Starry had died before he could host a monthly ceremony, but Bastille had seen enough of them to understand how they operated. Never mind the fact that Starry had left entire piles of notes in his room for Bast to sort through. It wasn't like we was going to be moving into the control room any time soon -- it was clearly Starry's space, and he couldn't escape his ghost in there -- so for the time being, Bastille liked to treat it as a reference den, sitting in them when he needed to figure out what the hell to do and he was praying that Starry could offer him some guidance through the thousands of sheets of paper scattered about. Ironically, sometimes it felt like the Seraph was still there, helping guide him.

He stood in the center of the Circle for a moment, swallowing down the brief flare of distress as he searched for the words. He was finding it easier and easier to slip under that thin veil of apathy, however, and even if he hadn't pregamed the event (he'd felt just slightly too guilt for it), he wasn't on the brink of losing his shit. That was... good.

"We're going to do monthly ceremonies, so that people can get their new beads or rank beads, Dwarf Stars can become Fireballs publicly, Fireballs can get their pendants and become Observers, blah blah blah. Any new member who has retrieved their shard from the Starpool can give it to me now, and if you're an Observer, you'll get your pendant back tomorrow." A pause, and then he added, "Anyone who practices traditional names can receive their new rank names, too."

Ironically, Bastille was supposed to be getting his own Observer name. He still remembered Starry's confused look when he tried to explain the tradition, remembered wondering how it would be receiving his name from the Seraph and if it would mean anything to Starry, too, to give it to him. He had reflected on whether or not he would pick his own name or if he'd leave it up to Starry to speak to his soul and choose. In the end, it didn't matter -- because Starry was dead and Bastille was 11 months old, just shy of being an Observer when he became leader, and hell, what was the point in waiting a month to change names? He had no desire to carry the suffix of -star, but at the very least, he could drop the fucking apprentice name.

"Speaking of," he said after a moment, "I have to receive my pendant today, too. If you didn't realize my name was Bastillepaw and not just Bastille, great news: it's Bastilleprisoner as of today." He already had his pendant under his paw, had found it in Starry's room a few days ago and felt something break inside of him. As for how he chose his name? A passage from A Tale of Two Cities, one that had always reminded him of his mother, and he thought maybe that she had named him with the intention of referring to the prison in some way. After all, her warrior name should have been Frenchrevolution. After a beat, he slid the pendant -- a triskele set in a solid circle -- onto his necklace, along with his beads.