Coldfire FST
25 Dec 2009 06:30 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
salineaSacrifices of Erna
a Coldfire Trilogy FST
"The efficacy of sacrifice, the Prophet had written, is in direct proportion to the value of that which is destroyed."
Black Sun Rising
1. Sacrifice
Leonard Cohen - Song of Isaac
"The sacrifice is not of your body," he explained. His voice was cold in the darkness. "It is... of my humanity."
2. Nights of Erna
Dead Can Dance - Black Sun
Never sleep through the true night, Damien's master had taught him. Whether you mean to use its power or not, you should be awake to observe its passage. There are too many things in our world that draw their life from that ultimate Darkness, too many evils that can only be worked when all sunlight is gone. So be awake, and take your enemy's measure.
3. The Sight
Sufjan Stevens - Ya Leil
"See what?" she managed.
"The night. The beauty of it. The power. The so-called dark fae, a force so fragile that even the moonlight weakens it - and so strong in the darkness that death itself falls back before it. The tides of night, each with its own color and music. An entire world, child! - filled with things that can't exist when the light in the heavens is too strong."
4. The Hunter
Tori Amos - Blood Roses
His minions hunt the shadows of the eastern cities for suitable preys, to take back to the Forest to feed to him. Women, always; mostly young, inevitably attractive. It's said that he hunts them like wild animals there, in the heart of that land that responds to his every whim.
5. Ciani
Angels of Venice - Within you and without you
Whatever it was that had caused her to devote her life to the acquisition of knowledge, that instinct was still intact and thriving. They had taken the facts from her mind, but they couldn't change what she was.
6. Karril
Marilyn Manson - Sweet Dreams
“My domain is pleasure - human pleasure, in all its manifestations. There are few kinds of pain that I can tolerate, fewer still that I can feed on. But apathy is my true nemesis."
7. Allies
Rolling Stones - Sympathy for the Devil
“For you I’ve become the most subtle creature of all: a civilized evil, genteel and seductive. An evil you endure because you need its service - even though that very endurance plucks loose the underpinnings of your morality. An evil that causes you to question the very definitions of your identity, that blurs the line between dark and light until you’re no longer certain which is which, or how the two are divided. That’s what you fear most of all, priest. Waking up one morning and no longer knowing who or what you are.”
8. Demon Hunter
Dead Can Dance - Chant of the Paladin
“When all this is over - when our enemy has been dealt with and we’re safely out of the rakhlands - I will kill you, Hunter. And rid the world of your taint forever. I swear it.”
9. Senzei
Mirah – The Light
Every few earthquakes some tormented soul took that chance, and added his dying scream to the siren’s din. Ciani couldn’t understand why - but Senzei could, all too well. He understood the hunger that consumed such people, the need that coursed through them like blood, until every living cell was saturated with it. Desire. For the one thing on Erna that Senzei might never have. The one precious thing that Nature had denied him.
10. Hesseth
Garmarna – Eucharie
There was a feeling of rightness about the creature, of completeness, such that the xandu didn't think to fear. It had sought food, and here was food. It would soon need warmth, and here was a creature who commanded fire. It would ache with loneliness… and here, in this creature, was a companion for its winter, who would brave the ravages of ice-time by its side, and then release it to seek out its own kind when the spring came again.
11. The Rakhland
Incus - Dead Wood
Senzei looked out over the seething waterfall, toward the Serpent. He could see nothing but clouds - white clouds, silver clouds – rising like steam from the water's surface. And perhaps, ever so elusive, sparks of liquid illusion that shimmered in the air like sea-spray. The Canopy. This close?
He turned back, and found Damien watching him. When the priest saw that he was all right, the concern in his eyes gave way to wry humor; the grimace of tension softened to a smile.
"Welcome to the rakhland," he told him.
12. Bad Dreams
Jan Garbarek, Anouar Brahem & Shaukat Hussein - Ramy
And nothing responds. Absolutely nothing. The planet is dead, unresponsive to his will. He feels the first cold bite of despair, then, a kind of fear he’s never experienced before. Danger he can deal with, death he’s confronted on at least a dozen occasions, but there’s never been anything like this before - never such absolute helplessness in the face of human suffering, such sudden awareness that his will doesn’t matter, he doesn’t matter, he has no more power to affect the patterns of fate than the dismembered limbs on this field, or the cooling blood that turns the dry earth to mud under his feet.
13. Earthquake
Muse – Hysteria
This wasn’t just a hunger for vision, like Senzei had known, or even an obsession with power. It had gone beyond that - far beyond that - into realms so utterly corrupted that barely a fragment of her human soul remained, clinging to the flesh that housed it as if somehow the two could be reunited.
When True Night Falls
14. Another Continent
Delerium - Terra Firma
This land. This continent. Bound to the Earth (if he read it right) by the same type of symbol that his Church would use to signify the One God, the One Faith… what else could that flag be, but a symbol of his calling?
A fervent prayer echoed in his soul, one he had never dared voice in all the long months of their travel. Oh God, let this land be Yours.
15. Miracles of Faith
Jonathan Elias - Faith
He wanted to respond to what they had accomplished. He wanted them to see it through his eyes. He wanted to give them the gift of his vision, to help them draw back from their day to day life and see - really see - how great their triumph was.
And more. He wanted to put all that in context, so that they knew how hard western man was struggling to find a similar peace. And - most of all - he wanted them to know what it would mean to the west when he brought home word of their triumph. For word of their success would surely spread, until all of Erna was inspired to devote itself to the Prophet's dream. At last.
16. Jenseny
Conjure One - Tidal Pool
Deep within the Protector's keep, in a chamber with no windows, Jenseny played with the fringe of her gown and savored its rhythm with her fingers. She's tried to explain that to her father once how all the tiny threads hanging there together were a kind of music and how she could feel it through her fingers when she stroked them, but he didn't understand. He couldn't hear that and he couldn't hear other things: the fall of rain on waxy leaves, the screech of living gibers as they were ripped from the earth, the beat of the spindle and the soft shuffle of the loom as it wove, wove, wove…
17. The Terata
Joanna Newsom - Swansea
Children. Like her. They wouldn't hurt her, would they?
18. The Fire
Delerium - Relics (Song of the Deads)
And then it seemed to her that one of the soldier-priests turned to her. Eyes of liquid flame, brilliant as the Holy Fire, fixed upon the space she occupied. His shield and sword were molten gold, and his banner-glass tinkled in the wind. He was too bright to look upon, too beautiful for her to look away. His voice was like the wind.
Some things, he whispered, are worth dying for.
19. Priest
Jan Garbarek & the Hilliard Ensemble – O Lord in thee is all my trust
Why did he become a priest? Because the One God was a living expression of man's optimism. Because his Church was man's greatest hope - if not his only hope - on a wild and hostile planet. Because only by devoting his strength and his passion to God did Damien feel he could justify his own existence. Any other profession would have been an exercise in futility.
20. Gerald
Dusty Springfield - The windmills of your mind
"You're trapped by your own intelligence, you know. A simpler man would have found his way back to God long ago."
21. Temptation
Enigma – Hell's Heaven
The figure smiled; the cold eyes gleamed. "I can make you a god." it pronounced.
22. The Waste Land
Yann Tiersen & Shannon Wright - Dried Sea
It was vast. It was lifeless. It was utterly dark. A land as black as the thick night which enshrouded it, all but invisible from their vantage point. Valley bled into mountains bled into the night sky, and even the illumination of Prima's slender crescent failed to distinguish between them. In such a darkness it was impossible to make out any details of the land before them, or to estimate its dangers. It was there, black and forbidding; that was the sum total of their knowledge.
23. The Undying Prince
David Bowie - The Man Who Sold the World
"He said that the Prince of the south never dies. He said that the Prince is very, very old, but you can't see it because he makes his body young again whenever he needs to. He said that he'll do it again soon. He'll make his body young, but he'll also make it look different so that he looks like a different person every time, but he's really still the same."
24. Jenseny's Death
Death Can Dance - Persephone (The Gathering of Flower)
While he explored the nooks and crannies of her mind, she wove and wove and wove with all her strength, using every skill that Hesseth had taught her and every ounce of power that the tides made available. Tidal power didn't work that well on material substance, the rakh-woman had told her, but in matters of spirit it was unequaled. She prayed it was so as she bound them together, forging a bond with her fledgling sorcery to support that which he had conjured, a bond which – she hoped – might never be broken.
Then she struck.
25. Calesta
Wax Audio - Whole Lotta Sabbath
Quickly the humans learned their weaknesses, and the rakh who had once terrorized small human villages now cringed in terror as their victims rose up, their souls filled with fury, their hearts set on vengeance. And all the while Calesta fed, Calesta inspired, Calesta rejoiced, as a holocaust of epic proportions took root in the Church's most blessed lands.
26. Prophet
Sarah McLaughlan - Building up a Mystery
"In my lifetime," he said solemnly, "I created only one thing of lasting value. One thing of such beauty and promise that long after I had committed my soul to darkness I still reveled in watching it grow, in seeing what turns it would take and what new paths would open up for it. Your Church, Reverend Vryce. My most precious creation."
Crown of Shadows
27. Andrys
Nirvana - Lithium
Those dreams ... they were pain and ecstasy almost beyond bearing, a catharsis so terrifying and so necessary that on the nights when Calesta did not answer him he wept, helpless and hopeless as a lost child. The dreams were all he had now. The hate was all that was holding him together.
That and the drugs.
28. Narilka
Beth Orton - The Devil Song
How could she explain to them that she had already faced the greatest evil of all, the well of terror in her own soul? How could she explain the way in which that confrontation had transformed her, smothering the helpless child who so needed protection, giving birth to someone older and stronger and far more adaptable. What did the petty evils of this world amount to, when compared to the Hunter's Forest?
29. The Iezu
Ikarus – Praying to Different Gods
But today it was not art that drove her here, but need; need for the kind of reassurance that only a god could offer. Would Sari respond? She was a minor goddess, as such beings were measured, and her domain was a limited one. Was it right to bring these problems to her, when there were at least a dozen other gods dedicated to that kind of turmoil.
You are the patron of my soul, she thought, gazing upon the gleaming temple. Even now, tormented by doubts, she felt the sense of serenity at the sight of the familiar building.
30. Prayer
Goran Bregovic - Elo Hi (Canto Nero)
He had prayed for nights on end for some new insight, but none had come to him. It was so tempting, those dreams of triumph. But if he obeyed his visions and started a war, how would he end it? Violence begets violence, he despaired. How could he encourage it among his people, and then expect it to disperse at the campaign's end? What kind of act or symbol would be powerful enough to disrupt such a cycle?
31. Through Hell
Faith and the Muse - Chorus of the Furies
It was bodies. Human bodies, stretching ahead to the horizon and beyond. Women's bodies, strewn across the landscape like discarded refuse, gathered together in such numbers that in places they were stacked in mounds, like heaps of living garbage. As he watched, they twitched and shivered, and their combined motion gave the illusion of waves passing across the surface.
32. Damien
Sting - It's probably me
"Gerald." He waited until the Hunter was silent, then said sharply, "Don't be a fool. Of course I'm going."
33. Channel
Tricky - I Sing For You
"Only once in my long life have I offered this bond to another man… and that one betrayed me."
34. The Forest (Amoril)
Rasputina - Bad Moon Rising
And as she dared to reach out with her hopes and her fears into the heart of the Forest itself, struggling for some fae-borne sense of Andry's passage, the presence that she sensed within that realm of shadows was enough to make her draw back, sickened. Not a human presence, that. Not the clean demonic signature of the Hunter either, which she knew so well from their two brief encounters. This was something less than human, something so unclean that the Forest itself would surely vomit it up if it had the power to do so. What was going on here?
35. Mount Shaitan
Conjure One - Redemption
"You must understand, Vryce. I honestly believed that somewhere, somehow, I could find an answer. I believed that in the month remaining to me I could discover a way to break my compact and survive, and ultimately cheat death anew… and I chose this instead. This sacrifice of life, made in the very face of Hell." He held out an arm to Calesta, and it seemed to Damien that he smiled. "Come share it with me, demon!"
36. Mother of Iezu
Bjork - Oceania
She would see where their restlessness led them. If it proved that their transgression were serious, then their lives might be put to better use as fodder for a new generation. For there must be children. There must always be children. Living and learning, dreaming and needing, playing their parts without knowing they did so, in the hope that one of them might glimpse the greater game that controlled them all.
37. The Hunter's Death
Sting - Why Should I Cry For You
In the silence of the Forbidden Forest, in the darkness that the Hunter had called home, Damien prayed for God's forgiveness, and for the peace of his friend's soul.
38. The Patriarch
Sufjan Stevens – The Tower of the Seer
The efficacy of sacrifice is in direct proportion to the value of that which is destroyed. Or so the Prophet had written. What could possibly be of more value to this Patriarch, whose greatest dream had been to live long enough to see his world change.
39. New Dawn
Dead Can Dance – Ulysses
Such power, he saw, could change Erna forever. The Hunter had already paved the way, establishing a new channel for currents to follow. He, with his death, would confirm the Pattern, and set it upon the face of the planet forever.
Self-sacrifice.
40. The Stranger
Emiliana Torrini – Serenade
In the dawn of a new world, Damien Vryce smiled.
Notes: Like all FSTs I've done so far (err, all two of them ^_^) this is literally years in the making (and I'm still not happy about a couple of picks, but I was getting annoying with having this FST lingering on unfinished)
Anyway, I had two angles for this :
1/ Really trying for a soundtrack feeling, with a lot of songs picked for the atmospheric mood and how they suit the character/scene/themes I wanted them for. As a result there's a lot of lyricless songs there. And a lot of Dead Can Dance ^_^
2/ Trying to represent as best I could the religious and spirituality themes of the books, whether with earnest or critical or tongue-in-cheek ways, following the thread of the sacrifice thematic.
Anyway, hope you enjoy. Comments very much welcome ^_^
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 25 December 2009 06:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 25 December 2009 06:21 am (UTC)Next FST I do will be an ASOIAF, I think, it should be up in about two years. Get ready! XD
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Date: 25 December 2009 06:22 am (UTC)Either way, I'M SO READY XD
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Date: 25 December 2009 02:55 pm (UTC)lol well then, it's a trilogy of books, seamless mix of fantasy, horror and science fiction. Very slashy. Awesome setting and magic system. Great anti-heroic character (very anti) and one of my favourite straight good guy ever ^_^
hahaha. Good!!
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Date: 25 December 2009 01:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 25 December 2009 02:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 25 December 2009 07:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 25 December 2009 02:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 25 December 2009 02:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 25 December 2009 02:56 pm (UTC)I hope the dl worked for you since mediafire looks like it's trying to mess with my groove.
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Date: 25 December 2009 02:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 25 December 2009 02:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 25 December 2009 03:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 25 December 2009 04:00 pm (UTC)Hope you enjoy!
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Date: 25 December 2009 06:03 pm (UTC)I hope I'll get the download soon.
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Date: 25 December 2009 10:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 25 December 2009 09:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 25 December 2009 10:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 26 December 2009 12:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 26 December 2009 01:53 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 26 December 2009 03:51 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 26 December 2009 11:46 pm (UTC)lol that's why I put the quotes ;) but reread sounds fun too XD
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Date: 26 December 2009 04:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 26 December 2009 07:42 pm (UTC)I really like Sufjan Stevens' track and the cover of with you and without you.
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Date: 26 December 2009 08:26 pm (UTC)Sarah MacLachlan - Building A Mystery.mp3
Bjork - Oceania.mp3
And thank you, I'm glad you're like it :))
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Date: 1 January 2010 11:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 1 January 2010 03:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 7 April 2010 12:53 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 7 April 2010 01:38 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 7 April 2010 01:44 am (UTC)