Vespera watched as slowly they gathered beneath her. Her people of the dying sun casting their names out for all to see.
She turned to the first, a slight man, with slender wings tucked to his side. A dusk court medic with clear determination
“Jude”
she started
“as a medic you see not only the parts that can be fixed, but also those that can be bettered. But what will you do should those things resists your treatment?”
She turned next to @Liam a man who had stood on terrastellan soil now for long enough to know its ways and customs. A man whose copper coat held the setting sun like gold.
“You are a just and fair man. But what would you do should the kingdom fall? Rebuild? Or move on to the next one?”
And then there was @Atlas whose appearance reminded her so of sweet Elena. She remembered when the stallion docked in Terrastella, carrying the scents of sand and sea.
“You would give your strength to Terrastella, and see them as one. But what if your heart is not enough to hold them together? If they stumble apart would you rely on heart or reason?”
@Below Zero a woman of the sea, who threw her passion into everything she did. A smile quirked at her lips as she made her poetic declaration.
“Your passion is admirable, as is your humility. But what will you do if the people push back against your path. Will you push back? Or let their waves sway you?”
She swivelled her head to look at a man who had walked these grounds for many years. @Rhone a longtime champion of wisdom, and a man who had long serving the dusk court.
“You have a strong spirit, and wisdom rarely challenged. But your heart has been broken once before, could you stand it if it broke again?”
One more stood before her.
"Aristal."
A man of mystery and freedom. It surprised her that he held himself to a court at all, and didn’t choose to wander as so many others like him did.
“You have confidence, something needed by a leader. But do you have the sense to back down for the better, even when pride is at stake?”
She looked to each of them again.
“I do not mean to discourage any of you, only to bring light to what it means to lead, to responsible for dozens of lives.”
she stopped for a moment, turning to watch the sun as it finally dipped below the horizon, leaving a spattering of stars in it’s wake.
“It is not for me to decide which of you shall bear the crown. Instead it will be the choice of your future people.”
Rules to Vote
Voting closes at 11:59P EST on 04/17/21
Before voting or if you are part of this nomination, please read all the below. If you have any questions/concerns, don't hesitate to ask!
Regarding this vote:
When voting, please read each characters audition - both IN CHARACTER and OUT OF CHARACTER portions!
Keep in mind when voting, we are looking for a character who embodies Terrastellan ideals, will have substantial enough activity to help drive the court in a positive direction, and solid ideas to bring to the court in terms of events, planning, etc.
You must use your Dusk Court Court character account to cast your vote - ONLY Terrastellans can vote here!
Do not use your OOC account to vote!
One vote total per member, even if you have multiple Dusk Court characters.
Those nominated may not vote for themselves. They are allowed to vote for a different character, if they wish.
Failure to follow the above rules will result in your vote being nullified.
You can freely post in this thread if you'd like to interact with Vespera or the nominees!
Character Requirements for those Nominated and/or who are chosen:
If you win the member vote and have another character in a Regime position (Sovereign, Regent, Emissary), that character must step down before your winning character can step up. This must be completed within 2 weeks.
If you have entered another one of your own characters into a different Court's Sovereign auditions, you may not win both. In the event both your characters are the number one pick, you will need to choose which character/court you prefer. The one that you pass up will be given to the runner-up.
General rules and requirements regarding Sovereigns:
Regarding Sovereign vulnerability: Sovereigns will be deemed Vulnerable if you make 10 IC posts or less per month (this means that it will be extremely easy for anyone to win a Challenge against you), and posted absences only make you immune for 2 weeks.
Sovereign activity requirements: To promote activity within their respective Courts, the Sovereign must setup 1 IC event every other season.
Once a Sovereign is selected and your profile approved, your first duty will be to create a Court Rules thread in your respective Court forum. Read this guidebook section for things you can do as Sovereign.
Only Terrastellans may vote, but...
Any character - from any Court - may post in this thread to interact with Vespera and the nominees.
Once voting is over you will be able to immediately claim this thread as completed for signos and/or EXP - even if you don't meeting the post count requirement!
I t was officially winter, but it didn’t feel like it. In the tiny alley by her home, she lingered and sipped at the coffee that had been bestowed upon her by a waitress who may as well have been a saviour. It was the early hours of the morning, but no sleep had graced Jane’s eyes the night before, and that didn’t seem to change.
At home, the fields would be covered in snow. Many of the mares would be close to their due dates, round with foal and limping on legs like sticks. The stallions would be discussing plans for the kingdom. Jane had lived through 3 Avalonian winters, and none of them had been particularly comfortable. It had been near the end of Winter that she had finally left; the snow starting to melt beneath her hooves with every day that had passed. Life had slid like sleet behind her, and she had faced the Solterran summer.
Her ear tweaked, and she turned her head to see one of the former maids of her aunt’s and uncle’s. Her name was… Ampiphane. Jane tilted her head and called, so the mare turned her head. They were around the same age, and although their social rank was not breachable back then, there was an affinity spawned by their characters.
“My lady, how wonderful it is to see you here.” “Don’t bother with those titles, I am no lady now,” Jane snorted and tipped her nose toward the other side of the table where she currently sat. “Drink with me, I’ll pay for you.”
“No, you don’t need to-”
“Of course! It’s only right, and for an old friend too.” The definition was a liberal one, considering she had only spent over two months in that house. But time moved strangely in Solterra, both faster and slower. “At least spend some time with me, before you do what you were planning.”
A slight reluctance slipped over the palomino filly, but she sat down before the table. Her ear twitched. Something appeared to be weighing on her mind, judging by the apparent desire to run. “Your mother has had a son!” came a sudden rush of words, and Jane paused in the middle of sipping her coffee.
“Please repeat yourself,” she said before the other could run. “Word has reached us from Avalon that your mother has had a colt. Named Evox.” Regret and pain were knitted upon her brow. “Please don’t tell the mistress that I told you.”
Would Jane have ever learned otherwise? Regardless of her suspicions, she nodded at what the mare said. Finally, the other left to do duties, and Jane was left with her thoughts in the swirling, empty alleyway.
She paid for her coffee and stood, shaking a little bit. Without thinking, she began to walk, making her way along the main street with no direction in mind. Her mother and father had the colt that they had wanted. The prodigal son, the sacred child. No doubt he would be doted over, free from all sins that a female could commit. Not him, not an heir.
Jane was unwanted now. An extra limb to the Vogelstein family, and what more? No skills existed in her to give her meaning, and the money would soon run out, although she would never tell Veil that. There was no need to worry her. Jane slipped around the city, wraith-like. What would it matter to any of them, if she disappeared? If she died? What good did she cause anyone?
Pain stung her eyes and she blamed the dust, settled as it was in the winter weather. No snow reached her here, and rain was rare, but the dust had been weighed down against the cobblestones. She did nothing but slide her body around the different horses that came her way; the strange underbelly of folks who woke at this hour. The merchants, the carpenters, people of use to society. Not like her.
Finally, Jane found herself at the wall. She climbed up the stones until she was facing the desert. Miles of sand, an ocean of sand. Just as much an ocean as the Terminus Sea was, so far away. “Freedom,” she sighed to herself, “How I hate the word.” She closed her eyes and wished for imprisonment, wished for servitude. She wished for the chapped hooves of labourers and people who knew crafts beyond that of idleness and making tea. Salvation was out there, she hoped, but what form could it possibly take to a mare who had not learned to see.
i've never felt more alone it feels so scary getting old
There’s a part of him that knows he should have tried harder, that he should have given her his everything. And yet, there’s something that doesn’t sit well with him. She wants him to love her fiercely but he knows he can’t give her that. He’s torn between wanting to love again and being scared to love again. It’s not fair to her and he knows it, he can only hope that she will understand.
It’s been a week since their date, a week since they sat awkwardly trying to come up with things to talk about. It’s been a week since she called him on his bullshit and he didn’t have the words to say. At the time, he didn’t understand his own feelings, but he does now. He knows he was never truly invested in a relationship and she knew it before he did.
Slowly he walks along the shore of the lake, his eyes looking out for her. He doesn’t really want to trek up into the mountains, so he hopes that she has come down in a moment of peace for herself. And then he sees her. She’s standing there, looking out over the water with the moonlight light cascading over her. She is beautiful in this moment and he hates that he’s about to break her heart.
He steps closer to her, a soft whicker of greeting leaving lips. He doesn’t call out to her, but he hopes she at least knows the sound of his voice. He waits until she recognizes him before he steps closer to her, coming to stand beside her.
He’s silent a moment, trying to formulate the words in his head, words that won’t cause her too much pain. "Good evening Luvena." He slowly turns to look at her, the deepness of his brown eyes searching hers. Without realizing it, a bright pink hibiscus flower blooms into her mane. It weaves it’s way between each strand, latching on unnaturally and never letting go.
This is the moment he needs to break the news. "I trust you’ve heard that Elena has stepped down…" It’s a pitiful way to start the conversation, but in its own way, it’s telling about where his head is at. The last time he was forced to choose between love or his kingdom, he tried to choose both and it had failed. He was pledged to Terrastella and he could not turn his back on her. He hoped she might understand.
"Just give me the world and I will give it back to you
Just tell me it hurts and I will fix it for you"
The air was odd, electric, as the little doe stood in front of the portal that had been crafter in the rift left behind when the Island had sunk below the waves. Like Atlantis lost to sea, it had been swallowed up, with angry waves wracking the surface where it had once stood (truly like Atlantis, the new memories of a prior, less mortal life, remembered that event too). But the Gods had created something special in return, and now, gently woven into being were the very portals that could lead another through the holes and into one only knew what. Cally was curious, and when the doe got curious, the only thing to do was let her explore.
But she also balked. The first portal she had ever gone through was the one that brought her to Novus, it was the one that had initially locked her magic away, and trapped her in an unfamiliar form. It was a terrifying idea to step into another with no idea of what could happen to her next. But she wasn't known for being a coward, she was an explorer. She squared her shoulders, letting her traveling cloak settle smoothly, supplies packed into her saddlebags, a full quiver and her bow ready to go. No matter what waited for her through this terrifying local, she'd be sure to take it on. Headstrong.
She let out a calming breath, before drawing herself up to her full (but minuscule) height, before carrying herself through the portal. Her hooves lacked against rock, a sound that turned to a more ping as the rock shiftened beneath her hooves, growing smoother, more illumiscent as sunlight reflected off it. Her hooves carried her further, her vision swimming through the portal before suddenly she was on the other side, standing in front of a large palace. Curious, she glanced around, noting a large table heavy with food, and approached it first, adding some of the odd delicacies that would keep well in a pack to her supplies, wrapping fruit, sandwiches and more to ensure she wouldn't starve when she went into the castle.
Because there was NO WAY she wasn't exploring that massive palace. A few others seemed to mill about, but not too many. The few that did seemed to be talking about keys. As she gathered supplies, she listened in, quickly catching on that most rooms appeared to be locked and required a key to be found. A scavenger hunt then? Grinning, the doe took to the small staircase, heading up them as quick as her dainty hooves could carry her, and throwing open the doors as she trotted inside. Looking around, she grinned in amazement, wonder, at the beauty of just the main entry and hallway, before shaking her head to clear her mind. No time to admire artwork, she had a key to find, a palace to explore!
"Speech" Thoughts
Open to any who want to explore the palace.
Pol shook her head as she traversed her homeland. The sight of Denocte in the morning was enough to make her smile. There was an air of emotions wrapping the aquatic mare as she walked, excitement and anxiety dancing through her like reef fish through corals. Excitement, because she finally felt like she was where she belonged. She had someone willing to teach her further how to heal and how to move forward into becoming the doctor that she hoped to become.
At the same time, Pol was anxious. What if she disappointed the elder healer? Would she be able to be useful? The young mare had to pause and take a few deep breaths on her way, lavender eyes closed tightly against the feat that was trying to swamp her. Breathing slowly, she shoved the emotions deep within her heart.
With a final deep breath, Pol pushed forward and made certain that she was on the correct path. Approaching the building that she had been directed to, the little mare knocked and waited patiently for the other mare.
"Luvena? It is Polar North..." She called loud enough for the other mare to hear, that way she knew who was coming and that it wasnt an emergency.
The winter’s biting chill had finally forced the stallion down from the mountains. His elk companion had been urging him for weeks now as the nights became cool and the wind whistled through the trees. The brute hadn’t wanted to listen to him. After the first month, he had left disappointed. A week later, though, he had been back and it had been with provisions to stay. The stallion’s heart ached to see her again, and each night he had stood at the entrance to the cave, hoping to see her visage materialize from the darkness, just as it once had. Gareth was a stubborn man, and once he had set his mind to something it was difficult to get him to focus on anything else. Some would consider it bullheadedness, and perhaps they were right. It served him well, in most things. But in matters of the heart, all it would do, it seems, is make him bitter and lonely.
Noor had thought that this final rejection after sudden and fleeting hope would break him. And while the stallion was perhaps not yet ready to admit it, the elk could see the cracks forming, and the guards being carefully built around his heart. It pained him to see his friend hurting this way, even though he had been correct. No one ever wins in those situations- no one wants to tell the ones that they love that they are going to be hurt, and they certainly don’t celebrate when their predictions turn true. Noor, perhaps almost as much as Gareth, had been hoping that Salome would show herself. That they could speak and, if nothing else, make amends. When she had not come the first time, he had tried to get his stallion companion to move on, but once that light of hope was inside of him, he could not let it go. Noor knew that he had to let the man come to conclusions on his own, even if it meant that he would have to fall apart.
But the elk would be there, as he always had. He would be the stallion’s silent rock, and he would help him shoulder whatever weight, and he would help him piece himself together again. That is what friends did. That is what one’s chosen family did. And fuck Salome, if she was too full of herself to see that. If her head was too in the clouds or far and away somewhere else, to toy with the gentle giant. To so deeply hurt a man who clearly still loved her after all of these years… it was a disgrace as far as he was concerned. But he would not voice those thoughts to Gareth. Perhaps he never could. It would wound him too much, and he had already been through enough. He watched the stallion, who walked just a bit ahead of him, shoulders hunched against the cold, so much like a child trying to curl into himself and disappear from the world that was far too big.
They were walking in the shadow of the mountain now, but it would still be a good half day at least until they would reach home. The snow here was, blessedly, sparse. He had let his mane down from the semi-neat buns that he normally kept to attempt to warm his neck. The strands fell in thick locks, whispering against his skin all of the sweet nothings that he had so wished to hear from lips not his own.
The stallion tried to push the thought from his mind and Gareth wondered briefly if anyone had missed him these last few months. After all, he had gone to the mountains just before the new Sovereign was named. He wondered what the final tally had been, and how the chips had fallen. He supposed in the end it didn’t matter much. He had never been one to play too much with politics, and found that most rulers were all variations of the same. He pushed air harshly through his nares, the action nearly causing him a coughing fit. He had spent much too long on the mountain, and he knew that. Noor had known it, too, but the stallion was too pigheaded to agree. He had been too desperate, perhaps. He had wanted so strongly to believe… But hope was a fickle bitch, and perhaps an aching lung would be a well deserved lesson what foolishness blind hope can bring a man.
a standing ghost
A gargoyle or a weathered shell,
A sort of lunar sentinel.
A big crow came and landed on a bone pile, black feathers ruffled against the wind whipping off the lake. They cocked their head and fixed Kassandra and her fire in a beady eye, feet stepping quickly to avoid freezing solid to the ice-encrusted ribcage. It was a deer of some sort, white-tailed, fallow, roe, or red, dead by an unknown cause. It’s final resting place was in the pebbles on Vitreus’ bank, sidelong, organs long harvested by opportunistic carnivores. Most all that remained was a layer of scruffy fur, cemented to the frosted bank, and bones bleached white in the sun. Bits of the nose, face, and eyes had been nibbled away by carp when Vitreus still moved in tides but now, completely frozen, the bottom feeders had returned to their given place, forced down by inhospitable temperatures and a layer of ice two feet thick.
Mid-afternoon, and the sun was a bleak, white beacon above her. Kas shifted forward slightly-- the crow awked, unappreciative of her sudden movement, and settled on a different rib-- and breathed on her little fire, sending the flames up a little higher. Her star-painted body lay in a comfortable nook made by a cluster of giant rocks, certainly deposited here when glaciers crossed Novus millenia ago, forming the mountains, valleys, and lakes. Or perhaps Tempus put them here as some sort of lesson, or reminder, for that seemed the godly thing to do. Maybe Caligo placed them, adorning her land of frequent frost.
Kassandra remembered a swirling, blackened form standing tall in the centre of Denocte’s court. The memory brought a grim smile to her lips and made her stomach flutter with disdain.
Stone windwall behind her, fire in front of her, Oculos nestled in and warm against her belly, Kassandra let the negative feelings dissipate. This was why she was out here, after all.
As if on cue, Oculos gave a dramatic, falsified shiver, and huffed, out of all the time to go camping in the whole ass world and you choose now.
“I prefer it like this,” Kassandra said, voice a salve. She stretched her neck long and rested her throat over the hound’s furry back. “I needed some time, space for my thoughts. We’ll go back to town soon, I promise.
A grumble from the pit of her companion’s stomach vibrated her jugular. we’ll be dead soon, I promise. But he made no move to get up, betraying his comfort.
everyone i've ever loved lives just past my able reach
While spring started from the bottom and worked its way up, autumn began in the sky and slowly descended to the soil, rendering the distant trees bare save for the towering, lurching conifers, and turning the once golden, pastel-green array of prairie grasses a dull copper.
Spring and autumn had similarities, as well, namely in their brevity. Passing by in a blink, a grasshopper jump, both were now a distant memory as winter and her wolven fangs sunk deep into Denoctian flesh.
It was mid-morning, and the sleepy brumal sun was not quite a third of the way up in the sky. Honey rays of light oozed haphazardly over the blanketed landscape, pressed against a silvery film of fog. Directly above, the sky was still dark, the late-falling stars hidden by thick steel clouds. Kas lifted her nose into the bitingly cold air and sniffed. There was no scent of snow on the wind-- for the moment, at least. Trapped in the palm of the Almas, the weather was as fickle as a feather in a thunderstorm.
Kas was cold, but she had been colder. The temperatures would rise with the rising sun. She plowed through snow deepened to her mid-knee, fetlocks heavy with chunks of ice. Her coat had grown long and shaggy, her white hair thickened and chaotic like some wild thing. She much preferred winter’s chill to a summer’s sweat (perhaps it had some to do with almost dying in a desert, once) and her Sideralis sabbatical was a refreshing chance to clear her mind, even though the tips of her ears were windburnt.
Slightly more miserable, with sore feet and a tail encrusted in snow, Oculos padded behind her, turning this way and that to make sure his larger companion took the brunt force of the wind. The two of them were on a bit of a hair-brained hunt looking for a flower that was not such a rarity during the warmer months but, during winter, became somewhat of a myth: Lily-of-the-Valley, a gentle, alabaster, bell-shaped bloom which could survive, nay, thrive, during the frozen deluge of snow and ice brought on by a Denoctian winter.
Oculos almost ran straight into the back of Kas’ hocks as she stopped to sniff at a likely patch of ground, but it was only the desiccated top of a dormant andropogon, crisp, brown, and frost-coated. Kas snorted cloud-breath into the snow and carried on, quite, determined, but more at peace than she had been for quite a while.
Bitter in his throat, Oculos swallowed a complaint with a swipe of his tongue. He was happy to see his best friend finally coming out of her funk-- even if she was leading them on this fools errand of looking for a white flower in a snow-covered field.
RUIN and RAVAGE
make me your priestess
rip me to pieces
♛
F
or days, the muck had been bubbling, oozing. A vile rot, abcessed around fleshless gilded bones that had been buried so, so long — their marrow now buzzing with a wild, dangerous electricity. The Tinea Swamp had been slowly pushing her out from its deepest depths, churning angrily against her skeleton which had nearly cemented itself beneath the gnarled, resentful roots of the Baldcypress and Tupelo trees. The swamp worked diligently hard to spit her out - a foul soul they no longer wished to keep, having overstayed its welcome by centuries.
It was then the last marsh bubble popped, and it was as if the swamp finally heaved and regurgitated. There was a small glint — the slightest glimmer — as the muck parted. A single spear-like tine, its sharpest point akin to a needle.
The ascent of her bones from the muck was slow only until the surface was finally broken, when the swamp suddenly spewed up the rest of her gilded bones which joined the circlet of her horns in a frenzy. Laying in an unarticulated pile, the muck dripped from them — weeping out of the eye sockets of her skull and oozing along the sharp line of her jawbone. The swamp seemed to breathe a sigh of relief as its depths were free of her, for now.
Her eviction — the start of the rebirth — was messy and careless. What followed was much more methodical: weaving back together the seams of centuries past. The crayfish were the first to converge upon the aureate pile of bones; they seemed to almost work in a hivemind, headed by a giant freshwater crayfish nearly as old as Tinea itself. It hooked its chela into a golden orbital socket, dragging the skull — her skull — from the grasp of the Swamp and over to the base of a massive Baldcypress tree. All the smaller crustaceans drug her bones, one by one, until they fell in place.
It was as if time itself stitched her back together, the Baldcypress weeping a continuous stream of wax that pooled and hardened around her golden bones. Eventually, she was whole enough to gather those no-longer-feeble legs underneath herself, to recline at the base of the tree that helped re-birth her back into the mortal world as the crayfish crawled back to their homes among the muck.
She had spent the days as the one hidden among the trees while her body fully re-composed itself. As she laid at the base of this same century-old tree, the golden crown above her head had overflowed and poured golden ichor over her eyes and skin. It burned, and she knew she was alive.
And as she stood up and walked from the depths of this swamp - her skin's translucency as the mingling Tinean fog - she was certain that this world was not ready for her.
"Speech." — (Thoughts.)
All welcome! ♥ I'd like to limit it to 1, maybe 2, characters max please! If someone snags this AW but you'd still like to thread, just ping me and Id be happy to start another thread with ya ♥
As a note, in this thread the 'rebuilding' of her mortal body is in due part to her immortality: she can be reformed and reborn from her bones after a period of abeyance following death (which can be a short period of time, or a centuries-long 'slumber')
There is not much to being a songbird. One wakes in the morning, and sings to the sky, just in time to wake up the rest of the world. Flying, eating, sleeping, singing. The cycle repeats, and is perhaps interrupted only to find another, but there is no variety to this avian world. Day in and day out life goes on, carried by the lilt of the songbirds.
Kerauno is no different than the rest of them. Blue as the sky he flies in, the only ways to tell him apart from the rest of a flock, is that he gleams a touch more brilliantly. They are blue while he is cerulean. His song is quieter than them, but he says just as much with fewer notes. He flies a hair ahead of the others, fast as the lightning for which he is named.
It is that speed which gets him into trouble that last spring. As he darts in and out of the trees, yielding his body to their branches, twisting and turning each way, pushing faster and faster, as graceful as a fish in water and as agile as-
A slug apparently. The thought strikes him just as the branch does, knocking him swiftly to the ground. There he lays, dazed by the fall. It lasts for only a moment before he is struck by a sharp pain, in his now crooked wing. Suddenly the forest seems louder, and each crack of a twig underfoot has him flinching as he hops to his feet.
There is one though that seems not so frightening. Though the crunch is loud, and echoes about the trees, it is slow, and gentle in a way. Its source is tall, and muscular, but it does not belong to the forest. It smells of sand and cacti, and it does not scare Kerauno.
He peers up at it -him- with black eyes, and cocks his head, eyeing the antlers that look just like the branch he had crashed into. Oh. the realization comes to him quite quickly, it was no wonder it hadn’t given way like a branch would. The songbird says nothing, but he stays where he is, unable to flee, but not desiring to either.
@Galileo feels something hit his antlers, and a moment later sees an injured swallow by his hooves.
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