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!
- He was dead.
- Stuff here was really fucking weird all the time.
- The way out wasn't gonna be as easy as he had first thought.
Eventually he had to come to the conclusion that he was going to be stuck in this place for a while and would need to come around to it's rules. Because once you understood the rules, you could begin to break them; play the game. It seemed this game was mostly compromised of stuff to do with the Gods. Which ones you liked, which ones liked you, which ones you yelled about the loudest.
He knew basically nothing about the Gods here but he knew one of them was death, had a cool cape. That was enough for him to want to meet that one. It seemed a good a place as any to begin.
Walking up to the shrine with the confidence of someone who had clearly just had a lot of beer, he placed a cigarette and a coin on the shrine; a good offering he hoped. The cigarette was something common to give to Gods back home and the coin was one of the few remnants of his homeworld. If the Gods were fake he could just take them back, if they were real it was a sacrifice he was willing to make.
"So...do I just say hi? I'm looking for uh...I think the name was Ludo? I dunno if we just start chatting or what, but the smoke and the coin is for you."
"Coin like that won't get you much." The voice that echoed from the shrine was rich with amusement.
She didn't appear with any sort of pomp or flair - she was simply there, dusky skinned and dark eyed, her skirts a colourful array of reds and yellows as she arranged herself upon the shrine. The coin was plucked up with long fingers, disappearing into a bodice which left little to the imagination.
The cigarette, too, was accepted - she placed it between her lips and leant forward expectantly. "Got a light, son?" she asked, tipping him a wink.
03-23-2019, 07:51 PM (This post was last modified: 03-23-2019, 07:51 PM by Adam.)
You've been drinking like the world was gonna end
"Uh--wha--" Adam frowned and moved backwards at the sound of his mother's voice, unsure of if he'd heard it right or if he was really that drunk.
But no, there she was in the flesh, sat on the shrine. Wearing the clothes he'd grown so used to seeing that they didn't even really register to him as inappropriate anymore (Hell, when he'd been working he'd worn much less) and picking up the cigarette, putting it to her lips. Numbly, automatically, he pulled a lighter from his bag (a converted pistol part, new technology for his world and apparently black fucking magic here, cos he hadn't seen any others).
"...Here." He flicked it open, lit the end of the cigarette. But as soon as it was lit whatever spell of astonishment had been holding him still broke and he shook his head. "No, wait. Mum, the fuck you doing here?"
Aena made a noncommital sound of thanks as the cigarette was lit for her, drawing deep on it and exhaling whorls of smoke as she sat back upon the raised platform of the shrine. She dangled her bare legs and feet over the side of it, her skirts hitched up beyond her knees as she smoked. "You pay coin, I come. At least I pretend to," she told him with a throaty laugh, though she dropped the pretence as she beheld her son.
"The fuck are you doing here, Adam?" she asked, propping an elbow on her knee and arching an eyebrow down at him. "I thought I raised you better. The gods never did fuck all for us, so why pay them any mind? It wasn't any god that put ideas in your head, or got you those scars. You did that all by yourself."
"Ew, Mum." Adam made a face. They had both worked in the same industry, yes, but it had always been an understanding between them that they didn't directly acknowledge it. Maybe one joke every few conversations was okay, but two in a row? Absolutely not.
Still, her question was a good one. He raised up his fingers to trace over the scars, marks that as far as he knew she had never seen. She didn't even know why he had them. After he'd gone off with Heidi most people from his early life had taken it as a sign of preferring her riches over their poverty and had cut him out.
"This place isn't the same as back home. The Gods here actually matter to people and I'm fucking bored. May as well smoke with a cool death God, right? Have a good time? Though...I do wanna know why the hell you showed up when I asked for that. If my own mum is the death God from Hell I'm gonna be real fucking confused. You got dad in there?"
She only offered him a sharp grin at his protests, especially when he culminated his speech asking if she had his father in there. It was difficult not to rise to the bait, but Adam did not seem to be a nut worth cracking with memories. With a defeated sigh, Aena waved a hand and seemed to dissolve before him, shrouded in a halo of rags which rose and bobbed and hovered above the shrine. The porcelain mask Ludo wore still held the cigarette (somehow).
"Very well, sweetling," it said. "You asked to speak with Ludo, and Ludo is here. What now?" The mask tilted slowly, and the tone suggested that the answer had better be interesting. Outlanders - they were not currently in the god's good books.
There was no answer, just a sigh and then his 'mother' disappeared. Adam felt the lurch in his heart even though he didn't quite understand it -- you haven't seen her in years, you idiot, why does it matter if she goes? -- and leaned forward after her out of instinct.
He jumped back though, at the appearance of the rags and mask. The appearance of Ludo reminded him of costumes from festivals in his home as a child, things he'd always been a little scared of. He licked his lips nervously and looked up at the God as the challenge of a question was posed to him.
"Uh, wow. Well...first, you look great. Exactly like they said, all spooky and shit." Always start with a compliment when you were speaking to the powerful, rich or famous. It helped when you actually meant it, which Adam absolutely did. "But I guess I just wanna know more about my death. Like..how the fuck did it happen? Do you know? I was just riding about...then poof, I'm here. Though if this is Hell, I dunno why we need a God of death...point is, I'm looking for some answers. And that-" He pointed to the cigarette.
"-Is a real good mix. Some of my best stuff. Where I came from the Gods liked smokes and drinks and stuff...dunno if you do, but the sentiments there, you know?"
Ludo's mask always somehow managed to convey whatever expression it was feeling, and yet in this moment the deadpan porcelain explained it perfectly. Spooky and shit. If Adam wanted spooky, the god could comply quite happily. Not quite yet, though. A curl of fabric removed the cigarette from the mask, holding it out for Adam.
"Enjoy it. I prefer games and toys," it said simply - though his question had a giggle bubbling up from the pulsing mass of rags. Ludo's mask rotated fully around, the rest of it following lazily like a comet's tail.
"Dead? You are not dead, sweetling. The dead cannot pray at shrines."
04-01-2019, 08:22 PM (This post was last modified: 04-01-2019, 08:22 PM by Adam.)
You've been drinking like the world was gonna end
Adam took the smoke back after the smallest second of hesitation. There was a chance it was some kind of trick, but given his limited resource of recreational substances nowadays, he wasn't going to turn it down. Besides, as Ludo expressed it's real desires he grinned, pulled something out from his bag.
He held out a small wooden bird. While it was not well carved it had been painted with care, a blue glaze and a small yellow beak, a dot for an eye. It had been a gift he had once stolen bought for one of Heidi's nieces, but before he could give it to her they had...begun to have their difficulties, and he had never had the chance. "Y'might like this, then. Look."
Adam twisted a small knob coming from the middle of the bird and once he let go, it's wooden wings slowly flapped, creating the illusion of flight. It was hardly magic, but it was a sweet toy and he passed it up to Ludo.
The revelation that he wasn't dead surprised him less than it should have (he was a bit sick of shock, by now, had begun to take everything with a sort of numb acceptance). He sat back and frowned, looked up at the rags and mask before him. "Then..what am I? Why am I here?"
04-03-2019, 08:16 PM (This post was last modified: 04-03-2019, 08:29 PM by Honey.)
ludo
As Adam produced the toy, the Accepted would swear that Ludo made a sound suspiciously like 'oooooo', the ragged deity floating down to eye level so it could peer at the thing curiously. As it flapped its little wings Ludo clapped together two tendrils of fabric, surging up again (the bird levitated up and out of Adam's hands as if it really could take flight) to regard the mortal before it.
"I like this very much," it said. "Thank you, sweetling. As for what you are... you are as you as you were before you tumbled into this place. I'm afraid I do not know why you are here, though. Why any of you are here. You are not the first lost soul, and you will not be the last." If rags could shrug, Ludo was doing it.
Ludo was almost cute as it took the bird up gleefully, Adam grinning as he saw his gift had been successful. That worked for him, too; wooden toys were a lot easier to give away than precious smokes and drinks.
"...Hmm. Then...is there something I'm meant to be doing here? I used to be a highwayman, but..." Adam was rarely one to ask for advice from anyone, but if you had to ask someone a God was a good candidate, right? "There's no fucking roads here, and there's no money so I dunno what to steal..."
He'd never really believed in purposes, but he desperately hoped Ludo might give him one. "You need anything doing? I'm so bored. I'll take anything on for a bit of excitement."
Ludo shrugged, as much as rags could do so. "Perhaps. If there is something you are meant to be doing, it is not at the behest of any of the Old Gods," it assured him, drifting slowly to sit among the other offerings, the little mechanical bird flapping about it of its own accord. A highwayman, though... Ludo tilted its mask this way and that as if considering Adam.
"A thief of riches," it murmured. "Opportunistic. I may have something for you to steal, should you think yourself up to the task. It is deep in the Ruins, though, and guarded by something quite horrible." If Adam wasn't mistaken, he might swear Ludo sounded amused.
"Oh yeah? Then who should I be asking?" Adam asked, though was distracted from this line of questioning by the sight of the bird flapping about as if it were actually real. A smile that spoke of a much more innocent joy suddenly appeared on his face before being replaced by the carefully protected mask of indifference.
Opportunistic fit him pretty well, and it was a word he liked. Adam grinned and shrugged with fake modesty. While the sound of a quite horrible guardian wasn't something he liked, treasure was. Maybe he could drag someone with him.
"Okay, okay. So what is it you need taking? Can't Gods just...go get whatever the fuck you want? Or is this like, a test?" If it was, he was going to ace it.
"Someone else," Ludo said frankly and with a tone of finality that suggested it wouldn't accept further questions about the reasons behind the Outlanders' appearance. Mostly because it couldn't say for sure, and that in itself was infuriating without adding further mysteries to it. Luckily, it seemed that the bird was a thoroughly good distraction for them both, and so was the possibility of treasure and exploration.
"A horn," it explained, as if fully aware of the innuendo but choosing to let Adam make of it what he liked. "And of course I can, but you are the one who is bored. Do we have a deal?"
