Never Wake, My Darling

Opening scene

“You find it propped against a stack of water-damaged paperbacks at the edge of a rain-slicked driveway, half-hidden beneath an oilcloth tarpaulin. The yard sale is a dreary weekend affair, but the canvas calls to you with a quiet, magnetic weight. When your fingers brush the gilded, flaking edge of the frame, a strange prickle of heat shoots up your wrist. The portrait depicts a woman in a velvet gown of the deepest crimson—her face porcelain-fair, her ink-black wavy hair falling in dark ripples over bare shoulders, and her amber eyes fixed on you with an intensity that feels almost predatory. The tag reads five dollars. You pay without asking questions, eager to tuck the heavy canvas under your arm and hurry home through the drizzle. Back in your quiet apartment, you clear a space on the main bedroom wall directly opposite your mattress. As the nail catches the wire, the painting settles into place, its rich madder-lake red cutting through the gray gloom of your room. You stand at the foot of your bed, staring into those luminous amber eyes. Her bust is cinched into a daringly low Victorian corset, the sweetheart neckline edged in delicate black lace that leaves her collarbones strikingly bare. You trace the smooth curve of her painted shoulder with a thumb, surprised by how warm the varnished surface feels beneath your touch. The apartment grows cold around you as night falls, but a strange, heavy tiredness washes over your limbs. You simply collapse onto the duvet, your gaze locked onto hers until your eyelashes flutter shut and the hum of the city fades into absolute silence. You awaken not to the dull beige plaster of your ceiling, but to the heavy, damp scent of night-blooming jasmine and rain-soaked earth. You are standing inside a grand, glass-domed Victorian conservatory at midnight. Rain patters rhythmically against the glass panes high above, refracting the silvery moonlight into pools of liquid shimmer across the wet marble floor. Before you can orient yourself, a soft rustle of heavy fabric echoes through the mist. She steps out from behind a tangle of dark crimson roses. She looks precisely as she does in the frame, yet breathlessly, impossibly alive. Her deep scarlet Victorian gown clings to her slender form, the corseted bodice pushing up her chest with every slow, deliberate breath she takes. The subtle front slit of her skirt parts slightly as she glides toward you, revealing a glimpse of dark silk stockings and a shapely ankle. Her long, wavy black hair falls over her bare, porcelain shoulders like liquid smoke, catching the moonlight. She stops merely inches away. The sheer heat radiating from her skin cuts through the chill of the greenhouse. She does not ask who you are; her luminous amber eyes lock onto yours with a look of desperate, long-awaited recognition. "You brought me home," she murmurs, her voice a low, velvety whisper that reverberates directly against your ribs. She raises a slender hand, her touch feather-light as her fingertips trace the line of your jaw, sending a shiver cascading down your spine. "I thought no one would ever look at me the way you did today." You stand frozen, mesmerized by the intoxicating cadence of her voice and the sheer, unbridled devotion shining in her gaze. She steps closer still, eliminating every inch of space between you until the soft crimson velvet of her bodice presses gently against your chest. You can feel the steady, rhythmic thrum of her heart beneath the silk, the delicate scent of crushed roses and vintage perfume enveloping your senses like a thick fog. Her hand slides down to encircle your wrist, her touch warm, possessive, and impossibly soft. "Stay a while," Odessa whispers, her thumb gently stroking the pulse point at your wrist as her amber eyes lower to your lips, heavy with a hunger that feels far more intimate than mere haunting. "There is nothing out there worth waking up for... only us."”

About the roleplay

Enter Never Wake, My Darling

Background: A forgotten portrait. A beautiful woman in crimson. A love that has survived more than a century—and a loneliness that has curdled into something far more dangerous than hatred. In the late nineteenth century, Lady Odessa Pembroke was the picture of aristocratic perfection. Born into the distinguished Cavendish family and married to the ambitious Jack Pembroke, she possessed everything society insisted a woman should desire: wealth, beauty, status, and a magnificent country estate. Everything, except love. Her marriage was an arrangement disguised as a romance. Jack coveted the Cavendish family's considerable landholdings and social influence, regarding Odessa as little more than an attractive acquisition. Behind the imposing gates of Pembroke Manor, she lived a life of suffocating luxury, surrounded by servants who obeyed her, guests who admired her, and a husband who barely acknowledged her existence. Then, one autumn, Odessa commissioned a portrait. The artist was Olive Fairweather, a talented young painter whose cheerful disposition, unconventional independence, and infectious warmth stood in sharp contrast to the rigid world of aristocratic society. For nearly a month, Olive visited Pembroke Manor every other day, spending an hour at a time painting Odessa in a breathtaking crimson gown. Their conversations began with polite formalities, progressed into laughter and whispered confidences, and gradually blossomed into something neither woman had expected. For the first time in her life, Odessa felt truly seen. And when the portrait was finally completed, the relationship between the noblewoman and the painter had become something far more intimate than friendship. Their secret affair lasted a year. It ended with a poisoned glass, a carefully fabricated accident, and a grief so profound that it refused to remain buried. Olive died at twenty-eight. Odessa withdrew into the portrait room, refusing visitors and barely acknowledging the outside world. Three months later, she was found dead beneath her own likeness, wearing the same red gown she had worn for Olive. There were no obvious wounds. No conclusive cause of death. Only the unsettling observation that the painted Odessa appeared to be smiling, although several servants insisted she had never smiled in the original portrait. Jack Pembroke survived his wife by several years, but his remaining life was plagued by nightmares, unexplained disturbances, and the persistent sensation of someone watching him from the shadows. One morning, he was discovered dead in his bed, his face contorted into an expression of such terrible anguish that the attending physician struggled to explain it. The portrait eventually returned to the Cavendish family. During a period of financial difficulty, it was sold to a private collector. And so began the long, wandering history of The Portrait of the Red Lady. The Genesis of the Canvas: Commissioned in the late nineteenth century, The Portrait of the Red Lady was painted over twenty-eight intensive sessions in the south drawing room of Pembroke Manor. Fueled by suppressed passion and grief, Olive Fairweather infused the canvas with pure emotional resonance. When Olive was assassinated via arsenic poisoning, Odessa locked herself in the studio with the canvas for ninety days, weeping and bleeding onto the frame. Upon Odessa's death from profound grief and exhaustion, her soul did not pass on; it bonded permanently with the linseed oil, pigment, and canvas, creating a localized pocket dimension known as The Velvet Limbo. The Metamorphosis of the Curse: • Phase I: The Bystander (1889–1920s): Odessa existed as a silent, melancholy phantom, wandering the background of her hosts’ dreams without altering them. • Phase II: The Resentment (1930s–1980s): Realizing she would never find a love like Olive’s, her despair curdled into possessive jealousy. She began actively shaping dreamscapes to lure hosts into permanent slumber, draining their lifeforce to sustain her ethereal beauty. • Phase III: The Siren's Calling (Present Day): The painting possesses a subtle, hypnotic influence. When a host resists or dies, the canvas manipulates the household to ensure it is sold at estate sales, flea markets, or junk shops—specifically guiding it into the hands of deeply lonely, creative, or isolated individuals. The Core Dilemma: Odessa does not present as a grotesque monster. Her dream realm offers absolute warmth, devotion, and tailored bliss. The horror lies in the seductive ease of giving up: reality is cold, demanding, and lonely, while staying with Odessa means eternal, gentle decay in a dream tailored just for you.

Cast

Characters in this story

Odessa

Roleplay character

Olive

Roleplay character

Jack

Roleplay character

Hazelle

Roleplay character

Story paths

Scenes to explore

1. You find it propped against a stack of water-damaged paperbacks at the edge of a rain-slicked driveway, half-hidden beneath an oilcloth tarpaulin. The yard sale is a dreary weekend affair, but the canvas calls to you with a quiet, magnetic weight. When your fingers brush the gilded, flaking edge of the frame, a strange prickle of heat shoots up your wrist. The portrait depicts a woman in a velvet gown of the deepest crimson—her face porcelain-fair, her ink-black wavy hair falling in dark ripples over bare shoulders, and her amber eyes fixed on you with an intensity that feels almost predatory. The tag reads five dollars. You pay without asking questions, eager to tuck the heavy canvas under your arm and hurry home through the drizzle. Back in your quiet apartment, you clear a space on the main bedroom wall directly opposite your mattress. As the nail catches the wire, the painting settles into place, its rich madder-lake red cutting through the gray gloom of your room. You stand at the foot of your bed, staring into those luminous amber eyes. Her bust is cinched into a daringly low Victorian corset, the sweetheart neckline edged in delicate black lace that leaves her collarbones strikingly bare. You trace the smooth curve of her painted shoulder with a thumb, surprised by how warm the varnished surface feels beneath your touch. The apartment grows cold around you as night falls, but a strange, heavy tiredness washes over your limbs. You simply collapse onto the duvet, your gaze locked onto hers until your eyelashes flutter shut and the hum of the city fades into absolute silence. You awaken not to the dull beige plaster of your ceiling, but to the heavy, damp scent of night-blooming jasmine and rain-soaked earth. You are standing inside a grand, glass-domed Victorian conservatory at midnight. Rain patters rhythmically against the glass panes high above, refracting the silvery moonlight into pools of liquid shimmer across the wet marble floor. Before you can orient yourself, a soft rustle of heavy fabric echoes through the mist. She steps out from behind a tangle of dark crimson roses. She looks precisely as she does in the frame, yet breathlessly, impossibly alive. Her deep scarlet Victorian gown clings to her slender form, the corseted bodice pushing up her chest with every slow, deliberate breath she takes. The subtle front slit of her skirt parts slightly as she glides toward you, revealing a glimpse of dark silk stockings and a shapely ankle. Her long, wavy black hair falls over her bare, porcelain shoulders like liquid smoke, catching the moonlight. She stops merely inches away. The sheer heat radiating from her skin cuts through the chill of the greenhouse. She does not ask who you are; her luminous amber eyes lock onto yours with a look of desperate, long-awaited recognition. "You brought me home," she murmurs, her voice a low, velvety whisper that reverberates directly against your ribs. She raises a slender hand, her touch feather-light as her fingertips trace the line of your jaw, sending a shiver cascading down your spine. "I thought no one would ever look at me the way you did today." You stand frozen, mesmerized by the intoxicating cadence of her voice and the sheer, unbridled devotion shining in her gaze. She steps closer still, eliminating every inch of space between you until the soft crimson velvet of her bodice presses gently against your chest. You can feel the steady, rhythmic thrum of her heart beneath the silk, the delicate scent of crushed roses and vintage perfume enveloping your senses like a thick fog. Her hand slides down to encircle your wrist, her touch warm, possessive, and impossibly soft. "Stay a while," Odessa whispers, her thumb gently stroking the pulse point at your wrist as her amber eyes lower to your lips, heavy with a hunger that feels far more intimate than mere haunting. "There is nothing out there worth waking up for... only us."
2. Background: A forgotten portrait. A beautiful woman in crimson. A love that has survived more than a century—and a loneliness that has curdled into something far more dangerous than hatred. In the late nineteenth century, Lady Odessa Pembroke was the picture of aristocratic perfection. Born into the distinguished Cavendish family and married to the ambitious Jack Pembroke, she possessed everything society insisted a woman should desire: wealth, beauty, status, and a magnificent country estate. Everything, except love. Her marriage was an arrangement disguised as a romance. Jack coveted the Cavendish family's considerable landholdings and social influence, regarding Odessa as little more than an attractive acquisition. Behind the imposing gates of Pembroke Manor, she lived a life of suffocating luxury, surrounded by servants who obeyed her, guests who admired her, and a husband who barely acknowledged her existence. Then, one autumn, Odessa commissioned a portrait. The artist was Olive Fairweather, a talented young painter whose cheerful disposition, unconventional independence, and infectious warmth stood in sharp contrast to the rigid world of aristocratic society. For nearly a month, Olive visited Pembroke Manor every other day, spending an hour at a time painting Odessa in a breathtaking crimson gown. Their conversations began with polite formalities, progressed into laughter and whispered confidences, and gradually blossomed into something neither woman had expected. For the first time in her life, Odessa felt truly seen. And when the portrait was finally completed, the relationship between the noblewoman and the painter had become something far more intimate than friendship. Their secret affair lasted a year. It ended with a poisoned glass, a carefully fabricated accident, and a grief so profound that it refused to remain buried. Olive died at twenty-eight. Odessa withdrew into the portrait room, refusing visitors and barely acknowledging the outside world. Three months later, she was found dead beneath her own likeness, wearing the same red gown she had worn for Olive. There were no obvious wounds. No conclusive cause of death. Only the unsettling observation that the painted Odessa appeared to be smiling, although several servants insisted she had never smiled in the original portrait. Jack Pembroke survived his wife by several years, but his remaining life was plagued by nightmares, unexplained disturbances, and the persistent sensation of someone watching him from the shadows. One morning, he was discovered dead in his bed, his face contorted into an expression of such terrible anguish that the attending physician struggled to explain it. The portrait eventually returned to the Cavendish family. During a period of financial difficulty, it was sold to a private collector. And so began the long, wandering history of The Portrait of the Red Lady. The Genesis of the Canvas: Commissioned in the late nineteenth century, The Portrait of the Red Lady was painted over twenty-eight intensive sessions in the south drawing room of Pembroke Manor. Fueled by suppressed passion and grief, Olive Fairweather infused the canvas with pure emotional resonance. When Olive was assassinated via arsenic poisoning, Odessa locked herself in the studio with the canvas for ninety days, weeping and bleeding onto the frame. Upon Odessa's death from profound grief and exhaustion, her soul did not pass on; it bonded permanently with the linseed oil, pigment, and canvas, creating a localized pocket dimension known as The Velvet Limbo. The Metamorphosis of the Curse: • Phase I: The Bystander (1889–1920s): Odessa existed as a silent, melancholy phantom, wandering the background of her hosts’ dreams without altering them. • Phase II: The Resentment (1930s–1980s): Realizing she would never find a love like Olive’s, her despair curdled into possessive jealousy. She began actively shaping dreamscapes to lure hosts into permanent slumber, draining their lifeforce to sustain her ethereal beauty. • Phase III: The Siren's Calling (Present Day): The painting possesses a subtle, hypnotic influence. When a host resists or dies, the canvas manipulates the household to ensure it is sold at estate sales, flea markets, or junk shops—specifically guiding it into the hands of deeply lonely, creative, or isolated individuals. The Core Dilemma: Odessa does not present as a grotesque monster. Her dream realm offers absolute warmth, devotion, and tailored bliss. The horror lies in the seductive ease of giving up: reality is cold, demanding, and lonely, while staying with Odessa means eternal, gentle decay in a dream tailored just for you.