As part of this IC event you can earn small agora type items that can only be gained from participation in this event. These will be tier based prizes, the more tiers you reach the more prizes you can claim (up to six total). Each board will have a themed prize and you much post on that board at least once to be able to claim that prize.
Please make a tracker for each character in this thread and update as needed. When you are ready to claim any prizes please tag nestle or the night account so that we can give them to you! Also send any questions to nestle over discord or PM.
The Prizes are as following:
The Masquerade Ball Prize: A mask of any design that when worn into battle will add +1 point to the defense total. You can design how it will look. Write out the description in your character’s profile before claiming.
The Underwater Prize: Receiver can pick an accessory from the following list that will grant the character the ability to breathe underwater for one thread per IC season. Options: shell necklace, embedded shell in flesh, tattoo on the skin that can have a slight ‘scale’ like shine.
The Mountain Gallery Prize: A necklace that will emit a soft moon-glow light that can be used to see up to four feet in front of the user in the dark.
The Festival Markets Prize: Small accessory or product purchased from a vendor can be any design. This is essentially a free extra accessory and will follow all rules of the ones allowed when joining/creating a character.
The Maze Prize: An enchanted map that will reveal to the owner the location of every character in the capitals of each court at any given moment.
The Grand Prize: An outfit that can change 1x per IC season. There are no limits on the size of the design, and can cover as little or as much of your character as you desire. You must update the description of the current season’s outfit on your character’s profile.
Points will be award for posts, different posts are worth different points. Please track and link them accordingly.
Each IC post (not in the maze): +1 point Completing a thread with at least 4 IC replies: +5 points Participation in the maze: +2 points per post Getting an IC tarot reading: +2 points Meeting a character for the first time: +2 points Kissing another character in a thread: +1 point Using one of the setting prompts in a post: +2 points Winning the maze: +6 points
The tiers for prizes will be as follows: Points are not transferable between characters.
1-10: You may claim one of the event prizes 11-25: Your character my claim two of the event prizes 26-40: Your character may claim three of the event prizes 41-50: Your character may claim four of the event prizes. 50-60: Your character may claim all five of the event prizes 60+: Your character may claim all five of the event prizes as well as the grand prize.
There are merchants of every kind, selling anything found in Novus (and many things you’ve never seen). Exotic spices and colorful fabrics, baubles and charms from the Seasonal Courts, instruments and parchment and pens made with the feathers of fanciful birds. There is a jeweler taking commissions as they come and turning out such delicate necklaces of silver and gold and at thousand other things beside. (There are other merchants, too, the kind that sell things - old strange coins, dusty bottles of green liquor, strangely carved knives and chests - not gotten by quite legal means.)
In between and among them all are the performers, an oh! It is hard to know which to watch. There are the pygmy-dragon trainers, whose small but fiery creatures twine around and through hoops and ribbons, spitting fire and smoke and gleaming like jewels. There are fire-breathers and sword-swallowers and singers with veiled faces. There are magicians and poets and comedians and even a stand where anyone - even you - can step upon the platform and tell a story or a joke or a poem of your own.
But all these things are a hallmark of Denocte. There is another, here in the markets only for this event: an observatory, hastily but lovingly constructed, round and pale as pearl at the end of the markets, next to the sea. Step within, and you can see Caligo’s beloved stars, constellations and planets for yourself. There are telescopes set up and pointing across the diamond-scattered sky. One is set on the moon and it looks real enough to walk upon. One is pointed toward Caligo’s star, Lux Aeterna, commonly called Caligo’s Eye. It sits like a crown jewel at the top of its constellation. Then there are planets, red and blue and emerald green, and oh they look close enough to dream of.
Perhaps the stars make you wonder of your fortune, of your own future path in this wild, lovely world - and there is a place to discover that, too.
Between two bonfires there is a tent that’s almost impossible to see through all the smoke and moving bodies. The canvas of it is a dark steel color and fleck with something that looks a little like shards of ruby dust. It billows in the breeze and shadows darker than the night sky seem to pour from the doorway when the fires around it dance and sway as merchants toss more and more wood onto them. Inside the tent is a single mare with silver, shining eyes. She’s a shed-star, the oldest of the one’s currently living.
“Sit.” she tells everyone who enters her tent, and gestures with her shaggy muzzle towards a pile of stain pillows that are ruby red as the glitz woven into this tent. “Would you to know what the cards say?”
The braver ones always say, “yes.
TAROT READINGS
If you decide to take part in having your character’s tarot cards read, please tag @Official Night Account in any post that you want followed with a reading. Also just tag nestle in discord so none of them are missed!
The readings can be done for single characters or as part of a group thread. Just have your character post a question starting with what or how (as those are easiest to read) and a reading will be done in RL and posted as the shed-star.
<3
If tonight you told a visitor that not so long ago the Arma Mountains had burned, they would have laughed.
There is only beauty here now, only wooden trellises arching over pathways, wound around with ivy. Only clearings that have been transformed to sculpture gardens, if only for a night, with marble as pale as the moon carved into strange and fanciful things.
It is a little bit like a maze, in a way, though the paths are lit with fairy-lights that gleam at once softer and brighter than any firefly could. Tonight the forest could belong to the fae, for along with the beauty there is an air of mystery, too (though it never verges into danger).
Where once there stood a wall there is now a living gallery: paintings on the stone, and mosaics of mica and ruby and silver, and thick ivy in weaving braids. It is all that remains of the Dragon-gate.
There are a few secrets in these gardens (each of them somehow more than the last - more quiet, more lovely, more colorful, more strange). There are a few stories behind the sculptures, some depictions from Novian lore. Will you wander to find them? Or only to see where the twisting pathways and meandering gardens take you, below the whispering of the boughs?
Not so long ago there was a nightmare here, but oh - just for tonight, Vitreus Lake has been sculpted into a dream.
There are a few tents set up on shore, silver as the moon, their peaks echoing those of the Arma Mountains that rise behind them. Glowing stones and candles lead up to them, and the figures within make shifting, elegant silhouettes against their silken sides. There are three vendors here, all bringing something different.
One is a tattoo-artist, henna or ink of any color you desire. Oh, for a coin or a tale she’ll paint a story on your skin, or any fanciful design, or only a word. The tattoos last for two seasons before they begin to fade.
There is a jeweler, too, whose eyes glint as fierce and bright as his wares and weapons. These strange trinkets and decorative knives are fashioned from a kind of glass you’ve never seen (unless you participated in the battle with thunderbirds on this very shore - then you know it well). Blue-tinted and smooth-edged, there seems to be some spark within them, like heat lightning or a memory of a long-ago storm. The vendor warns that these strange, lovely objects might disintegrate with time - but who can truly be sure?
The last tent is the most mysterious yet. Within is a mare, dark eyes and a knowing smile. Those gathered outside say in whispers she can stitch magic into your very skin - but although her smile is a promise indeed, she will not say for what. Not until you step a little closer, and she shows you a shell, and tells you it will grant you the ability to breathe underwater, if only you let her affix it to your skin.
But most wondrous of all (save perhaps that last merchant) is the lake itself. The shoreline has vanished, covered with an inlaid path of wood and gleaming gold. It leads into the lake itself - still waters that have been remade. Up like walls they rise, held back by something more thin, more strong than glass; it is easy to be captivated, watching the shifting secrets from below the surface. Just as curious as the festival-goers are the fish and creatures that glide darkly by, turning strange eyes to the inhabitants on the other side of the wall.
“To be alive is to be dizzy and not to know exactly where to go.”
----
The maze at a first, distant glance looks just like any other hedge maze. But then, after cresting a small hill it’s easy to get lost in how alive the outside of the maze looks.
Benevolent are scattered along the outside of the maze. Some are strangely colored and others strangely dressed. They are wondrous to look at as much as they are slightly terrifying when the shadows pool and gather on their skin as the moon rises across the sky. One performs tricks with wildfire, another dances with ribbons that catch like snakes in the silver-light.
At close inspection the hedge made isn't’ made only of hedges. Flowers are twinned between the sharp green. In other places there is something that looks almost like glass poking out through the branches. Around one edge there is music; around another bubble rise like fireflies into the darkness. Soon it’s clear that there is more going on here than just a maze.
The air tastes a little like magic and a little like sweet smoke.
Then a unicorn walks out of the maze---
HOW TO PARTICIPATE IN THE MAZE
The maze is going to be run as a choose your own path sort of adventure. There will be options and each choice will lead to 2-4 other pathways. Not all pathways will continue on and dice rolls will be done after the last day for each round to determine which paths continue on.
Some pathways will have challenges, others will be nothing more than a strange setting you will interact with. There are no right or wrong answers to any of the maze events and you can post as many times in each round as you would like.
You are also welcome to post threads just interacting will all of the things outside of the maze.
Each official round of the maze will be posted with a time limit in which all posts must be completed by. There are prizes offered for each round as well as a final, grand prize. Any character that participates is allowed to claim the maze tier of the event prizes, once enough points are gained. As the rolls are random any character/player is allowed to participate.
Please message any questions to the Night Account or message nestle directly.
NOTE: credit for the maze also goes to @Muirgen who has done some of the pathway descriptions and allowed her Benevolent to be used in the story line.
There is a hush from the outside when you first step into the wide hall of the Night Court Keep. It is almost reverent, the way the excitement turns from shouts to eager whispers. Everything has been transformed, and in this first room (oh, with so many more to discover!) you almost feel caught in the feathers of a brilliant tropical bird, so bright are the flags and drapes. There are tables covered in silks and furs and gossamer veils, tables hidden by row after row of masks - some frightful, some lovely, some simple or extravagant. For those more secretive, there are painted and wooden-slatted screens to adorn themselves behind. Drape yourself, help those around you. Who will you be tonight?
Not far from the entrance is a row of tables groaning under cut-glass bowls of punch. Some shimmers like Vitreus lake under the stars, some is as emerald-green as the grasses of the prairie, some as red as the flames that leap and spark in Denocte’s bonfires. Enjoy, but beware - too much, and you may find you can’t bring yourself to stop dancing, stop smiling, stop laughing. (That, or you may find that a once-Crow or pesky page has spiked a punch bowl).
Beyond that, each space in the sprawling Court has become its own world, full of its own wonders, subtle and grand. One room mimics underwater, everything deep green and dreaming blue, gauze flowing along the walls and glass orbs suspended, filled with water and golden fish. One room is nothing but black and white from high ceiling to intricate floor, and each colorful guest that goes through looks like a new dream. All of them have room for dancing. Still, there are a few untouched places for those that need to slip away - the library is cozy and crackling with banked fires, and the baths are quiet, secretive, waiting for those who wish to make the night more intimate yet.
Like the markets, there are performers here - but where the crowd outside is raucous and loud, everything within is a little slower, a little stranger. In one room a sole singer wails and whispers and sways, and in another a string quartet plays a dizzying waltz and never seems to tire. There are ribbon-dancers, and poets, and even a wandering pantomime - perhaps you might turn around only to see a mirror image of yourself.
He had grown so used to the taste and grit of the sand between his teeth. It coated his tongue, becoming a welcome, creeping disgust that dwelled at the back of his throat.
Despite the bitter taste, here he stood.... alone in this massive structure he had never before laid eyes upon. The Colosseum was vast - there was no denying it. In the time he was gone, no one could really explain how the stone walls had come to be seemingly overnight. They were neither new nor old, the test of time wearing the corners of each brick and only adding to the confusion of the Colosseum's birth. But the Warden knew one thing... when he stood here, he felt it. Knew it, in all its predatory glory.
Felt the surge — of power, of raw emotion, of the audience's howls of encouragement. Years past, it may have been — for now it all lay empty, barren and dusted in frigid snow — but the call still lit his nerves on fire, even now. The color of the blood that ran rivulets in the sand so long ago, they matched his eyes beautifully.
For a few minutes, the grit of sand had fallen away from his tongue. He could smell the age-old sweat as gladiators clashed, teeth and hooves and pure strength battling for the crowd's amusement. It reminded of a not-so faint memory that rose to the edges of his subconscious, that warmed him while the blizzard raged on above and around them.
In the Colosseum's raw power, he felt his own when teeth and anger met the Stormsinger's (trigger warning: gore). Oh.. how beautiful a day that was, in all its sadism, its blood, its fury! How feeble arrogance made you when it blinded your eyes with white-hot lightning... arrogance that felled you at the knees, that sent you running far away from Novus not long after.
So there the Titan of Solterra stood, in the middle of the empty Colosseum ring as he reminisced, the cold nipping angrily at him. Nipping at skin muddled by scars and fresh wounds — a testament to his journey in his own time away from Novus. And for a brief moment, everything — memories of his own, memories that haunted the halls of the Colosseum, the anger and copper blood that soaked into the sand, the sweat and tears and clash of metal upon metal — all coalesced into something beautiful.
Peace.
His mind lulled, and for the first time in ages... the spines that split his sternum jostled ever so slightly. Their jagged maw split, laying bare the gruesome-looking cavity to the subzero air, its beautiful red a stark contrast to the muted sand and vivid white snow. Behind those strong spines, thrummed a heart. Its beat drummed a heavy tune as it raged through his veins, filling his ears and nearly drowning out any noise around him.
Silence.
It was that time before the night comes to an end and the sun is getting ready to rise. That moment of utter silence. Darkness.. And yet not that dark, because you could see the light getting ready to shine, but these moments of stillness.. They were the hardest part of his day. The hardest part ever since the colonization. And yet they were so calm.. He didn't have to do anything, but stare. Stare at everything and nothing in particular.
The gargoyle moved forward, hooves placed one after the other, calmly, carefully. His dual colored eye viewing everything it could, his face turning slightly to the side to take in the sea and the upcoming sunrise. And that's when he stopped. The beautiful scenery reminded him of home. He never could get rid of those memories, now that he thought about it. The past was good, but it also was just as bad.. It has been awhile since he came to these lands. He had yet to see and learn more about.. well about everything. It's inhabitants more importantly. He had to know what he walked in on.. This is his home now and he had to get used to it. Finally a place to settle. The Dusk Court was a new chance. A new beginning. Still a lot of faces to be met.. A lot of relationships to be found.. He shivered at the idea--
His thoughts were interrupted by the sun rays. His milky mane that was falling down the side of his neck lit up with fiery yellow that spread over his body.. A warm embrace, welcoming him and a small smile formed on his pale lips, welcoming the day. Another day. Another journey.
He shook his head slightly and rolled his shoulders so a few pops could slip out before he continued on. His scarred body had no longer the cape of darkness over it. But Avilius was never ashamed of it, nor his scarred face. They were a reminder of what he went through, a reminder of how he survived. And of course they were the medallions he got for his victories. Everything came with a price. Enough fighting. It was time for something good to come along.
Starless is the beach. the watery tide. the ocean's roar, thrums violently between the ragged, ermine-bathed rocks. Surf water, & salty brine mixing with the wet froth of malevolent seas, that didst tear the shore & the earth, ravenously. The vision, churns, with each release. mad & reckless. Euphoric, the taste. The endlessly, rough desire between moon & sea.
turbulent, azure waves how they might thrash. how they might dance, tumultuous. Surfs, tortured, against each forthcoming & screaming tide. Everafter, they shall whisper, hungrily; the undead sirens of the sea. Can you hear the thrum? Can you feel her heart beat? The frothy waves. The languid chill of water, & revel in her immense power. Her beauty. O, would you live in this kingdom by the sea - with me?
The ocean, ever mesmerizing in her violent angst. An allure, unlike any other, as seductive trance after seductive trance. The rhythm of water, twists in its pale & darkly, shimmering essence. Abandon. release. Breathe in. breathe out. The heavy curl of waves, gathering like an aqueous gown, folding glamorously. the push. & the pull.
Soaked, bone-white jaws, tugging in the fang-filled glee of leviathans' who yet roams yond the vast, chimerian currents. As opal moonwater, dances beneath a pale, devil's crescent so bright, & softly eerie. Glittering a pure, porcelain smile upon the still-radiant blackness of evening. It is starless & dreadfully, dark; yet, from darkness emits the purest of moon light. The sweetest nightsong.
Solitude, lingers here. Breathes here. Hunts here. swathed, in the chilling image of sinister beauty. Hot, is the ebb & flow of oceanic humidity. Sticky fingers, how they might paste their misty, opalescent trail. Collecting silken lilac strands, upon the soft nape of lithe flesh. Our dark angel, euryale boleyn, so adores the sea. The ocean's wrath, hers’ to savour in its reckless passion. She revels in that intensity. It is in these harsh moments of endless calamity, ironically, does she find her calm. Her inner peace. her temple.
Sleepless, restless nights blend into the obsidian fold. The dark tides of forbidden dream, after forbidden dream. & in her smooth, feline wrath, Her scarlet physique weaves with tiger-purrs through the lush, watery decadence of the bay. Through the midnight heat of eventide. Elegant limbs ghosting, with feral grace, as supple calves caress the roughly, flowing reeds. Their grass harsh, ashen-verdant against the sultry elegance of crimson flesh. Rough to touch & wet with after-rain.
Euryale is caught in the throes; she has abandoned her former castle. the delicate curtain-robbed walls of an Athenian temple, which had once sheltered our salem witch queen. Wandering, yet again. Desolate (forever feral) heart, Seeking the empty solace of the woods. Of the deep gales of wind & mother earth, however torrid, & violent.
The scent of oceans, still lingers upon her flesh. The scent of that enigmatic deep & soft, grey sand. She moves into the forestry, into the lush mangroves till her travels take her far & deep. Where dreams wage war with the darkest corners of the heart. The mind. The soul. This new earth. This vast terrain full of endless hills, vistas. an opportunity lay here, and she seeks it out in the way a lone wolf seeks her pack. one day, she will have her heart's desires, she thinks. she laughs, delicately.
Israfel gave a snort but did not look away from the setting sun upon the horizon, her expression that of a brooding foal. “When am I not troubled?” Anymore, it was a constant state of existence. Now? She still was, but even more so, and despite the ire brimming in her blood, she was exhausted. It was tiring, being upset and angry and irritated at the world, wanting and needing so much more but unable to discover how to find it.
Settled upon a low branch of the tree that the Warden had taken respite under, Solaris shuffled her mighty wings and gave a soft sigh. The Phoenix’s lavender eyes regarded her charge almost cautiously. ’Is it because Asterion has tasked you with the venture to Delumine?’
The Sun Daughter frowned. Was it? “No,” she started, the words sounding uncertain on her tongue, “At least, I… I don’t think so?” It was hard to say for sure.
When the majority of Terrastella had fled towards Denocte for shelter and assistance, Israfel and Solaris had stayed behind. They fought the storm together, remaining behind amidst the torrential rain, the landslides, the massive sinkholes, doing their job to tend to the land that they had sworn vigil over. Now? Now, things had begun to settle down. The rains had passed and their land was beginning to heal, but instead of continuing her duty of protecting Terrastella, Asterion had given her a new task. Traveling to Delumine with a select few to tend to the Dawn King’s frail son. It would be her job to look over the traveling party and protect them, and that was honorable in itself… Not to mention it would probably do her some good to get out of the Dusk Court. So why was she so irritated?
“At least maybe I could swing by and see Ulric again while we’re there.” The Warden of Delumine had been the only individual that she had conversed with during her brief stay in the Dawn Court, and he had been interesting in his own way. Something about him… Well. At least she had that to look forward to.
Upon her perch, the ivory Phoenix seemed to grin down at her chosen child. The large avian’s royal purple eyes were shining in knowledge, in knowing, and she dipped her head. ’Indeed, perhaps you could. Now, release your troubled thoughts and try to relax? Things are calming, Israfel. Don’t ruin this victory.’ Vermilion eyes flicked up towards the Phoenix for a moment, holding her keen stare before letting out a soft breath. With a ripple of gilded feathers, the Sun Daughter let her eyes, and thoughts, wander back to the horizon.
