In the shadowed annals of Morrigan Deep, where eternal dusk casts long fingers over the sands and forests, few pastimes reveal the Immortalis as starkly as croquet. What begins as a genteel diversion among the nobility swiftly devolves into a performance of raw strategy, a game where mallets strike not merely balls, but the fragile pretensions of power itself. The croquet lawn, often laid upon the manicured grounds of castles or asylums, serves as a stage for the eternal dance of dominance, where every hoop navigated echoes the broader machinations of The Deep.
Consider the setup: players, clad in finery that belies their predatory natures, wield mallets carved from bone or silvered wood. The balls, painted in lurid hues, roll across turf stained faintly with the remnants of prior entertainments. To the uninitiated, it appears a contest of precision, a test of skill where the object is to shepherd one’s sphere through a series of hoops. Yet for Immortalis such as Nicolas or Theaten, the game transcends mere recreation. It becomes a microcosm of their world, strategy cloaked in performance, where the true stakes lie not in victory, but in the spectacle of control asserted and challenged.
Nicolas, ever the jester of cruelty, approaches croquet with theatrical flair. His mallet swings not with measured grace, but with erratic force, sending balls careening into undergrowth or against opponents’ feet. The chaos delights him, mirroring the labyrinthine passages of Corax Asylum where inmates stumble blindly. When a ball vanishes into the gloom, he does not retrieve it; instead, he summons porters or ghouls to dredge it forth, often at the cost of a finger or ear. The crowd—nobles, thesapiens, lower vampires—watches in tense amusement, knowing one errant stroke might summon mambas from hidden burrows or release apisvespa from concealed hives. Strategy here is performance: Nicolas wins not by scoring hoops, but by dictating the terror of the field.
Theaten, by contrast, embodies calculated elegance. His strokes are precise, each ball threading hoops with surgical intent, much as he adjusts candlelight to perfect shadow play in Castle D’Aten. Yet even he cannot resist the game’s undercurrent of savagery. A missed shot invites not laughter, but retribution—a tribute chained as impromptu hoop, or a rival’s mallet splintered under his boot. Croquet exposes the fracture in Immortalis composure: the Vero’s refinement yields to the Evro’s primal urge, turning a parlour game into a prelude to the hunt.
Allyra’s entry into these matches marks the shift from observer to player. Her mallet, often borrowed from Nicolas’s eclectic arsenal, strikes with a blend of precision and defiance. She navigates hoops not to win, but to subvert, her balls lingering near rivals’ feet, inviting collision. The performance thrills her, a reminder of the Run Rabbit chases where strategy masked as play concealed deeper intents. In croquet, as in Corax, every roll is a feint, every hoop a contract with chaos.
Yet the game’s true horror lies in its conclusion. Victor claims the loser’s tribute, not for consumption, but for display—a head added to the wall, or a limb fashioned into a new mallet. The lawn, once verdant, bears scars of prior contests, divots filled with tribute ash. Croquet endures as Immortalis emblem: strategy performed as civility, where the ball’s path traces the inevitable arc from play to predation. In Morrigan Deep, no diversion escapes the ledger’s ink.
Immortalis Book One August 2026