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Character of the Season
Frail in body but dangerously quick of mind, Nikandr is the sort of character who proves that curiosity can be just as perilous as any weapon. A necromancer, inventor, and problem-solver with more ambition than self-preservation, Niki approaches the world like a puzzle box begging to be opened, even when what’s inside has teeth. Blunt, dry-witted, fiercely independent, and carrying a history best left partially buried, he has a knack for making even failure feel fascinating. Whether he’s raising the dead, moving across Caido to King's End, or experiencing a hangover for the first time, Nikandr brings a wonderfully strange spark to Caido, and we can’t wait to see what trouble his brilliant mind wanders into next.
Congratulations, Niki!
Credits
Court of the Fallen was created in October of 2018 by Odd, Honey, and Crooked.
OG Skinning provided by Kaons, with functionality and many custom plugins made by Neowulf!
Ronin might be leading the pack, but he's also bringing up the rear as well technically, and so even if he had been absorbed by the strange and hazy glow leading them deeper into the Peepholes, he's aware that something isn't right long before his husband's call reaches his ears. "Are you alright?" his projection is asking just as Remi falls to his knees, and immediately both Ronins hurry to his side.
One of them corrals Carlo and Calan away a few steps, scooping them just as easily into his arms as the Bastion had done. "It looks like he's asleep," he says, his tone much more calm than he feels inside, while the other Ronin kneels beside Remi and reaches out to see if he can rouse him. "This is no time for a nap," he scolds softly, hiding his panic with humour and suddenly and fiercely missing their old magic.
Ronin stays on the path and tries to wake Remi up! His projection picks up the boys.
Magic: Astral Projection | Ronin can project a version of himself into another location. He can see, hear and speak in this space, and he can affect it physically, including combat situations. If the astral projection is damaged, it can no longer physically affect the space. He may only project as far as the sub-boards adjacent to his physical location - and only if he has previously visited the board.
Type: Light | Rank: Mastered | Cost: Action
In Amhran's mind he's still walking, so quickly does sleep take him. Outside of his mind, of course, he's sunk quite abruptly to the soft ground of the Peepholes with a mumbled and nonsensical exclamation, hands making a half-hearted attempt to catch him as he hits the deck, and he's asleep before he can so much as register the feel of the earth beneath his body.
In his dreams, things are much more interesting. He doesn't know where Deimos and Noah have gone, but quite suddenly that doesn't seem as important as the something up ahead, with its bone-root-antlers and hazy, unclear shape. Amhran's hand raises up as if to shade his eyes from the glow, his feet taking him ever closer, though he's unsure how much of a difference proximity is likely to make.
"Hello?" he calls. (It's not his fault, the vast majority of animals he encounters are Attuned and understand him).
Noah slowed instinctively as the light thickened within the Peepholes, his paws placing more carefully now against the damp earth. The lynx’s tufted ears tilted forward, every muscle drawn taut beneath pale fur as the glow pulsed again. There was no sharpness to it, no violence pressing at the edges of his instincts. Noah’s narrowed gaze tracked the way it gathered nearer. His whiskers twitched. Magic often carried intention, but this felt different than the heralds or gods or relics he had encountered before.
His bobbed tail flicked once behind him before he crept another few steps forward, shoulders rolling carefully beneath his winter-thick coat. The hunter in him searched for the hidden snare beneath the invitation, but curiosity pressed forward just as strongly. That's when the Raeling's voice sounded and snapped his attention back towards his fellow Halovians. Glacier eyes caught sight of the demigod hitting the dirt and his ears flatteend against his head. What happened!? he asked, training and experience the only thing keeping panic at bay.
Noah goes deeper into the hole but stops when Amhran falls.
Regional Score bonus: +15 in all shrine visits, drops, PQ+s, KQs, etc. (You must post this at the bottom of any post where a +15 should be included).
Wandering deeper through the Peepholes with the light glow continuing to beckon, Sunjata notices the tightness in which the breathing becomes. It’s a strange combination of uncomfortable and comforting, like the way things slow before falling asleep. But it isn’t him that goes, and he watches the path ahead as Melita begins to lag a little, not noticing immediately until it’s too late and his niece has fallen asleep.
It does get his attention, though, and with the worry that glints through Sunjata, he turns back toward her. “Shit, heuningby?” He asks, kneeling beside her to try and wake her, deciding after a moment to utilize the magic in his veins to try and keep anything else from happening to her. Water coils around him and Melita, curving up in a rushing current of a shield as he slips his hydrodome into place and tries to wake her from within it.
Sunjata tries to wake Melita up and pops his hydrodome around them!
Magic: Hydrodome | Draws a dome of water up around Sunjata and one another, protecting them from attacks and environmental effects for one round. Lasts for 1 post, requires a 2-post cooldown.
Type: Light | Rank: Mastered | Cost: Action
we'll break our own hearts so that someone else can't
No permission needed for power play!
Feel free to use magic/force on Sunjata, without killing him <3
Sunjata speaks with an Australian accent and has a passive magic that makes him produce a subtle scent that matches exactly to whatever those around him most desire him to smell like.
// And they glow, with the help of Lucifer Yellow //
They drift further into the Peepholes, the light welcoming and the exhaustion lingering in the very veins of the butcher as he trails alongside Flora down the path. He awaits her drama as he notices a yawn trying to take root, shut out immediately with the way Melita lingers behind. Glancing back and figuring the Heartless had it handled, he remains at Flora’s side, tail swishing back and forth though it’s growing admittedly slower the longer they walk.
This time, it takes a lot of his will power to hide the yawn – a hand lifting to cover his mouth as it starts and he can’t stop it from happening this time, huffing a quiet sound akin to an apology as his limbs feel heavier. But, the butcher remains focused as he can on the pathway ahead and to the light beckoning them.
Asta continues on!
The world is new to you, and you to it. During PQ/PQ+/KQs/Drops, you roll with advantage on luck-based rolls and receive an extra name during drops. (In order to use this, make sure to note the ability at the bottom of each post)
Regional Score bonus: +5 in all shrine visits, drops, PQ+s, KQs, etc. (You must post this at the bottom of any post where a +5 should be included). Residents cannot be cursed at shrines in this region.
Astaroth
// I had it, concerning madness, sink into satin, focus on the static //
The glow blinked around them, and for half a moment, the intrigue pulled and enticed more than the trepidation. His ears flicked back and forth, striving to catch any sounds, any nuances, to pick apart and understand. Head tilting, he inspected and studied, lifting his nose to snag at scents – but then Amhran fell, and all his attention meandered straight to the Raeling.
In one leap he was at the youth’s side once more, nose nudging at shoulders – hearing Noah through the thick of it. I do not know he inhaled and summoned some deep breath of calm, composed lengths when his mind had already started churning a multitude of possibilities and not one of them good. There’d been no warning, save for perhaps the surroundings itself. Incantations could be the cause. Something else lurking, waiting, biding their time. For now, he’d keep striving, protecting and shielding from the outside.
--
Deimos stands guard over Amhran and tries to get him up.
Eating fire is your ambition to swallow the flame down
It wasn’t the first time Melita had suddenly lost consciousness. Most of the other occurrences had been due to her own fault (wild magic), and not the sudden impact of whatever else was looming within the Peepholes. For one moment, she was gliding along with the rest of the path-dwellers, and within the next, she’d fallen down to the forest floor, deep in slumber, looming through a dream.
Wholly unaware of her uncle striving to protect and shield, her senses were overwhelmed by the edges of the haze. In her dreamlike state, she narrowed her eyes, taking a chance, a glance, at the strange formation nearby. A deer? But then it didn’t seem to be…or maybe her mind was playing tricks on her…she sleepily reached for a weapon that wasn’t on her with fingers that were still from the outside, wondering if she could heave a stone or something. In the end, she stared into the midst and mist, grappling with what to do, before crouching down amongst brush and bushes, remembering what it was like to strive and survive in the unknown.
--
Melita sleeps on and crouches down to watch whatever it is in her dream.
to be lit up from within, vein by vein to be the sun
For one stupidly wonderful second, Flora can only grin up at Sunjata as if he’s just handed her something precious instead of merely not being weird about it. No lecture, no grim little look, no immediate inventory of all the ways she might have ruined her life by letting a goddess touch it; just surprise, a smile, and congratulations, and gods but the bar is apparently in the dirt, because she could have kissed him for it.
"Thank you," she says, bright and pleased and entirely unable to hide either, before her attention flicks toward Asta and her grin turns a touch sharper around the edges. "I can’t wait to show you what I can do now." Glancing sidelong at Melita, Flora bounces her eyebrows as if to say yes, yes, she’s already heard this part, but frankly it bears repeating. The glow continues to slink ahead of them in wavering threads, splitting and gathering through the damp dark, and though the heaviness in her limbs is growing harder to ignore, Flora presses on. "Okay, so do you remember—"
She stops so suddenly that the sentence dies in her throat. "Mel?" The grin vanishes at once. Flora drops down beside the Honeybee just as Sunjata does. "Mel??"
BLAHBKLAH POSTING TOO LATE LIKE A MORON.
Flora
you can't be everything you wanna be before your time
Around Sunjata, Noah, and Astaroth, the golden pulse grows stronger. It no longer merely threads through the Peepholes, nor waits quietly at the edges of the dark. Instead it gathers and releases in slow, insistent waves, brightening the roots, the damp walls, the pools of still water, and the offerings half-hidden in the hollows. Each pulse seems to press closer without touching, warm and patient and difficult to ignore, as though the light has noticed those still standing and has begun to breathe directly around them.
Then Ronin, Carlo, Calan, and Deimos are pulled under. The stag is there, far away and yet suddenly near enough to be understood as present, though never clearly seen. Its shape keeps shifting against the haze, antlers branching like roots before gleaming white as bone, its long body narrowing and lengthening by turns, its face refusing to remain one thing for more than an instant. Those close enough to one another in the dream can see the others caught within it too, hazed and distant but unmistakably there, standing beneath a sky that does not belong to the Peepholes at all.
The creature’s gaze moves among them; slowly, almost thoughtfully, it turns its head, regarding each sleeper in turn with eyes that are impossible to name. Then its attention settles on Melita.
The dream changes around her first. Shifting desert sands ripple beneath an unseen wind, gold giving way to heat and glare and the thin shimmer of an oasis trembling in the distance. The air fills with the smell of metal, sharp and familiar, and then the vision tears open as though reality itself has been split by invisible hands. Through the wound comes something vast and wrong, a monster-god wearing the face of a friend, of someone who'd once promised aid, rushing toward her with impossible speed. It reaches her just as the world bursts apart: Sand explodes outward, swallowing the stag, the desert, the torn place. When the storm falls away, only a small black pouch remains in the dream, sitting where the creature had been, dark against the pale drift of sand.
Then every sleeper gasps awake. Melita has won the drop and received
A Dream For Two | When ingested, allows two people to fall asleep and share a dream together. Single use.
Flora did not post in time and cannot use this drop for levelling.
This thread will close in 48 hours, feel free to leave a final post!
The light continued to swell around him. Noah felt it brush against him like warmth from a distant hearth, gentle and persistent. The lynx's pupils narrowed against the growing brightness as he stepped carefully forward, ears flicking toward every subtle shift in the undergrowth.
There was something about it, enough to draw his attention again and again toward the glowing hollows ahead. The pulses lingered longer and brighter and more enticing to his feline curiosity.
Then Deimos collapsed, and the change in Noah was immediate. The curiosity vanished so completely it was as though it had never existed.
A sharp surge of alarm ripped through him. When the Sword was awake he was capable of protecting Amhran, himself, and Noah (and probably most everyone else gathered in the jungle, too). But down? Noah wasn’t interested in finding out the possibilities. His head snapped toward the Sword, muscles springing into motion. In two bounds he crossed the distance between them, placing himself beside the hybrid and the demigod. The light no longer mattered, it all disappeared beneath a far older instinct.
Protect.
His ears flattened against his skull as a low growl rolled from his chest. Every line of his body became defensive. His fur bristled along his spine, making him appear larger as pale eyes swept the glowing surroundings for threats. The jungle that had seemed merely strange moments ago now felt suspect and dangerous.
Deimos. The name shot across the attuned bond, carrying urgency and concern. His heart hammered against his ribs, feeding the protective fury building beneath his skin. Wake up.
Deimos didn’t feel himself collapse or buckle down to the ground, engulfed in slumber. He scarcely noticed the sleep pervading and surrounding, not when everything else was so suddenly, instantly, branched together in knotted and gnarled convictions. For minute moments or eternities, he blinked, trying to cobble together sense in a haze of light and the unknown, recognizing figures and others warped within the same vapor and blur. The vagueness made him leery, but he couldn’t discern what of, whether it was past experiences in dreams or the thought of illusions, where truth segmented somewhere in the middle and sharpened nothing at all.
But there was no Safrin for guidance or veracity, instead, a creature marked by nothing and everything. His hellhound eyes narrowed and he tried to advance, to peer inward and outward and discover, to wonder what they were pinpointed within – and it didn’t seem to matter. It was a never-ending chase where his limbs didn’t move and his maneuvers weren’t even perceived. He was only a sentinel and barely at that; breathing beacons of light and finding them murky, indiscernible –
And only when it peered away did he awaken just as suddenly as he’d been dozing – piercing eyes flicking open to find Noah hovering nearby. His voice carried on a rumble, marked by naught more than confusion and bewilderment, as if it would take eons to make sense of everything within those fractions and fractures of time. Did you see it?
Eating fire is your ambition to swallow the flame down
Suddenly there were so many others, and almost not at all; Melita could feel herself swallow down multitudes but it left her with naught but the epitome of confusion and drowning. But there was no surface and no end, especially when she found herself caught in the creature’s gaze – and she froze, wide-eyed and bewildered, lured by the sanctity of its strange likeness.
Because there was desert and gold, ancient lands that pressed back into her, as foreign and familiar as the day she’d been born in its threshold, and she would’ve reached out for the metallic reaches and the promises of dragons against throats, had it not been split apart altogether. She thought about screaming, but the sound wouldn’t escape from her lungs, uncertain if it was fear or nostalgia or combinations she couldn’t discern, couldn’t shake, friend and foe features pressing together. She couldn’t tell who was who or what was what, and as it rushed at her she made to duck – though it didn’t matter.
An explosion of sand swallowed it whole, and like she’d been torn apart too, she awakened with a partial outcry and a harsh gasp, hand clutching a pouch, eyes darting back and forth, hearing her name. “Sorry, sorry,” she apologized for succumbing to something she couldn’t describe, glancing around her uncle’s dome and taking a deep breath. “Could you see that shit?”
to be lit up from within, vein by vein to be the sun
// And they glow, with the help of Lucifer Yellow //
Hanging back as Flora does, the butcher watches as the light begins to illuminate brighter, gathering and waving along the hollows and the ancient himself. It’s very odd as more of their surrounding parties begin to nod off, though, his focus drawn back on Melita as the light pools around them and pulses, to the watery dome that the Heartless has thrown up around the two of them like it might prevent the light from touching them.
And with a quiet watchfulness that still tugs at his bones with exhaustion, he sees Melita wake, letting a bit of relief thread through his bones. Unfortunately, he hadn’t seen anything when Ludo’s demigod speaks, and so the butcher shakes his head with an apologetic smile. “I did not, no.. Perhaps we should find our way out of here now that we are all.. mostly fine?” And the light doesn’t seem to continue to pulse and beckon them deeper.
Astaroth
// I had it, concerning madness, sink into satin, focus on the static //
He doesn’t succumb to sleep, though the lull is there. The light instead begins to surround them, glowing brighter and pulsing like it’s quite pleased they’d made it thus far. And as Sunjata kneels beside Melita and puts up that barrier, worry flares in him as she doesn’t immediately wake up. He can see Flora in his peripherals and Astaroth whom he hears answer Melita’s question once she wakes and Sunjata’s barrier falls, an exhale escaping him in relief.
“I didn’t see anything either.” Sunjata admits, reaching to help her stand and get back to her feet – a touch over protective of his niece when it comes to randomly collapsing in not the best spot to be in. “We can talk about it on the way out, yeah?” He offers as a suggestion, following along with the idea that Astaroth has sparked into reality.
we'll break our own hearts so that someone else can't
No permission needed for power play!
Feel free to use magic/force on Sunjata, without killing him <3
Sunjata speaks with an Australian accent and has a passive magic that makes him produce a subtle scent that matches exactly to whatever those around him most desire him to smell like.
