FOR ARCHIVAL PURPOSES FOR PREVIOUS EXP CLAIMS ONLY; NO NEW CONTENT CAN BE CREATED USING THE IDEA OF THE ISLAND (OR ANY PREVIOUS ITERATIONS).
12/01/19 - as ever-changing as a heart
The island, once believed lost forever to the sea has returned.
Yet from the first moment it reappeared it's obvious that something is horribly (or wonderfully) wrong with it. It follows none of the rules that have always been true on this mortal plane. Not a single one of them.
Everything about the island seems more endless dream than reality. Mountains appear out of sand. A tree is a pine one moment and a birch the next. In the space between heartbeats snow might turn to sun and the rainbow following it might turn to ink and rain down in colorful masterpieces across the horses below. Both time and normalcy have no place on this ever-changing piece of Novus.
Is it an adventure in the wondrous or is it terrifying?
Welcome to a new element of world-building in Novus. This bit of island, first discovered in the SWP of 504 Spring, has reappeared in the IC world. It is a land that will be changing each season. Some reincarnations of it will be normal landscapes that you might see in real life. Others will be totally strange and push the realm of the real and the surreal into something 'more'. Enjoy and let your muses run wild!
YOU CAN EARN +2 EXP EACH SEASON
For each 'new' landscape of the island you will be able to earn the +2 EXP for an IC event each time you post 4 posts using the seasonal landscape. You can claim it for each season-- this is not a one time use bonus.
Also keep an eye out for some @'Random Event' fun happening on this board. <3
YOU CAN EARN +2 EXP EACH SEASON
For each 'new' landscape of the island you will be able to earn the +2 EXP for an IC event each time you post 4 posts using the seasonal landscape. You can claim it for each season-- this is not a one time use bonus.
Also keep an eye out for some @'Random Event' fun happening on this board. <3
12/01/19 - and a veil shall be withdrawn
The island did not love the icy blue-dark of the sea. It wanted sun, and sand, and life. It wanted the blue sky stretching above it like an endless crown. It wanted, it, wanted---
It wanted to not be broken (or at least to be something less than completely broken).
So the leviathan rose from the depth in waves of snowy froth. The mountain peaks of it brushed up against the belly of that sky-crown in a gentle coo that sounded like hello, hello, hello. What sand had been washed away by the furious sea was replaced with dead-gross knolls and peaked piles of snow that looked like piled up bones from where the ocean wind roared through it. The sun rising low over it turned everything diamond-bright and virgin.
No the island did not love the dark sea at all. When given the choice of something other than time it loved the sky and it welcomed, like all pure new worlds, the touch of life as it returned.
All the birds that appeared on the island settled in bare-boned branches with their throats full of songs. Did you miss us?, they sang as the snow fell on their proud feathers. Always the island would whisper back in the muted way of snow falling on pines:yes, yes, yes.
Prairie deer heard the song too. The last winter elk who had made his home among the doe knew the song in the marrow of his bones and he led his harem across the bridge. Snow reached up to their hocks and still they followed their elk across the sea. Even when a winter storm made the waves leap furiously at the walls of the bridge they followed him. To them that last elk, the god-made beast, was more than just made He was god.
And when the first horse decided to follow them not a single one looked back afraid of the beasts behind them.
On they went until the bridge faded into the shore and the shore into the small piles of snow cut by the wind. Their footprints made delicate maps in the snow and the winter elk's crown started to frost with crystals that chimed a song each time he moved (and it might have sounded like that bird-song). Each step deeper into the island dulled their sandy coats until they all blended into the snow. Only the darkness of their eyes was visible by the time they molded into the snow-covered stones.
Perhaps to the first horses to follow that seemed the strangest thing: the way the deer vanished into the snow. Surely it was stranger than an island refusing to love the sea. Perhaps they think nothing is strange anymore in this land risen from something more than one of their gods with a bridge made of frosted lava and holly. Perhaps they thought--
Perhaps--
But then the first shimmering ball of light appeared, flickering like a small star brought low by the winter storm (the one that's already dissolving out across the mainland). The first horses looked closer, wondering at the way the small star seemed to be singing a solemn poem more ancient than any book in all the libraries of Novus.
One of the first horses to follow the elk called it a wandering spirit. The next called it nothing more than a bird tainted by whatever magic ruled this island risen from the sea. The third smiled at the small ball of light and when he said “hello” the ball of light answered back.
And that was the moment the horses of Novus discovered fairies and how each looked like a hundred different creatures all at once.
This is the first transformation of the island. For 504 winter, the island will appear as a snow-dusted fairy glen. There are birch and pine forests almost covered in snow. Small hills run through the middle of the land (small enough that a fairy might still call them a mountain). And those fairies are as numerous on the island as the snow-birds are.
To each horse a fairy might look different. It could be a ball of light, a small bird, some combination of the known and unknown. We want you to be as creative as you feel like being (just not human imagery please). <3
YOU CAN EARN +2 EXP EACH SEASON
This landscape will change on January 31st, 2020. All threads started after that date will not count towards the +2 EXP for the 504 island IC Event. Remember in order to claim for it you need 4 posts in a thread started during the time frame of the event.
Also keep an eye out for some @'Random Event' fun happening on this board. <3
To each horse a fairy might look different. It could be a ball of light, a small bird, some combination of the known and unknown. We want you to be as creative as you feel like being (just not human imagery please). <3
YOU CAN EARN +2 EXP EACH SEASON
This landscape will change on January 31st, 2020. All threads started after that date will not count towards the +2 EXP for the 504 island IC Event. Remember in order to claim for it you need 4 posts in a thread started during the time frame of the event.
Also keep an eye out for some @'Random Event' fun happening on this board. <3
02/02/20 - to show the space between sleeping and waking
This time, the island did not cast the equines off like a sea serpent tossing them into the waves. This time the transition was almost-peaceful, gentle ever; as if magic as wild as this could ever allow peace to exist on its soil. But we should all know better by now than to expect the island to be kind.
Perhaps some of those left on the island were sleeping during it, or perhaps those on the bridge missed the way it changed from snow to ice to glass underhoof, the way it crackled with each step yet refused to break through. But those were awake, and watching, and listening would tell of the way all the fairies dropped from the sky at once, and how their light sounded like music as it faded into the cold night. And the dust they crumbled into was golden, and fine, and softer than any silk a royal could buy. But that too was carried away by the wind, the wind that swept across the island and seemed to carry away all the fairy rings and the birds and the deer. It stripped away the land until it was nothing more than hills and snow and trees, and horses too naive to leave.
And then, the hills began to tremble.
And then, the trees began to grow, and twist, and shake the snow from their branches like they couldn’t bear to stand hunched beneath it for a second longer. They shed their bark for something new and pale, and leaves as red as the setting sun sprouted like fire along their boughs. The hills lowered themselves upon the ground as if to admit defeat, only to rise again as mountains a moment later. All at once the snow began to slide away into the waiting waters, and grass that was purple, and red, and yellow, and brilliant began to spring forth, patterning the ground in a mosaic of colors so deep, the average horse could walk amongst it and only their head would show to betray their presence. And as the rest of the color began to flow back into the landscape, it became all too clear that something had already begun to go wrong in the island’s transmutation. Because the color leached back in haphazardly, without a care for what used to be green, or blue, or red, or any other color; the river flowed in shades of violet and the rocks lining its bed were green.
Perhaps the flowers with petals that were shaped as suns and comets and colored like the stars came next; or maybe it was the way the mountains pulled up their roots and lifted themselves into the sky, and waterfalls tumbled down like tears from their cheeks. The animals came next - if they could be called animals. They came as ghosts, shaped like half-formed deer and birds and wolves that sprint like feral things through the treetops. All the island seems to echo with their howls and their laughter and their sing-song calls, like the dead have learned how to sing the song of the living.
It was only when the transformation was complete that the first horse looked up and realized how small they felt, and how large the island had suddenly seemed to grow.
And who can really say who was the first to try and use their magic in this strange, new world - and yet they all somehow know to try the same only at their own caution. Because here on the island fire becomes ice, and a healing touch leaves rot in its wake.
Some will say it was spring that forced the island to change its skin yet again, but others know it is only the magic of the place that keeps it from being any one thing for too long.
This is the second transformation of the island. For 505 spring, the island will seem to have been tipped upside-down. The trees are smaller than the horses, the grass rises above their heads, even the colors appear to have swapped themselves freely for another. The island as a whole will seem massive, far bigger than either of the previous renditions; perhaps the horses have all been reduced in size, or perhaps the island is playing one more trick on us all. But what is maybe the most surprising is that the magic of the island has affected the magic of the horses - no matter what magic your character has, it will be reversed in threads on this island.
You can be as creative as you want and take artistic liberties with this landscape. Perhaps for your horse everything is almost-right, and just wrong enough to be unnerving; or perhaps everything is utterly strange and unfamiliar, and they must let go of all they thought they knew to navigate the land. When in doubt, you can dm @sid or @nestle to bounce ideas.
YOU CAN EARN +2 EXP EACH SEASON
This landscape will change on March 31st, 2020. All threads started after that date will not count towards the +2 EXP for the 504 island IC Event. Remember in order to claim for it you need 4 posts in a thread started during the time frame of the event. Threads that have not been active since November have been archived - DM staff if you would like to revive them!
Also keep an eye out for some @'Random Event' fun happening on this board. <3
You can be as creative as you want and take artistic liberties with this landscape. Perhaps for your horse everything is almost-right, and just wrong enough to be unnerving; or perhaps everything is utterly strange and unfamiliar, and they must let go of all they thought they knew to navigate the land. When in doubt, you can dm @sid or @nestle to bounce ideas.
YOU CAN EARN +2 EXP EACH SEASON
This landscape will change on March 31st, 2020. All threads started after that date will not count towards the +2 EXP for the 504 island IC Event. Remember in order to claim for it you need 4 posts in a thread started during the time frame of the event. Threads that have not been active since November have been archived - DM staff if you would like to revive them!
Also keep an eye out for some @'Random Event' fun happening on this board. <3
04/02/20 - a tingling in the spine, a catch in the voice, a faint sensation,
It starts with a settling of fog over the island.
The fog, at first, seems just like another boulder of mist rolling in from the sea at dawn. The silence it brings with it, well that's to be expected. The birds are the first to fall silent, their songs swallowed up into nothing by way of a single, collective inhale. There is song -- and then there is silence. It's that simple, surely nothing to be worried about.
When the spectral creatures hunting through the grass stop running and baying at the dying of the night, well that is to be expected too. Wraiths have never loved the dawn, when their forms are made for moonlight and starlight. Perhaps this too is not deserving of worry. Not yet.
But then the roaring of the lilac waterfalls stutters into silence like a heartbeat struggling against death. The echo of them is next to fall as well, and then there is only a hush, hush, hush. This hush is nothing like the sea on the shore, or the night knocking at a window by the top of a leaf. This is oppressive silence. The air grows heavy.
And then the fog starts to darken, and darken, and darken. The world inside the fog turns black.
(Outside still looks the same, sunlight and summer fronds and the sea. But inside the fog there is only blackness. Until there is more than blackness….)
That more than blackness starts with a single orb of light. Up close it might seem a small star, hot to the touch if only it would come closer and stop drifting away, away, away. Those brave souls that follow the light might be surprised to feel only that heavy, silent air around them and not a single blade of monstrous grass. Or maybe they only notice the way everything underneath them feels like almost-smooth glass. Or maybe they will only hear the echo of their steps drowning out everything, even their heartbeats.
Maybe they will notice none of this, because that single flickering star has multiplied like a cell. Suddenly there are constellations everywhere and blackness in the places between all this sudden light. There are moons orbiting overhead and comets running between them like snakes. The places between the blackness of the fog are suddenly full of light.
When they walk deeper into the fog (or is it only silent darkness now) there is only cosmic wilderness to be found.
And so like gods, they all walk on.
The fog, at first, seems just like another boulder of mist rolling in from the sea at dawn. The silence it brings with it, well that's to be expected. The birds are the first to fall silent, their songs swallowed up into nothing by way of a single, collective inhale. There is song -- and then there is silence. It's that simple, surely nothing to be worried about.
When the spectral creatures hunting through the grass stop running and baying at the dying of the night, well that is to be expected too. Wraiths have never loved the dawn, when their forms are made for moonlight and starlight. Perhaps this too is not deserving of worry. Not yet.
But then the roaring of the lilac waterfalls stutters into silence like a heartbeat struggling against death. The echo of them is next to fall as well, and then there is only a hush, hush, hush. This hush is nothing like the sea on the shore, or the night knocking at a window by the top of a leaf. This is oppressive silence. The air grows heavy.
And then the fog starts to darken, and darken, and darken. The world inside the fog turns black.
(Outside still looks the same, sunlight and summer fronds and the sea. But inside the fog there is only blackness. Until there is more than blackness….)
That more than blackness starts with a single orb of light. Up close it might seem a small star, hot to the touch if only it would come closer and stop drifting away, away, away. Those brave souls that follow the light might be surprised to feel only that heavy, silent air around them and not a single blade of monstrous grass. Or maybe they only notice the way everything underneath them feels like almost-smooth glass. Or maybe they will only hear the echo of their steps drowning out everything, even their heartbeats.
Maybe they will notice none of this, because that single flickering star has multiplied like a cell. Suddenly there are constellations everywhere and blackness in the places between all this sudden light. There are moons orbiting overhead and comets running between them like snakes. The places between the blackness of the fog are suddenly full of light.
When they walk deeper into the fog (or is it only silent darkness now) there is only cosmic wilderness to be found.
And so like gods, they all walk on.
This is the third transformation of the island. For 505 summer, the island will be surrounded by a heavy barrier of fog. Characters will have to cross through it to gain access to this new version of the island (there can be pain in the crossing, it's totally up to you). The entire island inside the fog is like walking around in space. There are nebulae to walk inside, stars to touch and fly between. There are comets close enough to grab if your character is brave enough. And each step echoes like walking on glass instead of dirt and stone. There seems almost no end to the cosmic wonders that can be found inside the fog wall.
You can be as creative as you want and take artistic liberties with this landscape. Perhaps for your horse everything is more dreamworld than real world; or perhaps everything is utterly strange and unfamiliar, and they must let go of all they thought they knew to navigate the land. When in doubt, you can dm @sid or @nestle to bounce ideas.
YOU CAN EARN +2 EXP EACH SEASON
This landscape will change on May 31st, 2020. All threads started after that date will not count towards the +2 EXP for the 505 island IC Event. Remember in order to claim for it you need 4 posts in a thread started during the time frame of the event. Starting this season (summer 505) any post that is starting during the time frame for the island and completed within 2 months of that start date can receive the +2 EXP.
Also keep an eye out for some @'Random Event' fun happening on this board. <3
You can be as creative as you want and take artistic liberties with this landscape. Perhaps for your horse everything is more dreamworld than real world; or perhaps everything is utterly strange and unfamiliar, and they must let go of all they thought they knew to navigate the land. When in doubt, you can dm @sid or @nestle to bounce ideas.
YOU CAN EARN +2 EXP EACH SEASON
This landscape will change on May 31st, 2020. All threads started after that date will not count towards the +2 EXP for the 505 island IC Event. Remember in order to claim for it you need 4 posts in a thread started during the time frame of the event. Starting this season (summer 505) any post that is starting during the time frame for the island and completed within 2 months of that start date can receive the +2 EXP.
Also keep an eye out for some @'Random Event' fun happening on this board. <3
08/03/20 - in a beautiful place, alone,
The island is still moving long after the season turns, like a beast that has learned how to be its own master. All those stars are still flickering, still turning, still multiplying and glowing like a thousand flames lighting up the island. And as the first snowflakes turn to teardrops among the stars, those brave souls that have lingered on the island begin to wonder if the island has at last decided what it wants to be. They’re living, they whisper to each other, as they cradle those fiery lights close to their chests.
Until, like a shot to the heart, they aren’t.
The roaring of the stars turns to a scream that shatters the earth. The island stops beating at once, and all those stars fall down, down, down into the blackened earth where they crumble to dust and ash. In the darkness and the silence that remains, there are no gods to be found. Only a heaviness that settles over the island like a stone tied to the bottom of the ocean, weighing heavily across those few brave (or unfortunate) souls that find themselves trapped.
The air grows still.
And cold.
And dagger-sharp.
Has the island sunk in the sea, or swallowed whole by the beasts within it?
And still the darkness reigns.
It is not until the morning when the sun begins to rise in the distance that the answer becomes clear. The dawn breaks over a sea of glass and crystal, left behind by the collapsing stars.
Each sharply-edged surface is a mirror, reflecting back the colors of the morning in all its brilliance. Perhaps some of the mirrors are twisted into arcane shapes, a reminder that they used to be stars -- perhaps some of them still glow like embers pulled from a fire, hanging by a thread onto the magic of the island. Or maybe the first horses to wake up and begin to explore do not even notice the shapes they have become, and think only that the new island looks like the graveyard of the heavens, with snow beginning to settle in the crevices like a bridal veil.
The sunlight breaks itself into dozens of refractions when it touches the strange crystals. And as the horses begin once again to explore, they find the island has become a maze of crystalline mirrors. Everywhere they look is reflection upon reflection, and with each step that they take a thousand versions of themselves (tall and lean, short and stocky, black and white and overly saturated) follow closely.
Or is there another face looking back at them, looking out from their eyes, staring over their shoulder, breathing upon their necks?
Until, like a shot to the heart, they aren’t.
The roaring of the stars turns to a scream that shatters the earth. The island stops beating at once, and all those stars fall down, down, down into the blackened earth where they crumble to dust and ash. In the darkness and the silence that remains, there are no gods to be found. Only a heaviness that settles over the island like a stone tied to the bottom of the ocean, weighing heavily across those few brave (or unfortunate) souls that find themselves trapped.
The air grows still.
And cold.
And dagger-sharp.
Has the island sunk in the sea, or swallowed whole by the beasts within it?
And still the darkness reigns.
It is not until the morning when the sun begins to rise in the distance that the answer becomes clear. The dawn breaks over a sea of glass and crystal, left behind by the collapsing stars.
Each sharply-edged surface is a mirror, reflecting back the colors of the morning in all its brilliance. Perhaps some of the mirrors are twisted into arcane shapes, a reminder that they used to be stars -- perhaps some of them still glow like embers pulled from a fire, hanging by a thread onto the magic of the island. Or maybe the first horses to wake up and begin to explore do not even notice the shapes they have become, and think only that the new island looks like the graveyard of the heavens, with snow beginning to settle in the crevices like a bridal veil.
The sunlight breaks itself into dozens of refractions when it touches the strange crystals. And as the horses begin once again to explore, they find the island has become a maze of crystalline mirrors. Everywhere they look is reflection upon reflection, and with each step that they take a thousand versions of themselves (tall and lean, short and stocky, black and white and overly saturated) follow closely.
Or is there another face looking back at them, looking out from their eyes, staring over their shoulder, breathing upon their necks?
This is the fourth transformation of the island. For 505 winter, the island has been transformed into a place of crystal. Some of these crystals are cut into strange shapes and figures; but most are mirrors. Mirrors that show the world as it is, and mirrors that show an alternate reality, all arranged into a maze.
You can be as creative as you want and take artistic liberties with this landscape. Perhaps for your horse sees only reflections of themselves and the sky; perhaps they see a world they long for, or one that gives them nightmares. Is the island beautiful, or a stark reminder that home is safer than an island that sheds its skin at will?
YOU CAN EARN +2 EXP EACH SEASON
This landscape will change on October 1st, 2020. All threads started after that date will not count towards the +2 EXP for the 505 island IC Event. Remember in order to claim for it you need 4 posts in a thread started during the time frame of the event. Starting this season (winter 505) any post that is starting during the time frame for the island and completed within 2 months of that start date can receive the +2 EXP.
Also keep an eye out for some @'Random Event' fun happening on this board. <3
You can be as creative as you want and take artistic liberties with this landscape. Perhaps for your horse sees only reflections of themselves and the sky; perhaps they see a world they long for, or one that gives them nightmares. Is the island beautiful, or a stark reminder that home is safer than an island that sheds its skin at will?
YOU CAN EARN +2 EXP EACH SEASON
This landscape will change on October 1st, 2020. All threads started after that date will not count towards the +2 EXP for the 505 island IC Event. Remember in order to claim for it you need 4 posts in a thread started during the time frame of the event. Starting this season (winter 505) any post that is starting during the time frame for the island and completed within 2 months of that start date can receive the +2 EXP.
Also keep an eye out for some @'Random Event' fun happening on this board. <3
09/30/20 - a creature that raised its dripping mouth from the rimstone pool
The island has risen, and fallen, and grown spores of steel and diamond instead of seed. It has been alive, and full of ghosts, and bloated with monsters braying at the cycle of the mother moon. But the island, that strange broken place caught in a tide that never touches the shore, has never been inside out.
Until it is-- as suddenly as it had risen, and fallen, and sunk into the sea.
The sound it makes as the insides of ore, and loam, and bones buried in the thickets, go belly up is no less terrifying than the crying laments of dead stars falling. There is no light to break up the deafening sound. There is only darkness as the ore rises through the skies like arrows and shadows where the mirrors fold back to reveal a cave.
And then, as the cave crawls free from the mirrors (or is it the mirrors crawling into the cave?), there is a soft sort of light. It starts as a dawn glow, a noon-fall, a twilight gloom that lives only in the cracks between an eyelid and a dream. The light brightens into a pale-bone-sun curling along the cathedral curl of a cave large and massive in a way that suggests only monsters might find religion between the points of stalactites.
Beneath the salted spears, where they fall enough to meet those rising from the floor, there is a castle ringed in a city made of silver, gold, and the glass bones of the stars. The castle and its city is reachable in one way only. There is a bridge as arched as the top of the cave rising above the black abysmal bottom of the island’s insides. It is a glorious sort of bridge made of diamonds, and emeralds, and barnacles that shine like stars.
And glorious it is!
Until you notice that the belly of the bridge is not stone but the curled ribcage of a monster too grotesque and malformed to name.
Those brave enough to cross the bridge, and look up-up-up and never down, might discover the strange layout of the city. They might wonder at the spiral cycle of it that moves inward in patterns twisted as a labyrinth. Some might call it a shell where others see only a noose tightening as they walk. Still some might not wonder at all when the city reveals wonder, after wonder, after wonder, like a tide-pool meeting a meadow in the spring.
There are shops with doors wagging as tongues do in a breeze no mortal can feel. But there are no keepers to be found-- not even in the shop with the weeping walls. The wonders, it would seem, are for the horses to touch and to take. There are no gods here, no wise shamans, no laws to keep them from doing as they please.
So they wander, the horses, through the shops full of wonderful things and they skirt around the one with the weeping wall (and the one behind that that screams). Even here, in the inside out island, they are still in their bellies animals made to run.
And it’s easy to forget that the city is hiding a castle where there are so many discoveries to be made in the trapping circles. But for those that wander (or are lost) long enough the castle waits as ominous and holy as the religion of monsters.
The doors of the castle are as open as the shop doors but they are too heavy to wag and wave in that unfelt breeze. Perhaps that makes the way the netherworld stones shimmer and shine strange. Perhaps it is only the way the glow of the stone follows those who pass through, like eyes might, that makes the door seem strange.
Across the threshold the castle awaits with hallways that tangle upon themselves like veins through a body, and there seems a strange pulse in the walls (not a thrum but a thrash). Rooms peel off of the hallways like leaves (or like chambers). Each room is lovely in the way that dreams are-- warped walls, tide-pool floors, and art that shifts and moves with each blink of an eye. Each might be as easy to linger in as the last.
But for those that do not linger and keep only to the vein-like hallways, with their opal floors and metallic archways, the throne room awaits. And upon the throne the sovereign of the island’s insides waits with their crown of woven tree-trunks upon an opal brow.
Outside, when the light starts to dim on a place hidden between two stalactites, something blinks.
Until it is-- as suddenly as it had risen, and fallen, and sunk into the sea.
The sound it makes as the insides of ore, and loam, and bones buried in the thickets, go belly up is no less terrifying than the crying laments of dead stars falling. There is no light to break up the deafening sound. There is only darkness as the ore rises through the skies like arrows and shadows where the mirrors fold back to reveal a cave.
And then, as the cave crawls free from the mirrors (or is it the mirrors crawling into the cave?), there is a soft sort of light. It starts as a dawn glow, a noon-fall, a twilight gloom that lives only in the cracks between an eyelid and a dream. The light brightens into a pale-bone-sun curling along the cathedral curl of a cave large and massive in a way that suggests only monsters might find religion between the points of stalactites.
Beneath the salted spears, where they fall enough to meet those rising from the floor, there is a castle ringed in a city made of silver, gold, and the glass bones of the stars. The castle and its city is reachable in one way only. There is a bridge as arched as the top of the cave rising above the black abysmal bottom of the island’s insides. It is a glorious sort of bridge made of diamonds, and emeralds, and barnacles that shine like stars.
And glorious it is!
Until you notice that the belly of the bridge is not stone but the curled ribcage of a monster too grotesque and malformed to name.
Those brave enough to cross the bridge, and look up-up-up and never down, might discover the strange layout of the city. They might wonder at the spiral cycle of it that moves inward in patterns twisted as a labyrinth. Some might call it a shell where others see only a noose tightening as they walk. Still some might not wonder at all when the city reveals wonder, after wonder, after wonder, like a tide-pool meeting a meadow in the spring.
There are shops with doors wagging as tongues do in a breeze no mortal can feel. But there are no keepers to be found-- not even in the shop with the weeping walls. The wonders, it would seem, are for the horses to touch and to take. There are no gods here, no wise shamans, no laws to keep them from doing as they please.
So they wander, the horses, through the shops full of wonderful things and they skirt around the one with the weeping wall (and the one behind that that screams). Even here, in the inside out island, they are still in their bellies animals made to run.
And it’s easy to forget that the city is hiding a castle where there are so many discoveries to be made in the trapping circles. But for those that wander (or are lost) long enough the castle waits as ominous and holy as the religion of monsters.
The doors of the castle are as open as the shop doors but they are too heavy to wag and wave in that unfelt breeze. Perhaps that makes the way the netherworld stones shimmer and shine strange. Perhaps it is only the way the glow of the stone follows those who pass through, like eyes might, that makes the door seem strange.
Across the threshold the castle awaits with hallways that tangle upon themselves like veins through a body, and there seems a strange pulse in the walls (not a thrum but a thrash). Rooms peel off of the hallways like leaves (or like chambers). Each room is lovely in the way that dreams are-- warped walls, tide-pool floors, and art that shifts and moves with each blink of an eye. Each might be as easy to linger in as the last.
But for those that do not linger and keep only to the vein-like hallways, with their opal floors and metallic archways, the throne room awaits. And upon the throne the sovereign of the island’s insides waits with their crown of woven tree-trunks upon an opal brow.
Outside, when the light starts to dim on a place hidden between two stalactites, something blinks.
This is the fifth transformation of the island. For 506 spring, the island has been turned inside out. Upon crossing the bridge horses will find themselves in a cave as large as any of the courts. The walls arch high enough that it's near impossible to see the finite edges of them. In the cave, across a bridge, is a city. And in the center of that city there is a castle in which a creature sits upon on a throne.
Be as creative as you want with this setting. Your character can discover a shop full of things that are only defined by the limits of your imagination. The rooms of the castle can appear like anything, be full of anything, hide anything. The creature sitting on the throne can appear in any form. It could be a horse, a dragon, a snake, a monster-- there are no limits to what you can come up with. Maybe it's not a creature at all-- maybe it's only stone.
And what's with the blinking thing?
YOU CAN EARN +2 EXP EACH SEASON
This landscape will change on December 1st, 2020. All threads started after that date will not count towards the 506 Spring island IC Event.
For any thread started during the current season, you will have 2 months from the start date of that thread to get 4 posts in. Like other IC events, you can claim 4 posts across multiple threads as long as they were all completed during the same 2 month period.
Also keep an eye out for some @'Random Event' fun happening on this board. <3
Be as creative as you want with this setting. Your character can discover a shop full of things that are only defined by the limits of your imagination. The rooms of the castle can appear like anything, be full of anything, hide anything. The creature sitting on the throne can appear in any form. It could be a horse, a dragon, a snake, a monster-- there are no limits to what you can come up with. Maybe it's not a creature at all-- maybe it's only stone.
And what's with the blinking thing?
YOU CAN EARN +2 EXP EACH SEASON
This landscape will change on December 1st, 2020. All threads started after that date will not count towards the 506 Spring island IC Event.
For any thread started during the current season, you will have 2 months from the start date of that thread to get 4 posts in. Like other IC events, you can claim 4 posts across multiple threads as long as they were all completed during the same 2 month period.
Also keep an eye out for some @'Random Event' fun happening on this board. <3
12/08/20 - all things that live, die
The silver star-river running through the heart of the city one day ceases to flow. That ever present lub dub, lub dub beating beneath the hooves of the horses who lingered too long in the glowing markets leaves only a sigh of silence when it hesitates between the last beat and the one-that-will-never-come. The shop doors wagging like tongues in the breeze no one could feel fall shut at once with a resounding thud that echoes throughout all the city. The weeping ones and the screaming ones beneath them hold their breath -- and wait.
Even the clouds, when those horses look up and up (or is it still down?) seem suddenly lifeless in the sky.
That is when the trembling starts.
It is easy at times to forget that the island is a thing made of magic, a thing wanton to shed its skin and crawl free of its remains. But for those that wander (or are lost) for too long, the reminder comes when the spiraling of the city begins to unwind. Like a thread being unspun it pulls itself apart, curl by fragile curl, stretching itself farther and farther. The only sound it makes as it unwinds is of ore, and loam, and bones crashing into the sea surrounding it. And of footsteps, racing away to safety across the pale arch of the ribcage bridge.
Perhaps it is a blessing then, that the bridge should be the last to fall. Maybe it is the island’s only way of expressing its love for those that come again and again to witness its wonders. Or maybe it is only that the monster whose bones became the bridge was loathe to return to the darkness from which it came.
Whatever the reason, it is forgotten when rib by rib is pulled apart and dropped into the hungry waves. It becomes a distant memory when the island collapses upon itself like a ribbon fallen to the ground, as it sits empty and alone in the sea. As night falls, a sickle moon rises like a scythe over the island.
It is not until the next morning that they see what the island has become again (or rather they hear it, whispered to them in the birdsong heralding the new day, in the waves gently lapping against the shores of the Courts.) There is no bridge this time to guide them into the new world -- but the first horse to step into the Terminus sea did not look back when they began to walk not through the water, but overtop it.
They only looked down, and down, and down at the faces of stone that looked up at them through the water. At the kelp that tangled down their necks like manes, at the fish that schooled around the curls of their horns.
There were boats waiting for those that were less-brave than the first horse, but for every boat that carried a horse from one distant land to the other, there were more who tossed their heads back and laughed with wild abandon as they raced across the water like young-gods. And to each of them the island whispered, and sang, and laughed as it welcomed them back to its waiting shores.
And oh! how different those shores are from the last!
There are no spiraling labyrinths rising to pierce the sky, no shops waiting like jealous dragons hiding away their treasures. There are no exposed bones of the earth crying out their lamentations. A sea of emerald grass that is as soft as silk brushes out a greeting against their legs as they move deeper and deeper into the rugged hills. And sometimes -- those hills followed after them.
There are faces carved in the hills, and bodies rising from the stones. Statues watch as the first horses explore the new land (and whisper to one another about how strange these horses seem, how different from them they are.) The braver statues follow along behind them like stray dogs, freezing each time those mortals eyes turn back to address them.
But perhaps, if you are patient enough, if you were to stand quietly beside them long enough to hear the earth breathing --
Perhaps too you might hear those statues begin to whisper to you their stories.
Even the clouds, when those horses look up and up (or is it still down?) seem suddenly lifeless in the sky.
That is when the trembling starts.
It is easy at times to forget that the island is a thing made of magic, a thing wanton to shed its skin and crawl free of its remains. But for those that wander (or are lost) for too long, the reminder comes when the spiraling of the city begins to unwind. Like a thread being unspun it pulls itself apart, curl by fragile curl, stretching itself farther and farther. The only sound it makes as it unwinds is of ore, and loam, and bones crashing into the sea surrounding it. And of footsteps, racing away to safety across the pale arch of the ribcage bridge.
Perhaps it is a blessing then, that the bridge should be the last to fall. Maybe it is the island’s only way of expressing its love for those that come again and again to witness its wonders. Or maybe it is only that the monster whose bones became the bridge was loathe to return to the darkness from which it came.
Whatever the reason, it is forgotten when rib by rib is pulled apart and dropped into the hungry waves. It becomes a distant memory when the island collapses upon itself like a ribbon fallen to the ground, as it sits empty and alone in the sea. As night falls, a sickle moon rises like a scythe over the island.
It is not until the next morning that they see what the island has become again (or rather they hear it, whispered to them in the birdsong heralding the new day, in the waves gently lapping against the shores of the Courts.) There is no bridge this time to guide them into the new world -- but the first horse to step into the Terminus sea did not look back when they began to walk not through the water, but overtop it.
They only looked down, and down, and down at the faces of stone that looked up at them through the water. At the kelp that tangled down their necks like manes, at the fish that schooled around the curls of their horns.
There were boats waiting for those that were less-brave than the first horse, but for every boat that carried a horse from one distant land to the other, there were more who tossed their heads back and laughed with wild abandon as they raced across the water like young-gods. And to each of them the island whispered, and sang, and laughed as it welcomed them back to its waiting shores.
And oh! how different those shores are from the last!
There are no spiraling labyrinths rising to pierce the sky, no shops waiting like jealous dragons hiding away their treasures. There are no exposed bones of the earth crying out their lamentations. A sea of emerald grass that is as soft as silk brushes out a greeting against their legs as they move deeper and deeper into the rugged hills. And sometimes -- those hills followed after them.
There are faces carved in the hills, and bodies rising from the stones. Statues watch as the first horses explore the new land (and whisper to one another about how strange these horses seem, how different from them they are.) The braver statues follow along behind them like stray dogs, freezing each time those mortals eyes turn back to address them.
But perhaps, if you are patient enough, if you were to stand quietly beside them long enough to hear the earth breathing --
Perhaps too you might hear those statues begin to whisper to you their stories.
This is the sixth transformation of the island. For 506 summer, the island has become a land of rugged hills. The emerald grass is as soft as silk, and stones dot the landscape like fallen stars. A multitude of statues of all shapes and sizes rise from the stones -- each with a face. If you are watchful, you may see a statue blink, or turn its head to whisper to its companions, or stand up and follow after an unsuspecting horse. If you are quiet, you may hear the stories they have to say.
Be as creative as you want with this setting. The statues can look however you like, and they can tell whatever stories you choose! Perhaps it is a legend, or a child's story; perhaps it is the story of their own life, of their carving, of how and why they became turned to stone. Maybe they are all heroes and villains immortalized forever on the island. Maybe your character thinks nothing of the statues, and is thankful only for a(n almost) normal season.
YOU CAN EARN +2 EXP EACH SEASON
This landscape will change on February 1st, 2021. All threads started after that date will not count towards the 506 Summer island IC Event.
For any thread started during the current season, you will have 2 months from the start date of that thread to get 4 posts in. Like other IC events, you can claim 4 posts across multiple threads as long as they were all completed during the same 2 month period.
Also keep an eye out for some @'Random Event' fun happening on this board. <3
Be as creative as you want with this setting. The statues can look however you like, and they can tell whatever stories you choose! Perhaps it is a legend, or a child's story; perhaps it is the story of their own life, of their carving, of how and why they became turned to stone. Maybe they are all heroes and villains immortalized forever on the island. Maybe your character thinks nothing of the statues, and is thankful only for a(n almost) normal season.
YOU CAN EARN +2 EXP EACH SEASON
This landscape will change on February 1st, 2021. All threads started after that date will not count towards the 506 Summer island IC Event.
For any thread started during the current season, you will have 2 months from the start date of that thread to get 4 posts in. Like other IC events, you can claim 4 posts across multiple threads as long as they were all completed during the same 2 month period.
Also keep an eye out for some @'Random Event' fun happening on this board. <3
Please be advised, tagging the Random Event account does not guarantee a response!
