A Binding of Kin Character Lore

As I did with Descend Beyond and Felix and Blight, I transcribed Elodie and the Twins' lore for those who can't access the PTB.

Elodie Rakoto

Born into a lush Parisian household, Élodie Rakoto grew up in a comfortable home miles away from the verdant island of Madagascar, her parents’ birthplace. Her backpack was always heavy and usually contained no schoolwork. She carried the essentials: a few history books, some printed maps and a compact shovel. Instead of wasting away with regurgitated facts from her classes, she explored the city to discover the stories behind each statue, neighborhood and street sign. She collected bits and pieces of Paris, making it her own.

When she was fourteen, her parents took her to Dyer Island for a “business trip.” To her grand disappointment, the island was a private site for exclusive members of the Imperiatti. She was forced to attend pretentious and awkward social mixers daily. After a few weeks on the island, she met the Pariahs, like-minded teenagers who had no interest in being pawns for their parents’ political chessboard. On dull, rainy nights, she would convince them to sneak out and explore the island unsupervised.

One foggy evening, they stumbled upon an abandoned internment camp. Felix, one of the Pariahs, didn’t want to go in, but Élodie insisted. Inside, they found a strange underground laboratory in ruins. The Pariahs grew excited, browsing through the strange apparatuses for trophies and mementos. But Élodie noticed something in the far-left corner of the wall: odd scratches in the shape of a circle. She ran her fingernails against the cool concreteーthe marks were deep and narrow. A warm whisper suddenly sent her mind adriftー

ーDeep, rumbling thunder. Black, glistening waves. An ashen sanded beach. Incomplete. She was compelled to touch the ice-cold sand and draw a circle with a line in the middle.

A sharp thunderclap and lightning whipped the sky. The ground shook as sleek, obsidian claws tore through the concrete floor, ripping the earth open. The building began to collapse and Élodie spotted her mother wielding a bizarre instrument while her father told her to run. Thenー

Complete darkness.

Élodie never saw her parents again.

For years, this nightmare woke her in the middle of the night, cold, sweating, shaking like a leaf. As a child she suffered from night terrors and often resisted going to bed. To soothe her mind, her grandma would light a tea candle and tell her stories until the wick extinguished in a hot pool of liquified wax. The perfume of the warm vanilla-scented wax would lull Élodie to sleep as she envisioned stories of legendary heroes defeating fear and foes. Élodie had forgotten the stories, but she still remembered her longing for the verdant Malagasy rainforests and colossal mountains that her grandmother described. When Élodie felt cold and numb with grief, she would light a vanilla-scented candle and summon her childhood memories of this distant, idyllic place, raising her spirits to rise above her crippling depression.

Fourteen years later, Élodie still searched for the missing pieces of the puzzle. No rational explanation could explain her parents’ disappearance, so she had been looking elsewhere. She researched any and all legends that mentioned a dark force that snatched people at night without a trace. From there, she translated old tales and built a tapestry of narratives from around the world that corroborated the uncanny way her parents had vanished on Dyer Island. She also gathered artifacts made by ancient civilizations who sought to destroy or resurrect the incomprehensible and indestructible thing that took her parents. There were various names for it, differing from one language to the next: the Abyss, the Infinite, the Hole.

Her findings pushed her further into the dark field of occultism. The Pariahs were long gone. She’d alienated them with her theories. But she refused to give up on her parents.

Élodie had set out into the cold, misty evening. She turned a corner, leaving Paris’s 13th arrondissement, an eccentric neighborhood with a substantial library dating from the middle ages. She had pressing work to do for Hazra Shah, the Collector, an occult specialist who archived rare artifacts.

He’d recruited her after she’d salvaged a rare stolen Maori statue of spidery fangs like the claws she’d seen on Dyer Island. For the next five years, Élodie had been procuring occult relics for the Collector. In exchange, he provided large sums of money, equipment and precise information about obscure manuscripts.

Just as the Collector requested, she had secured the annals of a witch trial convicting a mother birthing conjoined twins in the 17th century. According to legend, an occult incantation was engraved on a set of skulls, all of which the Collector possessed except oneーthe witch’s skull. There were no traces of where the skull was now, but Élodie was acting on a hunch. Breaking into the catacombs to retrieve a lost skull involved certain risks, but no more than the previous work she’d done for the Collector.

With a flashlight, she followed the ancient layout of the catacombs and spotted a collapsed wall. A few large stones blocked the way in. She grabbed her portable XRF analyzer and scanned the materials of the wall. Working for the Collector had its perks. The brick mortar had been poorly mixed, showing high traces of sand. The whole thing was brittle, and the ground was moist from the damp evening air. This was her way in.

The journey beneath was long and treacherous. The air was heavy and moldy. She gasped when her key-chain flashlight hit an endless wall of bleached-white skulls.

Something cracked behind her. She spun around and collided headfirst with a baseball bat. Pain exploded in her skull and darkness filled her view.

When she came to, a man was carrying her over his shoulder, venturing deeper inside the catacombs. He was wearing a dark robe.

The Black Vale.

She’d managed to elude them until now. Ruthless and lethal, they went by many names. She’d figured out that they ultimately all worked for the same group, a ring of occult fanatics rumored to perform human sacrifices for what they called the Old One. She had to get out of here fast.

Élodie spotted a loose skull on the wall, grabbed it and smashed it on her assaulter’s head. Stunned, the man lost his balance and Élodie hit the ground running. As she turned a corner, she suddenly felt a sharp pain to her side.

She looked down and saw a large blade planted there. Shocked, she removed the knife and warm blood spurted out.

Her heartbeat rang in her ears as her vision blurred.

She fell to her knees. Summoning all her strength, she drew a circle on the ground with a shaking, blood-red finger and traced a line in the middle.

An opaque heaviness fell over her shoulders. A familiar scent of vanilla-spiked fruits and lychee nuts coated the air. Thin, tropical rain drizzled down leafy vines. Warmth.

Madagascar.

A ghostly cry erupted from the thick foliage.

Élodie looked up and the vines turned to hissing snakes. The canopy soil suddenly turned ashen and collapsed under her feet. She sank into something dense and cold that swallowed her like quicksand. She screamed, before being smothered by… the abyss… the infinite… the hole…

She found what she had been searching for.

The Twins

A pair of conjoined twins, Charlotte and Victor Deshayes formed an emotional bond like none other. The unlikeliness of their successful birth in the 17th century could be described as miraculous, yet it immediately brought about their life of persecution. The twins emerged with Victor’s lower body affixed into the chest of his sister, legs twisted around her muscles and organs. He was smaller than Charlotte, grown as if he were an appendage of her body rather than a fully formed boy. As the newborns screeched, so too did the midwife who delivered them, running from the home, yelling of a demon birthed by a witch. So began the hunting of Charlotte, Victor and their mother Madeleine.

The coming years were fleeting memories for the twins, yet they were the closest thing to a normal life they would know. The journey with their mother was what they believed all children underwent, the games of running and hiding through France’s countryside being an ordinary occurrence. At the age of five, a new challenge to the game was presented as their mother fell ill. Pale and exhausted, Madeleine had no choice but to pass responsibility of collecting food onto Charlotte. The girl, burdened under extra clothing that concealed Victor’s protruding body, set out from their forest tent and marched into the nearby town. Though a peculiar sight, she did what she had been trained for, waiting for an opening at the market and swiping whatever food she could. It was a victory in the game, but one short-lived.

After midnight, glowing flames surrounded the family’s encampment, bobbing through the darkness. A single, commanding shout broke the night’s silence and a mob of witch hunters streamed in. Grubby hands tore the twins from their bed, Charlotte frantically kicking all who approached. Madeleine cried for her children, her voice abruptly silenced by a club to her skull. Victor shrieked, the wailings of a trapped rat.

The hunters coordinated quickly. A judge on hand declared Madeleine guilty of witchcraft, evidenced by her demon spawn. Within minutes, they shackled her unconscious body to a tree, surrounding her feet with dry twigs and moss. As she awoke, she did not struggle, only begged her children to turn away. They would be given no choice. The twins were forced to watch as the torch was lit, and they watched as flames leapt up their mother’s skirt, charring and sizzling her flesh. They watched as fat dripped from her body, and her face bubbled and twisted. They watched until the screams that tore her vocal cords were no more, and all that was left was the crackling of embers and a nauseating stench.

Whatever joy and goodness were in them died with their mother. Caged and transported to an old wooden temple, they were sold to a secretive group clad in dark cloaks. Victor reacted with the ferocity of a rabid beast at any who approached, clawing and biting. The only solace that could calm him was the embrace of his sister. Charlotte, bitter and hateful to all but her brother, found purpose in being his protector.

Within the temple, they were exposed to unusual experimentsーsome cruel, many simply baffling. One day they would be made to break the neck of a small grey bird. The next, they would bleed their fingers into a vase of roses. Every seventh day, they would sleep with the branch of a damp oak beneath their pillow. Then there was the chanting: a never-ending chorus from cloaked figures on scheduled intervals.

In time, a final experiment was planned. Two robed figures herded the twins to the center of the temple, holding Charlotte upon an altar in a room alit with candelabras. The wrinkled face of a man peered from under his hood, placing a hand on the forehead of each twin, making careful examination of their skulls. “Memento mori”, he uttered, as he withdrew a shining blade.

Charlotte rolled to her side, shifting her brother off the altar. With a screech, he stretched his arm as far as he could, knocking a candelabra to the ground. The flames took to the dry wood immediately. They swept over the floor, igniting the black robes that brushed against it. Screams of agony pierced the chaos, invigorating Charlotte. She dashed through the inferno, vision concealed with nothing but black smoke and blazing flame. A painful heaviness filled her lungs. No exit could be found, every step leading to overwhelming heat. She fell to her knees, suffocating, and then saw itーsunlight, trees. She stumbled from the fire into the dewey grass. Without looking back, she ran into the forest until she collapsed.

When Charlotte opened her eyes, she reached for Victor’s hand. He made no attempt to budge. His body hung helplessly from her torso. She clasped his face, stared into his sad, still eyes. The movements she was accustomed toーhis body pulling at her skin, his legs prodding at the cavity in her chestーwere no more. Victor was dead.

Charlotte had no choice but to continue moving as she mourned, fearing black cloaks and witch hunters were prowling. She concealed her brother’s corpse under her clothing and marched for the sewers of a nearby city. There, she set up camp, emerging often to steal whatever food she could, resorting to raiding barns for pig slop when desperation set in. Throughout the years, Victor’s corpse rotted as his limbs oozed and blackened, yet his body demonstrated resistance to complete decomposition, as if his sister’s blood still coursed through him. Protecting his lifeless body became Charlotte’s sole reason for being, refusing to ever be separated from the only family she had left.

Life into her teenage years was a game of survival. Her hatred for humanity grew each day under the realization they would never leave her be. No matter how many died in her botched robberies and desperate attempts to escape, there would always be more to pursue and sling words of condemnation at herーmonster, demon, witch. And it was the black cloaks who were the worst of them. Their hunt for her was unending, forcing her to constantly abandon shelter and run.

For years, Charlotte fled, drawing blood out of necessity, cradling her long-dead brother in the night. During a frigid winter, her body began to break down. Food was scarce and the refuge of rickety shacks were no use against freezing temperatures. Sickle in hand, she sheltered near her campfire in the woods, not knowing if the black cloaks would take her before the cold did. As frost crystalized around her nostrils and her lips took on a gentle blue hue, Charlotte felt something she had never experienced: acceptance. She closed her eyes, opening herself to the serenity of death whenーa shriek, shrill and vicious pierced her ears. Victor spasmed and flailed from her chest, a cloud of fog encompassing him. Before she could react, he spilled from her in a bloody puddle, landing on the snow and running.

Pulling herself from the edge of death, she gave chase. Calling his name, she ran through the forest until her legs could hardly carry her, until finally, within her view, was Victor, sitting at the edge of a thick fog. His face, twisted and feral, screamed as a dark hooded figure emerged from the fog, grabbed his arm and seized him. The serenity that had crept into Charlotte was extinguished, replaced with the seething hatred and rage she had depended on for so long. With a tight grip on her sickle, she charged into the fog, prepared to eviscerate any who set foot near her brother.