Why Nicolas in Immortalis Turns Opening Ceremonies Into Grotesque Spectacle

In the shadowed annals of Morrigan Deep, few figures command attention quite like Nicolas DeSilva, the self-styled doctor of Corax Asylum. His penchant for spectacle is no mere eccentricity; it is the very mechanism by which he asserts dominion over the fragile order of The Deep. Where others might content themselves with quiet rule, Nicolas transforms every opening ceremony, every communal rite, into a grotesque pageant of horror and absurdity. The question lingers: why does he do it?

Consider the infamous hat shipment to Khepriarth, that dawn of chaos in the Fourth Moon of 1536 P.V. A supposed gift to the gentlemen of the village arrives, insufficient in number, sparking immediate discord. Gentlemen bicker, a bee test is decreed, doors are locked, and plague-ridden fleas do their merciless work. Women are buried alive, protests silenced under soil. What begins as a ceremonial gesture devolves into mass grave-digging, the living interred with the infected hats. Lord Khepriarth complains to Tepes, Tepes to Theaten, and rumours swirl. No sender is known, yet the pattern is unmistakable: Nicolas’s hand, turning a simple distribution into extermination.

Or witness the asylum itself, Corax, where opening ceremonies are not village affairs but internal rituals of control. Nicolas rounds up inmates for speeches in the meeting hall, announcements devoid of meaning, mere preludes to petty tortures. The chapel, once sacred, becomes a theatre for his screeching violin concertos, amplified to stifle sanity. Straps, scalpels, and birches gleam on racks, the corridors a cacophony of clanging clocks and mirrors that distort reality. He declares the insane sane, the sane insane, all to prove his psychiatric supremacy, traded for tributes from Irkalla. Every event, from the levitating chair to the hall of mirrors, is a ceremony warped into spectacle, inmates reduced to props in his endless performance.

This compulsion stems from Nicolas’s core nature, forged in Irkalla’s demonic education and the Baer clan’s warrior blood. Boredom gnaws at him relentlessly; immortality breeds ennui, and he combats it with escalation. A shipment of hats becomes plague; a chapel sermon, a symphony of screams. His sadism demands an audience, be it inmates gossiping or The Deep’s lords lodging complaints. Ceremonies provide the stage: openings imply structure, which he gleefully dismantles. The bee test mocks gentlemanly pretensions; the floating chair parodies authority. Grotesque inversion is his art, control his canvas.

Yet deeper motives lurk. Nicolas, split Vero and Evro, embodies primal urges in a fractured form. Webster tempers his chaos with science, but ceremonies unleash it. They reaffirm his supremacy, a reminder to The Deep that Corax is no hospital but his realm. Irkalla’s mirrors watch, the Ledger records, and every plague, every flaying, every inverted clock etches his indelible mark. In a world of feigned balance, Nicolas exposes the rot beneath, turning rites into revelries of ruin.

His spectacles are not madness but mastery, a grotesque ballet where order crumbles and he alone conducts the fall.

Immortalis Book One August 2026