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[event] once a future [3/3]
Posted: Thu Dec 17, 2020 7:03 pm
by Paragon
“Hey dilly, dilly, sing song, sing
Hey dilly, dilly take my wing
Find, follow, ding, dong, ding
Hey, silly, silly, find the ring…”
The cold winds of the northern realm blew across the landscape. The grey skies were filled with clouds and in them there brewed the makings of a snowstorm. The great trees of the Wildking’s Forge, the vast forest that covered many parts of the Northlands, stood like sentinels guarding against the bitter cold. What light there was in the skies was filtered by the clouds and further dampened by the branches of the towering trees.
The city of Kalzasi was quiet. The streets were covered in the frozen dust of a fresh winter morning. The buildings stood empty. The people were gone. The whole of the city was devoid of life except for the cawing of crows. Time had not been kind to the Jewel of the Northlands. The Plaza of the Jeweled Arches was greyed and dull, the once vibrant colors of the many shops and buildings that stood there had faded. The grand platforms that hovered in the skies, greeting sky ships and welcoming them into the skyharbour, had collapsed and crushed that which succumbed to their weight. The mighty Mistreach Keep lay in ruins, its walls partially crumbled as though something had smashed through its interior. Even the great palaces built into the mountainsides of the Cloudhaven District had fallen to the ruin of time.
Life, had abandoned the city of Kalzasi. All that remained? Was the shell of a once great city, ever still beneath cold grey skies.
And so he watched.
And so he waited.
As he always had.
As he always would.
But he was not alone.
Perhaps this time, something different would unfold. Time would tell. He always did...in the end.
Off Topic
Welcome! The following thread is a dream. Your characters went to sleep in their beds and "awoke" in the morning to find themselves in a ruined, dilapidated Kalzasi. The streets are bare. The buildings have fallen. The entire settlement looks and feels older. It will be up to you to determine if your character is aware that they are dreaming or not, regardless, it will not change the fact that what they experience will feel real.
1.) This will be a rapid fire event. You will have a time limit to provide a response. If you do not do so, I will skip over you and progress to the next response.
2.) With each moderated post, the posting order is reset. So, if you did not post last cycle you will be able to post in the same order following my moderated post.
3.) For logistics purposes, you can assume that your character will always wake up in the real world the actual following morning, unless I state otherwise. They will remember the events of the dream.
4.) 1 PC per writer. Meaning, only one character per player is allowed!
Happy posting! Three people have until December 18, 2020 @ 11:59 PM EST to post. After the first three posts, the topic will be closed to all others. I will delete any posts made after the first three participants.
Re: [event] once a future [0/3]
Posted: Thu Dec 17, 2020 7:24 pm
by Galius
The day before hadn't been anything special. A day of engraving coins and make sure to keep up with orders. It was relatively boring. Though the Orkhan took great pride in his work. There was something mundane about the daily ritual that had consumed his working life. The curious nature of the man was starting to play at him. To urge him to go on an adventure. Explore something and learn something. But that would be something for another day as the Orkhan had settled down to sleep for the night. Tucked away in his small abode with research scattered about the table. Galius had a great many things planned for the future. But he needed to figure out where to start. Though that could wait for the morning.
Galius had just drifted off to sleep, or so he thought, before he was awoken by the sound of crumbling rock. His modest abode had been destroyed by some means. The Orkhan rose, fully dressed which struck him as odd, from his bed. Looking at the surroundings that he had grown slightly more accustom to. Seeing as how they had morphed into something similar yet different. Ruin had set it. Time had seemed to grab Kalzasi by the throat and choke the life out of it. Buildings were old and abandoned, including the one that Galius had fallen asleep in.
With a determined look upon his face, the man began walking. Viewing the streets as he went. Popping his head through the doors and windows of buildings as he went. "Is there anyone around?" he called out to the empty streets before him. "My name is Galius... If I know you then I would be glad to rendezvous. If I do not, then I would be glad to meet you." The Orkhan patted his side where his sword would normally rest. Feeling the empty place where the hilt would be. A item of comfort that the man was missing only drove the unease to a greater strength within his chest.
"I refuse to believe that I am alone"
Re: [event] once a future [0/3]
Posted: Thu Dec 17, 2020 7:28 pm
by Kala Leukos
Her eyes opened on her room in the Cintamani Pavilion, but they saw only the open sky. It was gray. There was no bed beneath her, no furniture at all. The mosaic upon the floor was cracked and missing tiles. There was no one else.
That was wrong. She was never alone, not truly. Delving deeper within, she felt the presence that was supposed to be there. There was no need to name it; it was known. It was there, but not here, which made perfect sense in dream logic, though she didn't even think to articulate that. Her mind merely made peace with what it perceived. She rose and picked her way through the ruins. There were no bones save those of trees long dead, petrified. Her feet traversed halls and open spaces that had become like home, though this was not her home, not the home that was Home without needing words to distinguish the difference.
Wandering, she made her quiet way among the remains of a quiet city. This was not how she remembered it—she remembered it vibrant and teeming with life and new things—but this was the city now. It must have been like this for a very long time.
She looked up, expecting someone, but no—she still felt their presence within, but they were not here. They were not coming down out of the sky to join her, momentarily dazzling her, backlit by the sun. There was no sun now, not really. Just gray winds whispering of coming snows. These streets were familiar. She must have known them before they were ruined. Everything had fallen down, but the trees had grown up. The trees' branches held murders of crows—or were they conspiracies of ravens? No, they were too small to be ravens. They cawed instead of voicing the deeper, throatier croak of the raven. She saw them flying there—crow fans, not raven wedges. The shapes matter. She had told him so and they had made him a tail to work with his wings...
Who?
She fretted at the question as she explored the emptiness. Was someone watching her?
Kaus always had her back. Kaus! He wasn't here. He was there, dreaming in the back of her mind, but he was not here. Kaus, dreaming.
Kala, dreaming.
She stopped in her tracks. Something had happened. She was exploring. Why? A part of her wrapped in a cocoon of gossamer bondage was struggling to ask questions. Where was Kaus? Who was dreaming? Someone was watching her; not Kaus.
Immediately, she keyed her aether through a rune, a habit when she questioned what was happening around her, a way to see what was happening beneath the surface, to see the patterns underlying all things. She opened her senses and she Saw.
Re: [event] once a future [0/3]
Posted: Thu Dec 17, 2020 7:47 pm
by Pahoran
Once A Future Dream
He then seemed to awake. He awoke on the ground with a his mattress and bed around him in a puff of particulars in the air. Pahoran got up annoyed that his bed had collapsed under him, but it was then as he came to a full standing position that he realized that something was different about this place. It was old and decayed.
The ice blue eyes narrowed and he began to suspect that he was dreaming. It was a very realist dream but something about still seemed off. The young man looked at the ruin and then walked out of his barracks. He wander for a while search the ruined keep. He felt a verity of emotions but he wandered looking for something or someone he was exactly sure.
Seeing the gapping holes in the massive structure Pahoran spread his wings and took to the air. Flying over the city he instantly noticed that even here he was alone. The once full sky’s lacked any of his brothers. The ground was also empty. Yes this must but a dram but what kind of dream he wasn’t sure. So he flew looking to see if he could find any life.
It wasn’t there but the knight in hiding wasn’t about to give up. He came down closer to the tops of the buildings hoping that would help him see better.
“Most have been forgotten. Most deserve to be forgotten. The heroes will always be remembered. The best. The best and the worst. And a few who were a bit of both.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Feast for Crows
Re: [event] once a future [3/3]
Posted: Sun Dec 20, 2020 10:55 pm
by Paragon
There naught but silence in return to Galius’ query into the emptiness of Kalzasi’s once grand streets. Not even the howl of the winds seemed to interrupt the echo of his words. Until there came a small giggle and the patter of feet down one of the alleyways. Then silence returned to the dead city. What had happened? What had befallen the mighty city of Kalzasi that it would suffer such a fate? The once shining towers of the Sky Guard, that served as bastions of defense against threats, were broken and crumbled. It was as Galius drew further inward into the city that he found an astonishing sight.
Skeletons. Hundreds of them. Buried beneath a light powdering of snow. The flesh long since stripped from the bones. The rags of clothes still clung to some and the bodies of families huddled down in what appeared to be positions of shelter. Mothers clutched children to them. The bodies of soldiers lay near broken swords and shredded armor as they seemed to have died defending them.
On and on the trail went leaving only one question left to be answered.
Was there anyone alive?
The flap of wings sounded in the air.
---
The world before Kala’s senses was a dead one. The very stones of the building she resided in seemed to be devoid of any life. It was bereft of the echoes left behind by people passing. There lingered in it no trace of even the memory of what had once been. It was, however, filled with the icy chill of winter’s breath. Beneath it however, there was...something else. Something different. Something more.
The whisper of the winds quieted as Kala’s senses came into focus. It was slow, almost as though whatever it was, was attempting to elude her sight but such a thing could only last for so long. After a moment’s focus, there is was. The last ghostly touch of something that desired to remain unseen. It sprung into her senses, opening up to her awareness and flooding every pore of her being with a flood of emotions.
Dread. Desperation. Horror. Rage. Cunning.
All of these things came rushing to Kala as the distant wisp of what once was burrowed into her brain through the bridge of her aethereal vision. Until finally it dissipated, leaving only the echo of screaming in her ears before that too also faded.
In the distance, the sound of wing beats drifted to her ears.
Something was still alive in this place.
---
A bird’s eye view of Kalzasi granted Pahoran the advantage of seeing something no other could. Mistreach Keep lay mostly in ruins, that much was clear. But it was the way it was in ruins that revealed something about that destruction. The Yawning Chasm, usually a crevice encircled by the Keep and guarded day and night by the soldiers of the Sky Guard, appeared as though it had cracked wide open and swallowed a portion of the inner city with it. Stone and rubble looked to have scattered across the lands, smashing through buildings and rippling outward in a wave of destruction.
Following that trail of devastation, that would lead Pahoran to see the line of bodies that stretched onward. Hundreds, maybe thousands, of skeletons laid bare before the open skies as whatever calamity had befallen the city had claimed them. Something terrible had happened. And as Pahoran circled the Yawning Chasm, it seemed that the city was not as dead as it might have appeared. For deep within the cavernous maw of the Chasm there burned a light. It flickered but it was there. It was a light matched only by another that flickered toward the upper reaches of Kalzasi, toward the regal estates of the Cloudhaven District where the Great Houses and the wealthy once made their homes.
Two lights in an otherwise cold and silent city. And in the silence, there came a voice echoing over the whisper of the winds. A voice that was soon accompanied by the form of a man approaching the line of skeletons that rest in the open streets.
Off Topic
You have until December 22, 2020 @ 1159 PM EST to post a reply before I move forward.
Re: [event] once a future [3/3]
Posted: Mon Dec 21, 2020 4:30 am
by Kala Leukos
Kala was dreaming. She knew that now. And yet, only a handful of times had she become aware of her dreams as she was dreaming them. Lucid dreaming was a step toward forgotten magic, or so she had heard. Stories of dreamsailors were akin to fairy stories for children, but a wise tutor had told her that most fairy stories were grown from a seed of truth. If this was a lucid dream, she ought to be able to wake up. She ought to be able to wake Kaus up as well. They had lucid dreamed together, but she could not rouse him.
And she could not focus on that thing, that person she sensed. Runic magic cast within a dream—was that dangerous? Was it even real in any sense of the word? Everything was dead, and yet someone had been singing, hadn't they?
"Take my wing," she murmured. "Find the ring." Those had been the instructions encoded in a song if that was what that was. Lucid was a relative term, it seemed. And if something was in here with her... She felt a thrill of alarm even as she found herself doing something new with a magic she had owned for some time now. Something slithered between things, always managing to stay on the edge of her vision, on the edge of her Vision, until she Saw.
She screamed. Unprepared for the wave of dread, desperation, horror, rage, and cunning, she screamed. It was short. She cut it off and calmed herself, even as she felt something trying to climb into her mind, and then it was gone. The screams remained, echoes, and she thought they weren't all echoes of her own voice.
Something was still alive in this place, this ruin of reality, other than her. She heard wings. She wished they were Kaus'. She wished they were her own. But she turned toward the sound and followed. Her Vision worked here. Perhaps her ties to the Elements would as well.
"Lady Saedene?" she whispered. It was a prayer; she didn't know if those were answered here as well. But she didn't wait to find out. Perhaps the Lady of the Midnight Mourning would hear and answer, but something was traveling on wings. She could be fast as well. Jogging, she got her bearings and then began to run after the sound of wings, senses open for any danger that might attempt to surprise her. She was going to find that ring. Perhaps then she would have some power to bargain with whatever it was out there.
Re: [event] once a future [3/3]
Posted: Tue Dec 22, 2020 2:45 pm
by Pahoran
Once A Future Dream
His blue eyes searched the ruins even as the sound of his wingbeats echoed off of the emptiness. There was more then just the lack of people here, Pahoran had seen ruins in his times and usually nature came back into a place even if there was great tragedy, but now there was none of that. Everything was silent his wings beats weren’t competing with the other sounds of nature, they were alone filling the air around him, echoing back to him.
His eyes took in the gapping maw that had once been Mistreach Keep and the city center. It took in the scatting of stones beyond the keep. Lastly it took in the bodies, and memories came back to him. Memories of a boy, flying in the dark of the knight, silent as now 5 year old should be, over the fields of dead as his family fleed there home. The sight below him was both worse and better. Skeltons didn’t make the young man all that squeamish, but the shear quantity of them and huddled as they were was sickening. Pah felt the momentary need to gage, but turned away and breathed.
It was then that he noticed the flickers of what, candlelight? Two of them. One in the hole itself, and the other coming from the homes of the wealthy. He wondered about those feeling that he would have to look into them. His attention was then drawn towards the sound of a living voice. His ice blue eyes turned and looked towards the source of the sound. He slowly began to descend towards where he saw the figure moving. He did so cautiously in case the person was armed with something that could cover great aerial distances. Pahoran eventually settled on a upper story where he could see and be seen in the individual looked up. He only caught the last part of what he said.
Pah spoke in his baritone voice that echoed across the emptiness as had with wing flaps. “Your aren’t alone,” He said and studied the Orkhan. Having been raised in Alios he was used to the Orkhan, but he was warry of anyone in this world. “The real questions is that a good or a bad thing.” The young man said cautiously.
“Most have been forgotten. Most deserve to be forgotten. The heroes will always be remembered. The best. The best and the worst. And a few who were a bit of both.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Feast for Crows
Re: [event] once a future [0/3]
Posted: Thu Dec 31, 2020 10:26 am
by Galius
The crumbling ruins of a society built upon a cavern of undead was almost poetic in a way. The silence was deafening. He began to wonder if he was actually alone. Not but the day before were the streets filled with souls. People chattering and doing business all through out the streets. And here they were empty and destroyed. Had Galius been in the city longer. He may have felt a sense of dread. The lose of such a great city and it's people. But instead he was just curious. There were questions that left unanswered. What happened to the city? Was it war or evil finally taking it's grasp upon the living. Was it the years of torment and undeath that rested beneath the city that cause this issue?
He continued along the road. Studying each building that he passed. Looking at the damage and remains of whatever was left. Curious as if there were answers in his face that he was waiting for. Searching for.
Was he truly alone? Perfect timing as the sound of laughter hit his ear. Followed by the sound of feet parading off into another direction. Picking up his speed, Galius walked down the alley way. Trying to follow the sound of the footsteps.
Stopping in his tracks as he stared upon the new discover. Fresh snow on top of a pile of bones. It was a sad sight. Each skeleton held it's shape relatively well. Bodies of men cloaked in armor with broken weapons laying at their side. A testament to the failure of instruments. Mothers protecting their children another testament to a mothers protective nature. Stepping towards the pile. Studying every detail that he could as he approached.
Crouching low to take a skull from one of the corpses. He turned it over in his hand. Pressing with a little force to see if it would crumble. Or if the bones remained strong. But soon a voice broke his concentration. Setting the skull back where it was he stood tall again. "That would depend on your intentions." The Orkhan said as he turned towards the winged man. Not someone he recognized out right. "I am Galius, the seventh son. I mean you no harm. I am more curious as to what happened."
Re: [event] once a future [3/3]
Posted: Fri Jan 01, 2021 11:28 am
by Paragon
As Kala called out to the Lady of Midnight Mourning, there was a warmth that grew in her pocket. Reaching inside the pocket revealed the strand of celestial hair that had been gifted to the young woman the season prior. It radiated a peaceful warmth casting a small light in the cold grey of the winter morning. The winds of the broken city picked up ever so slightly before something touched upon Kala’s senses, reaching into the well of her aether and brushing against the power of her Semblance rune. The world around Kala’s vision grew dark as she was drawn into a sleeplike trance. Her eyes grew heavy until they were closed to the world and the only thing she could see was the dark being her own eyelids. Kala’s aether was nudged into motion as her hand was drawn to reflexively close around the strand of hair and then a soft light blossomed in the dark.
Footsteps began to illuminate in the snow. They moved forward, shining softly before fading leading the young woman deeper into the city and toward the sound of flapping wings. Upon opening her eyes, for the briefest of moments, Kala would still be able to see those footsteps but they would fade. It seemed that Saedene had heard and had shown the way. With every blink of her eyes, those footsteps continued to glow softly and guide Kala until finally she was brought to one of the many main streets of Kalzasi. What awaited there was the sight of pure devastation. It was at this place that the footsteps ceased. At the place where only death seemed to reign supreme.
Open as she was to the lasting aura of what was in that cold place, the echo of what had occurred touched upon Kala’s senses. It was a whisper of dark things that clawed at the edges of her senses, hissing in the back of her mind as it grew ever stronger with each step she took toward the line of skeletons, broken bodies and remnants of conflict. At the far end of the road there stood two figures.
An Orkhan and an Avialae, one of her kin. Perhaps they were the only two left in that broken place…
----
Picking up the skull, it soon crumbled under the weight of the pressure that Galius applied. The bone dust fell like sand between his fingers. It did not stop there. There came a great sigh through the air and a whipping of the winds through the alleys of the street. In the distance, Kalzasi’s clocktower emit the sonorous tolling of its bells.
One.
Two.
Three.
One by one the skeletons lining the streets all began to crumble into dust that drifted into the skies. The ashen bone dust floated up into the air being drawn away by the winds. As the cloud grew, a shape within the cloud began to form. The clouds in the skies grew darker and the mists over Kalzasi grew thicker until the shape, for but an instant, became clearly visible. The shape of a skull formed in the cloud of bone dust and mist that had begun to gather thickly within the city. Within one of its eyes there shone a light.
Pahoran would recognize this light as that which he had seen shining softly within the Cloudhaven District.
The skull broke apart as the dust of the bones became indistinguishable from the growing mist that had begun to roll in over the city.
There came another sigh in the air followed by a soft chuckle.
Something was coming...
Re: [event] once a future [3/3]
Posted: Fri Jan 01, 2021 3:42 pm
by Kala Leukos
By some accounts, Kala Leukos was brave. But she was young and she wasn't stupid. She was beginning to find her place within Kalzasi's society. She knew a thing or two about magic and defending herself from harm. But to awaken within a dream, still dreaming and witness to a nightmare that she could only hope wasn't prophetic...
It was a great deal to cope with, and so the Lady's warmth in her hand and light in her eyes was a great comfort. If she survived this waking dream, she would have to return to the Temple to make an offering. Perhaps She might even guide her toward gleaning some wisdom from this experience.
But in the now—if Time meant anything in Dreaming—she found her way through her magic and Her grace, though what she found was an unwelcome sight when her eyes. Bells tolled. The bones of the dead crumbled into dust. But an Orkhan and an Avialae, the former and the current custodians of Kalzasi, stood still.
"Oy!" she called because she was small and her tread soft. People accused her sometimes of sneaking when she didn't mean to. "I am Kala Leukos. I am dreaming. Are you dreamers, too, or part of the dream?"
But the dust was becoming mist. Something was coming. Her fist tightened around her tiny divine relic. She knew the Gods were real, but she also knew They helped those who helped themselves. At least, the Lady had led her to what she hoped were fellow dreamers. She was unused to being alone.
"Something comes," she said softly.
