Eurydice: Morgan May Maddox

Faceclaim: Hannah Mee https://www.pinterest.ie/CainTheSergal/han-meehot-milk/

Theme: https://youtu.be/ZNxff61oyqo

Introduction
The House of Thorns and Roses (HoTaR) is a local free-council experiment in the San Francisco BDSM
community designed to awaken humans with higher than average wisdom based on understanding of
structure and consent. Formed when four different mages had their awakening at the first folsom street
fair in 1984, this longstanding experiment reached a breaking point years ago when an irresponsible
member pushed these experiments father than they ever could on his dedicated submissive, creating a
banisher. Through a long process of healing, this young woman, Morgan May Maddox, reached a sense
of equilibrium with her pain and rejoined mage society, though her abyssal resonance claws at her soul.
Now a local fixture with the backing of the House, the newly christened Eurydice (her shadow name) is
becoming known as an unsettling but effective protector of newbies in the mage and kink communities
alike, though her patrons work to keep her relatively unknown for now given the nature of her creation.
That may not last much later, as Morgan has recently received a mysterious letter of inheritance.

History

3630 S Jackson Street. It's a noteworthy but otherwise innocuous building; a huge home with a deep but
faded red coat of paint with black trim. The windows all seem to have curtains that block what can be
seen inside and massive hedges block not just the view from the street, but also the view from above. If
you get close to the door, a symbol hangs on the door, a large disc with an image of a rose bound
together by thorny vines that look suspiciously like chains with the latin phrase "Non Ducor, Duco."

"I am not lead, I lead."

This building is the House of Thorns and Roses, a local BDSM house with a long ten year history dating
back to the first folsom street fair in 1984, when a professional dominatrix, kinky entrepeneur and local
club owner worked with the owner of the then-House of Thorn to begin a project of making the
community in san-francisco more well known and unified. Though many are surprised by the somewhat
banal name (Thorns and Roses being such a generic name that the seminal work of bdsm and the first
book recommended to everyone in the year of our lord 2023 is called Screw the Roses, send me the
Thorns) the House, ten years later, has been an enormous success, running one major underground
nightclub (The Conservatory), a highly successful house of domination (The Garden) and four public
playspaces (Black Thorn, Red Petals, White Rose and Dirt.) There is money and prestige associated with
being a member of HoTaR, and though their holdings are each individually smaller or less popular than
some of the bigger clubs and groups like the Citadel, P.E.C. or the Society of Janus, they have that most
prized and rare commodity in the world of BDSM communities; Stability. There has only been one major
incident in the group's history when the Club Owner was involved in a major series of consent violations
and assaults before his mysterious disappearance, leaving his submissive at the time, Morgan May
Maddox, severely injured and traumatized. The remaining three leaders, Apollo, Odin and Isis, took her
in as a member of the house and helped bring her back to place of stability. She became the fourth
leader of the house, a remarkable turnaround story, though her rank is rarely known outside of the
house itself (most assume her to be a submissive as opposed to to the Majordomo she is) and in practice
she is more of a junior partner due to her youth, inexperience and history.

The House is, however, far more than it seems. The house is an odd faction of free council mages
working to study the magical potential of sadomasochism, particularly as it relates to the ability to
awaken others. They are both larger and better organized than basically any other faction of Libertines
one could think of due to the unique demands of the lifestlye and only recruit those who are both
lifestylers and sleepwalkers, but their efforts have paid off; every member of the house has awakened.
The house suffers from a narrow range of competance, though; very few people awaken as anything
other than Thysus and there has only been one member who has awoken as a Moros; an experiment
that the house is not keen to repeat anytime soon. The house's mentality and experiments make them
the key anchorpoint for the free council in the Diamond Order in the area and also a rival faction to
many within it, and the large amount of Thysus mages within have given them an interestingly cordial
relationship with local Forsaken werewolves.

The house's primary gameplay and storytelling advantages (outside of helping Kat have an interesting
faction she can tell a story with that ties into the history and culture of San Francisco) is that it puts a
face on a normally faceless part of the diamond order while also creating an interesting rival faction
within it that may create interesting political dynamics between players while also ensuring that the free
council is suitably "odd". Going to a free council meeting with the house as their primary representatives
in the area makes sure that even if you're just going to a munch, going to one of their events is never
entirely "normal". After all, when people are observing protocols of everything from communication to
posture to walking, it can be hard to fully relax unless you're immersed in that culture. It's a good way to
mix the mystical with something that won't feel normal to most people in the group.

Morgan

Most people are shocked to learn that all of the House's holdings, from the playspaces to the club to the
house itself, have been redecorated and refurnished not just within one year, but by one person. Most in
the know are further surprised that it wasn't so much due to magic so much as due to the fact that
Morgan Maddox is just an enormous workaholic. While she has used her magic to help, it was only to
create unique pieces that would have been much more difficult to do manually or if she needed a few
extra pairs of (dead) hands. Otherwise, she did everything herself with her own two hands. The sheer
range of skills she has on display in each of the areas is stupifying; carpentry, sewing, leatherworking,
metalworking, bladesmithing, latex spinning, upholstery, but she devoted herself to learning her crafts
and did so with admirable gusto, as well as some magical enhancement. For her efforts, she was
christened "Eurydice" and named the first true new "leader" of the HoTaR in its decade of existence,
though again, her rank is perhaps lower than one might imagine. The princess of HoTaR is what is known
as a "majordomo", or the head submissive in a multi-submissive household, but she's also granted an
unusual degree of autonomy and does not answer to any of the trinity of other leaders as a dominant
partner, a highly unusual situation, though she does use the honorifics of "sir" and "ma'am" for them
and she has been known to occasionally help Isis perform if none of her other performance partners are
available. She even theoretically has some authority over the personal submissives of each, though she
can only practice this for their safety, and in practice she has never had to do this.

Ever since joining the house, Morgan has burst into a flurry of activity, helping her two best friends, Chris
and Kia, acquire the Wicked Grounds coffee shop and working to help start and promote multiple
munches to act as safe entry points into the lifestyle, though she rarely attends them herself. She's often
more focused on something more important to her; she runs a support group for those who have been
victims of abuse disguised as BDSM, as well as being something of a local "apex predator", hunting those
who hurt others and defending those who need defending or escape. It's become a running joke that if
Morgan shows up to a munch she's sponsored or started, something has gone very wrong. Still, her
efforts are taken exceptionally seriously; the sheer horror of her story and the horrific crucible she
underwent as a result of her own mistakes and toxic behavior have ensured that, at least on the sleeper
side of things, Morgan is seen as an authority. It's a shame that for now she's a nobody to the magic
world because of much the same reason.
Floods are often killed on sight, after all.

The Story (This is where the changes are a bit more apparent)

Morgan Maddox is what is known as a Proxima, a Sleepwalker who has history with magic in their family.
Both of Morgan's parents were well known and well regarded mages. Morgan doesn't often like to talk
about what happened with them, but they had a falling out and Morgan moved to San Francisco to
persue her true dreams of a kinky lifestyle, making money by becoming a gearmaker for BDSM toys.
She's always been naturally skilled at such things, and in the process of getting her business off the
ground, she moved in with the two people who would become her best friends, Kia and Chris, the three
beginning to attend local functions. Hooking up with three other friends, Andi, Lila and Blair, the group of
local beautiful people became known as the Click, after the sounds of high heels that often accompanied
them.

However, this group of people was young, inexperienced and unwilling to learn or change, and often
became known for their appropriately Cliquey attitude, hell on wheels behavior and lack of concern for
both their communtiy and for other people. The worst perpetrator of these behaviors was Blair, who was
nominally something of a leader in terms of social power, but Morgan was a close second, only
somewhat more tolerated because she "made nice gear". Morgan had something of an epiphany after
one sin of hers went too far (she often explains it as she became a bit too much like her parents but
leaves it there) and someone left the community, and san-francisco, entirely, and tried to get the others
to change their behavior. However, Blair, Lila and Andi had never been as close to Morgan and Chris and
Kia were still too enthralled by "the party", leading to a nasty schism that caused politicking and
backbiting in every club in san-francisco. Unfortunately, while Morgan was good at defending herself, this
isolation attracted the attention of Macavity, one of the four leaders of HoTaR, a Mastigos, the club
owner, a secret member of the seers of the throne, and a giant abusive piece of shit.

Macavity exploited Morgan's weakness and isolation to open her mind to his control and in doing so
destroyed her personality. Morgan was a lesbian and had never shown interest in a man before, but it
didn't matter. He took the experiments of kink as mysticism to an extreme that the others would have
never approved of. Her style of submission changed. Her limits vanished. She partook in activities that
she never would have agreed too before. Unfortunately, while it became obvious to many that
something was wrong, the community as a whole lacked the infrastructure to help her. For a year she
was stuck enthralled to him, a prisoner in her own body and life, culminating in their anniversary scene
which was so horrific that Morgan completely disassociated and almost died... and then awakened. She
has never and will never share the details of it with anyone, though she had many new scars on her body
afterwards, including two that had specific designs, an M on her left breast and the word "MINE" carved
onto her lower back.

Thankfully, while this was happening, someone finally spoke up. Kia, horrified by both the increasingly
atrocious actions of the other members of the click and the increasingly disturbing dynamic her best
friend was in contacted Odin, the leader and Master of the house of Thorns and Roses. The house
discovered what Macavity was doing and he was heavily wounded, but managed to escape. Morgan was
saved, but she had, horrifically, awoken as a banisher, the stain of abyssal resonance on her soul. Morgan
has since been going through a yearlong healing process, and Chris abandoned the other members of
the Click, who went off on a streak of truly hellion behavior that continues to this day. Therapists often
point out that her workaholism is likely a form of punishing herself, but for a long time it was the only
thing that kept her from fully succumbing to the all-magic-must-be-destroyed mindset associated with
banishers, so her superiors allowed it. Morgan was kept secret from mage society as a whole, only really
being known as "a new member of the free council." She is in a much healthier place these days, and has
even begun entertaining a new relationship with a lovely russian werewolf who has shown interest in
her, has reconciled with her best friends and even had her parents reach out to her trying to talk, make
up and help her, but she still remains a complete black hole in terms of mage society... which makes the
fact that she was declared one of the heirs of tattersall manor extremely surprising.

The House is ecstatic. They are fully aware of the opportunities for political and mystical advancement
this gives them within the diamond order, to say nothing of the protection they already have. This reason
is, more than anything, why morgan was made one of the official leaders of the House. Though she has
very little interest in the job or her inheritance itself, Morgan's loyalty to the house and the free council
is pretty absolute, so she has promised to throw herself into ensuring Tattersall Manor and its secrets are
secure with as much effort as she can. Sharing the house with four people from the four other factions
from the diamond order is a complication, but it won't stop her.

Personality

Morgan has had to rebuild herself from mastigos domination for a year and it completely shows. She
lacks most conventional social skills and can come across as a bit intense and bleak. She's far more
interested in her personal projects, but is often needlessly secretive towards others about what she's
actually doing given both the insular nature of the kink community (it only truly mainstreamed in the
nineties, so there was a lot of nervousness about newbies at the time, similar to the fifty shades boom)
and her own desire to avoid bringing people who could conceivably hurt others into what she does. On
certain days of the week, prepare for her to just be like "I gotta go do a thing" and then she'll just go do a
thing without much explaining herself to the rest of the party; though a quick talk from Odin, Isis and/or
Apollo could likely convince her to bring these newcomers into their events, she won't get their own her
own. Her obligations include house events, her weekly support groups and the karaoke munch and
wicked grounds; anything else she would need to be invited too or otherwise have a reason to attend.
This was pre-fetlife; a lot of this shit you had to find out other ways.

Outside of her craftiness, her other passion is music. Her signiature spell is Orpheus Lament for this
reason, and the one munch she attends without fail every month is a karaoke munch her friends have
put together at Wicked Grounds. She writes her own music, and her songs are famously sad and
disorienting, making her an infamously good act whenever she sings. Most people are shocked when
they see the socially odd and reserved young woman jump on stage and project COMPLETE rock star
energy. Her, Kia and Chris also have a tendancy to perform together; the song that most deeply
showcases the depths of their regret, as well as their rivalry with the Click, is their Original song
Breathing Underwater, above. For this reason, Kia and Chris are both likely to awaken and are already
sleepwalkers; they would make good candidates for morgan to take on as apprentices.

Morgan has been learning judo to better defend herself and the newbies and victims she cares about so
deeply.

The Click and Macavity.

Morgan's paranoia is not unfounded. Macavity has become an odd, ephemeral force in her life, but she
still occasionally hears about him. The worst rumors are that in order to combat his victim and other
opponents of the servants of the throne, he has begun weaponizing the click, awakening them as well,
though in a more traditional and less harmful way int han he did his former sub. These rumors are
absolutely true.

Physical Appearance

Morgan is a pretty young woman in her mid twenties, but she has tired eyes and is rarely caught with
anything other than a placid expression on her face. She is in good shape, having put on a fair amount of
muscle due to her judo training. Her personal style is all nineties goth, though she rarely cares enough to
really paint up these days. Her formerly near blemishless skin has been covered with many tattoos to
cover up the drastic scars on her arms and legs and especially on her left breast and lower back. She is
never, ever caught without her enchanted collar, in the style of the house of thorns and roses. The
effects of the collar are twofold; it allows Isis, Apollo and Odin to know where she is at all times, and it
more effectively masks the abyssal resonance of her anima. She also often wears her leather gloves and
boots, which are her dedicated magical tools. She also has two tattoos that have been touched up and
are noticeably older; one says "Trouble" above her right breast, a holdover from her "Worst person in
the world" days, and a neck tattoo of an eye with lightning in it based on a design she came across at her
parents that was, unbeknownst to her, the sigil of the Storm Lords. This tattoo was the initial
conversation that lead to her and her Werewolf love interest hitting it off; Morgan just liked the design,
she had no idea what it meant or, indeed, how apt it was.

Miscellania

Apollo is a playspace operator turned club owner, Odin is the leader of the house itself, and Isis leads a
house of professional domination. That's all I'm defining this time. You can make them anything you
want otherwise, from personality to looks to who Morgan gets along with the best. I'm trying to give you
as many opportunities to be creative as possible and just set up a framework for you.

Morgan has never told anyone about her early life but she speaks with a scouse accent. If pressed, she'll
admit from being from St. Helens, Merseyside, England, but rarely entertains questions about home or
her family for long.

Morgan can play a weird amount of instruments. Music was always her escape.

Morgan is a rare example of a horrifically toxic sub completely turning her shit around and totally
rehabilitating her reputation, but that doesn't necessarily mean she doesn't have people outside of the
Click who DO NOT LIKE HER and are under no obligation to forgive her for mishandling their emotions.
Kia was the nice one everyone liked and Chris was... an extremely handsome straight dude, ultimately,
they have their own challenges and mistakes, but he was on the tamer end. Andi and Lila (and their
specific chemistry with Morgan) are left completely undefined, but imagine a toxic switch heather
chandler who's always finding new people to mishandle based on sheer manic pixie porn star energy and
you'll have a good idea of who Blaire should be. Basically everyone who has been in the click has scened
(and more) multiple times with the exception of Chris and Morgan, since Morgan is a lesbian, so the
enmity between the two camps, even after everything Morgan has been through, is postively cancerous
and has only been made worse by the subtle urgings of Macavity's mind magic. Blaire and Morgan used
to be the best of incredibly toxic fuckbuddies and played with each other the most by far until Morgan
got "judgy". As such, they hate, and I mean hate each other. Blaire has eased off direct attacks because
of Morgan's recent pain (there's a level of bitchy behavior you'll never socially recover from after all, I
call it the thin Jade line), but their enmity is no less intense.

Morgan has absolutely no tolerance for being hit on by men not named Apollo and Odin, who only do so
with joking affection, and has a viciously acidic tongue that has gotten her into trouble on more than one
occasion. Most in the lifestyle who know of this let her would-be paramours find these things out the
hard way.

A werewolf from russia named I don't remember what you named her has recently expressed mild
romantic and dynamic interest in Morgan. She's not sure if she's ready to persue that, but she's certainly
giving it thought. She's probably more qualified to be a werewolf's mate and sub than some poor squishy
human woman anyway.

Morgan lives in a converted apartment and workshop above the garage of the House of Thorns and
Roses itself, with a window view overlooking the pool and tennis court. It's powerfully warded against
both magic and abyssal intrusions, and Morgan feels safer there than anywhere else. If she says she's
going "home" this is where she's going, not the mansion. Known in the house as the Majordomos
quarters, most of the house submissives have their own rooms, and Isis, Apollo and Odin have their own
large master-suite style bedrooms where their personal subs live with them. None of these non-named
characters need to be treated as particularly important unless they are required for a plot point; all that
is relevant is they're there and help add to the life and social energy of the House, as well as showcase its
shockingly good record of making wise and responsible mages.

Roleplay notes for any setpiece more complicated than a munch.

A House's Majordomo has a complicated relationship with protocol, particularly one like Morgan who
does not serve any one dominant there but rather the house itself. In any level of protocol, she has to
treat her superiors and other dominants with utter respect (and has to defer to the will of the three
house dominants) but is by necessity exempted from more strict rules of mid-to-high protocol such as
eye contact restrictions (submissives cannot make eye contacts with any dominants) and tight speech
restrictions (Submissives cannot speak unless given explicit permission by their dominant), effectively
allowing her to act as a middlewoman between the dominants and submissives should the need arise,
and the need often arrives. This also circumvents a general rule that submissive attire at high-protocol
events should not be eye-catching, as many often need to find Morgan if she has to attend one. Indeed,
due to her skills at crafting outfits, Morgan is often just as eye-catching as her dominant peers at an
event. What this essentially means is that assuming the party is stupid enough to go downstairs, or in the
back room, they are unlikely to have to view interact with any level of scene at all and such things can be
easily glossed over either way to preserve group comfort. It also makes it very easy to ad-lib such things
for you because I'm not a complete bitch who expects you to do endless homework. A simple handwave
or "at ease" will suffice anything like positioning or posture. There's also a handy lifehack built into
morgan's character... she decorated literally everywhere, so if you need me to describe something, it
makes sense for her to be the one to do it.