From being an Abandoned who had rarely left the Hollowed Grounds, to embracing the call of adventure, to dying and being reborn first as an Ascended and then as an Ancient, Maea has gone through quite the amount of changes in her life. One thing remains common, though, in her attempts to find out just where she belongs; she’s always had a craving for knowledge which has brought her to so many places and to meet so many people here in Caido. We can’t wait to see what else is in store for her!
Congratulations, Maea!
Credits
Court of the Fallen was created in October of 2018 by Odd, Honey, and Crooked.
Skinning and hosting by the epically talented Kaons, and functionality fanciness by the coding magic of Neowulf. If you ever see either of them around, make sure to show them some love!
A smile flickered across Ronin's face as his husband joined him, and he needed little prompting to meander after Remi out onto the waves with the Hels all about them. Any playfulness left him as he followed the other man's gaze out across the sea, to where he said the ship had been. To where he had committed those murders. Silently, he slipped an arm around Remi's waist, watching the dark and lapping water. "Hopefully it is not so far afield this time," he said softly.
Oh, they all look and play and watch so wonderfully!
Peeping here, snooping there, the laughter echoes through the cathedral and across the stretch of sands.
But it is beneath the waves that Ludo lurks. Yes, yes. And it is Amalia who finds it, bobbing just under the water and watching Remi as he walks across the waves.
Spotted, the black-eyed youth appears to grin at the Shield, peeping away in the blink of an eye. But Amalia, dolphin or otherwise, will feel rags winding about her, and a mask settling across her face.
And another Amalia springs back onto the sand, prancing across it and pointing to the water. "It's in there! Find Ludo!" the pretend-baker calls.
Ludo has been SPOTTED!
It has (very badly) made Amalia up to look like Ludo.
03-16-2020, 09:42 PM (This post was last modified: 03-16-2020, 09:48 PM by Odd.)
"Ludo? Or the lives it would have me end?" The alchemist asked, his own arm sliding around Ronin 's waist as well. One of the Hels hopped onto his head, making him look rather ridiculous despite the all too weighty and serious topic of conversation.
Not particularly aware of his surroundings (really, when was he ever), he hardly noticed the way the pink of Amalia's shift was swallowed up by gray and black rags deep below the surface of the waves.
"I'm surprised you're here. I'd have thought Safrin wouldn't want you anywhere near Ludo." Her being jealous and all that. Hearing the call from 'Amalia' on the shore, Remi glanced towards the coastline with a small hum, not at all disappointed that he hadn't been the one to find the playful god. "Darn Ronin. Looks like we're rather shit at this game." His wolfish grin suggested he wasn't at all bothered by it. "Quick. We'd best go find it." That said, Remi didn't make any attempt at all to move from his place on the waves, arm around his husband.
REMI
I wish I could discover something that doesn't expire
Speaks with a thick Italian accent.
Force and magic can be used against Remi without permission.
As Amalia emerged from the water, Loren padded around the side of the cathedral and peered at her suspiciously. The baker he'd met hadn't ever sounded this enthusiastic, and he couldn't imagine her calling everyone's attention to the god like that; he'd seen her puppet show and knew the reverence with which she spoke of the gods. Besides, the point was to find the god, and this gave it a chance to get away.
Plus he didn't want to go swimming.
So he sent his gulls to look out at the water instead. He himself joined Amalia and shaded his eyes, staring out at the ocean while keeping her in his peripheral vision. Where exactly did you see it? It was projected to her and her alone, and he tried his best to get a read on her mind.
As Saiden rose up from one of his dives, he heard one of the (many) people he didn't know called out the location of Ludo. Grinning, he started swimming in practiced strokes out in the direction she indicated. There was indeed something dark underneath the water there.
Taking a deep breath, he dove under, but couldn't see exactly what it was from his current spot. So he surfaced again and continued swimming out towards the supposed hiding spot of the god. When he was closer, he dove again. Grinning as he saw the telltale signs of a ragged robe, he swam under the surface of the water, trying to make his way towards it.
Alina saw the commotion below. Descending just enough to figure out what was going on, she caught the gist of it easily enough. Eyes narrowing, she rose into the sky once more. Then she began flying towards the area the unknown woman had indicated.
It didn't take the Fae long to reach the spot. Descending once more, she circled above where she could see the dark mass below. Having no particular desire to take a dip, she just stayed right where she was, flying in lazy arcs. Her plan was to keep an eye on Ludo, and to track it when it inevitably got up to its next trick.
Mischief, bemusement, distractions, deterrents from the unyielding cloud hovering over him – head tilted for a moment, before he was pulled into the waves, into the shoal, into something other than melancholy and hesitation. His initial reaction to Amalia’s newest shift, something quite dolphin-like, but in a hue of very vivid pink, he snorted; not at her, but at the scene itself. Impressive, which was the truth, with something like a chuckle, like warm laughter, billowing through the Attuned bond. Before long the weight that had clung to his shoulders dissipated in the distinction of the waves, one arm extending in patterns of swimming, the other along her fin, occasionally dipping his head below the surface of the water, eyes opening beneath its veneer to peer, to spy, to find.
On the last lingering occasion he raised his cranium back up to find Amalia altered, and the laughter sprung from his chest on an even pulse. Rags and masks on top of the dolphin adornments inspired another round of chuckles. “Quite a new look,” he embarked on another snicker – before extending his free palm, churning and raising the water, as if to uncover the hidden herald along its fathoms, and possibly shield Amalia too, if any came meandering into the water for her – though too bemused and distracted, he’d missed the entire charade along the beach.
under the bludgeonings of chance my head is bloody, but unbowed
Amalia is correct in her supposition: the god is hiding beneath the water, and her delight in finding it is nearly palpable to anyone who cares to search her mind. But that delight is quickly replaced by a sense of bemusement as Ludo vanishes once again, leaving the dolphin alone.
Alone... and wearing her own set of mask and rags, as great a caricature of Ludo as it had been of Safrin at the puppet show a year before.
Deimos' laughter and the disappearance of the water from around her draws the Shield's attention back, her grin delighted and mischievous beneath the expressionless mask. She hasn't the faintest idea what Ludo has planned, but she knows better than to not play along.
Shifting back to human form, the very poorly disguised Amalia climbs onto the surface of the water. The sight of herself (?) upon the shoreline is a little bit dizzying at first, but she quickly recovers. If Ludo's goal is to remain undiscovered she can think of only one thing to do: bare feet tapping against the water, she runs a handful of steps away from her location before diving under again, hoping to distract others from Ludo and perhaps, if she's lucky, hide.
Ludo!Amalia hops onto the surface of the water, runs a little ways, and drops back under to try and hide.
The appearance of her favorite herald sent the girl scurrying away from her other whereabouts, grin aplomb, easily tricked and deceived, swindled and distracted, when it came to anything amusing, playful, or impetuous. She also trusted Amalia, appearing on the sands, once fellow demon queens of the forest, and so she held naught back as she raced along moving forms and adorned masks, laughing, beckoning along the sea. Her toes dug into damp sand, before she too was clambering along the waves, the Fae anklet bouncing along her limb, continuing her, and poor dear Fangorn still trapped in her arms, to race after the supposed, ragged and masked being.
Drawn by the sound of Amalia's voice, Jigano and Isuma exited the cathedral just in time to follow her pointing finger to the mass of rags that dove back between the waves. He glanced back at his baker-friend with a wry grin and took a step towards the ocean, right to the edge of the water.
The very wet, very dark water, with its constant motion and churning waves.
The bard hesitated, fingers reaching down to brush over SoulKeeper as if seeking comfort in the lantern's ceaseless glow. Comfort, or perhaps inspiration. With a return of his grin he backpedaled then changed direction and ran at the surf, leaping towards the rolling breakers but shifting as he did so, sprouting pale feathers even as he used his Item Shift magic to bring the lantern with him as he flew towards the place he'd seen 'Ludo' dive back beneath the waves. Isuma followed with a happy hoot, the pair of pale avians skimming just above the ocean's spray as they tried to follow their god's masked form beneath the waves.
He remains near Melita until Amalia’s voice rings out, mentions the water — and the man shifts his attention to the waves below. He spots something moving along the surface before diving below and heads straight for that, a shaky pump of his wings to bring him over the water until his talons feel the brush of the waves. And then he shifts into his whale form when he’s far enough out, diving beneath the waves to try and find Ludo. His dark nose peeks out above the waves briefly before he dives beneath toward the bottom, trying to see if anything creates a shadow to follow.
in the moonlight
SuNJATA
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.
Hearing the call, Maea whirled around and came running back from the place along the cliffs where she had been searching. Some old part of her rankled at the idea that it was Amalia that had found Ludo - because of course it was - but it was unusually weak, and easily suppressed. Ever since their most recent encounter, Maea's attitude towards the Attuned woman had been far more amicable. Not quite back to how things had been, but... improved.
Still, she found it very curious that Amalia would leap out of the water if Ludo was in it, and she slowed some distance away, to approach more slowly. Loren was already there. Maea leveled narrowed eyes on the woman, searching the face of her childhood friend to try and figure out what was going on.
"Why don't you go in and catch it, then?" she asked with a tentative smile, as she reached out, hoping to take Amalia's hand and follow her back down beneath the waves.
Nothing lasts forever, I thought you should know
BASE INSPIRED BY ODD <3
♦ Violence, magic, thievery is permitted with Maea at all times. DM me if you have any ideas ♦
Rance startled at the sudden outcry and swiveled first his head, then his entire body toward the sound, talons clacking on the roof. He missed the sight of the ‘woman’ jumping out of the water, but did catch many reacting to ‘her’, diving into the water or manipulating it with magic. And even though he was determined not to be a part of this virtually-unknown being’s game, he couldn’t help but feel caught up by the excitement of it. He croaked loudly a couple of times and took to the sky following the others he saw, but not approaching too close as to maintain his illusion of keeping separate. Flying higher than the others afforded him a better view as well, eyes flicking to the shore as well as the sea, just to see if further directions came from there.
Is this ‘game’ entirely fuckin’ safe? he queried across the Attuned bond to any who might be listening.
Quanil looks up suddenly at the cry of a spotted herald - does the herald have spots? or stripes? or dots? Is there a difference between a dot and a spot? - and looks to the water.
They hesitate, remembering Maea's warning that the ocean, while breathtakingly beautiful, might literally take their breath and, well, that's the end of things. They're a strong enough swimmer in calm Oasis waters, but...
Honestly, if it were any herald other than Ludo, Quanil might've jumped in to try their hand at swimming anyway. But the reminder of who they're searching for also reminds them of the possibility of their own mortality.
They sit on the sandbar to remove their boots. Next, they untie the rope that acts as a belt for them, tie one end around one boot, the other around the other, and drape the rope around their neck, so that the boots hang just in front of their chest.
And, cautiously, they wade into the water. Quanil has no intention of going far out, but they're enjoying the sun and the sand and the sea, at least. They squidge their toes into the wet sand and grin a bit.
