Winter has come at last to Terrastella, blanketing the Dusk Court in stillness after a long and fraught summer and autumn. With the borders to Dawn closed, a dictator (and old enemy of Dusk) in charge of Solterra, and the Night Court on edge, Terrastella holds a tenuous peace within its own borders. The Halcyon and the rest of the court are helping others as they can.
But not all is despair. There is still some fun to be had, and the long evenings are lit with bonfires and candles.
Borrowing from Nestle’s wonderful idea, below are three prompts that Dusk citizens can join in for Signos. 150+ Signos will be awarded for a completed thread involving one of the prompts. Just tag @Griffin or @‘Official Dusk Account’ when you are done! Threads must be finished by May 31. I will link open threads here once some kick off. Have fun!
It is a tradition some say is as old as the court itself. High up on the cliffside, with the sea a dark shadow below, a bonfire blazes. There is no sound but its blazing and the sigh of the waves; all is solemn, for the water listens. Here the citizens may come to make a wish for the coming year, writing it on a scrap of paper and casting it into the sea. What will your wish be?- or do you dare to ask the sea for a curse?
Away from the cliff’s edge, there are warm drinks and tables laid out with food. Here there is room for dancing, and for talk, and for another tradition - a gift exchange! Perhaps you have a trinket for someone you fancy, or a present for a close friend. It is midwinter, and time to celebrate those you love.
(If preferred, Griffin or staff can roll for a winner)
It is a bright, clear morning when the competitors are called to the starting line, just outside the city gates. The bare-limbed trees seem to hold their breath from across the meadow, as do the spectators gathered throughout the course. It is time for the proud Halcyon unit - and those who think to test themselves against them - to show their skills in the form of a race.
But it is not just a test of these brave pegasi’s speed alone. Around the course (which winds throughout the whole of the court, and ends back at the entrance to the city) bands of silver and gold have been hidden - some hung in the highest trees of Tinea, some perched precarious at the edge of the cliffs, and still others hidden (save for a bright glint) in the snow-dusted hillocks of the plain. Five must be gathered before a winner can return victorious. Will you test your mettle against these skilled fliers, or watch and cheer them on from below?
It is a chilly night, red-cheeked kind of night when the doors to the great hall are opened and the citizens beckoned within. A fire snaps brightly in each grate and the walls are lined with the flags of dusk, dusty blue and rose and gauzy purple. Along the long tables are scrolls of paper and pens with pots of ink beside t hem - and pitchers of mead and wine. Tonight is only for fun, for laughter and drinking and creating art. There are prompts to follow, if you wish, but perhaps you and your friends want to do portraits of one another - the options are limitless (as is the alcohol!) Only don’t get too rowdy, or you will be asked to leave.
(20 bonus signos to anyone who submits a drawing they’ve done - attach it to your post or in the dusk court channel!)
Posted by: Raum - 04-05-2019, 08:31 AM - Forum: The Day Court
- No Replies
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
A crow lands upon the windowsill. Its head cocks listening to the sounds of the trees whispering their midnight dreams. Then it bends forward and tap-tap-taps with its raven beak upon the window. Tied to one of its leg, bound by silver ribbon and sealed with a crimson wax stamp is a piece of parchment. Upon opening, it reads:
Rufio,
The Night Court sleeps too well. There is much I have planned, but the first is that I ask you and a chosen few to go to the three food stores in the East of the Night Court, not far from its citadel. Under the cover of darkness you will blow up each that you find. If you are caught, and you value your tongue, you will reveal nothing of the Regime to any who ask. If you are seen, you will not return to Solterra by the usual routes, Isra has spies, I know this for certain. If you think you are being followed, you will not return at all.
I am sending three others with you. You are to meet them, three days from now, at Richter’s Cave in Elatus Canyon. There you can plan your travel. If you or any of the others should speak of this mission to any outside the Regime, or speak out of turn, I will know and a life will be forfeit.
You have 2 weeks. I will wait to hear of the explosions.
Good luck,
The Regime.
With that the Crow takes flight, leaving only a solitary black feather in warning.
@Rufio - eeee a challenge is set! This plot has been approved with Nestle and will lend itself to following plots too. If you are uncomfortable participating, please let me know. Maybe have a chat with the other 3 players (@Sid @Zombie @Griffin) to arrange a thread (either in Elatus Canyon for your characters to meet and plan, or straight to Denocte!) <3 you!
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
A crow lands upon the windowsill. Its head cocks listening to the sounds of the trees whispering their midnight dreams. Then it bends forward and tap-tap-taps with its raven beak upon the window. Tied to one of its leg, bound by silver ribbon and sealed with a crimson wax stamp is a piece of parchment. Upon opening, it reads:
Toulouse,
The Night Court sleeps too well. There is much I have planned, but the first is that I ask you and a chosen few to go to the three food stores in the East of the Night Court, not far from its citadel. Under the cover of darkness you will blow up each that you find. If you are caught, and you value your tongue, you will reveal nothing of the Regime to any who ask. If you are seen, you will not return to Solterra by the usual routes, Isra has spies, I know this for certain. If you think you are being followed, you will not return at all.
I am sending three others with you. You are to meet them, three days from now, at Richter’s Cave in Elatus Canyon. There you can plan your travel. If you or any of the others should speak of this mission to any outside the Regime, or speak out of turn, I will know and a life will be forfeit.
You have 2 weeks. I will wait to hear of the explosions.
Good luck,
The Regime.
With that the Crow takes flight, leaving only a solitary black feather in warning.
@Toulouse - eeee a challenge is set! This plot has been approved with Nestle and will lend itself to following plots too. If you are uncomfortable participating, please let me know. Maybe have a chat with the other 3 players (@Griffin @Zombie @Firefly) to arrange a thread (either in Elatus Canyon for your characters to meet and plan, or straight to Denocte!) <3 you!
Posted by: Raum - 04-05-2019, 08:29 AM - Forum: The Day Court
- No Replies
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
A crow lands upon the windowsill. Its head cocks listening to the sounds of the trees whispering their midnight dreams. Then it bends forward and tap-tap-taps with its raven beak upon the window. Tied to one of its leg, bound by silver ribbon and sealed with a crimson wax stamp is a piece of parchment. Upon opening, it reads:
Targwyn,
The Night Court sleeps too well. There is much I have planned, but the first is that I ask you and a chosen few to go to the three food stores in the East of the Night Court, not far from its citadel. Under the cover of darkness you will blow up each that you find. If you are caught, and you value your tongue, you will reveal nothing of the Regime to any who ask. If you are seen, you will not return to Solterra by the usual routes, Isra has spies, I know this for certain. If you think you are being followed, you will not return at all.
I am sending three others with you. You are to meet them, three days from now, at Richter’s Cave in Elatus Canyon. There you can plan your travel. If you or any of the others should speak of this mission to any outside the Regime, or speak out of turn, I will know and a life will be forfeit.
You have 2 weeks. I will wait to hear of the explosions.
Good luck,
The Regime.
With that the Crow takes flight, leaving only a solitary black feather in warning.
@Targwyn - eeee a challenge is set! This plot has been approved with Nestle and will lend itself to following plots too. If you are uncomfortable participating, please let me know. Maybe have a chat with the other 3 players (@Sid @Griffin @Firefly) to arrange a thread (either in Elatus Canyon for your characters to meet and plan, or straight to Denocte!) <3 you!
Posted by: Raum - 04-05-2019, 08:26 AM - Forum: The Day Court
- No Replies
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
A crow lands upon the windowsill. Its head cocks listening to the sounds of the trees whispering their midnight dreams. Then it bends forward and tap-tap-taps with its raven beak upon the window. Tied to one of its leg, bound by silver ribbon and sealed with a crimson wax stamp is a piece of parchment. Upon opening, it reads:
Abel,
The Night Court sleeps too well. There is much I have planned, but the first is that I ask you and a chosen few to go to the three food stores in the East of the Night Court, not far from its citadel. Under the cover of darkness you will blow up each that you find. If you are caught, and you value your tongue, you will reveal nothing of the Regime to any who ask. If you are seen, you will not return to Solterra by the usual routes, Isra has spies, I know this for certain. If you think you are being followed, you will not return at all.
I am sending three others with you. You are to meet them, three days from now, at Richter’s Cave in Elatus Canyon. There you can plan your travel. If you or any of the others should speak of this mission to any outside the Regime, or speak out of turn, I will know and a life will be forfeit.
You have 2 weeks. I will wait to hear of the explosions.
Good luck,
The Regime.
With that the Crow takes flight, leaving only a solitary black feather in warning.
@Abel - eeee a challenge is set! This plot has been approved with Nestle and will lend itself to following plots too. If you are uncomfortable participating, please let me know. Maybe have a chat with the other 3 players (@Sid @Zombie @Firefly) to arrange a thread (either in Elatus Canyon for your characters to meet and plan, or straight to Denocte!) <3 you!
She stands in the middle of the lake, her eyes looking at the mountains that surround them. The snow offers a white blanket of beauty all around them. Despite the frigid temperatures, she cannot help but see the beauty that’s all around her. There’s a sense of peace that washes over her. Despite everything that has happened in Novus as of late, she can still find peace and comfort in something as simple as a snow-covered lake. And as she stands on the frozen water, she sighs in absolute contentment.
The fire beside her crackles as the sun begins to rise. She had come out here last night to spend some solitude thinking about what she needed to do in order to get Isra back. She had told Metaphor where she would be going via a note written in the sand of their humble home. Finnick refused to let her go alone, so the bird had been keeping a watchful eye over her all night. As the sun began to rise, she send him on a hunt. After all, he needed to eat to keep up his strength. After all, he was still healing.
She hears Metaphor before he speaks, the way his feet crunch the snow. She recognizes the way his pace is slow and deliberate, the way he breathes in the cool morning air. The only thing that tells him that she knows he’s there is the way her ears follow the sound of his approach.
And as he comes closer to her small little campsite, she turns her body to greet him fully. She steps closer to him, her head wrapping around his own in a loving embrace. “Good morning. I did not mean to leave you and make you worry.” She had just needed time to think and reflect. “I just needed some time to think.” To think about what was to happen in order to find Isra, what to do about Raum, and what she wanted out of her relationship with Metaphor. So many things were on her mind, so many things that distracted her form the task at hand. Although her love for the sorrel next to her was strong and it made her feel alive, it cluttered her thoughts. As a warrior, it was dangerous to love someone as fiercely as she loved Metaphor. And yet, she was not willing to let those feelings go away.
It was beside the creek that she woke that day, coiled into herself as much as any equine could, their bones were not meant for curling up- it had taken her several attempts to learn this over the coming weeks. Not for lack of trying, often looking absurd as she failed to wound around herself like she had as a canine, to tuck herself in with her tail. Strange though, the chill had not left her aching beside the water, no more so than she usually did. Her right ankle was the only exception; an ever constant reminder throughout her seemingly endless lives. All things to be expected due to the season, which still continued to change, the days colder as they grew long into the heart of Winter. Days as short as her list of companions, she moved as molasses does down the ragged bark of a tree making friends in this place.
Clinging far too dearly to that which she could not have back, to a life passed.
Her breath hangs like a fog as she breathes it, freely, here as she stands in the quiet of the fields. Another place she has no name for, another world where she must relearn life and this time, this time, her task was much more difficult. Tested, with an unyielding will to comply to the task set before her. For a coward, she was more than she seemed, stronger than she let on. Perhaps not of body, but there are many things that might define strength, in this, Reckitt was strong of faith; if she was weak in all else.
A place was found within the realm, Novus, moving along a path that was one of comfort, security. Often resorting to what she knew she was capable of, which was much more than one might guess- all in due time. A healer, a medic, an alchemist, her expertise was called different things but it was all the same in the end; one day she might be reminded that she is much the same as she ever was. Dawn Court, they did not turn her away, instead they welcomed her, she was quietly thankful for them, helping where she could, but a shadow in her own right. Reckitt was a silent presence in a loud world that was always teetering on the ledge of chaos and crashing ruckus, tempting fate in ways she never dared; not outright.
If anything seemed to bring her a semblance of a rock to hold her up, the strength she needed to push on in this body that was hers, and not hers at all. A buffer between the world that was often too much for the soft soul of a Druid, though she was not sure she was one anymore, was she?
It was Rou, the kind soldier that lent his strength to the weak, the not capable, to souls like herself.
The first snow of the season had caught him unaware, again. It always seemed to do so. If he had known it was coming, he would have hurried to the library, for a prison of books is not a prison at all. Instead he had been sleeping, and he woke up to a world of white.
The worst of it had passed but it still was coming down lightly and he could not go out without getting snow in his wings. The snow itself was not the issue, of course, and neither was the cold. He just hated getting his wings wet, and snow-covered wings eventually turned to water-covered wings. It always happened, no matter how much he shook before coming in.
So he paces. Rhythmically, of course, so that the ring of his steps on the stone floor sound like a song waiting for words. But to his annoyance the words don't come.
Eventually he stops beside a large window and peers out across the field. It is still snowing, just like the last time he checked. The stallion huffs with impatience and the window fogs up defensively. A moment passes. Thinking happens.
After another moment, He blows the cold window until a foggy veil covers one corner. He plucks a loose feather from his wings and uses it to write on the glass, reversed so that from the fields someone would read:
H E L P !
He laughs to himself, more of a cackle really, and quickly rubs away the message just in case there was someone outside who could see the message and become alarmed. After all, there is a murderer on the loose, and a harmless prank in times like these could easily cause panic.
The kelpie had begun to think that it never came here; summer crawled on and on, hot and thick, until it scorched the grasses brown and ran the creekbeds dry. Not until autumn showed its teeth in evening winds and laid its frost upon cold ground did Amaroq begin to hope.
And more than hope.
When the first flakes spun down like bits of stars he smiled on his lonesome stretch of beach and breathed out ice. When the first full moon of winter rose, huge and near as a world he might yet explore, the unicorn laughed as he rode the breakers and hunted seals among the midnight tide-pools. Oh, how hungry he was! Oh, how strong!
Yet still alone.
It is a loneliness that eats at him, while being part of his own sharp hunger. It is a loneliness that verges on madness, that floods his mind with instinct and not reason. Now, in winter, it is a need and not a want, and it drives him up to shore, a lovely ghost among the horses that walk on land and do not dream in salt and tides.
He prowls like a wolf along the shale of the beach; he hunts like a unicorn up and down the coast. Frost follows in his tracks, ice climbs delicate as a spiderweb up his horn, forming lovely patterns too small to see. His need makes him bold; the winter and the moon make him beautiful.
There is snow on the black rocks of the shore when he finds her again (this girl who he has seen always from a distance), and the seagulls’ cries hang in the air even after they have passed. There is a mist over the water and though the sun is not yet set the moon is already up, a watchful eye. When Amaroq turns from it he sees her, and his horn points like a finger.
Careless of her spear and her wings and her cold basalt eyes he approaches, smiling like a wolf. Though he leaves some space between them his eyes beg her to come near, nearer yet, close enough that their skin might smell of salt together, close enough they might dream the same dreams (he has so many dreams to share).
“You come so often to the sea.” He says to the girl. “Are you looking for god?”
It has been a thorn beneath her skin for some time now, her brain rolling over that storm-swept day when she’d first met Vespera, and each time the flare of anger in her breast is sharper than the last. She still dreams of the flood waters crashing in as she’d struggled to pull the people of Terrastella to safety -- still remembers when even she, and Marisol, and Asterion had not been enough to save a drowning pegasus, how the cruel river had wrenched the mare from their grasp.
It would be easy to fly to the peak, to let her anger boil over, but --
This is not a journey meant to be easy, and she is not seeking an argument so much as she seeks answers to Vespera’s cruelty. So she places each foot after the other and lets the path take her where it may, winding her way up into the very peak as the sun begins its descent from the sky and begins to paint the sky with vibrant purples and pinks.
“I made you a promise before, Vespera, when I first became part of the Halcyon unit -- that I would serve you until my wings could no longer carry me, and sing your praises until my voice no longer worked, and I promised to protect Terrastella until my last breath.”
She pauses, staring down the shattered statue with fierce, pale eyes, her wings tucked tightly along the curve of her back, and she thinks of a day when she had been so hopeful she had found a home far away from the troubles of Gods.
“What were you truly testing, Vespera? When your Halcyon pilots were risking their lives and limbs to save your people from the floods you had brought upon us -- did we not help enough? Your king was out amongst us, using the magic you gifted him, to help rescue those who needed it -- were you not pleased, by how quickly we responded, how tirelessly we worked?”
I almost died for you, she does not say, biting back the words hard enough that her teeth ache, and you cursed me instead.
Static rolls across her primaries at the thought like the warning rumble of a thundercloud in the distance, and she wants to scream in bitter frustration -- what cruel god would think this power was a gift, when all it did was remind her of the things she had been trying to forget? How could she serve a deity who would throw away her people so easily when they had all rallied so quickly to her defence, to her home?
“You remind me of my father, Vespera -- he liked to play cruel tricks on mortals as well, and he truly believed he was enlightening them. He was wrong, and you were too.”
She thinks her dam had a point, when he had first told her about the Gods -- that they are not to be trusted with the power they had, for it was all too easy for them to abuse it; after all, who governed the gods except for themselves?
@Random Events i guess anyone else is welcome as well but theo is mostly just here to be heavily disappointed in Vespera honestly i thought there'd be more yelling about this
