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!
01-01-2023, 08:28 PM (This post was last modified: 01-01-2023, 08:29 PM by Dantalion.)
Dantalion
how the fuck am I supposed to know
Danta has made a fort. And it's a very good fort, he thinks; created from a hollowed out fyrhund burrow, he's broken through the top, piled up some rocks and bones (ammo and decoration) and is using his lovely leather coat from Torchline as a flag. And he's ready to defend it.
Defend it from whom, you ask? Everyone, of course. Call him crazy (likely) or just call the Ancients impulsive (definitely) but one has to do something to pass the time, and this is just as good an idea as any.
"Don't anyone think about attacking my fort!" he announces, sounding very prim and proper about it all. "Or I will have to retaliate with force!" Which would be a tragedy and a shame and not at all the entire point of a game like this.
To make his point extra clear, Danta flings one of his rocks off into the distance. So there.
if we're in love or if we're in pain?
Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!
Horns: Diamond - they look very similar to #2 in this image.
Edmund hears the commotion and after taking a quick glance, smiles widely. "I like your fort!" Skipping down a ravine of lava, he slides to a halt a few feet away. "I'm going to make one too!"
Already scowering the ground for a suitable place to build, he sticks his tongue out at Dantalion, [say\"One I'm done, we should fight to see who can destroy each other's fort first." Challenge given, the younger Ancient gets to work, regardless of the other's response. Danta's burrow is good, but Edmund likes the look of a small rock formation. There are a few pillars of dark stone sticking up out of the ground, encircling a small area.
Moving quickly, Edmund collects bones and stray lava rocks to fill in the gaps between the pillars. It takes some time but soon he's created a woven fence of bone that connects the pillars. Fort made; he throws one of his stones at Dantalion's fort.
A Gore Crow was watching Dantalion's antics with curiosity, circling high above until he made his challenge. Cawing raucous amusement, she swooped down to dig her claws into a burned skull and rose again on flapping wings to make a strafing run - aiming to drop the skull right on Danta's head, of course.
She returned to the sky to see what would happen next when who should appear, but their baby construction worker! Skipping, no less, but eager to join the game. Angling her wings to take her a ways off, she alighted near some volcanic rocks that were light enough to lift in her bloody talons and rose with criminal intent, flying high into the sulfurous clouds above Edmund so her form would be obscured and waiting for a break in the smog to time her drop on his head this time.
Despite having become Ancient rather early on after the war, Ophelia has not met most of their fellows. An odd duck to say the least, they don't consider this a problem at all as they drift in to find little forts being constructed and defended, manned by strangers. Their family had been the Ascended after all, and they are not entirely keen on losing an entire family a third time. Some distance had been nice. But after a year, they are undoubtedly lonely - so why not intrude, uninvited and unexpected?
Their lial form is clearly the best option, so Ophelia transforms leisurely, and gleefully partakes in the lial's favorite form of hunting - bodyslamming. Specifically, the pretty man's fort, whoever he may be. Superheated Stone Crocodile versus regular stone. Ophelia is no scientist, but the scientific method of "fuck around and find out" seems rather appealing in the moment.
Shoot lightning through the vital veins They think that you emit the light, but you only take it in
In the near distance, around another bend and of caverns, a roar can be heard – loud, potent, powerful. And were those flames, rounding along the corner?
That could be a black dragon: a pernicious beast of legend, ready, willing, and able to defend its home for little to no reason.
Maybe it would be best to go another way?
You’ve encountered a Black Dragon. This counts as an uncommon creature encounter for the purposes of levelling, but does not count as a Random Event for levelling or MP. There will be no further admin/re intervention. If you choose to follow this creature, you do so at your own risk, however, just having it in this thread is enough to satisfy your levelling requirements. (You may not kill this creature without admin permission. )
Black Dragon (uncommon/mythical) - Black dragons of average size. Highly aggressive with fiery breath that can instantly melt most substances.
"Hey, hey. I said don't think about attacking my fort!" Danta barks out, his brows furrowed into a deep frown as his hideout is both targeted by Edmund and bodyslammed by Ophelia, and then Zefira drops a skull on his head. It means war, clearly, and he's dusting bone and ash from his hair and boomeranging a bone up towards the gore crow when a roar shakes him to the core.
And while it's dangerous - because the Climb is very dangerous, who knew? - and he's almost certain that's a Black fucking Dragon galumphing about, of course it makes Danta smile. "There's a bigger monster about than me! Defend yourselves!" he shouts to them, all pomp and nobility - before ducking into his burrow like a coward to hide from the dragon.
if we're in love or if we're in pain?
Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!
Horns: Diamond - they look very similar to #2 in this image.
01-02-2023, 04:22 PM (This post was last modified: 01-02-2023, 04:22 PM by Ophelia.)
Ophelia
A reptilian laugh that sounds like rocks scraping together escapes Lial-Lia at the man’s complaints, tail thwacking the edge of his fortress as they belly roll sideways to oversee the rest of the battlefield. Moments later a draconic bellow and the lick of flames echoes from deeper in the caves, and their prey pops down out of sight like a fine-boned gopher.
Writhing around on their superheated belly, Phi decides Danta is precisely right - they are the bigger monster. So, unbothered by the dragon, Ophelia slithers towards Edmund ’s fort to body slam that one too, hot stone-scales sizzling.
Shoot lightning through the vital veins They think that you emit the light, but you only take it in
"You made it too tempting!" Edmund calls as he chucks a rock at Dantalion's fort. Then there's a roar and the young Ancient pauses just long enough for Ophelia's attack to land.
Perhaps Edmund should be more worried about the dragon. And for a moment he is. But then the lial is body slamming his fort and all of his newly ingrained territoriality spikes. The molten tiger in him rages at the blatant disrespect of his space, and before Edmund is even fully aware of it, he's shifting.
The molten tiger pounces over the edge of his fort and lands on Ophelia's back, bearing his full weight down on the lial in an attempt to pin them to the ground.
A lial joined the party and Zef cawed approval of the big lizard throwing her weight around, though the sound might have been lost in the ensuing roar. The Gore Crow circled a little higher above the fray, slipping sideways in a lazy dodge as Danta aimed a bone at her before he hid, this time croaking derision (though she was careful to give herself enough of a head start to bolt for freedom if the dragon came up nearby).
It gave her a grand view of Edmund ignoring her rock-attack and instead paying more attention to the newcomer.
And oh, that would not do.
With his fort abandoned to animal rage, and the dragon's presence deemed less important than her pride, Zefira was more than happy to fold her wings and descend from above to land within it. She shifted back into her human form clad in red and black leathers and patted her hair into place before looking around at the construction. "Hmm. I suppose it'll do in a pinch..."
Hefting the rock she'd dropped in there earlier, she chucked it towards Dantalion's flag, hoping to break the pole while it was undefended. "Oh, sugar, if you're more scared of a li'l ol' dragon than me, you've got another thing comin'," she drawled, leaning on the bone fence of Edmund's fort and grinning with fanged amusement out at the children trying to kill each other nearby.
Yeah, well, this fine-boned gopher can fly, alright? Zefira gains a human form (though not so much human morality, to the surprise of no one) and Dantalion gains bible-black feathers and penchant for plucking out eyes. Well, more of a penchant. Zef's rock strikes his flag, but he's lucky and the pole doesn't snap; it's not flying nobly in the wind now, though, so much as lying hopefully lopsided like a wilting erection.
But anyway. Lial and tiger engage in a fight to the super-heated squashing, and Gore!Danta screams skyward, a familiar looking skull clutched in his talons. Making a beeline for Zef once he realises what she's done, of course he believes that turnabout is fair play, dropping it directly onto Edmund's fort and - hopefully - Zef's head.
if we're in love or if we're in pain?
Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!
Horns: Diamond - they look very similar to #2 in this image.
Finally the party really gets into swing. Ophelia isn’t so much watching the spectacle as providing the baseline for it with their body slams, but somewhere overhead one crow becomes a human, and a human becomes another gore crow, and really Phi is beginning to lose track of the plot.
Luckily that’s when a tiger descends from overhead, and though the youth is more territorial than Ophelia’s laidback humor, the Lial doesn’t actually know that. So instead they begin to wriggle and writhe, trying to take the tiger for a ride if it decides to cling to their stony back - right towards Dantalion and Zefira, hoping to turn a twosome into a forceful foursome like a locomotive lizard with an unruly tiger passenger.
Shoot lightning through the vital veins They think that you emit the light, but you only take it in
it's a blessing that Edmund has claws and Ophelia has scales. The tiger gets a foothold and the lial isn't harmed, apart from the weight of their extra passenger. As the youngest Ancient tries to keep his balance, Zefira steals his fort. Whipping around with a snarl, his ears fold back in warning.
Even as he does so, Edmund remains standing atop Ophelia. Ire momentarily moved to another, the urgently taps their back, urging the lial to turn and go back towards the fort so that he can defend it. Perhaps he should simply jump down and run there himself, but Edmund is enjoying his improvised ride too much.
Two heads were better than one, as the saying went, but Dantalion's bombing run forced the she-demon to duck with a snarl of annoyance. The skull shattered magnificently at her feet but she wasn't given time to appreciate the artistic spray of destruction because there was a lial and a tiger coming right towards the fort she had commandeered.
Zef might have been reckless but she wasn't usually stupid. She crouched, fingers flexing with a predatory welcome as she grinned at the charging duo, and flung a rock at Edmund's fuzzy head. "You want your li'l fort back, kitten? Come an' take it."
Waiting until the last second, she managed one more missile before she jumped to avoid Ophelia's assault on the fort. Not sideways but up, growing black feathers once more as she did and circling up to join Dantalion above the fray, cawing her laughter as the kitten's own fort took the brunt of his temper.
Positively cackling his delight to see the skull shatter (and cause some inconvenience and chaos in the process), Danta is swooping and freewheeling overhead as he watches the assault on Edmund's fort take place. All of this works quite well for him, naturally, because if they're all attacking/defending this setup, they're leaving his own the fuck alone.
And he's just getting invested in the will Edmund help destroy his own fort soap opera when Zefira flaps up to join him, and its with a screech of outrage that Danta declares - naturally - that the sky belongs to him now. Granted, a sky fight might be a messy thing, so he contents himself with trying to shit all over Zef's feathers instead.
Did someone say petty?
if we're in love or if we're in pain?
Code blatently stolen from queen of codes, Sky!
Horns: Diamond - they look very similar to #2 in this image.
