Novus
an equine & cervidae rpg
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Novus closed 10/31/2022, after The Gentle Exodus

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Grey
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#1


i can't undo what i've done
i can't un-sing a song that's been sung

It was the black pegasus youth that had told Grey where he was, after he’d inquired. After the boy had frightened him enough to nearly send him tumbling into the river he’d been walking along. After coming upon a glowing golden pool that had cursed his vision, and the fear that the shadows were coming alive. That night had been long, though not the longest the unicorn had ever experienced. He reserved such titles for the night after his sister had been murdered. And the night he’d almost died.

Grey stands now within the walls of what he has come to know as the Dawn Court. Somehow, through pure luck, after endless days of journeying, he’s managed to find himself in Novus. And the word reminds him of the last time he had seen Amaranthus, when the god had told him to seek Novus, where he would discover his purpose. Still, the unicorn stands here and does not know what he is meant to do. He thinks of Amaranthus and wishes for the warmth of his embrace, but knows that by not trying hard enough Grey is failing him.

He looks up at the bright autumn sun and try as it might, it cannot reach past the cool of his skin, cannot warm his heart. In the light, the frosted crystals on his body sparkle gently but do not melt. He turns away from the sun and instead gazes out over the crowded market streets. It seems the equines of this kingdom are taking advantage of the sunny afternoon. It has been so long since Grey has been among so many others that his skin begins to crawl slightly with the thought of pushing his way through.

He breathes in and his chest aches with a gaping sort of emptiness, and he can only hope that whatever Amaranthus believes is here will fill it. The man’s ghost white eyes close for a second, preparing himself for the onslaught of sensory information he is sure to undergo. When he opens his eyes again, he is gratefully aware of the absence of darkening on the edges of his vision. That, at least, is working in his favor. He takes his first step into the crowd and hopes that perhaps he might come across someone who can again point him in the right direction.

"Speaking."


Grey
credits



@Forseti I hope this is okay!









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Forseti
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#2

Don't pretend you wanna change
Don't you see the mess you made
She had wandered many places; faces blurred into a technicolor past and all she had seen blended together in ways she couldn't keep track of. Never had she stayed in one place for long--the call of something greater, always greater, pushed her onward like a mother bird nudging its chick from a nest for its first flight--but she grew tired of endlessly searching for something she didn't even know existed. She questioned, she doubted, she was pulled down into a spiral of ceaseless wondering and it was the stone walls of a great kingdom she knew nothing of that finally saw her rest into a space that wasn't the sky. Her wings grew weary, her resolve dissipated, and there in an unfamiliar land she would, without realizing then, call it home.

She was never taught what 'purpose' was save for the excruciating task of memorizing every detail of gods--deities that had no faces, empty statues that remained uncarved and were yet still revered with each impervious meeting of sun and moon--and she spent endless time that surmounted all constraints of passing days with nothing more than a book and candle, burning incessantly across spellbound pages. Tales of the morally unbound, the misdeeds and generosities of greater powers who held no regard for any but their own, wrote themselves across binded papers and in their folds she rested her head and gave her heart. She, who was but born for its sole purpose, lost in the ink with no real sense of direction other than forward.

But it would not be within the books that she advanced through.

The solid structure of stone underneath her spread wings sang its siren call and she dropped to its feet, cloak billowing out behind her, wild dark hair a mass of ravaged beauty claimed by the wind. The maroon fabric was fastened tight as though afraid to leave her side, golden pauldron sporting emerald feathers. She breathed deep, the slight sting of coming winter splintering its way through her veins and taking hold of a heart set free. It was a welcomed prick, a negligible ache that made her feel. And how she had not felt such things before, an experience stolen, trapped in a village with no name for gods never seen.

Though she dropped to land in an expanse of deserted grassy plains she moved toward the wall of increasing size, safeguarding behind it a castle of impressive view. Laying beyond steel gates were the movements of many wandering through set-up stalls and wavering tents--a marketplace on a day the sunlight shone upon them in crisp fall-turning-winter air. Curiosity tugged her closer to the barricade, molten golden eyes watching what they could see through the intricate designs blocking her path. They were closed, the gates, and though there should have been attentive soldiers warily regarding her as she had seen many do before, they seemed preoccupied with an entertainer some paces away. So the skull-marked girl waited where she could go no further; eyes caught the shape of an icy, crystalline figure and they rested on him as he made way through the crowded streets, questions lingering in their depths.
CREDITS

@grey it sounded like the marketplace was inside the court gates, so i played it out like he was inside and she was waiting to be let in from the outside c:









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Grey
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#3


i can't undo what i've done
i can't un-sing a song that's been sung

The unicorn feels eyes on him, a sensation he is not at all unfamiliar with. As one of the King's shields as a youth, he has spent much time in front of crowds, being looked upon with all kinds of eyes. Warm, cold, beseeching, cunning, he knows them all. So too he knows that someone is looking at him in that moment that he pauses. The crowd does not part nicely around him like a river to a stone. Bodies bump and brush up against him and his skin crawls strangely in response.

Then he finds the eyes, bright and golden as the sun and fails to strike within him any sort of warmth. The equine they belong to stands beyond the gates, due to the care less of its appointed guards who are distracted. He feels their failure to do their job keenly, as though their failure is his. As though, somehow, their lackluster performance of keeping the gate represents his inability to protect his people, his family and his King.

“You, there,” he says, his voice unkind and sharp and burning cold, “You cannot simply leave equines standing beyond the gates. Get back to your posts or I will find somebody to relieve you of your duties.” The once-noble in Grey rears its head—the young man he had been who wore confidence and command like a cloak—for a moment. The guards, whether embarrassed or spurned by his demanding presence, scramble back to their job and open the gates for the pegasus beyond.

Then, Grey is just Grey again. He shoulders the world once more, bearing it upon his back endlessly as a heavy weight. And he turns away from the scene at the entrance to the court and back to the markets, only white eyes and frosted skin. No pride, no vigor. He stands there for a moment and simply frowns at the busy streets. His discomfort is only evident in his hesitation to push back into the crowd but after a few seconds he begins to do just that.

"Speaking."


Grey
credits



@Forseti









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Forseti
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#4

Don't pretend you wanna change
Don't you see the mess you made
Forseti knew what closed gates meant; they kept the populace in, and kept intruders out. It signified some sort of war, whatever that fight may be about, and silently she wondered what sort of situation she recently dropped herself into by finding Novus. It didn't actively appear that there was a war; no call to arms, no battle regimes readying themselves in the midst of it all. Everything quite seemingly was peaceful, if not all a little confusing for her. But she supposed that getting over that little aspect would take time, just as all the other places did.

The sun beat down in chill winter air and she began to wait rather impatiently stuck on the outside of the great wall gates. She traced their pattern in the metal over and over until her eyes found the ice-born man and she soon realized that he had found her, too. She appeared to call him over with that golden gaze, her sights upon his frozen body perhaps irking him enough to find out what she wanted. But it wasn't her that he moved to, it was ignorant group of guards who hadn't even noticed her presence.

He was striking in his command, his reprimands, biting into them with a coldness that might've sunk deep beneath their flesh. It seemed that way, since they jumped into action and without a second's thought cranked the groaning gate open to allow her to pass. Interestingly enough they spoke not one word to her as she passed into the (where was she? she didn't know) busy streets of merchant stands, partially shocked to see that the kind unicorn merely wanted to leave as quickly as he went to help her.

With brilliant maroon cape snapped securely around her chest, she made motion to follow him. Though, why, she didn't know. She possibly felt some inkling of gratitude, of debt, of needing to express such feelings. But she wasn't even sure how to process such emotions; was it out of line to follow someone who was clearly discomforted by... whatever was around them? Should she even attempt to go to him when she couldn't simply pinpoint what bothered him? It could have been her.

But she pushed past the doubt and continued to close their gap anyway, keeping wings tightly tucked and trying to look as least intimidating as possible (she couldn't be too careful). "You are... kind." She spoke out to him, her voice drifting in the spaces and the deeper chill in the air that emanated from his skin. She paused, trying to sift through all the manners she had seen others give as thanks. "I am grateful for your help. They seemed to... fear you."

She almost had it.
CREDITS


@grey









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Grey
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#5


i can't undo what i've done
i can't un-sing a song that's been sung

He doesn’t know she is following him, because he doesn’t look back once he has turned around and begun to walk away. He can’t know the gratitude that she feels, because Grey had only spoken to them that way because the guards were slacking off on their duties. And, oh, once he comes across someone in this place with a higher status he might just make mention of it to he or she.

He still feels the aching of failure in his bones when he hears her speak behind him, her voice reaching out for him in the infinitesimal spaces between equines brushing too close to his sides. Grey stops, almost reluctantly, and his white white eyes find her sunshine ones. The crowd separates around them like a wind breaking against a wall, and he can hear more than one muttered complaint. The unicorn ignores them.

She calls him kind, but he cannot blame her for not knowing him enough to know otherwise. He is not kind, not truly. He had not commanded them for her, he might have done it for anyone left standing helplessly outside in such a way. Perhaps, on a different day, he might not have done it at all. He cannot say. “Do not mistake compulsion for kindness,” he says somewhat idly.

His breath does not fog the air but his voice crystallizes as it rolls off his tongue. Still he does not move out of the flow of traffic, does not indicate for them to step to the side. He is has immovable and cold as the mountain that had nearly claimed his life.

She speaks of fear and his gaze flickers back toward the gates, at the guards now standing in their places as they should have been doing without his behest. Grey has known many things, but fear is perhaps the one thing he has never felt. Once he had been too confident for fear, too angry, and then too lost. “I think they are simply too ignorant to know I have no say in whether they keep their jobs or not,” he observes then, after a moment.

"Speaking."


Grey
credits


@Forseti









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