Novus
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Novus closed 10/31/2022, after The Gentle Exodus

Private  - bone to rune; skull to dust

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Turhan
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#1

bone to rune
Turhan has never seen the sea but he has encountered it a great many times in his life.  Enough to know the ebb and flow of the tides - to know that they are controlled by the moon, the sun, and the rotation against the pressure of space.  He knows its power, that it can destroy things or take them away permanently.  The sea is forever.  It is cyclic and unending.  The sea can be frozen or evaporated but it will never fully disappear, the sun will release it or the clouds will rain and rain and rain until the basins it leaves behind fill up again.


Terminus was a name he knew from a long - long time ago, because it had been a fitting one from the beginning.  Now, much older and wiser, Turhan returns to the same shores he once came to for healing and cleansing.  How many mothers and their children had he healed here?  How many warriors had he baptized in the blood of the wolf in these sands?  How many enemies did he curse before he sent them into the waves to face their fears -- to face Vespera's final judgment?


Too many, 


Then again, Turhan is good at intentionally forgetting things.  The ghosts linger here on these solemn beaches and he intends to leave them here.  He does not care to recollect on a broken and painful past for his people however.  He does not want to bring his blood to a boil or to corrupt his mind with the anger he knows he will always feel for how his people were treated.  Turhan has gone too long on the winding path of healing and spirituality to look back behind him now and wonder - what if?


Though,


What if .. what?


Would there have be more of them if he chose to be a warrior instead of a medicine man - to be one of the men who walked out into the sea and prayed to Vespera for strength and courage to defeat the enemies that stood against them?  The thoughts worm at the edges of his already half-faded sanity, a blind eye has an all-seeing mind, and Turhan knows how savage an angry spirit can be.  The Elder certainly knows how savage his own had been in his younger days.


He will not become that today.  Today he is here to heal.  To reconcile with his Goddess Vespera.  To remember her spirit and to honor it as his travels abroad bring him back to home at long last.  Turhan wonders what it will be like to meet these new people who have filled the ancient lands.  He wonders when and how he'll come to know them - under what circumstances that it will have to be before he is seen by them.  Will they capture him?  Are they anything like the hunters that razed his family to the ground simply because they were different - because they were in the way?


In the evening like this, when the wind is chilly and the air clings to a stormy notion, Turhan is encouraged to take his time crossing the beach.  His finely tuned senses suggest to him that he is alone and that is fine with him, he has been alone for quite some time now - searching for his lost ones, avoiding everyone else.  Though he wonders why he avoids crossing the path of a stranger - perhaps he has lost his faith in new minds and their ability to grasp old ideas.  Quite often, they can't see past the horns, the hair, and the grease paint, the strange and ancient language he has spent his whole life speaking, and quite comfortably at that.


The winds shift, the ruffle the wild mane of hair and beyond the heavy medicinal scent of his own body lies a secret.  He has been followed - or perhaps close to being encountered - he cannot decide which of the two circumstances it might be.  Turhan hopes, for the stranger's luck, that it is just coincidence and not conspiracy.  The mystic stops dead in the sand and listens to the ground beneath his feet.  He listens to the wind which carries more information to him, someone is downwind of him, steadily pushing through the sand themselves.  The horns tilt as he looks down off to his right to get a good snort of the air.  


"Ndani ali kunj uko?"


Who follows me?  Who is here? .. he doesn't remember how to say these things in a much simpler way.  The jungle of ancient words comes out like liquid gold from his shark-toothed mouth.  The sneer he gives is something terrifying, two rows top and bottom of long, sharp-sharp teeth.  When nothing attacks he releases his hostility back into the wind and waits quietly.  Too old to fight and too old to run, he supposes it is Vespera's way that a stranger should happen to happen his way.


"Speak your name, mlendo."  Brusque, he forgets the common words for 'Other' and places it with his own instead.





@Silas  Go easy on the old man <3  We are still working on this muse, this post is a mess but ILY so write with me c:
 

T U R H A N
skull to dust











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Silas
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#2


The cave was built into the side of the cliffs that lined most of the Terminus Sea. It wasn't particularly large, just a little cove that a few large animals could seek shelter in. It was a cool refuge from the hot summer sun, with slightly dampened walls, though the source of the moisture was nigh undiscoverable. Except for one or two boulders and some small rocks scattered throughout, it was empty. There were no inhabitants except for those who passed by.

Like Silas.

He stood a couple of yards back, just out of reach of the moonlight that shone down into the cave's entrance. His paleness was enough on its own to illuminate the beginning of his form as he faced out toward the sea. He had spent a good few hours there, resting from the sun's heat. Though now in the darkness he found himself growing increasingly restless, though without much of an idea of what to do, or where to go.

Luckily -- if luck is the name you'd like to give it -- he was presented with a distraction. A large, strange-looking beast passed by along the tide's edge. He was painted, literally painted, it seemed, in strange colors, to go along with a strange mop of mane and a skull across his face. In fact, Silas wasn't really sure what species he was looking. Curiosity piqued, he stepped out into the gaze of the moon.

He had only followed the stranger a couple of minutes, if that, before he his presence was a marked change from the status quo. At first the skull-wearing equine -- for equine he was -- spoke in a strange language, and Silas cocked his head to the side, deciding that he was definitely not familiar with it. Then, words he recognized. 'Speak your name.'

Silas continued his way forward toward the stallion, whom he was increasingly intrigued by. A small smile danced across his lips as he speaks in velvety words. "I am Silas. Please, don't mind my intrusion. Your presence was hard for me to ignore and I find myself insatiably curious to know you." He's not turned off by the stallion's brusque tone. Instead, his golden eyes glitter with interest and... something else that cannot quite be named.

@Turhan










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Turhan
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#3

bone to rune
Turhan is neither afraid nor certain of the footsteps which come closer and closer yet.  The sounds of the hooves - when it comes near enough - measure the weight of the beast approaching him. Blindness is his only skill set in matters such as this, which aid to blade-sharp hearing and a keen sense of smell.  Silas is big but not big enough, and his approach - although careful and quiet - not quiet enough.  The mystic freezes like a statue, the stillness allowing him a better ear as he tunes all of his attention to his hearing as well as his olfactory senses.  Together, they deliver an image to the Elder that his eyes cannot.


However which way it goes, Nature is fair.  The wind changes directions and blows back at Silas and with it the distinctive scent of wild roses, wood smoke, and most of all, horse blood.  Feathers rise up like a coxcomb between Turhan's ears, the ribbons and bells flutter and flap along his blood soaked cheeks.  The old horse raises his head when Silas speaks through his approach - perhaps a wise thing to do - but it doesn't stop Turhan from raising his lip to show off the dangerous bite he is still equipped with.  A silent warning to stop and not get so close -- at least until he can fathom what it is that Silas is saying to him.


The shared language isn't something that Turhan has learned out of friendship and so he has trouble configuring the tone Silas wants to set.  Neither hostile nor openly friendly about being encountered, Turhan maintains a neutral posture (as neutral as a highly decorated native can look, of course).  The language of the 'Mlendo'  is something he has taught himself enough of to use it against those who threatened his people first -- to speak to the outsiders in a way that they would better understand his deadly promises.


To warn them of the spears and arrows that his people would rain down upon them as a fair warning.


However ..


Silas speaks in gentle enough tones that Turhan realizes he is speaking his own name - to make sure the painted stranger knows he isn't there to cause trouble.  Or so it seems, something trills in the Elder's blood, a dull warning echoing in the back of his thoughts not to trust the unexpected so soon.  Even though he wards off his own hostility towards Silas, he still keeps a finger on the trigger .. just in case.


"Your kind, no good at promises."  He finds his words and uses them. Naturally, Turhan does not trust him and gages his distance between here and Silas - and wonders how hard he'll have to concentrate to stick the man in the throat with a poison tipped quill.  Being a man of peace, however, helps.


"I am Turhan, what is it you wish to know?"  Vespera hums in his blood - she sings of strange - yet - stranger things and reminds him that not all is as it seems.  She tugs at the braids in his hair, twirls the trinkets woven into them, and reminds him of all the prayers he and his people made towards peace and understanding between the Ilati and the Mlendo.


Perhaps, he wonders then, we are to finally understand what we do not understand.


Have patience, it is as if Vespera is listening to his overprotective heart and laying a hand over it to soothe old wounds.  Although he does not reveal all his cards, he will always have a soft spot for answering questions - for that has been his whole life.


"Speak, I am listening." 

T U R H A N
skull to dust











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Silas
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#4

A strange mixture of scents wafted into the pale kirin's nostrils. Smoke of burning trees- a lovely scent that he could wrap himself into for days- plus a rich floral odor. Then finally, and most curiously, the peculiar coppery scent of blood, nearly tangible on his tongue. It was coming from the stranger.

There was an uncomfortable weight between them, or at least, Silas sensed that the other, very strange stallion was uncomfortable. He himself held no opinion on the matter. He kept his distance, not being the touchy, feely, cuddly kind. The eyes that met his, the words of warning and distrust. All Silas could think Was that he had made no promises. A loophole in language.

Despite that distrust, Turhan introduced himself, and seemed on the whole rather open and inviting. It was peculiar. Still, the offer on the table was for Silas to pick his brain. Picking it for real might have been fun, or perhaps picking those teeth... Silas found himself momentarily distracted as he realized the pearly whites flashed at him were even sharper and pointier than his own. ’Fascinating!’ Perhaps he’d just found his first question.

"My, what sharp teeth you have!" A flash of his own grin. “Tell me, what causes you to have such crocodile teeth? And your mane the decoration? Your face the skull? A stranger sight I haven’t seen in a very long time. Is this normal dress for those in this land?” The questions were, of course, completely genuine, as was Silas’s curiosity. He knew nothing of Novus, not even its name, and this beast was quite the oddity.

@Turhan
Sorry it’s shitty..










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Turhan
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#5

bone to rune
The smile on the stranger was lost to him entirely, blind eyes rolled beneath the sunbleached, empty sockets of the coo he wore as a headpiece and saw nothing even if they concentrated on Silas who stood before him.  The questions came quickly, he new better to never expect them, but still felt surprised when the Mlendo went after the Elder's strange looks first and foremost.  It lead the old man to believe that Silas was an explorer from beyond - that he had found his way here more or less by some unceremonial means.  The Ilati flicked a heavily jeweled ear to shoe some six-legged stowaway off of him then let out a deep sigh.  It was possible that it could have been mistaken for exasperation - but he was old and breathing was not always easy.  


Turhan's head turned this way and that, as if waiting for someone else to approach them, but in truth he was trying to understand the Mlendo's curiousity.  What words would he need to use to communicate effectively back to the outsider?  Should he just take Silas home with him to eat a meal with the other tribesmen so he could understand?  


"I kill the coo.  It was my Rite. "  He explained the mask first, tried to. A lot of 'humming' and 'umming' made the old man's efforts more noticeable.  "I kill the coo with tooth that healer made."   He pulled his lips back for an impressively wide angle of the fearsome predator teeth that had been carefully filed and long-since maintained.  His hooves had been split at a young age, and upon closer inspection - one could see that his feet were not indexed for such an abnormal modification and they did not splay like toes.  Turhan seemed to do just fine with them all the same - never in his life had he needed to run fast or far, Tinea had been his home and only on the rarest of occasions did he travel past the known lands for spiritual reasons.  


"I show you why.  You come with me, have feast and fire with Ilati then you understand."  The invite was honest and simple, the underlying threat of what would happen to Silas if he upset anyone was not yet revealed - but Turhan did not feel the need to issue the disclaimer for himself or for the rest of his tribe.  If the Mlendo was truly intelligent, he'd live to tell the incredible story of his night in the Elder's den as he broke bread with some of Vespera's most blessed peoples.


T U R H A N
skull to dust



@Silas  Jane Goodall gets invited to dinner by the silverback to eat leaves and nunsutch with the gorillas.   I got nothing.  LOL.









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Silas
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#6

At first it wasn't clear to Silas that Turhan was blind. There were so many things to take in about the older giant, and at urban had mastered the disability so well, that it had completely slipped Silas's notice. When the strange-looking stallion began to turn his head from side to side, Silas finally caught on. 'The dumb fool... He cannot see!' The kirin knew better than to think that a horse so old let something like blindness hinder him. And yet, a childish giggle slipped past his lips. Turhan's sigh was ignored.

Silas had no idea what a "coo" was. 'Obviously, something the old man killed.' A sarcastic thought. Those teeth, however... Silas had not been given his teeth by s healer. His were goddess-given-- and not in the normal, congenital way most would think. He ran his tongue over the sharpened bones while his golden eyes glittered with mischievous thought."It all sounds rather odd to me, but how could I possibly refuse such an invitation?"

Silas wondered who these Ilati were, and if they were more likely to be friend or foe. He had no doubt that Turhan could be a powerful enemy, but it also seemed that he could be easily manipulated. There was a world-weariness to him, but that life experience seemed more like a past life than any active engagement in the now.

Silas let these thoughts drift away and inclined his head politely. "Please, it seems like there is so much for me to learn. Lead on and I shall follow."

@Turhan











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