Magic hovers in the air, an ever-present thrum that shivers and sighs at every whisper of movement, shuddering at every touch. The wind is pushing it farther, farther out into the land - like a weed it grows, taking root deep in the soil, crowding out every other stray bit of magic that comes too close.
Like the pool of light, the work of magic that was leached from the blood and magic of the sun god, more and more strange occurrences are popping up around the world of Novus. A whisper here, a push there; subtle changes that warp the flow of energy. The air is sweeter; the water holds a subtle tang whose flavor changes at whim. A light that winks in the distance at night, a strange beetle with a reflective shell -
- A field of flowers blossoming overnight on the battle marked fields of the Bellum Steppe.
But these are no ordinary flowers.
They dance in the wind, bending on long stalks, petals curling delicately at the edges. But oh, how they shine: they glisten in the sun like a million sharply cut gems, their edges sharp to the touch. They come in every color under the sun, so vibrant that they seem to pull their saturation directly from the rest of the world itself. The steppe seems suddenly dark in comparison, its grass brown and wilting around the wildflowers.
And as you approach, you may become aware of a sweet melody playing in the distance, like an orchestra heralding the arrival of magic. The wind plays music as it dances through the flowers, carving notes along their petals. Its calling to you in a voice that’s nigh irresistible, with words that awaken your soul but puzzle your ears. Come closer, it whispers, come see my beauty for yourself. There’s a promise hovering in the air, as if just by being in the presence of the flowers will bless you abundantly. But will it? Or is the sweet music masking a hidden danger?
Still you follow the sound, until you’re walking amongst the flowers and feeling their glassy blooms brushing against your legs. Whether they’re safe or dangerous, their beauty is undeniable. Their entire presence is a miracle of nature, and a testament of the gods’ broken magic.
But which god’s magic is responsible this time? Will your curiosity get the better of you?
How to Participate!
The Bellum Steppe has erupted in blooms, scores of wildflowers coating its fields. But these are not normal wildflowers, for while they act and move like normal plants each one is carved from precious gemstones. Their vibrant colors can be seen from miles away, calling anyone who catches a glimpse to come closer and see for themselves. But are they truly as harmless as they seem, or is there a danger hiding beneath their petals?
There’s only one way to find out.
Each character may reply to this post only one time. Rolls will be done and a staff edit will be posted at the end of each reply with Random Event results. You are more than welcome, and encouraged, to branch off into individual threads to interact with other characters. You may respond to the characters before you or your reply could be set at a different moment it time (this is totally up to you).
If you reply to this thread, it gives you +1 post in an IC event; if you replied to Water So Bright it Burns as well, you will now have a total of +2 posts in an IC event. There are more threads like these to come, and once you gather 4 replies total you can claim them for EXP!
All replies after May 1st, 2019 will not be considered for a RE roll.
Possible rolls and their rewards are as follows.
1 : Spring is in the air! Being around the flowers has awakened something in the character. Character will receive the common agora breeding item: healthy pregnancy.
2: 50 signos
3: Enchanted by the flowers, the character has decided to pick one and take it along on their next journey with them. But perhaps a day, perhaps an hour, perhaps only a minute later, bad luck will begin dogging the character’s heels. The ground may become unstable under foot, or perhaps a swarm of bees begin to chase them. The exact details are up to you, but for half an IC season your character will find themselves constantly plagued with various misfortunes, perhaps prompting them to get rid of the stolen flower.
4: 100 signos
5: + 1EXP point
6: 150 signos
To tag this account: @*'Random Events' without the asterisk.
Please be advised, tagging the Random Event account does not guarantee a response!
04-01-2019, 11:41 AM - This post was last modified: 03-21-2021, 12:41 AM by inkbone
she knows my heart belongs to you just me and the lavender moon
A
s time passed with no more sightings from the beast, there was a flexibility to everyone’s schedule. Sometimes it would take a little longer for someone to get up, or they’d spend a little more time talking to someone they met in the halls. That was how she found the window: a guard passing a quick flirtation. Just long enough for her to slip out onto the balcony and take to the air.
Her wings were young and strong, but they were still slightly immature. The feathers were not quite developed, the fluffy down not yet shaken from their edges. She made frequent stops, dipping in and out of trees, resting at creeks and small ponds, before she came across the steppes. While they had been gone it had bloomed into a valley of colors, long and graceful flowers on tall stalks.
See, everything is growing back. Everything! With one final swoop down below, she not-so-gracefully stumbled into what she thought would be compact dirt.
When she landed it instead felt like a breeze passed beneath her and righted her wings, allowing for her to flow smoothly to a halt. The crystal flowers around her swayed in a gentle and rhythmic dance. There was a sweet hum vibrating in the air around her, a melody that whispered enticement. Come closer, the petals seemed to sing. And she did.
I bet mama would love one of these for her hair, she thought as she spotted a yellow flower, the curls of its petals dancing like firelight in the early morning sun. But she did not pick it, instead she moved to delicately place a kiss on its unfurling leaves, to wet her lips on the dew.
”Who are you?” she asks them, for surely they are the work of the gods and their magic.
@Random Events | "speaks" | notes: here's to hoping mom doesn't find out about this
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
He returns to Bellum Steppe, the sunrise bright upon the horizon. The Crow is silver and bright as he steps amid the swaying flowers. All about him glitters and his skin is the silver metal gleaming amidst their glittering stems.
The meadow is a rippling sea of glittering light. The flowers lean toward the sun, bright and beautiful. In silence the Solterran king steps through them, wondering what magic it was that caused flowers to grow from blood-soaked turf.
With the meadow of wild-gem flowers covering the whole of the Steppe, Raum cannot even see the place where he left Seraphina dying. Bellum Steppe hides the horrors of her past, ghosts roam no longer upon a land as barren as Sheol, but in a meadow fit for the Olympian gods. What deceptive magic is it?
Gems tap, tap, tap against his limbs, magic whispers its way into his bones. His blue eyes mirror lapis lazuli petals the shimmer and shiver and shine in the light of the new day.
A glimmer of gold catches his gaze and slowly the Ghost turns to see a child step out into the meadow. Her gilded skin shines like the band of a ring, the gems nestled like precious stones, into her soul. She wanders, breathless but bright, her horn rises to the sky, as if to summon the sun to rise. He does not move, but she meanders closer. Shadows do not claim her, the dust of the desert does not adorn her, twilight does not sleepily bathe her. The girl is born of sunrise, a hazy gold that blinks its eyes awake.
A music plays, a melody akin to the Pied Piper and the girl steps deeper into the sea of flowers. Their stems ripple like waves of the sea, like hands that lure her in. The tide of music and magic pulls her orbit closer, closer until she is but a stride from him.
Raum watches her, ears listening to the lilting music of magic dawning. Bellum Steppe was no place for a child, he has seen unease slip along Sabine’s spine the moment comprehension of this savage place wove its way into her mind.
The Crow moves towards the child and his skull lowers. Petals reach for his lips, to poison, to bless, to curse? Oh it could be any one of them! He sways back, his lips unkissed by such strange petals. His eyes drift to the girl, “This is not a place for children to be. Especially not alone.” Raum murmurs gently, warily, as the drip of phantom blood on ruby petals begins to tap, tap, tap between the Delumine child and the Solterran king.
“If you have parents, you should run home to them. There is danger in even the most beautiful of things.” And he thinks of Sabine, of the daggers he bestowed her, each one ornately, beautifully carved.
He looks to the child. “Stay safe.”
@Anemone @Eulalie @Random Events
***STAFF EDIT
@Raum has rolled a 5! He has been awarded +1 EXP point for interacting with the flowers.
When she'd gone searching for her daughter and found her nowhere within the walls of the court, Eulalie's heart had tripped over itself in her frantic worry. Perhaps the beast in the woods had not been found nor seen again but that did not mean that it still could not be. She thought of Moore and Casper and did not allow herself to think of her daughter lying in their place. She questioned every guard on duty in the castle until one, guiltily refusing to meet her eyes, had said he'd allowed her to slip out the window.
Oh, how her ire was stoked. This was her child, Princess of Delumine, a mere one year old. What did he think, allowing her to wander off on her own. And if she hadn't been more worried about finding Anemone she might have stripped him of his position then and there, for her anger was the bear of a mother's. It would rip to pieces any who put her child in danger.
“Tabbris, to the sky. Find her.” The demand was short, but the large gryphon was already off the ground before she could finish. As guardian of their family, his interest was in finding her as much as it was his bondmate's. His great wings flapped, carrying him higher and higher until he was soaring great wide circles far above Delumine. After he'd moved southward of the captial, he saw her. “She's moving southeast,” was his revelation, passed across their bond. Eulalie set out, sending a silent request to Oriens that he keep Anemone safe until the woman could reach her.
Tabbris kept close tabs on the Princess, every stop she made, until they at last arrived over Bellum Steppe, and though Eulalie was a fair distance behind Anemone, with every break the girl took to rest her wings, she grew closer. Tabbris hung back a moment as Anemone went to land, and his dark eyes took in the strange sight of the flower covered Steppe.
He was content to wait for his bondmate to arrive until he saw the wraith poised among the flowers that the Princess slowly made her way toward seemingly unknowingly. “She's not alone,” he said, and with a clacking of his beak he circled once, twice, before diving to the ground just between Anemone and the man of silver. The crest of feathers on his head stood, his wings puffing out at his sides, his beak slowly opening to release a warning hiss.
Eulalie's heart thudded in her chest as she, at last, stepped out on the meadow. She only just slowed her racing pace to a trot, hoping above all things that the equine was someone that she'd recognize from the wedding. So many had come, but she thought she would know their faces if she saw them again. And recognize the man made of moonlight she did, but not from her wedding.
No, Eulalie knew his face from a very different place, and her heart jolted to a stop in her chest suddenly. It banged against her ribs as though it were a wall and then lied back, fluttering desperately. His name was no doubt know all over Novus, the man who had attacked Isra, killed a brother and then Seraphina, stolen the Solterran crown. But she did not wilt in fear, she did not shake. No, her soul became a bear again, taking in the sight of her cub with something dangerous.
She nearly stalked through the flowers and even though they whispered across her skin beckoningly they could not touch her wild, protective heart. Their song was merely a humming in her ears, the ticking of a racing clock. Their wiles and whims were lost upon the woman of ivory and gold who only saw the dagger-silver ghost and her daughter mere feet from him. She arrived there, a gilded warning, just as he began to speak.
His words sparked a biting fire within her, for how dare he speak to her daughter of danger and safety, as though he were not the first and never the latter. Her ears flattened upon her skull, her dark eyes fathomless depths. There was no warmth in that earth for him, just the shadows of a grave. She stepped forward, placing herself between he and Anemone and oh, how she wished to make him regret everything he had ever done.
“Sometimes,” and her words were level but her gaze was withering enough to burn every flower in this strange meadow of magic, “the snake in the grass is exactly what it appears to be.” She wanted to say ‘I know what you've done. I know what you are,’ but she didnt. Instead, Eulalie turned and began to usher her daughter away. “Come, we are leaving,” and her tone left no room for arguing.
Once they were away from this place she would be having words with her daughter. Anemone needed to understand that she was far too young to run off in this world of theirs, though she hated that it was so. Oh, she would put Tabbris on her tail for a month after this, and she was sure that Somnus would agree. “Tabbris, do not let him follow us,” she passed to her bondmate, knowing he would come with them but at a distance to ensure that the man did not trail. Her soul might be a bear but she was still just a mother. But she would do whatever it took to keep her children safe.
god comes to your window & you're just too tired to open it.
She hates the flowers.
She lingers at the edge of the Steppe, a smudge of shadow barely distinguishable from the treeline; it is nighttime when she arrives, because it is dangerous to travel in the day. She can’t be noticed unless she needs to be seen, and she only feels secure in her ability to navigate Solterra unseen. (She resents him for taking that freedom from her, too – she can’t walk in the sun, only the pale shadow of the moon, and is that fair? She is still alive, but he has made a ghost of her.) When she smells their perfume, she is caught off guard, and, much as she would like to avoid that place, her curiosity is enough to tempt her there. Seraphina wishes it hadn’t, as she stands before the beautiful meadow, because she hates the flowers, loathes the flowers, resents them – she hates the way that they bob and flow in the wind, the way that their radiant petals catch in the moonlight, the way that the wind whistling through their leaves creates a soothing, soft melody. She hates them. She wishes that they were dead.
Right there - right over there, that was where he left her. A throng of lily-like flowers grow in a patch over where her corpse would have rested, gorging themselves on soil soaked red with her blood. Those are the worst, the little leeches. How dare they? How dare the gods – because it has to have been some god, doesn’t it? – do this to her. How dare they. Making something beautiful here – how dare they do that? It feels like some ugly mockery, and she resents it, coating such an ugly, terrible place – the place where she had died, because, oh, she has certainly lost – a – life here – with flowers. A celebration, or some morbid funeral; she wonders if people frolicked through the field of them in the daylight, enjoyed the beauty of the flowers and the music and the warm presence of the sun on their shoulders, and she resents that thought too. It is callous. It is painful. She hates the flowers, hates them.
But maybe it is more than that.
She stands in the lilies that would have coated her corpse, resenting them, biting back fury that is whiter than the moonlight washes the flowers around her hooves – she wants to dig them up and crush them beneath her hooves, but she doesn’t, just stands and seethes. As far as the world is concerned, those lilies swallowed her, and she hates them all the more for it, because she is reminded – painfully – that she was left there, forgotten. (Torstein came looking for her, but no one else – her people did not come to find her body, to burn her remains in accordance to custom. Those that she had considered friends abandoned her. And – she must have been there with Isra for days. Surely it was long enough for Raum to return, but none of them bothered to find her, when they heard of her death. Solterra didn’t care for her alive, and it cared for her even less dead.)
(She’d heard about the meeting that followed, too, that none of them had bothered to raise their voice at Raum, that her death had been met with a crushing national apathy; and she resents Solterra for it, too, for never returning the care she so desperately tried to offer it, for being so quick to accept her murderer as a king in her place. Perhaps it is convenient; it helps her to play dead. But it feels like a knife between her ribs, and she can’t pull it out – it feels like a slow, agonizing death. She used to believe that, if she tried enough, if she was good enough, she would someday be met with good in turn.)
But there she was – there was the dead queen of Solterra, covered in a thick shroud of lilies.
The lilies brush against her heels, bloodthirsty creatures, and she isn’t sure if there is a scream or a sob caught in her throat, isn’t sure if the tears that threaten at the corners of her vision come from rage or a misery that stings more viciously than misery has ever stung her before, because it feels like an absence of - hope.
She turns, choking down air, and she does not look back.
tags | @ notes | takes place at an entirely different time than the raum/eulalie/anenome encounter; she's in & out. poke me if you want your character to have caught a glimpse of her? I just want to make sure that no one too plot relevant catches her, lmao.
***STAFF EDIT
@Seraphina has rolled a 5! She has been awarded +1 EXP point for interacting with the flowers.
I'M IN A ROOM MADE OUT OF MIRRORSand there's no way to escape the violence of a girl against herself.☼please tag Sera! contact is encouraged, short of violence
The stars were shining - he had never seen anything quite so beautiful, like a thousand silver tears strewn across the sky. When he looked closely, twisting his body so he flew upside down, struggling to balance, he could see spots of color way off in the distance.
I wonder, he thought absently, as he shifted around to face forward and continue his flight, how long it would take to fly to them?
In his dreams, when he was blindfolded and hobbled and perched, the stars had been white spots against a black sky, bleached and sterile looking. But oh, his dreams had sold them woefully short! The sky was not black, but a blue so deep and so dark it swallowed the light. And the stars were not white, but every color imaginable thrown together, burning so brightly they threw light into the void of the sky without caring that it would be snatched away - they just kept shining.
He could stare at them forever, if only the sun wouldn’t chase them away.
His wings were starting to ache, but still he didn’t stop, wouldn’t stop. The terror on the filly’s face as she fell from the air, chased down by one of the other falcons haunted him. The stars urged him on; keep going, they whispered, and they seemed to burn brighter when they spoke to him, you’ll know when it’s time to land.
So he flew.
He flew farther than he’d ever flown before, farther and higher than he’d ever known he could. And he didn’t stop, not until -
- Look down.
He didn’t want to - he’d been stargazing again, losing himself in the endless constellations on display above him. But he did anyway, because the stars told him to, and they had brought him so far already.
The sight below was breathtaking, almost as breathtaking as the cosmos. Hundreds, no thousands of flowers glittered like gems strewn upon a field, turned silver in the moonlight so that they too, seemed made of stardust, kissed by heaven, blessed by whatever god had saved him. It was a sign, the sign he’d been looking for, the sign to land.
He almost didn’t see the silver mare who walked among them. Sirius hovered overhead, afraid to land, hardly daring to breathe, and unable to look away as he drifted on silent wings.
She looked like a ghost, hardly stirring the flowers that she walked past. She walked amongst them like she belonged there, like this was her land, and they were the intruders.
When she finally turns away, he lets out a sigh of relief. A cold draft pushed him lower, and he lets it; in wide, spiraling circles, Sirius falls slowly down to earth.
He lands amongst the flowers, hearing the soft music whistling through their petals; but it’s to the stars he looks. You’re here, they whisper to him, and he can almost feel them smiling down at him. Welcome home.
He doesn’t know of the blood that’s been shed here, that’s soaked the earth these flowers now grow upon. He doesn’t know the horses who have lost their lives, the battles being waged as he stands here beneath the stars. He thinks of the silver woman, finds himself standing in the very spot she’d been staring at (the spot she’d nearly died in, although he doesn’t know it yet.)
He only knows that he’s free, and here is where the stars have sent him.
***STAFF EDIT
@Sirius has rolled a 4! He has been awarded +100 signos for interacting with the flowers.
04-01-2019, 11:44 PM
Played by
Dingo [PM] Posts: 50 — Threads: 5 Signos: 330
behind these eyes
beneath this crown of fire
hides a mind etched in violence
Atreus does not trust the Gods, but he also does not fear them.
He certainly doesn’t belong here, not in this dusty, ravaged place meant for ruinous barbarians and their ilk. Yet here he was, standing smack dab in the middle of the steppe in a field of vexatious flowers, whose petals have been replaced by glittering rubies, emeralds, topazes and everything between. The wind rustles them gently, and as they brush against one another their sound resembles that of glass wind chimes over anything else. The roan’s ears tip backward in an attempt to drown out the unmistakable song carried on the breeze, and for a moment he swears he can hear a sing-song voice accompanying it – he knows it was the very thing that had lured him all the way here in the first place.
The urge to reach out and snatch one between his teeth is almost too much to bear, and perhaps a time or two he almost gives in to temptation before jerking his head back at the last second. Oh, the possibilities of what he could do with them in his workshop! What magic did they hold, assuming they held any at all? Would he come to regret his decision to leave them behind, or would he simply be thankful to have another chance to go back home to Fiona, curiosity be damned?
Through narrowed eyes he looks to the sky, dark lips curled with disdain. “You will not feast on me today.” The words nearly come out in a hiss, a warning to the Gods and their trickery, a promise to himself as he abandons the glittering garden behind him.
The Gods had fooled him once before, and he’d be damned if he allowed them to do so again.
The boy was drawn forward by a promise, a magic that glittered in the distance. His eyes are wide with joy as he beholds the flowers, pressing closer and closer to see what caused the splash of color on the mountainside. Pan is unafraid, though perhaps he should be cautious as he approaches the strange world covered in stranger magic… but to the boy, something so beautiful could hardly be dangerous. And he had to know. The collector in him wanted to drink it all in, to gather each jeweled flower and hoard it as his own, but he knew that he could only take that which he could carry. So he presses onward.
As he nears the field, each flower seemed to come into view, colors vibrant as they danced in the sun. Wind tossed them this way and that, and as he stepped into the field, the world around him appeared to come to life with color. Around him the blooms were a rainbow, all hues of gold, red, and blue. Their leaves and stems even seemed to shine with emerald brilliance, and Pan had to stop to touch them, jumping back only slightly when he found the edges rough where they should be petal-soft.
He should have questioned the strange magic and what had brought the flowers to Bellum Steppe, but instead the boy simply drinks it all in. Tiptoeing through the flowers, he is delighted by the sound they make, like a hum of a thousand wind chimes all at once. Instinctively, he knows that he should only pick one… but the pressure to decide on only a single flower brings him indecisiveness and worry. All around him, the world seems warmer, sunlight beaming from the faceted gemstone faces of the flowers…. But finally one stands out brighter than all the rest.
Ruby petals reach toward him, fringed with a golden citrine at the center. As he steps toward it, Pan picks at the stem gingerly, and carefully places it into his satchel with a smile. It would be one of his most prized possessions, he decided, and offering the field a forelorn look that suggested he never wanted to leave, the boy does finally begin his descent from the Steppe back toward reality once more.
i'm a pretty flower girl
check out my pretty flower curls
There is a song that draws her in. It sings to her bones and hums in her blood. It pulls Flora to the meadow and she comes, a moth to its flame.
The flower-girl is near enough a stranger here. But the earth knows her blood. The hills know the echo of her breath as she fought Asterion. She knows what it was like to hurt here, what it is still like.
The Steppe, rumour says, was where Seraphina lay and died. It was a place barren and empty. Its grasses were thin and dry and sparse of colour. There was no vitality here, the earth drank it and the skies had wept all the rains it ever could over the bloodshed here. Rain was rare, and yet, now a wild meadow grows.
Florentine stands upon the field edge. She watches those flowers sway, she hears the chink of their dance as they touch each other and laugh in jeweled voices that sing and echo the magic’s song. This golden Dusk girl was a time traveller, born into a changeable world of ancient magic and ever-changing time. They were fickle lovers and changed lands as readily as the sun rose each day. They showed her horrors, they showed her utter beauty and everything they showed her defied nature. Florentine’s young eyes never knew what normal was, she never questioned a field of crystal flowers, glittering in a thousand colours plucked from nature’s palette. And she does not question them now.
Even as she steps out amidst their stems, their cold, hard petals brushing, beautiful and bright, against her limbs, Flora knows that anything could happen here. She touched one flower, and then the next and the next. She tastes fickle magic, she breathes a twisted kind of beauty and as her golden lashes close, she wonders what joys, what horrors this meadow might bring forth.
But above all a smile curls her lips for, yes, this feels like home.
![[Image: x341oLX.png]](https://i.imgur.com/x341oLX.png)
