Drache

The Calm Before the Storm (Ebonfort)

"Feel magic?"

Could she feel magic? She had felt many things on this journey, most of them confusing and terrifying and heart-wrenching. Certainly magic had been involved, but Rilana didn't consider that she could feel magic in general. It was more like magic had washed over her from powerful sources like the null shard, a dragon god, and a deranged shield-mage moon fey, as strong and undeniable as the waves of the ocean, with herself being no more talented for being able to feel them. Thinking about it, she looked around at the camp spread out before them, trying to sense anything special. Without even looking she knew where Kona was, and Ortha, and if she concentrated she could even see through their eyes. She could feel Ortha's insatiable hunger and naive curiosity. She could feel Kona's disapproval and cool superiority. For a moment it seemed that she could feel the living energy of everything around them, even the people, the same way she felt Kona and Ortha's life forces when she Bound herself to them. Svarak's, being the closest, was huge and warm beside her.

When Svarak produced the sword, Rilana eyed it warily, her expression stony as she refused to touch it. "I cut myself on it in the tower," she whispered. "I heard Juloya's voice." Her eyes squinted closed and she put her face in her hands, trying to banish the memory of the pain the woman had been forced to endure all this time. She eventually straightened up, looking more careworn than before.

"Yes, about two days with the weather like this." Taking the cooked food, she ate slowly, noticing that it was delicious and feeling guilty that she was in little mood to appreciate it. "This is really good. I never imagined that you could cook. You keep surprising me." At least this surprise was a pleasant one. She watched him for a while, wondering at the implication of him wishing they'd had longer to dance together.

"It seems almost foolish to make plans when I don't know what's going to happen, or if the people I care about will even be around for me to...be with." One of her hands dropped to the silver sash around her hips, toying with the hem. She pulled one foot up onto the rock, leaning forward to rest against her own knee. "At one point I had hoped for more than friendship, but I know better now, so if we manage to accomplish this...terrible thing, I'd be glad to see you often." As often as her wanderlust would allow, of course.

She didn't answer his question right away, taking a few moments to finish a mouthful of her dinner and look out beyond the camp the the mountainous and winter-locked wilderness.

"For my part, I don't know that my life would have been much different until last year. I never had the urge to leave the Frostfell and my wild friends." She felt a bubble of satisfaction from the gryphon. "If not for certain meddling that brought me south," and she gave the Charr a pointed look, "I would still be there."

"But others will not feel the same. An entire city cut off for centuries? And not knowing why? I'm sure they will feel slighted, angry. And it's hard to blame them, even if it was the only way to stop...him."

[Ebonfort] Days of Grass and Dust

It felt like a step in the right direction as Asher watched Verissa relax and invite him to teach her something. She could have refused and then they would have gone back to his tent together. Learning how to weild a staff wasn't crucial, not like learning to how simply live as a slave in the camp. Asher couldn't put his finger on why, but this was important. Perhaps that's why he looked so serious when he approached her. He reached for the staff, but didn't take it from her. Rather, he corrected her hold on the staff, moving her fists to cut the length of wood into thirds, both palms down.

"There. From this position you can get to any other type of hold fairly quickly. Both hands on one end like a sword can give you a powerful strike, but the beauty of the staff is how versatile it is. From this hold you can bring your hands out and use the staff to block a sword or axe..."

He slid her hands out, increasing the gap between them and then brought the staff up towards him until it bumped his chest.

"...or, you can bring them closer together and turn the staff into a weapon on both ends."

He brought her hands in closer with only a fist-length between them and then rotated the staff slowly, doing figure-eights so that the ends of the staff swept around beside her shoulders. He never looked away from her face, even if she looked down to see what he was doing with his hands.

"From here you can strike down at the knees or up at the ribs or even the head." Asher held both ends of the staff, twisting it up or down to show Verissa how she could use both hands to manipulate the staff to jab either one end or the other at a specific target.

"The position you hold your body in can help you control your strikes or blocks. You have to move so you can move the staff around you." The swordmaster moved, keeping one hand on the staff as he stepped around behind his slave, reaching for the other end until Verissa was between the wooden weapon and Asher's chest. His voice was in her ear.

"You were using your lower back too much, which throws you off balance and leaves you open to attacks. Until you have learned the basics, focus on keeping your back straight and moving your legs instead. Now, step forward with your right leg and I will move the staff, but keep your hands on it."

When she did so, Asher moved the staff, swinging the right end out and the left end back, showing Verissa how the momentum put power behind the strike and how natural the motion could feel. They practiced the move and a couple more. Asher had taught this lesson many times before. The staff was usually the first weapon children started with, graduating to other things when their talents and interests emerged. But somehow this lesson was special, more personal. Now and then the wind brushed through Verissa's hair, and Asher could still smell the herbs from her shop. He kept close to her, and it occured to him that he should enjoy the feeling of her back against him, but he tried to ignore it, resolving that he didn't want to be like Jasper.

"I hope you'll let me teach you more. It will make me feel better to know you can protect yourself." His words caught a little and Asher fell silent, trying to clamp down on a jab of grief.

"Anyways, if you someday wanted to go on the Hunt, it's never too early to learn how to wield a weapon."

(Ebonfort) Strangers in a Strange Land

"A beetle as big as a house? That sounds more like some of the things I have seen with the drow in the Gem Deeps. Giant spiders and such things. Yick." The dragonkin clacked her teeth and gave a shudder which started between her shoulders and jolted down her spine and across her wings until they shivered and her tail twitched crookedly and curled into her own lap. Drache was not fond of spiders.

But her moment of squicked-out-ness only lasted a moment before there was a smile back on her snout. "A pleasure indeed." There was something suggestive in that, of course. Her forked, black tongue flicked out to lick her lips, which was totally natural and not at all suggestive, right?

Peering at his face, she seemed to consider something for a moment. "Well, you look human to me," she announced rather flatly with a shrug of both wings and shoulders. She hadn't traveled far outside of Pyresian lands, and when she was on the wing, or plundering dangerous depths or scaling tricky obelisks she didn't meet too terribly many people. She'd never heard of the Keeramis or whatever Raffey called them. Of course, it was entirely possible she'd run into one and never known them to be "not human."

She polished off quite a bit more food while listening to Raffey describe the desert, and her pupils gradually widened in a lazy way that seemed to suggest she was trying to picture it in her mind and reconcile it with what little she had heard of the vast wastelands to the south. An entire ocean of golden sand sounded pretty boring and lifeless, but the dragonkin knew a moment of confusion because she also knew that there were quite a few rare spices, metals, and other high-value trade goods that came out of the desert, and here was a man telling her that people lived there. Her snout gave a twitch and her tail tip flopped back and forth. "I think I would like to see this place someday. At the very least I'm sure I will enjoy the heat." A grin.

She realized at some point that both of them were neglecting the campfire, which had consumed most of its natural fuel and was surviving simply because Drache was almost instinctively feeding it with her own energies. Turning to it with a lifted eyebrow, she essentially cut it off, causing it to gutter low as she tossed a couple more sticks into it.

It was then that Raffey scooted closer, and the half-dragon's grin widened. Her tail coiled loosely around his leg and she rested a warm palm on his thigh. "I'm from Pyresia, the dragon city, though it was mostly built by dwarves. It's all mountains and jungle on the coast. The city is a giant volcano, some say the tallest in the world."

Her attitude changed somewhat when he asked what she was. Not so much the question as the way it was phrased. "What I am is a dragonkin. A half-dragon. Some dragons can change their shape to look like humans or elves or whatever and sometimes leave children behind. My mother was human."

Drache looked away and sighed smokily. "As for what we're called, that's an entirely other list of words. Freak. Abomination. Mule. I guess the last one's somewhat true since we can't have children of our own."

In a brave attempt to steer the conversation away from shipwrecking on depressing thoughts, the hybrid lifted her hand to gently poke Raffey's chest. "Which is why you haven't seen many of us around." She couldn't help but think of his accent as simply awful, but it made her wonder what his native tongue tasted sounded like. Her own Commonspeach wasn't too bad, though it was accented as well, primarily with a gravelly guttural inflection, an emphasized sibilance, a slight purr on her "r's", which she was probably accentuating on purpose when she murmured Raffey's name.

"Sssay sssomething to me in yourrr own language, Rrraffey."

Ebonfort

Quest: Interest Check!

I intend to run a quest during the next season, which starts tomorrow. This will likely have two groups that start separate and come together near the end. One group is a journey by sea that starts in Azure Strand (Ebonfort) and the other meets in Pyresia. This is open to any character who is not currently time-locked on one of the current quests (though if those quests finish up soon I may be able to work those characters in). Please let me know if you are interested and which character you would like to play (pm or reply here). Newbies and veterans welcome!!

<3 Bex

@Rekaigan @RomanAria @Foster @Carantathraiel @HylianRose @Tuddums @Isotope @Wild Alyssa @HHShetland @SilverSpartan @Yennefer @terrorbubble @TheTruthWhale @Twhirtley

[Ebonfort] Give a Leg Up

The flight to Pyresia took five days, the land passing beneath the dragons in a patchwork of colours and textures. The deciduous woodland close to Genrit's cave faded into the westernmost reaches of the massive prairies of the Kerawac. The land grew rocky as the faint suggestion of the sea to the west draw closer until it was a constant blue smudge beside them. The wind became wet, warm, and briny, and a lush carpet of jungle greenery clung to the mountains rising underneath them.

A dark shape of the Ash Peak started off as a dark shadow and grew by the hour. Even as the craggy jungle-infested mountains climbed higher and higher until the dragons were nearly threading their way through them rather than watching them pass by below, the volcanic cone towered over them, haloed by smoke and clouds. It was stunningly huge, even in comparison to dragons, and the shaped stone balconies curving out from its more vertical slopes were perhaps not as crowded as a wild dragon might fear.

The city itself seemed to tumble artistically down the slopes, colourful by way of both crafted structures and the presence of exposed seams of geodes and rivers of molten rock. Several styles of ships clustered in the deep harbour that was parly protected by a narrow cliff. There were many wide staircases and broad boulevards sized to the foot-steps of dragons, with hominid-sized roads and buildings lining them.

The closer they got to the city, the more dragons they say. At first they seemed to be other patrols with marked wings like Mojavico and his superior. But once their keen eyes could pick out the main of the city, other dragons appeared, eyeing the large white drake with varying degrees of interest as they went about their business. Some of them seemed to be flying just for the pure joy if it, using both the ocean breeze and the rising heat from the volcano to make it all nearly effortless.

Mojavico pointed out various landmarks to Genrit as they flew, the males slightly behind Vesenthicar as their path took them upwards towards the summit. So high that clouds rolled between them and the ground and still the peak was above.

The pair brought Genrit to a large cave opening in the western face of the mountain. It was obviously a natural ingress, but had been further fashioned by the dwarves to improve its appearance and preserve it. The floor inside gleamed with flat marble tile, though the scraping of many dragon-claws had dulled it some. Two much larger dragons framed the entrance, watching their progress with shrewd gazes. One was a coppery red with smokey black wing membranes and the other was a gold so pale she was nearly yellow.

Neither Vesenthicar nor Mojavico spoke to them as they led Genrit inside, sandwiching the white in the middle of their trio as they moved into the Ash Peak.

Ebonfort

The Hidden Door has been started between Cihr'Cten and GM.

[Ebonfort] The Hidden Door

@SilverSpartan

[Ebonfort] The Hidden Door

Starting Date and Time: Ceruleo 41st, 300DM

Starting Location: Chartric Forest outside Silent Rise

CS URLs: Cihr'Cten

The thick woodland was full of the sound of creaking trees, the immense boughs kept even the gray overcast light from filtering down to the loamy forest floor. The Ceruleo winds rocked the massive canopy back and forth, leaving the gloomy underbrush cold but spared from the blistering gusts that threatened even more snow.

Tracks of wildlife crisscrossed the open spaces between the trees and down into the rocky caves that occasionally yawned up out of the relatively flat land at random. It was from one of these rocky outcroppings that a sound came, starting small at first but growing slowly.

A massive tree, just as large as one of the great branching behemoths in Silent Rise that cradled homes and businesses in their notches and boughs, dangled at a steep angle quite disparate from the rest of its fellows. The aged and gnarled wood seemed grayish and friable when the others seemed dark and cold but still sturdy. The victim of termites and woodpeckers, the dying tree groaned and screeched woodenly under the onslaught of winter wind, its branches fracturing and breaking to drop down on the snowy leaf litter below.

Finally, as its slow descent towards the ground reached the point of no return, a fierce snap like a fracturing dragon bone echoed through the woods like a thunderclap, the sound followed by a slow, thunderous crashing. The main tap root had finally broken. Roots cracked and snapped, pulling up a nearly perfect circular crater of rich earth even as the trunk bounced and jolted off the upright shapes of its neighbors and slammed into the earth with an echoing boom.

The silence that followed was almost uncaring in its normalcy as snow filtered through the bright hole in the dappled ceiling, coming to rest mournfully on the great log. Within the gnarled roots, a small object tumbled free. A small carved sphere of moss-green jade that emanated a faint magic as it rested in front of a black hole leading down into the blackness, framed but the tender roots of the tree.

[Ebonfort] Days of Grass and Dust

The wheels of the empty cart rumbled faintly across the beaten dirt path through the camp as Asher lead the tall draft mule back towards the Healer's tent. It was still light out, but the shadows were lengthening as the sun dipped towards the horizon. The change in the campsite was more than obvious. Carts and packed bundles littered the area, many of the tents and pavilions already uprooted and turned into rolls of leather and canvas with support polls bundled in the centers. Children and dogs ran screaming with laughter through the walkways that seemed wider than usual.

Verissa wasn't at the Healer's tent, but Shenzi pointed him in the right direction after spending some time complimenting the woman not only on her skill, but her confidence in spite of her tragic change in circumstances.

The grey-eyed Swordmaster nodded, glad to hear Shenzi report a good first day for Verissa, and then offered to stay and help pack the Healer's Tent with the other young men and women. But Shenzie waved him off, her canine teeth glinting with her foxy grin.

"I'm sure you have your own tent to pack, Ash. Verissa should help you with it."

As he passed by a group of Shenzi's unofficial acolytes, he couldn't help but hear a wave of whispers and turned to look. His scar-bisected eyebrow twitched up and apparently the woman named Briea took his attention as an invitation. While the others watched, she wandered over from where she and her friends were organizing something for Shenzi and she smiled warmly.

"Hello Ash," Briea greeted him, moving in front of him so that he was forced to either stop walking or knock her down. When she spoke, her fluid hand motions were accompanied by a saucily-cocked hip, and he couldn't help but notice that the pretty dyed wrap accentuated her shape.

"What do you want, Briea?" he asked, grumpy and even slightly suspicious. He knew that she was interested in him, but something about her seemed ingenuine, though he'd never been able to put his finger on it. As a sly grin spread across her face while she contemplated the answer to his question, Asher felt his brow scrunch with a frown.

"I can think of a few things," she replied thoughtfully, her white-blonde hair falling perfectly straight over her shoulder as she tilted her head to regard him. He had to admit, she was very pretty. "But I was wondering if you wanted to share a tent with me once we all reach the Gathering? A handsome man like you shouldn't sleep alone."

Normally such a suggestion would have instantly made him think about Wren, but while he did think of her, the jab of outrage in his gut had less to do with his dead wife and more to do with Briea's assumption that he would be alone. Squaring his shoulders a bit, the young Swordmaster tightened his grip on the mule's lead rope.

"I won't be alone. In case you hadn't heard, my tent is a bit crowded now after the raid last night." His words were stoney, but Briea either didn't get the hint or refused to give up so easily. She pressed closer and even lifted an arm to rest her palm on his shoulder, her hip nudging against his. She was warm and smelled good.

"Haha, you know as well as I do that slaves can just sleep outside with the dogs," Briea giggled hatefully, and Asher decided he had had enough.

"I don't have time for this," he growled, pushing roughly past the woman, not noticing the daggers in her eyes as she stared after him, the look fueled by the wicked giggling of her friends.

When Asher finally found Verissa on what was left of the training pits, he paused to watch for a while, crossing his arms over his muscled chest and leaning against the massive shoulder of the mule, who busied himself cropping at the dry grass. He didn't smile a lot, but an amused smirk loitered on his lips as he watched the woman attack the ground and the air with the weathered stick. He had spent enough time training to know when someone was genuinely training or just getting out their anger, and Verissa definitely appeared to be doing the latter.

Eventually he decided to speak up, leaving the mule and cart to wander around a bit while approaching Verissa with his hands lifted in a peaceful gesture. His boots crunched on the cracked sandy dirt.

"You have a lot of power behind your swings, but you're too stiff. If you actually did hit someone holding a staff like that it would jolt it right out of your hands." He kept his distance, waiting to see how she responded to his presence before getting close enough for a good hit. Asher wasn't ignorant of the possibility that she blamed her kidnapping entirely on him and might wish to punish him for it in a very direct and skull-cracking way.

"I could show you, if you'll let me." He watched her eyes the way he would watch a startled cat or a sketchy camp dog, not making any motion to take the staff from her, his eyes stormy and soulful at the same time.

Ebonfort

Dryads have now been written up. Also, a Language system is now in place to help streamline the ability of characters to learn new languages. Please add a language section to your CSs. If you have questions about what languages your characters can know, see me. I'm aware that there may be languages I haven't listed so if I need to add any more, please let me know.