It began with a tremble deep below the dark waves.
The whales took themselves to distant coasts at the first moaning ache of the ocean bed. Sharks feasted on the schools of fish swimming in frantic patterns where the currents met their fins with unusual violence. The sea descended into anarchy at the first shift of the coral reef. Order became disorder, predators and prey shifted their values. All anything in the ocean wanted to do was survive.
The shores were the next to tremble. Waves crashed into the sand with abandon. Each granule of sand shifted like fine sugar, too thick to float away like flour. Dune grasses quivered in a wind that wasn’t born from any direction but under. Crabs scurried towards the mountains and sand swallows made their nests in desert limestone and mountain peaks. Seagulls swept down upon the courts, roosting like bats in any dark and high corner in which they could fit.
All the bones of Novus shivered and the wilds grew cold with dread.
Soon there was no hiding the way all the joints of the world ached, or the way the sky started to look darker in a line across the southern horizon. It hardly took anytime at all for everyone to know the volcano was overflowing with electric heat and acid. Horses started to gather on the southern shore, sure that the island was further out to sea than it seemed. They were sure nothing could harm them when there was sand beneath their hooves and sun on their backs.
Pillars of smoke started to rise from the distant island. Embers started to dance on the wind like locusts from the underland, red as fire and as wild on the winds as a million starving hawks. The island groaned and it sounded, to the horses on the shore, like the earth was waking up. Teeth of rock were cracking wide and blood of salt was flowing. That distant island was becoming, although no one could say what it was becoming.
No one could even remember when that distant island rose from the sea like a leviathan of the black waters. Each horse told the one beside it a different story, and each horse beside a horse told another horse a different one.
“I saw it rise as I sailed the Terminus.” A bay stallion told a purple mare. His wings shifted like flies at his side. She thought that flies would know the truth of that island in a way horses never would.
“There was a storm a month ago. I think the sea swallowed it and made that distant peak with the energy left behind from lightning.” A unicorn looked at foal and its mother. The unicorn smiled but it was a sad smile. It was sad in the way that fear is always a little full of sorrow even when it’s terrible.
“That is no island. The peak is a monster. It has come for us all to leech all the hate and violence from our blood like a plague leeches out weakness.” No one wanted to look at the old mare who told that story. No one wanted to know that it was their own black hearts that rose that distant volcano from the bottom of the sea to be an altar for their sins.
In the end though all the stories didn’t matter, because the volcano was erupting. The earth was weeping out her sorrows in the most violent way. It didn’t matter because soon the horizon rose like a black wave to swallow up the setting sun.
And if the stars came, there was no one on the shore who could have told night from day.
How to Participate!
There is an island far out to sea that is just visible along the horizon. Upon that island is a volcano that has started to erupt. Smoke is rising up into the sky. Soon daytime over the sea looks like a black and moonless night. The ocean waves are crashing against the shore and each one is larger than the last. The sand is shaking finely and an army of crabs is marching across the shore to higher ground.
Horses are already gathering and they are all wondering if disaster is striking Novus once more. Surely, most of them think, the island is too far out to sea to bring chaos to courts. But deep in their hearts they know that their world is changing once more.
A NOTE: The island is too dangerous to travel too. Even with wings-- the sky is full of ash, smoke and fire. Trying to venture to the actual island itself is almost certain death. This event takes place strictly on the shorelines of Novus.
Each character may reply to this post only one time. Rolls will be done and a staff edit will be posted at the end of each reply with Random Event results. You are more than welcome, and encouraged, to branch off into individual threads to interact with other characters. You may respond to the characters before you or your reply could be set at a different moment in time (this is totally up to you). This event will last for several days IC time.
If you reply to this thread, it gives you +1 post in an SWP.
All replies after May 17th, 2019 will not be considered for a RE roll.
Possible rolls and their rewards are as follows.
1 : 10 signos
2: 20 signos
3: 40 signos
4: 80 signos
5: 100 signos
6: 120 signos
To tag this account: @*'Random Events' without the asterisk.
Please be advised, tagging the Random Event account does not guarantee a response!
05-03-2019, 06:30 PM - This post was last modified: 03-21-2021, 12:41 AM by inkbone
The current, predictably westbound and generally swift, seemed sluggish and backlogged, as if the ocean were too full to hold any more of the frigid waters of it’s frothing tributary. The waters themselves, even, were different and wrong; dark and thick looking, like tar, like taint. Dulled surface broke and bubbled, hissing as if in response to the abrupt change in pace.
Curling her lip in distaste, Llewelyn gave a customary huff and pulled herself quickly away from the river. Whatever was wrong with it? Taking a step back, the mare studied the waters from what she felt was a safe distance, Aurelian eyes slitted in suspicion. She took a moment to check the hang of her emerald cloak, relieved to find that none of its plush hem had touched the now-rancid Rapax.
Without turning her back on the suddenly unpredictable river, Llewelyn slowly made her way up the shallow bank and back to the even more assured safety of the meadows at the southwesternmost point of Orien’s kingdom. A measured sigh blew from white and pink nostrils as the maiden felt her hooves sink into the lingering blanket of snow that lay heavily upon the slumbering prairie, a hesitant curiosity still present within her mind.
It was then that she turned her attention toward the not so distant shoreline and felt herself gasp at what she beheld there;
Ocean waters blackened and thrashing, beating against Delumine’s shores with a viciousness that made something within the mare quail and shrink with fear. Above the angrily crashing waves was a sky that looked to be painted in blood, though it was quickly growing just as black as the sea that it hovered over. In the distance, somewhere far to the south of her home, Llewelyn could make out violent tridents of lightning slicing at the heavens, and for a moment, she wondered if the gods had returned to wage war upon one another.
“Oriens!” She gasped in horror, not knowing whether her cry was a rebuke or a plea for help. The femme’s leonine tail undulated and lashed in the sudden winds, the once crisp scent of frozen flowers replaced with the rancid scent of sulfur and a foul warmth that wrapped it’s way about the Lady’s frame.
Embers and ash had begun to drift lazily toward the earth, hissing against the surface of the Rapax and peppering the snow with black. Llewelyn’s eyes grew wide with fright and she cast a terrified glance toward the citadel and the security of Somnus’ leadership. She wanted nothing more than to turn tail and gallop back home, back to her honey and rose-scented apartments and the familiar safety that could be found within the pale walls, but she found that she could not move.
For all of her bravado, all of her haughtiness and condescension, Llewelyn had never been faced with fear. Indeed, this was not the fear that accompanied a child through the darkness, not the fright of a broken trinket, or the scare of finding someone just around what was thought to be an empty turn; the terror that the patterned mare felt was something out of a storybook, so pure and all-consuming that she hardly could believe it were real.
And so she stood there, in her finery and her horror, waiting for the world to end.
.... >.> ... can someone come rescue my idiot? It seems to have malfunctioned.
***STAFF EDIT
@llewelyn has rolled a 6! She has been awarded +120 signos
05-03-2019, 07:26 PM
Played by
kealie [PM] Posts: 74 — Threads: 16 Signos: 0
It was without warning when the ground under-hoof began vibrating, the feeling unnerving and somehow cynical in its movement. Maerys moved towards the shore when her mauve eyes caught sight of quite the tragedy. The cold winter air was loud, filled with a noise that tried desperately to burst eardrums. The heavens, so azure just seconds ago, grew shaded and quickly darkened as the beast of a volcano belted its insides into the atmosphere. All that could be seen through the veil of smoke and heat on that small island in the distance was thick, hot lava trickling like blood from a wound.
Her mind began twirling as she passionately tried convincing herself this was some sort of illusion, a piece of fictional work that was brought to her in the form of a nightmare. Wake up. Wake up. Wake up. But alas, as the air further heated and the storm that fell from the sky was pebbles, not drizzle, there was no refuting it. Complete darkness prevailed as vapors expanded and the heaven grew stricken, any sign of daylight dimmed from view. The zephyr surged to push the oceans into peaks of destruction and wrath, driving them to crash against the coast like an enraged steed in combat.
Maerys hears the murmurs, all troubled about the distant volcano. She'd seen graver than a volcano, but she wasn't convinced she'd seen something more critical than a volcanic monster. "I- I- understand not what is happening.." Her mumble was bothered, a whisper of fear among the screaming of the world around her. Her succinct immigrant tongue would go unnoticed in the chaos around her. The picture before her did not halt but rather it poured gasoline onto the spark of dread that bloomed in her belly. Though her lip quivered and her nostrils shuddered, she felt a sense of duty and did not flee from the scene. Resolutely she persisted, expecting the absolute worse that her thought could even imagine.
Furrowing her brow, she watched attentively, prepared to battle though she knew she was savagely unprepared and ineffectual for the responsibility. A juvenile dam was no threat to a lurking, hulking monster. That didn't matter to her, however, because when the time came to fight she would be among the first to enlist herself.
At first, it was unclear what drew her to the shores that day. Hāsta had protested as usual, but eventually joined Corrdelia on her journey. It was something in her heart that told her she needed to see the ocean today. Of course, her crow companion made a comment about how "it wasn't anywhere near summer yet, the ocean is too cold", but that wasn't the point. Something wanted her to be over there today and it'd bother her all day if she ignored it.
And so they took flight with Hāsta following beside her. Normally Corr didn't mind walking, but flying would get them both there much more quickly. She made sure to bring some supplies with her in case they ran into any trouble, but she was hoping for nothing too dangerous.
Unfortunately, Corr would not be met with good tidings on this journey. The ground beneath her trembled and ached and it seemed the world was erupting into chaos along the horizon. There was smoke, so much smoke, and fire further out.
Once she had a good view from the shore, her heart stopped. It was something she had never seen before, but it was horrifying. For once, even Hāsta was silent and simply perched herself on Corr's shoulder. They looked out in silence and tears welled up in Corr's eyes. There were many voices around her, but she could not focus on them. Instead, all she could hear was the cracking and booming in the distance. Was this the end?
"Corr, we need to go. Now."
For once, she did not argue with her companion. She was right, it was not safe here. They needed to go back home and warn everyone, and they had to do it quickly.
"Let's go!" she replied to the crow telepathically and leaped back into the air. Hāsta did not hesitate and followed beside her, both of them trying to avoid all the smoke and other crap lingering in the air now. Corr prayed to Mother Earth (and Vespera, if she was listening and cared. Corr was told that she was a temperamental one) that they would be safe and that there could be some way they would be able to overcome this.
***STAFF EDIT
@Corredelia has rolled a 5! She has been awarded +100 signos
I want to be with those who know secret things or else alone
When Asterion sees the smoke building on the horizon like a wall of ash built by the gods, the first thing he does - the only thing he can do - is freeze. The bay’s body falls to stillness, his eyes wide round pools where only memory ripples, back and back, as even the wind holds its breath. But within his chest his heart is hammering, and his lungs are tight, and his mind is racing like the great black swarm of birds that flees the island.
He thinks of the pass through the Arma Mountains, burning; of standing in the cool surf of the coast and watching the distant firelight lick red over Aislinn’s shoulder as she explained to him why the destruction was justified, why it must be. He thinks of the fire in the desert in Ravos, the one his golden twin had run for, each of her bones begging to die, each of his begging to save her. His magic had been pitiful, then - it took everything he had to wring out a thin fall of rain, enough only to keep them alive long enough to escape.
But Asterion is not weak now.
The king is afraid. Even the bonfires of Denocte and the cheerful, snapping fires of Terrastella have not smothered his instinctual dread of fire, but bigger than that, below that, is the gnawing question: what do the gods have for them next? What punishment is coming, how many deaths does it mean? How hard will they be asked to fight only to fail again?
The tower of ash continues to climb, up and up until it hits some plateau in the atmosphere and billows out, a gnawing edge of darkness against the bright blue of the sky, and Asterion begins to run.
It doesn’t take him long to reach the coast; the bay king is never too far from the shoreline and the sea. He scrambles down the rocky pathways, a sheen of sweat like seafoam on his withers and neck, his gaze returning again and again to that building black cloud as if compelled. All the while his mind cries Cirrus, Cirrus, Cirrus, until she answers that she is safe, that she is coming.
Now that there is only the flat line of horizon between the island and the shore he stands on he can see flame now, too, or something red and molten and terrible. Here on the mainland there are birds crying out and the sound of the waves, ever constant, running up against the beach, but from that distant point across the darkening water there is only an awful silence. Those bright red rivers of color look as though the earth has split wide and is pouring out its hearts-blood, and Asterion wonders what is dying below their touch.
He sucks in a breath of air that is still clean, still wrung with salt and brine. The wind is not yet carrying that destruction to them, and if he could bring himself to pray he would ask it not to shift. But Asterion has long ago lost faith in the gods of Novus; he knows they have only themselves as saviors.
When he walks into the sea the magic is already stirring within him, parting the waves until he stands ten yards out and still dry. In his sandy wake the crabs and starfish crawl away, back into the cool water and their blissful ignorance. The king thinks of a sand dollar, tucked beneath the dark fall of his hair against the curve of his neck. He thinks of every friend and sister he has loved and all those who have been lost as the water before him begins to heave, and froth, and the magic within him begins to churn like a whirlpool. Though he doesn’t turn to look there is a new bank of clouds, now, building at his back, soft and dark and heavy with rain.
As the sky begins to darken and lightning flickers in that monstrous cloud of ash, Asterion stands ready to defend Novus with all the magic in his saltwater blood. But he knows he can only do battle with fire, and lava, and mix rain with ash. If it is magic that is coming for them - if it is another plague from the gods -
The earth at her hooves feels like the moon is breaking up and crashing down upon the soil across the mountain range. A stone inside her shadow is humming to a stone outside of it, and it sounds like nails dragging down her spine. Isra lifts her head up. She counts the sun in the sky and the moon starting to peek up too early over the winter horizon.
But when she turns to the sea, where Fable is feeding below the waves, black rises up to meet her gaze. The broken bits of her heart collapse and she's running before her mind can ever tell her hooves to fly through the city.
Isra runs to the sea, and her soul is crying Fable, and each stride makes her harder than the last.
Soon it's sand underneath her that is turning to ore, slick and studded with blood-red rubies. She paints the world in a message to all the gods looking down that promises-- this time she has no stories to soothe their beasts. This time all she has is rage, all she has is death a bitter taste on the backs of her teeth.
She has in her all the fury, all the storm-violence, of a flock of thunderbirds. Even the sight of Fable rising like a comet from the waves does nothing to cool the fire raging through all her insides.
Fable turns his head towards the smoldering volcano even as his wings are carrying him back towards the shoreline. In the shadow of him the sea is pulling back and splitting wide and Fable watches all the crabs and the gulls run in the opposite direction that his unicorn. His first thought is worry, his second is of his belly. After that though, he can taste some of the rage in his unicorn and he understands. So Fable roars back at the grumbling volcano and says in the way of monsters, not today.
Every crab in Isra's path turns to a sand-piper. Every clam turns to a gull. Everything trapped to the sand changes to something that can fly far, far away from the sea. Isra gives the shoreline wings even as she's fueling her magic into a storm-rage inside her skin.
Asterion becomes visible as she crests the final dune and she turns her direction to join him. She doesn't pause to wonder while the sea is bending away from her as if they've made, once more, a tunnel of glass. Her hooves don't falter on the thick ocean-mud and although she could change it to marble she doesn't. She runs through his clouds of rain and for once she does not think of sorrow.
Both her and her magic are looking towards the distant, dying island and saying not today. Her dragon is still dripping salt-water rain from his teeth, ready to fight any stray fires back where the starfish and the crabs cannot.
Isra turns to Asterion, and when she smiles each of her teeth shine like pearls in the coming ash-black death. She needs no moon or stars to guide her now for all the sand at her hooves turns to glowing moonstone that looks like it was torn out from the center of her city by the sea.
No island, no god, no disaster is bringing harm to her city.
Not today.
"But tell me your heart doesn't race for a hurricane or a burning building."
@Asterion
***STAFF EDIT
@isra has rolled a 6! She has been awarded +120 signos
The boy frolicked among the shoreline, chasing Oliver as if there was no care to be had in the world. The morning started like many others, free and unscathed, but tides would turn far more quickly than Pan realized possible. For now though, there is only sunlight, shoreline, and the wash of surf against the sand – a perfect sort of day. Roaming deeper and deeper along the coast, the scaled boy explored places he’d seldom been before, eager to find the latest treasures to add to his collection… but then, everything change.
First, it started with a rumble – a bellow louder than the scream of a banshee, so loud he wanted to cover his ears. Spinning wildly toward the sound, the boy scooped his otter friend into his satchel, stepping instinctively inland as Oliver chirruped in annoyance at the sudden change in mood. Far in the distance, Pan saw the volcano. It was previously unnoticed by the boy – simply another faraway island with a tall cinder peak that seemed lazy and harmless enough. Now though, smoke began to billow into the air – slowly at first, almost lazily circling the peak. As harmlessly as it began, the smoke thickened and turned black as it rose into the sky, Pan’s eyes widening as he watches.
He cannot turn away, taking in the sight of ash-filled smoke blotting out the sky, even as others begin to journey toward the shoreline. Some gasp with understanding, knowing that the world as they knew it was inevitably changing. Others pled with their gods, crying to the wind for salvation. Pan just stands though, his seafoam eyes transfixed on the gurgling mountain, curious and unsure of what came next even as his heart beats faster in his chest.
It is only when fire climbs high into the sky, that instinct kicks in. Run. It is the only thought that crosses his mind, as his lips part in silent protest, lungs heaving for clean air as he races with the crabs from the shoreline. And as fast as Pan’s legs can carry him, he runs – without direction, without purpose… only the thought of survival keeps him moving as the volcano pours its ash and fire into the noonday sky.
Leto is ink, slick and black. She is the glimmering pitch of obsidian freshly mined from deep within Novus’ arterial caves. She is the shadow seeping out from the swamplands, the shade of ancient trees cut loose at the sounds of chaos.
In her silver eyes is the blood of the earth. It oozes, so utterly lurid bright and commanding. The earth is groaning. She is birthing, in blood and water, a monster that rises, black as pitch, from the waves of the sea.
The black monster, this looming creature of ebony stone, belches smoke up, up into the sky. And there ash swirls like snow and lightning flashes, red and violent and near silent beneath the earth’s forging groans.
The sea churns, made restless at the earth’s wild distress. Frothing waves thrust themselves up upon the sands of the seashore. They rake their terror along the Terminus’ beaches. Hissing in worry and crashing in despair they reach and reach for the horses gathered along their seashore.
The earth’s breath, black and fetid, spreads until even the sun is blotted from the sky. All becomes shadowed as the monster begins to rise from the deep. Beneath the earth’s wild grandeur, in the sights of her wicked birthing, Leto moves. At her flanks Ilati prophets step, over rock, through timorous children and anxious adults.
All of Novus’ hearts are trembling and even Leto’s rocks her chest. Her bells and bones are drowned out beneath this cacophonous happening. With those silver eyes, full of lightning, full of lava, she looks to her left and to her right. The whole of Novus is gathering. This is no monster come to plague each court. No, this is the world birthing a monster ready to swallow all of Novus.
At the corner of her gaze a king stands ready, amidst the raging sea. The waves crash against his limbs in exultation. But for Leto they roll in, clawing, dragging, begging. Yet the sea parts for her king, it holds itself back, heeding his command. The star girl's ears fall to her skull her lips peeling into a victor's smile. Darkness shatters in her gaze as her eyes glow, white, white, white. Oh it is the sea that makes her heart run wild, though her eyes return to the leviathan rising.
i'm a pretty flower girl check out my pretty flower curls
There is a quiver of magic that creeps and crawls its way up the slender curve of her spine. Florentine shivers beneath its touch, she aches with knowing and her nerves begin to hum with excitement.
Oh but the roar… Even Terrastella’s walls quake at the volcano’s sounding. Magic slips, bright and wild, through every inch of Novus. Florentine feels it. Oh, she drowns in it. Every fiber of her being was forged from catastrophic magic. She is a girl made at the end of Time and at its beginning too. There is no part of Time not open to her. Ah she hums with the magic that now rattles the bones of Novus. The Time-girl smiles with the magic that sings in her ears and reminds her whose power it is that ricochets through her flesh and heart.
Florentine is hours and seconds. She is centuries and millennia. She is the girl of parallel worlds and endless alternate lives. This time-girl was not made for monotony, for mere court intrigue. Oh this wild earth with its burgeoning magic awakens her soul. She rises before it, stirred like the monstrous island that rouses far, far out to sea.
They call to her: this darkness and this chaos. They beckons the Rift girl from her rooms and she comes. Each step, each beat of her gilded wings frees her of the tethers of this plain existence she has begun to call life. Somewhere her dagger is keening, oh she feels the magic pulling them tight. Her eyes amethyst and bright, glow, alive with wonder, alive with life.
Florentine lands upon sea-soaked sand and lays her wings to rest upon her swollen sides. She drinks in the volcano erupting and she remembers dragons and comets landing in fire and splitting earth. She remembers lightning upon planes leaving behind their jagged pillars. And clockwork forests with leaves as sharp as knives, and above all, she remembers a once-sea, redder than blood, with whale songs left to haunt the leviathan bones she played through as a child.
Oh chaos and discord forged her and maybe she is the only one who stands upon the beach, closes her eyes with a smile and listens to the roar of the earth and its wicked magic. The child kicks in her gut, listening to the joyful thrum of her heart, the song of her blood that cries out, desirous.
florentine rocking your pretty flower world
***STAFF EDIT
@Florentine has rolled a 4! She has been awarded +80 signos
