked from its neck. For the grief-stricken, the avengers, and every aimless child of war, nothing less than total eradication would make up for their loss, and the wheel of fate upended once more for the victims to become the aggressors. The church of Loptous would not - could not be allowed to survive in even the smallest of constituents, including those who had renounced their faith and the evil therein, and it didn’t matter that the new regime had forbid the continued violence of oppression. There was never any shortage of vigilantes willing to stain their own hands for the greater good.
And they were persistent. Where a land could birth rebels fearless and tenacious enough to topple an empire conceived long before they had ever been born, it was no surprise that its dogs, too, would stop at nothing to clamp their teeth around their quarry’s neck, as this one had traveled to distant lands just to corner Salem in a one-door, run-down tavern nestled within the rocky foothills of the Oghma Mountains.
The chair’s legs scraped the floor like a blade against a grindstone and Salem felt the hair on the back of his neck rise in anticipation. There were only three other guests nursing drinks around the room, and all of them knew that in a place like this, it was better to mind your own business. They kept their eyes down as the heavy footfalls of a man’s working boots crossed from one side to the other. Salem lowered his head when they stopped at his table. They were muddy, old, and bound in cloth to keep the soles on - a desperate man’s shoes, willing to buy his next meal with blood.
Scream. Scream so that your throat cannot contain it, that your mouth might be ripped apart for the sheer size of it, and then may the blood that chokes you be but a taste of our misery—
“How’s it, Father?” The man’s deep, rumbling voice produced the greeting with ominous cordiality, and Salem felt like his jaw might crack just to utter a single syllable more than what it would take to spit at his feet.
“… I am no Father to you.”
The man made a wet, guttural sound - a kind of strangled cough - and then sighed through its phlegmy tendrils.
“That so? These ol’ eyes ain’t what they used to be. Coulda sworn I seen you—“
Salem’s fingernails scraped along the sides of his tin cup. He’d made sure to strip away anything that could identify him as a priest of any faith, and dressed in drab, nondescript linens with a woolen traveling cloak to hide his face. This man couldn’t have known — couldn’t have seen anything. Salem eyed his ankles, then the knees of his shabby trousers, assessing whether he had the leverage to hook one of his feet around them and throw the man to the ground. Then he could leap over him to the door to make his escape. Out there in the woods, without a witness to the deed, he wouldn’t be afraid to call on his talents if he had to.
The man grumbled again, then hacked something thick and shiny onto the floor.
“Don’t s’pose I’ve got the wrong man now, have I?” He sniffed, and Salem remembered a girl had said to him many years ago that people like him smelled funny. She could smell the dark god’s blessing in his blood, an ashy sweetness unknown to the priests themselves, and it made her sick. Whether or not her superstition had any merit, she had indeed died that night, curled up in a mire of her own viscera expelled in such quantities it had turned the rug beneath her bed black. She had not been the only one.
The memory worked loose the grasp his fingers had around his cup, as if it were a ledge he clung to in the half-hearted effort not to relinquish himself wholly to the abyss below. But he knew, too, that offering his neck to his executioner would not bring back those lives he’d taken, just as luring this ailing hunter to the woods would not rid his ears of the wails that flames had not silenced fast enough.
“Never mind that then,” the man continued persistently. “Mind if I take a load off? M’feet’s been aching—“
“Find company somewhere else.”
“Mm? Edgy sort, ain’t ya? Alright, mate, I’ll just cut to the chase—“
Here it was at last: death’s inevitable blade. Salem braced himself.
“I heard a medicine man’s been seen working miracles in these parts, so I walked all night ’n day to cross the mountains just to meet ‘em. Figured he might have something for my kid—“
He looked up in surprise. The weathered face with the scar across the high-bridged, narrow nose that he’d come to expect was instead that of a middle-aged, overweight man, his fleshy cheeks florid with whatever ailed him.
“—y’see, he got thrown from his horse not too long ago and hasn’t woken up since. My wife died this time last year and—“ The man’s eyes started to glisten, recognition entirely absent in his bubbling grief. Salem raised a hand to stop him.
“You have my condolences.” For thinking the worst of you. “I mended a young man’s broken arm when I arrived, but—“
“So you ARE the medicine man!”
Salem closed his eyes and breathed in through his nose. Then released a steadying breath and all the paranoia that had wound tight knots through his shoulders.
“I would hardly call myself that, but I’m trained in the healing arts. Your son—”
Your son is dead. If not when the accident had happened, then certainly he is long gone by now.
The man peered at him expectantly, then hacked and spat something vaguely pink into his hand, wiping it next on the thigh of his filthy trousers. Salem frowned.
“Take me to him. Tomorrow. Tonight, you must be tended to, or else you might not make it back to see him.”
—
As he had suspected, the boy - Theo - was a corpse on a bedroll in the back room of his father’s dilapidated home, the winter’s cold the only mercy in its staving off of decay’s hideous bloat. There had been little else to do then, other than a burial, for which Salem offered his assistance only when the twist of guilt had stopped him from taking old Ulric’s delinquent horse in payment for his treatment and riding to the next town. Although the man’s cough had abated to fits of dry wheezing every now and again, it was comfort he needed most now, and so comfort Salem tried to give, however inexperienced he was in anything but swallowing one’s grief.
“Tell me about your homeland,” Ulric asked as they stood vigil over the mound of earth in the umber dusk.
“It’s very far from here,” Salem answered obediently.
“Not anywhere in Fódlan. I can tell by that staff you’re carrying.”
“No.”
The man grumbled, spat, wiped his nose from the intermittent tears, and then tried again:
“If you don’t wanna talk about it, that’s fine. Truth be told, I envy the way you can shutter up all your thoughts and feelings and stand there like some manner of breathing statue. I never in my life seen a man handle a body like it wasn’t nothin’ stranger than a sack of flour.”
Salem stared out at the sun setting behind the mountains without saying anything. Ulric sighed.
“Guess that’s a priest’s lot, eh? Can’t be torn up inside over every person you can’t save.”
“Indeed.” If only… Salem closed his eyes against the sun and the afterimage of a fetid street buried in twisted limbs and rotting blood faded into blackness.
“… What say we share a bottle or two in Theo’s memory? Send you on your way to Garreg Mach by daybreak.”
“You’re too kind. But let me first apologize for—“
This time Ulric stopped him, raising one big hand and smiling.
“Grief’ll let you go when the time’s right. Surprised, huh? Your eyes’ve got that hollowed look in ‘em, so I figure there’s no need to force yourself on my account. Trust me, I know it better than most.”
Salem bowed his head. “What these eyes have seen would be better off left buried.”
“Then bury it! Whatever’s haunting you, the past you can’t bring yourself to talk about, loved ones you couldn’t save, put ‘em in the ground right now.”
Salem considered this. What right did he have to this grieving man’s forgiveness, when just a day ago he’d imagined how he’d kill him twice over? Yet for every apology or confession he tried to make, Ulric stopped him. Perhaps, denied companionship for his past sins, this was the prison he was meant to inhabit, just as the old man must inhabit one built from his own grief. Despite the show Ulric made with his forced laughter and too-big smiles, Salem couldn’t believe that he walked unfettered by his yesterdays. It was tragedy’s isolating melancholy that ultimately eroded a man’s heart.
“C’mon, mate, sun’s gone down!” Ulric was already just a man-shaped shadow in the door of his house now, disappearing inside shortly after he was certain his warning had been received. Salem turned to the mound of earth one more time. Had it not been the ghost of his past that had spared this man’s life? To atone for every life he had taken, he endeavored to save one with his own magic. It was selfish, of course, but selfishly he sought to cleanse himself of whatever evil may have imbued itself within him from the very institute that had taught him all he knew. Had he not… Father and son may have met their ends utterly alone.
By now, Salem’s feet had sunken into the cold, damp mud, so he pulled them free of the mire and trudged across the yard.
—
“—the monastery’s a two day’s ride south, then half a day east of here.”
Salem took the reins of the old mare. Sensing she was nervous about him, he patted down the side of her neck.
“I thank you for your hospitality.”
Ulric waved his hand. “No need for that. You fixed me right up, so it’s the least I could do. What’s the plan, once you’re there?”
Nothing. He was wandering. Hiding. He had no home, no faith, no identity any longer. Salem lowered his eyes.
“… I don’t know.”
Ulric laughed. “Finally, the first honest word out of you. Garreg Mach’ll be just the place for you then. Plenty of people make a pilgrimage up to the monastery to receive the Goddess’ guidance.”
“I see.”
“Just promise you’ll come visit if you’re ever back this way again.”
Salem nodded and climbed up into the saddle. “I will. Take care that a winter cold doesn’t do you in before then.”
“So there’s a sense of humor under there after all.”
Salem let the man laugh enough for the both of them, and then exchanged another round of farewells before setting off southward under a clear winter’s sky. May the Goddess light your path, Ulric called after him, and beneath the shadow of his hood, it twisted Salem’s lips into a sardonic smile.
