Dekaidin

The Family Biz [Open To Apply]

— Entobalti, “Kitty Hell” — the Traeculam

A flick of his claws, his eye watchful for any flaws — a purr of satisfaction, and Tāwhaki announces, “My shift is over, follow if you dare!” and dashes neath Ilaria’s angelic robe and toward a new portal, a hypnotic liquid vortex large enough for the pair to pass.

Before visions twist to shape beyond the crimson-inked eddy of his own demonic energy, the strong scent of Entobalti lashes his feline nose. Wistful thoughts find their foothold, and he grins wickedly. Soon, he can taste it: acrid, rotten, robust; a vivid retelling of an exploded corpse on a colossal scale tinged with salt, myrrh, musk, and castoreum; a fishmonger’s rotten, violated, pestilential cervix. Alighting on an exposed nerve, he feels the twitch, the snap, the song of bedlam resonating throughout this vast and ever-shifting hipasia of horrors.

“Enjoy the view while it lasts,” Tāwhaki taunts.

Not bothering to look back, he stridently high-steps onward, each claw viciously raking the taut, nervous membrane of their bridge through a patina of sanguine mist. It shudders, and one can almost imagine a distant, voiceless, spiritual scream, but it is difficult to pick out through the incessant background roar of agony that washing over Entobalti in an endless, exquisite wave. It struggles to lift them over a pool of noxious, yellow, bubbling bile, but is too weak to fully support their weight. It fails, underbelly striking the pool and recoiling from the agonizing acidic touch. Vile steam rises up to greet them, and Tāwhaki pauses. He sniffs the air, eyes drifting in a direction outside of traditional dimensions. Sinisterly extending a single claw, he swipes his forearm across their flesh-bridge, severing the wailing tissue. No longer taut, it snaps and shivers, flinging them through a noxious, jaundiced void of choking, gasping, pleading voices.

Landing in a muck of crust-layered blood, they behold before them a monolithic minaret composed of trembling muscles and viscera. What look like the outer layers of eyes, peeled precisely and surgically off the surface, scales the exterior, glossy, blinking.

Tāwhaki is about to speak, then a parade of ghastly phantoms manifests from nought as the world around shifts to incorporeal, a mode spectral, translucent. Shrieking, they hiss, vomiting and ejecting ectoplasm at Ilaria. Before they get the satisfaction of seeing their mark, a great translucent tentacle strikes through the caked, dessicated film, dragging them down and screaming.

“Hmm. Lovely,” sniffs Tāwhaki says in his unhurried, unconcerned fashion, “Now then, you understand that as an employee of the Asomatous Détente & Terrestrial Customs, this is as far as I can take you without risking my clearance. Give the package to Balem, and they will send you to Aeternus. Ciao!”

With that, Tāwhaki leaps through a small portal, most likely to continue his shift.

⇝⛧⇜

Battle Toyale — Christmas Rumble!

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Xenopunk Dysphoria: Tech, Slime & Bone

—— Earth-F67X: New Roswell

To an outside observer, it might appear peaceful, timeless. A sensory deprivation well, one of many located beneath New Roswell. Bored deep in the Earth’s crust under a secret military base somewhere in Antarctica, it was pumped with nerve-ablating xenon gel and contained the pale, fetal, emaciated form of the symbiote, an ornament immobile and suspended at the end of a thoracic cable. No sense of touch, smell, sound. No light. Just it and a single cable binding it in perpetuity to the global intelligence infostream.

For a human, a horrific fate. Insanity. Eternal torment.

For some humans in adjacent wells, it was precisely that. Hell. For many of those, deservedly so. Psychopaths whose unique brain patterns were leveraged specifically for the purpose of defending Earth against unconventional threats.

For the symbiote, it wasn’t ideal; certainly anything but peaceful, timeless. Nor was it Hell. It benefited from the arrangement in terms of self-actualization. In terms of wish fulfillment. In terms of goal achievement. There, alone, helpless, constrained, it possessed more power than anyone or anything else on the planet. Power. Absolute, final power. Supreme commander over of the network of deranged, abnormal minds. A quanta of conundrums demanded its attention at any given moment, every moment. How it addressed them often determined the future of the planet. Three presently deadlocked its processing capacity and loomed at the forefront of its consciousness, delegated among the other minds that served as Earth’s multicameral threat assessment and response delegation.

In order of importance, they were The Rapture, the Mindrot, and the Pleiades.

It hated the first, because that was an event largely outside of its control. The only thing it could do was direct the government to spin, spin spin. But social media, even bot-infested and meme-turned, would still spin how it wanted it to. It locked down the portals to Ximbic, the few that still remained. Suspended them in quasi-timeless space, similar to its own in terms of mood, but completely different in terms of function.

The second, the infovirus it dubbed Mindrot wasn’t so much a problem. Discharged from the alien vessel along Neptune’s orbit, it was at this point more a curiosity. People were jaded, the Rapture would make them more jaded. Even as it still decoded the Mindrot’s internal directive, tweaks were made to dilute and pollute its aim, even as it sowed chaos on the socials. Tweaks that made it absurd, conspiratorial, dysfunctional. A bit of encouragement to disconnect, focus on what could be touched, smelled, heard — ironically. A mindrot among other rots, it would drown amongst the chaos of information, misinformation, transformation, and transfiguration. Meanwhile, Earth’s own message awakened beneath the gaseous wream of Neptune and would soon reach out to the alien vessel.

As for the Pleiades, that was always a contentious place. An active portal between the natural and the supernatural, one heavily monitored and access through which was typically negotiated. But it seemed to be becoming unstable, and a lockdown was in order. Although, given the other two issues, maybe more chaos was in order rather than less.

That’s when it got the signal, almost simultaneously from a host of satellites and non-euclidean observers.

Ximbic was gone.

The Yarniverse: Circ & Anshin

I'm a shitty, unclear, vague, ambiguous writer so there's no point in me participating in this community anymore.

The Land of Skara: and the Songtale of the Breaking

Hopefully the RP still lives.

@Argetlam350

It still lives. I'm waiting on some other people from the first round to write something before I do another set of prompts. We just aren't as speedy as you seem to think we should be, I suppose. :D That said, the activity in the discord has also slowed. I'll ping Forge and Liaison and see if they're working on anything.

Neo Babylon

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The Land of Skara: and the Songtale of the Breaking

@Boom @Odium @Argetlam350 @THE ADORATION @Forge @JohnRoleplay @Liaison @Fetzen

First set of prompts are up! :)

The Land of Skara: and the Songtale of the Breaking

Green gulls, they fly with the weight of tradition. Fleeting, their appearance tells a story. It starts beneath the watchful ward of the Starburst Chamber, itself atop a grand black tower rising from the Court of the Dawn-Spring. In an underground eyrie, it is rumored they hatch after a year long cycle. So it has been for hundreds of years, perhaps thousands. Watchers care for them until they grow strong enough to fly or, perhaps, craft them using arts ancient and arcane, then turn the great underground wheel, open the grates of the plaza floor, and let the birds fly — to where is unknown. Most meet their doom. Yet their image can be seen in the sky all across Island, telling the tale that the Festival of the Breaking fast approaches. Faster, word of their appearance throughout the land on the tongues of troubadours and skalds.

Fyrkat ܟ Skolt & Pite

A ray of light vanquishes a clot of fog, exposing fresh blue sky to the two young kroca perched in their stick-stack abode. Lit therein is a sign. It sits atop the tallest structure in the village, a wooden clock tower in the menroh. A courthouse. At the summit, a weathercock. On the weathercock, a massive green bird. Wings flash like underwater emeralds, and it flings itself off and vanishes into the fog. They follow the ray down to the river, and there see a familiar dragonically-inspired craft near.

“Mother!” celebrate the twins.

Stakris ܟ Nadira & Ykka

In the foothills of the mountains north of Stavkat, a dream ends with a vision. High above, a shadow, unique in its dashing of the heavenly rays. No harpy eagle full on its snare of an ill-alarmed vole. Too fleet for most prey, but provacative enough to catch the keen-sighted birds attention and beg forth its scream. Then, all too suddenly, absent. A cry above, one of battle, a dash of wings, a clash of talons, and then a shout of shock. Around Nadira, a shower of emerald flakes.

Nadira is long-lived, and has seen the green crystal rain before.

It bodes the death of a gull and, if one so wishes, a bid to travel.

Porjkat ܟ Kerbera

Landbridge turned port, Porjkat is abuzz with news of the sighting of green gulls. Of course, it is an annual — expected. In this ostensibly modern era, timekeepers and skywatchers track with precision the passage of time. So, even before the sighting, the small town’s hostels, alehouses, and whoredens burst with boisterous foreigners from the southlands. A brief influx of wealth and violence, bawdiness and brawls. Then an overland voyage to Lundros — for most, heavy-laden with exotic wares, a crossing of a fortnight.

For some, who merely wish to attend, to be there when the Starburst Chamber’s crystal roof gleams in the light of a weird new star, it will be far briefer.

Arrowfalls ܟ Roan

Sleep descends on the Arrowfalls long after night reduces vision to the bronze flicker of flame and ember. Almost too soon it burns out, the long shadows of purple morning splay out in their stead. For those light and brief to slumber, the urge for relief strikes in that predawn. A quiet place, a strand of dry stones bordering the small rivulets running near camp, born of the mountains. Some feed into the west branch of the Yanvin while others fill the handful of large lakes separating Arrowfalls from Mirynkat. This morning, they shimmer a vibrant emerald green.

If that urge strikes Roan, he is likely to notice; else, another, less familiar with the strange dust glittering in the flow might request a breakfast song explaining the unfamiliar sight.

Lundros ܟ Cerwin & Phaedra

“There you are, just the volunteers I am looking for!” declares a young man.

Board hanging around his neck and a bag pregnant with pamphlets, he knows words aren’t enough these days to catch an eye, so he grabs by the hand Cerwin and Phaedra as they, by pure coincidence, cross paths on a busy Lundros street, perhaps out for a morning stroll or departing café-style breakfast.

“A dashing gentleman such as yourself and a lovely scholar are perfect pair of volunteers, nay, organizers! to make this the most fabulous annual festival in a thousand years!” he proclaims, relinquishing his grip, but leaving in their palms a strip of paper embossed with a salutation and address that they might recognize as that of the Iron Word’s guildhouse.

The Pale ܟ Vildrel

Fog dense and light thick, scintillating, and light gray — almost white — floods the gulf and adjacent fjords taken together as a region of Islund dubbed The Pale. Therein, it is impossible to see the green gulls. Impossible, except atop Mount Leirstyg. Thereup and year-round, a wind-watcher and weather-scryer can easily see the passing of these majestic creatures. On that annual, she blows into her alphorn, and roll a long undulating drone into the gulf. That tradition echoes from ship to ship, filling The Pale with the vibration of expectation for those who wish to make the trek to Lundros and partake in the celebration.

It rolls over Vildrel Könire, Iskra, and others along the rocky hillock.

Yanvin Valley, near Ghilros ܟ Willis & Vodilic

Thump-thrump, thump-thrump, a wagon loudly makes its way along the riverside road that weaves through the forest of the Yanvin Valley, heading first to Ghilros and then to Lundros. It is the lead in a procession long enough to deepen ruts that already cut down to bedrock. Cheerful chatter boasts of profit to be made at the festival, of how this annual is special, of how this man or that woman personally saw a green gull and spread the word throughout their village.

Of course, the noise carries through tree and branch to Willis.

So too does it drift up the hillside and touch the ears of Vodilic, bidding him depart from his shortcut turned sojourn.

If they desire to attend, perhaps they will march alongside the line of merchants, sightseers, and celebrants.

The Land of Skara: and the Songtale of the Breaking

Fyrkat ܟ Skolt & Pite

Rain skirts along the dark, stacked basalt of the dozen or so squat, square towers in Fyrkat’s niþroh. Cold, it glazes the jutting uneven edges of unmortared stone with clear clean ice. Along those glimmer-tracks, the rain races and leaps into a muddy rill, normally a fine dirt path when the weather is fair. Fair it is not, flanked by a fist’s depth of dank, stinking, soot-tinged snow. So today the road wends wet through the fishing village like a tributary of the nearby Tofyrvin, itself, even now, at the start of the thaw, more a babbling brook than a river; narrow, just sufficiently deep to support passage of the lateen-sail rigged dhow traveling northward and seaward.

Like nests atop the towers, precarious hunch single room shelters of unfinished timber gable-capped with shaved bark shingles, mostly fir. There is a square hole in the side of a particular one, passable as a window. Two sets of intense black eyes, large and luminous, peer out and contemplate the overcast, mist-mantled village, the rain, the dawn fast approaching, the forceful lethal current of the river that, at this hour, must sing to better without eyes be seen.

“It has been nine nights since we’ve seen the twins of day,” chirps a masculine young voice, agitated.

“Skolt, we trust they follow the paths they always have, in time with timeless time,” chirps back a female voice, crisp, anxious.

It is the way of things in Fyrkat, to express a fear without giving it a name—without breathing into it evil life. Their mother, absent these nine nights, her fishing voyage taking her north upon the Tofyrvin, out to the coast, to the great western water called the Kvelhav. She was due back three nights ago. The nest felt empty. Worse, it was nearing, the day of anticipation, of day of departure. They didn’t want to leave not knowing her fate, not bidding her farewell.

“In time with timeless time, Pite,” assents Skolt, echoing the litany.

He lifts his black, broad wing and drapes it over his sister’s round, sloped shoulders, although neither feel cold. For warmth, they have their cloaks, scarlet and violet. They have a clay stove with lump of coal burning in its belly. They are well-fed on carp and barberries. They have hope, auspiciously audible on the wind. A melody, a chirp, a call. The birdsong of their mother paddling against the current with the help of her living boat-dragon Vanptadra.

The Land of Skara: and the Songtale of the Breaking

Thanks! Yes, feel free to join!

@Circ Hi :)

roleplayerguild.com/topics/192621-the…

I think you meant to post this link! That one leads back here.

Anyways, count me interested!

@Timemaster