A large spire of whitestone carved into a mountainside stood tall. The pointed tops of its towers pierced black clouds in a looming grey sky. It’s windows were stained glass with colorless depictions of lovecraftian goliaths consuming small cityscapes with their many mouths and tentacles. White lights would illuminate these windows so bright that even at a distance you would know - somebody was home.
“Someone has pulled back the curtain once again.” Spoke the tall man, cloaked from head to toe in a black shroud of thick cloth with small metal ornaments chiming around his sleeves and collar.
He sat in what seemed to be a throne room. A single large stone seat at its far end with a checkerboard carpet that sprawled from the room’s entrance to the throne. A large window of stained glass was at its opposite side, with large candle lanterns lining the walls as the sole source of light within the room, but the candles were blindingly bright. There was something else in the room though, but it would not be visible unless you looked for it. Above the throne was a dark spot, somewhere that the light of the candles didn’t reach the black-clad man. In that small abyss was eight white-glowing eyes that stared down upon the King in Black.
“A way out. A way out. A way out. A way out. A way out.” A roar of countless childish voices spilled from that abyss, along with the sounds of small chinois legs dancing along the ceiling.
The King in Black smiled beneath his shadowed hood. His ivory white skin in perfect contrast with his pitch-black tapestry, and as he looked up to properly regard the sentient darkness above him - locks of his long white hair spilled out from his cowl. The darkness stared back, the childish laughter warping into metallic scraping and the small clacks of stone, echoed and distant as if it were heard down a hallway. But then the abyss vanished, returning to a normal shadow above the king’s throne.
Location: The Closet?
Where were you?
You were somewhere else just a moment ago, weren’t you?
The place you were in now seemed to lack anything of much detail. The walls, ceiling, and floor were a matching shade of gray that played tricks on your eyes when you scanned your environment. There was a ceiling fan wobbling around as it spun on the floor, or were standing on the ceiling? There was a plain black circular table with five chairs positioned around it - and if you cared enough to notice - that was exactly the amount of bodies standing around in this strange space.
Rattling noises came from the furthest side of the room, opposite to the group of unwilling travelers. Some rustling around behind two wooden-frame white doors with the thin skits carved within - to allow what was inside to peek out but not the other way in. Eventually the doors snapped open wide and a formless blob of white gas, or liquid, something, flew out and towards the black table before seemingly assuming the table’s shape as its body. The [monster] would take this time to gather itself, before speaking as the table.
@sassy1085 Mark is accepted and you can move him on over! I’ll have the opening post up early tomorrow. If anyone has questions, feel free to hit me up beforehand.
Natives of the swamp forests in the southeastern subtropics, the Yanaski people are usually seen as indigenous humanoids with reptilian or fish-like traits that have been developed to better suit their homelands. They range from monstrous to beautiful, but most are capable of altering the coloration of their scales to better blend in with their environment. Yanask culture is centered around the cycle of life and death personified into the idol of worship called Ska’yana - The Mother of the Hunt. While the majority of Yanaski people are found in their mangroves, many do tend to migrate out to explore the rest of the world.
Appearance: “Stop staring me!”
The Yanaski woman stands at the meager height of roughly five-feet in height (150cm). Her thin frame would border on brittle, but sleight muscle definition can be seen on her legs and arms in particular. The mane atop her head was faded shades off wavy green and pink that turned nearly white towards the end of each lock. The very large almond shaped baubles that she called eyes sat in each socket with a big golden-glowing iris sitting at each center. Tati’s reptilian features are mostly present along her arms and legs as metallic scales of green, blue, and bits of pink can be found tracing them. Her hands also quite inhuman, with thicker green scales covering her hands down to her long clawed fingertips. Her human features were softer, pinkish ivory skin with small freckles tracing every unprotected bit of her fleshy skin.
Equipment: “Trees speak those who listen.”
As a Wildspeaker, Tati is capable of molding mana drawn from the leylines into plantlife and communing with beasts willing to listen. While still being relatively new to magic in general, she carries seedlings with her at all times in a small leather pouch at her waist. Accompanying this is a Yanaski Gnarlroot, a long wooden stave of warped wood that is rich with natural energies native to their swampland home.
Magic: “Sometimes they even listen.”
Wildspeaking ✦ The primitive natural magic passed down by Yanaski’s forest elf ancestors still lives on in the patches of tribes throughout the swamplands. It is not utilized in the conventional sense with spells, instead - the Wildspeaker channels mana into their being whilst attempting to commune with the spirits that reside within the environment itself. If these spirits do not answer back, the utilization of this magic falls short. Luckily, the Yanaski belief system revolves around assisting in the balance of life and have a good standing with those spirits from the get-go. The results of wildspeaking depend on both the environment and the mood of those spirits. Sometimes trees will uproot and begin to crawl like top-heavy spiders towards her enemy, sometimes some vines will sprout from the soil to debilitate then. While others, maybe a bed of flowers begins to sprout around them? Spirits are by their design, quite capricious, so the results of Tati’s requests are usually pretty random and difficult to determine ahead of time. Each usage is a gamble in itself, a roll of the dice.
Scales of Ska’yana ✦ The magic-imbued swamplands that the Yanaski people call their home are just as much responsible for the race’s gifts. The scales that they have upon their body are imbued with trace amounts of magic that allow the people to camouflage themselves to a certain degree. The changes of hue and shade are entirely biological, but the fading of their very personage from sight is surely the result of something else. Illusory magic does come easier to Yanaski than most, there are even Mistspeakers in their swamps who ask the water spirits to conjure mirages and ghastly visions on any hostile trespassers that encroach upon their homelands.
History: “Sah slii kast, za Ska’yana!”
Tati’yana was born in the Southeastern Marshlands within the remote Skri’tak Village. While many of the scattered populations focused primarily on fishing and hunting bugs and other small creatures, the Skri’tak primarily consumed the bitter sap from the mangrove trees and hunter larger prey during the winter. Tati’s mother was a reputable Wildspeaker while her father was a simple hunter, both of which held their weight in Skri’tak and did their part in Ska’yana worship. They named her Tati’yana meaning The Beauty of the Hunt in the language of the forest, specifically due to the rare pink colorations of her scales found on her arms and legs.
She lived a proper life during these early years, being taught to hunt and hide early on in her development - how to give back to the wilds so they can remain bountiful. Tati’s mother was the most prominent figure in her life, with countless late nights of spiritwalking after eating Sky Mushrooms and learning how to channel mana properly. Father usually hunted during the nights and slept throughout the day, but he was branded a Yanaka, “Chosen Hunter” before Tati even turned ten. Yanaka are charged with defending the tribes from outsiders and rarely returned to their home village once becoming such. It was a sudden transition for Tati but she eventually learned to love and respect her father for his thankless job.
Around the age of fifteen, her father would be found dead along the border of the swamplands. It wasn’t uncommon for Yanaka to turn up dead, and it was tradition that their home village make no waste of their body when it was found. Whatever wasn’t already claimed by nature would be eaten by friends, family, even neighboring tribes would sometimes partake in this sacred act. The loss has a strong affect on the young Tati’yana. Mothers and fathers died everyday, especially in the insect-ridden lands of oversized crocodiles and man-eating fish. But what really bothered her was that he died to something that he wasn’t hunting, it was another person who used magic.
Anger ignited the drive and curiosity of Tati to make several trips to the border of the marshlands, making small and usually fruitless investigations around the areas her father once patrolled. Her mother quickly picked up on these advancements and rather than dispel them, offering to accelerate her training so that she may leave Skri’tak sooner than later. The training to become a true Wildspeaker takes decades, and with the Yanaski’s lifespan of roughly one hundred years - meant that you wouldn’t be leaving the swamps till the middle of their lifetime. Instead she opted to learn as much as she could before heading off to Arskel to see if she could find anyone who knew of mages that tried to foolishly explore her homelands.
Natives of the swamp forests in the southeastern subtropics, the Yanaski people are usually seen as indigenous humanoids with reptilian or fish-like traits that have been developed to better suit their homelands. They range from monstrous to beautiful, but most are capable of altering the coloration of their scales to better blend in with their environment. Yanask culture is centered around the cycle of life and death personified into the idol of worship called Ska’yana - The Mother of the Hunt. While the majority of Yanaski people are found in their mangroves, many do tend to migrate out to explore the rest of the world.
Appearance: “Stop staring me!”
The Yanaski woman stands at the meager height of roughly five-feet in height (150cm). Her thin frame would border on brittle, but sleight muscle definition can be seen on her legs and arms in particular. The mane atop her head was faded shades off wavy green and pink that turned nearly white towards the end of each lock. The very large almond shaped baubles that she called eyes sat in each socket with a big golden-glowing iris sitting at each center. Tati’s reptilian features are mostly present along her arms and legs as metallic scales of green, blue, and bits of pink can be found tracing them. Her hands also quite inhuman, with thicker green scales covering her hands down to her long clawed fingertips. Her human features were softer, pinkish ivory skin with small freckles tracing every unprotected bit of her fleshy skin.
Equipment: “Trees speak those who listen.”
As a Wildspeaker, Tati is capable of molding mana drawn from the leylines into plantlife and communing with beasts willing to listen. While still being relatively new to magic in general, she carries seedlings with her at all times in a small leather pouch at her waist. Accompanying this is a Yanaski Gnarlroot, a long wooden stave of warped wood that is rich with natural energies native to their swampland home.
Magic: “Sometimes they even listen.”
Wildspeaking ✦ The primitive natural magic passed down by Yanaski’s forest elf ancestors still lives on in the patches of tribes throughout the swamplands. It is not utilized in the conventional sense with spells, instead - the Wildspeaker channels mana into their being whilst attempting to commune with the spirits that reside within the environment itself. If these spirits do not answer back, the utilization of this magic falls short. Luckily, the Yanaski belief system revolves around assisting in the balance of life and have a good standing with those spirits from the get-go. The results of wildspeaking depend on both the environment and the mood of those spirits. Sometimes trees will uproot and begin to crawl like top-heavy spiders towards her enemy, sometimes some vines will sprout from the soil to debilitate then. While others, maybe a bed of flowers begins to sprout around them? Spirits are by their design, quite capricious, so the results of Tati’s requests are usually pretty random and difficult to determine ahead of time. Each usage is a gamble in itself, a roll of the dice.
Scales of Ska’yana ✦ The magic-imbued swamplands that the Yanaski people call their home are just as much responsible for the race’s gifts. The scales that they have upon their body are imbued with trace amounts of magic that allow the people to camouflage themselves to a certain degree. The changes of hue and shade are entirely biological, but the fading of their very personage from sight is surely the result of something else. Illusory magic does come easier to Yanaski than most, there are even Mistspeakers in their swamps who ask the water spirits to conjure mirages and ghastly visions on any hostile trespassers that encroach upon their homelands.
History: “Sah slii kast, za Ska’yana!”
Tati’yana was born in the Southeastern Marshlands within the remote Skri’tak Village. While many of the scattered populations focused primarily on fishing and hunting bugs and other small creatures, the Skri’tak primarily consumed the bitter sap from the mangrove trees and hunter larger prey during the winter. Tati’s mother was a reputable Wildspeaker while her father was a simple hunter, both of which held their weight in Skri’tak and did their part in Ska’yana worship. They named her Tati’yana meaning The Beauty of the Hunt in the language of the forest, specifically due to the rare pink colorations of her scales found on her arms and legs.
She lived a proper life during these early years, being taught to hunt and hide early on in her development - how to give back to the wilds so they can remain bountiful. Tati’s mother was the most prominent figure in her life, with countless late nights of spiritwalking after eating Sky Mushrooms and learning how to channel mana properly. Father usually hunted during the nights and slept throughout the day, but he was branded a Yanaka, “Chosen Hunter” before Tati even turned ten. Yanaka are charged with defending the tribes from outsiders and rarely returned to their home village once becoming such. It was a sudden transition for Tati but she eventually learned to love and respect her father for his thankless job.
Around the age of fifteen, her father would be found dead along the border of the swamplands. It wasn’t uncommon for Yanaka to turn up dead, and it was tradition that their home village make no waste of their body when it was found. Whatever wasn’t already claimed by nature would be eaten by friends, family, even neighboring tribes would sometimes partake in this sacred act. The loss has a strong affect on the young Tati’yana. Mothers and fathers died everyday, especially in the insect-ridden lands of oversized crocodiles and man-eating fish. But what really bothered her was that he died to something that he wasn’t hunting, it was another person who used magic.
Anger ignited the drive and curiosity of Tati to make several trips to the border of the marshlands, making small and usually fruitless investigations around the areas her father once patrolled. Her mother quickly picked up on these advancements and rather than dispel them, offering to accelerate her training so that she may leave Skri’tak sooner than later. The training to become a true Wildspeaker takes decades, and with the Yanaski’s lifespan of roughly one hundred years - meant that you wouldn’t be leaving the swamps till the middle of their lifetime. Instead she opted to learn as much as she could before heading off to Arskel to see if she could find anyone who knew of mages that tried to foolishly explore her homelands.