Immortalis and the Banquet Tables That Reveal Too Much Excess
In the eternal dusk of Morrigan Deep, where the overlapping suns cling to the horizon like reluctant lovers, the Immortalis preside over banquets that lay bare the grotesque excess woven into their very essence. These are not mere meals, but rituals of dominion, where the line between sustenance and savagery dissolves into a crimson haze. The tables groan under the weight of tribute, thesapiens bred for slaughter, their flesh basted and presented on silver platters, their blood poured like the finest Ashurrel wine. Yet beneath the veneer of noble refinement lies a primal truth: the Immortalis hunger for more than meat, they crave the spectacle of suffering, the assertion of absolute power.
Consider the gatherings at Castle D’Aten, where Theaten, Vero of the noble line, hosts Ducissa Anne and Count Tepes. The tribute arrives stripped, washed, basted by ghouls Klouthe and Harlon, laid bare upon a bed of mango. Anne blesses the meal with a dagger drawn from her lace-gloved sleeve, Tepes offers his wrist in ritual, and crystal glasses fill with warm blood. The carving begins, thigh sliced tender, liver invaded delicately, all under the glow of candlelabra adjusted precisely for shadow and light. This is civility incarnate, or so it appears. Yet the air thickens with the unspoken: these are not equals at table, but predators savouring the fruits of dominion. The tribute lasts moons, prolonged by meticulous care, a testament to the Immortalis restraint, or perhaps their exquisite cruelty in denial.
Contrast this with Nicolas at Corax Asylum, where the banqueting suite stands pristine, reserved solely for his solitary indulgences. No shared rituals here, only the gleam of silver untouched by others, the echo of speeches delivered to empty halls. Nicolas devours alone, his feasts private affairs of petty tortures and midnight scribblings. The excess manifests not in communal pomp, but in the intimate horror of his chambers: a gramophone crowned with Demize’s rotting head, clocks ticking discordantly, bloodstained sheets perpetually unmade. His appetites spill beyond the table, into the cells where tributes hang from straps, their blood collected in goblets for inspection, their bodies resolved in debauched urges. Where Theaten savours the performance, Nicolas embodies the indulgence, his sadism a ceaseless rhythm of consumption.
These banquets reveal the Immortalis core: beings of unnatural hungers, their dual natures Vero and Evro demanding balance through fracture. Primus split Theaten into true self and primal beast to curb unrest, yet the tables persist as sites of that unrest’s echo. Theatens courtly dissections mock the civility of The Deep’s feudal bartering, while Nicolas’s solitary gorging underscores Irkalla’s ledger of debts unpaid. Tributes, bred from thesapiens mobs post-War Before the Dusk, embody the endless cycle: mortals offered to immortals, lives tallied in flesh and blood. The Electi’s Immolesses challenge this, but their failures only affirm the tables’ truth, where excess is not vice, but verdict.
The Ledger notes these feasts with sardonic precision, for in the carving of tribute lies the carving of The Deep itself: a world sustained by gluttony, where the banquet reveals not just hunger, but the hollow heart of power.
Immortalis Book One August 2026