#marinesocks

Like, I think one could come up with a design that suits both styles hopefully. It MUST be green. And for visuals I would be wanting eyes, absinthe spoons, swirly smoke, and some wormwood leaves as well. Other WIPs:

I don't know how a Cellars of Sulis Hall cover would look, truth be told. Just as long as it denotes gothic horror. However I read Pandora by Susan Stokes-Chapman earlier this year, whoch is set in 1799, and the first inner page was made up like how books of that era were, and I would absolutely demand the same. All that said, an illustrated cover by Rohan Daniel Eason would be the dream. Like look at the art he did for the Hollow Woods boardgame -

(I'm so tempted to by his Kafka for Kids book now.)

If Maternity Colony were published it wouldn't be alone, so it wouldn't have its own cover as a short story but if it did...a trad goth style is a must. I'm thinking primarily the inside of the Young Limbs and Numb Hymns vinyl for the kind of style:

The Holy and the Damned, again, I'm not sure. I think it needs to be grandiose. I'm normally averse to people on book covers but something more simple like as with the Locked Tomb books where it's an illustration of Ninon at then the title in a suitable font I'd be happy with.

"[For psychological thrillers,] there is as much internal conflict as there is external conflict. If there’s too much external conflict, it becomes a regular thriller. If there’s too much internal conflict, it becomes a boring book." —Kat Clay (here is a link to the YouTube video that helped me the most. I've watched it, no joke, at least 3 times just so i can remember every bit of her wonderful advice.)

"Getting inside the characters’ heads is particularly important in a psychological thriller because much of the conflict and suspense will come from the mind games that the characters are playing." —Sally Jenkins for The Writers Bureau

"Psychological thrillers are both character and plot driven. It is essential that chapters and scenes are economical and contain events that move the story along." —Jacqueline Ward

then I'll add one that's not specific to just horror.

So there were dragons and they weren’t just big beasts, they were godlike beings. Like. Massive as all heck, formed the world and all things in it sort of godlike beings. They were older than known history and as the human race was starting to take off… the dragons were dying out. By that point, the Creation that formed them (this world’s chaos/stardust that forms literally everything) was running out. It was in the world, in the things that they had made. So there’s one dragon left. The youngest of them, the one that’s contributed least to the world it’s breathren made and the one that will be it’s tomb. The only known to humans and it’s so obvious that it’s ancient — curled atop the highest mountain peak, cracked and covered in ivy like an old ruin, hardly breathing, hardly alive. It’s there and for a while (years, decades, centuries), it’s worshipped. Is a temple and a god both.

The humans know little of the dragons, but they form prayers and ceremonies and a religion. The dragon is practically comatose — it’s eyes never open, it’s breaths are few and shallow and long between. It’s hardly conscious. But the humans can tell that it’s divine (it’s a knowing in the air). So they worship it. Send their priests (maybe a dozen or so) into the almost-cage of one of it’s claws, where the sun barely shines between the bars of its talons, to say once-a-moon chants, for good harvests or good weather or good fortune.

But every five-ish years (perhaps it’s a time made significant because that’s when the dragon blinks, for a few decades, until it’s eyes never open again. It’s a significant measure of time, akin-sorta to a decade for us due to something like that), the collection of priests choose one to stand before the dragon, not a foot from its face, to act upon a ceremony (on the day of dragon’s blink). It’s a dual purpose — to see the fate of the next five years (received from the wind, and, if the next years are to be especially favorable — from the dragon’s breath) and wish well upon the dragon, laying some sacrifice or significance before it (the object the chosen person holds dearest, perhaps). There’s a constant wind atop the mountain, drawn to and formed from the last spark of Creation there is that’s still semi-tangible (that’s keeping the dragon alive, that’s feeding the heart of the people’s religion).

Because of the dragon’s decline, breaths are becoming fewer and weaker and longer between. Details are kept tight, between the priests and the chosen person and other such high ranked people but some of it, inevitably, leaks.

And one year, the one chosen (they are chosen as children at 10 (and there’s requirements to even be considered but I’m trying not to get too off-rail), because of… something dragon related. A trinket — a chipped bit of scale or talon or tooth, from the dragon they know or a salvaged bit from one they don’t. There’s a reaction that makes them chosen and perhaps it’s a series of trials — a series of hoops that must be leapt through just right). Anyways, the one chosen one year is closely related to a priest. A daughter, or a niece, or something such. There’s a personal tie, where there’s been no recorded one before (not the records are that in depth, or plentiful). So there’s… a smidgen of doubt, that this child was truly chosen, among the other priests (did the priest spill secrets to the child? Taint the results?) but they continue because once a child is chosen, it’s done. The child is chosen the same day as the ceremony, so as one is fulfilling their part, another is being chosen to replace it. And they are trained/prepared for the next five years, until they are the one standing before the dragon and so the cycle goes, on and on. (And, to clarify: the last girl is not wrongly chosen, just believed to be so).

So a child, tied to a priest somehow is chosen. They — she, because it is a girl and this year and this ceremony and this day is ancestor to the one in Crimson Daybreak. This child, this teenager, for she is fifteen when it is her turn is pessimistic or realistic or just smart. She thinks that all of this: the ceremony, the religion, the dragon; is ridiculous. They see the pattern of the dwindling breaths, have a lack of faith where most/all others have trust. She knows the dragon will not breathe. Suspects that the things it is making her people do is unnecessary — she is not a believer, though she’s kept the fact hidden (she wouldn’t be chosen if it was known).

So she has a grudge, a bitterness, a rage to her. Perhaps on the last ceremony, there was little wind and no breath (like there’s been the last too-many times, tales of it’s breath too old to be really believed to be truth) and the day following it, a friend or family member was lost. And in her childishness, her naïveté, she places blame on the dragon. On the ceremony’s failure. On the religion entirely. The priests are saying that they are ones failing the dragon — there needs to be more worship, stronger worship — but the girl doesn’t believe the fault lies with them. Believes that the dragon is the one failing.

So she is angry and hidden in the large flowing robe, there is a sharpness — a dagger or a spearhead or a rock. And she expects the little response there is, but upon the stillness — the dying dragon, the lazy wind, the dry sky — in the face of it, her rage boils over. She draws the sharpness and strikes it against the dragon’s face. It is not a large wound, in comparison to the dragon’s size (the mountain is a small perch, considering and all of their priests hardly fit in the sacred room of it’s claw) but it is roughly the length of the girl’s forearm and it is deep enough to shed blood. Blood which has never been seen, for it is sacrilege to touch the dragon without proper reason or permission. It is a startling yellow, so bright it looks glowing.

It is a small wound, but to the dragon, who has hardly been living for centuries, to whom this is a revokation of the dribbles of Creation that has been keeping it hardly alive? It is enough. It is the last straw.

It dies.

The divinity falters, the air of life cut out in one harsh moment. The ceremony is done privately, just before sunrise, the chosen girl having made the climb up over the night before. And there is no grand destruction, no obvious revelation — no wind that picks up howling, no sudden onset of black clouds or rain, no out-of-the-blue thunder or lightning. But it is there, the death. In the air. A feeling brother to the one of breathlessness when the air is forced from your lungs. That breathlessness sweeps over the mountain and though there is no grand show of proof, it is known. The dragon is dead. The ceremony has failed. The girl is claimed a traitor of highest degree — she’s slain their god, their world’s heart.

And this day is what Crimson Daybreak’s celebration and sacrifice comes from. The events of Crimson Daybreak would not be if not for this day, twisted though the memory of it becomes.

The girl is blamed, immediate, for on this day the dragon is the chosen one’s responsibility (perhaps they are a keeper of sorts, until they’re twenty and the next person takes over). And her name is ill-remembered, butchered pronunciation of her name modern (meaning Crimson Daybreak time) translating to a grave insult. It’s one of the few shreds that’s survived the centuries between the times.

That, and what follows the dragon’s death.

The felled blood’s crystallized form, that hums under the right girl’s blood. The startling change of the sun — from always yellow to red.

The people are terrified at the change — believe it to be the end of the world, brought upon by the girl. And so she is hunted (the few priests were stunned to stillness or moved to the dragon and she quickly fled). And at some point she is captured — shortly after, at midday, just before the red sun is sinking. And she is dragged back to the dragon’s head and she is killed, as urged by the witnessed priests, who saw her slay the dragon, as retribution and sacrifice. And the night is a long, terrifying thing. People waiting for death, admitting their committed atrocious trying to salvage themselves (also urged by the priests, attempting to earn favor back from the world they think is dying).

And the sun rises yellow again, the next day.

The priests claim it to be because of their honest confessions. That regrets and sins laid bare is what salvaged the world from ending.

And time slowly warps the old ceremony, that day, into what it is during Crimson Daybreak. The terrified confessions turns into the burned ribbons — yellow after the dragon’s blood, burned in repetition of the sun rising and easing the people’s fear and honesty. The chosen girl turns into the sacrificed girl. The slab of blood that hums is the new choosing trial. The sigil the girl’s blood makes upon it is the one the chosen girl drew, all that time ago (then a call for good fortune, now a death sentence). The lone night before is the chosen girl’s hard climb. The room being so red is mockery of the day of the red sun — playing it out on her alone instead of the whole world and her sacrifice is to please the sun’s color shift into lasting just the one day. And so such.

Backtracking to explain a thing or two that didn’t quite come across in the ramble. The ceremony, roughly, is like so:

At ten, a girl is chosen via prerequisites (birthed close to the day of the ceremony?), trials and the last test done on the day of the ceremony. For the next five years, she is raised by the priests, or some other figures in the religion, in preparation of the ceremony. She is taught the loose magic of sigils, has to craft her own that will shape the five years following her day. And on the night before, she must climb to the dragon’s head via the front arm not attached to the clawed room (? Using the scale gaps as handholds? It’s not too long a climb and she is prepared to be capable of it beforehand. The climb is entirely lost, modernly, just the lone girl the night before is remembered). The priests participating in the ceremony, only a few, not all, take a longer route. When the time is right, the girl lays out a pouch of soft sand and draws the sigil she crafted into it. If it is blown away, there is good fortune, if not, there isn’t and the inbetween. The priests are stationed evenly behind the girl in a semicircle. They are to stand witness and they drop their own fistfuls of sand, to blow in the wind/breath.

The chosen one beforehand did not have to be a girl, just. The last one was and that’s what’s remembered so all modern chosen ones are girls. Because the last is all that’s remembered.

Is that. What you wanted, Marine? I got carried away with the original ceremony and kind of forgot that you just wanted more of the world in general, not necessarily the past but it is still knowledge of the world, so… it counts? I think? If you want specifics, you should ask the specifics. I get off track so easily.

If more of the Crimson Daybreak world is wanted (not necessarily Gianna-related at all, just the literal world)… ask? Kinda think I’ve given it too much worldbuilding to be just one thing but I’ve also (miraculously, surprisingly) escaped the Urge (but that may just be the mental exhaustion of doing this all), so. Maybe not? Let me know if there’s interest.