this is Salem, a land filled with magic and maladies. It is a place where witches and their elemental familiars gather, a home to legend and
lore that predates time itself. Yet of all the wicked and wonderful stories the past can tell us of, the most magical are the ones yet to happen.
This is Salem - this is the start of your very own journey. Welcome to starfall
Starfall is an animaga witch roleplay set in mostly modern times. Members play as witches in a world plagued by monsters, where the only safe spots are walled cities. Starfall strives to be a character-driven roleplay with expansive lore and a highly interactive plotline. We want to allow members to
create and look back on a magical journey, and mold the site and its plot as their characters grow.
The duck was exasperated. they were on their second month spent outside of sundial and, while Cassius had paid the rent on their actual home in advance, as well as alert the landowner that they would be out of town for a while, it had gotten ridiculous at around the same time that Cassius had decided to stop shaving.
"Like hell I can't. I'm not going back. Not after that whole thing happened." He was currently fumbling his way around the base of the lighthouse, only a candle to light things as he rummaged through the piles that held his essentials, looking for a can of beans to warm up on the stack of firewood outside. Finding one, he picked it up, blew out the flame, and fumbled his way back outside.
In his time out here on the outskirts, his look had become...disheveled to say the least. his clothes were dirty, a thick beard covered his face, and his ponytail had long since been abandoned for the long, matted mess that now hung around his face like some mangy mane. "'The Demon's Nightmare', or whatever they called it was too much. I'm not going back. Not like anyone would miss me there anyhow."
You know full well that Aeliana is going to have a heart attack when she finally gets word that you've gone missing.
"She'll get over it, Beck. Now help me find that tinderbox so I can get us some dinner cooking." He complained to the bird, as he rummaged through the collection of an old folding chair, a stack of firewood, and various other bits of stuff and trash that had accumulated over his "stay".
Post by heath ambroise on Sept 22, 2017 3:48:05 GMT
There had been a tip off from someone somewhere that something was creeping about one of the lighthouses. Which one? Who knew really. So, Heath had set to investigate both. He’d already visited the other one. Nothing. Not a shred of anything. Maybe a dead raccoon? But honestly, he hadn’t stuck around to see if it really was dead. He’d waited at sundown for anything to appear. Not a shred of anything interesting. Hopefully this one panned out and he wasn’t just chasing a story that didn’t exist.
Spoiler alert it hadn’t. He’d observed the lighthouse for activity for a bit. He’d seated himself among some trees and just laid low while sketching out the scenery in a notepad while Sinclair laid on a tall branch. In case this did produce even a tiny column, at least he would have an illustration to go along with it. He drew until it was too dark to see and then returned tp staring at a lighthouse. The smell of the sea was pungent here. He could hear the soft roar of waves crashing in the distance. Heath shivered slightly at the thought of a dark sea expanding until the horizon. He hated the ocean at night. And this wasn’t like Venice Beach. There were no lights ere except what the moon and the stars could provide.
“Something is coming out!” his familiar hissed suddenly in his mind. Heath almost shot up to see. He flinched before slowly peeking at whatever had caught Sinclair’s interest. It wasn’t impressive in the slightest. “Are you serious…?” the witch sighed as he watched some sort of hobo hobble out of the building and fuss with something. “It’s something.” Sinclair replied indifferent to his witch’s frustration. The blonde stood up, dusting himself off before making a bee line for the squatter. “Evening.” He greeted once he was halfway there. “Mind if I ask you a couple of questions…sir?” he continued trying not to make a face at the stranger. Now that he was closer he realized he really was a hobo. The clothes, the supplies, the stench. Sinclair has followed, keeping in step. He gave the duck a solemn nod in sympathy for the trash fire of a witch they had.
That was his response when his fumbling for the tinderbox was interrupted by some youth approaching him. He stared at the man at first, taking in his clean appearance. No one really came out this way, and the tone with which he addressed Cassius felt demeaning and pitiful. Not to mention the question at hand.
He scowled as he got up, his eyes piercing through the darkness to glare a hole in the man. "If this is about the Demon's Nightmare or whatever, I don't want to answer questions. If this is about Jester's Den wanting me back, I don't want to answer any questions. In fact, I don't want to answer any questions, period. So run off and leave me to my thoughts."
He picked himself up, tired of the man's presence and began to walk around to the entrance of the lighthouse to retire inside, tucking his can of beans and tinderbox under his arm, and picking up the folding chair to take with him. As he stormed off, Beck hopped a little forward and addressed the man.
"My apologies, but you will have to forgive Master Cassius. The whole Demon's Nightmare incident left quite the mark on him. He almost lost a coven member during it, and has been taking it out on himself since." At this, the duck picked itself up, and flew its way over to the shoulder of his witch, who began to make his way back into the confines of his "temporary" residence.
Heath’s eyes narrowed in a mix of annoyance and confusion. Seriously? “Perhaps you will reconsider when you hear that I am not here on behalf of my coven, or for old news.” He said evenly as the witch before him began to leave. As if pretending that he didn’t exist and being rude would make Heath leave. He was a reporter, and this was child’s play to him. He’d get the disgusting hobo to talk. Or he could get his statement from the local authorities. This was clearly illegal. He looked back down at the stranger’s familiar, his annoyance softening as the duck spoke. “I see…” he stated before looking down at Sinclair.
“I could ice him out.” The coati suggested quietly.
“I’d rather you didn’t.” Heath returned just above a whisper.
“You can’t be serious.”
“A reporter doesn’t build rapport by attacking the people they are interviewing.”
With that, Sinclair huffed and moved closer to Heath as the blonde resolved himself to follow the smelly bastard, into his even smellier dwelling. He entered the lighthouse cautiously. Sinclair followed discreetly, staring into the darkness of the building angrily. He was uncomfortable in here despite his ability to see easily in the darkness. Heath couldn’t. It would take him a moment to adjust. A dangerous, tense moment for the familiar. They should’ve left the angry hobo to himself. “As I was saying-” the blond announced, unafraid to follow the man indoors. He didn’t own the place after all. “I would like to ask you a few questions. It will only take a few minutes and then I will be out of your hair.” He repeated. “My name is Heath Ambroise. I’m here to investigate recent reports of strange movement, sounds, and even lights occurring in the lighthouse. How long have you been dwelling here Mr…uh?” he trialed off as he looked in Cassius’ direction. His eyes were beginning to adjust to the darkness and he was slowly starting to make out the man’s features instead of just his outline.
He sighed as the man followed him in, unsure of how to process this. He was about to teleport behind the man with shadow step and threaten him until he heard the bit about old news.
He raised an eyebrow and turned around. "For real? No joke, you are the first person to actually tell me they don't want to hear about it. And honestly, its refreshing." He kicked some of the junk in the room to the side as he swung around and set up his chair.
"Sorry about the mess, it was here when I got here, I swear." He collapsed his weight into his chair and enjoyed the feeling, pulling over a lantern and lighting it with a quick strike of a match off of a nearby toolbox, casting dancing shadows across the walls.
As the man asked his first question, He reached out his hand to offer a shake, "Constantine. Cassius Constantine. And I've been out here camping for about a month or two now."
The bird scoffed a bit from its new perch upon a light fixture over the door, its vantablack form melting into the background, its red eyes piercing. "Camping implies a plan to return to civilization at some point in the near future. I fear he lacks such plans."
Cass glared at his familiar before clarifying for the reporter. "I may be squatting out here, but it was only temporary. Only until I could clear my head enough to get back to work in the city." He let out a sigh and sank back into his chair. "So is there anything else you want to know about me?"
Heath quietly wondered how long the guy had spent out here. He made a face at the smell of the interior and refused to find a place to sit. He would rather stand. He also seemed not to understand how the newspaper worked. There weren’t any new developments about the Demon’s Nightmare. The press had been flooded with testimonies and a search for answers. But that was awhile ago. Maybe he’d read more articles recently and that was why he was so on edge. Or maybe he’d just found an old newspaper among the trash of this lighthouse… Still, it seemed to put Cassius at ease and that was what he needed if he wanted to get his answers. “Yes, well, I am glad you are relieved now.” He said with a quick nod as he tried to get a good look at his surroundings.
“Yes, of course. I’m going to assume that goes for the stench as well.” He said lightly, a tiny smile pulling at the edge of his lips. He blinked quickly at the sudden light, squinting as his eyes readjusted before relaxing once more. He quickly reached up to grab the stranger’s hand, and offered a firm shake. “Heath Ambroise, reporter. Nice to meet you, Cassius.” He said as he offered his own name in return. He nodded as he dropped his hand back to his side. “Excellent, I think the reports are only a few days old, at the latest.” Though perhaps that had more to do with the fact that no one came out here. Well, except for the hobo before him. Though, despite his immediate appearance, he was more well mannered than expected. Even if he had been a little hostile outside. He turned his attention to the duck and nodded again. “That is unfortunate. I will make sure to inform the coven if they begin asking for him then.” He looked back at the witch. “You did say you were from Jester’s Den right?” Heath asked to clarify.
He raised his eyebrows at what he considered a weak excuse from a weak looking witch. Did this even qualify as living though. Hazel eyes slowly scanned the dimly lit surroundings before looking at the general state of the building. This place looked like a dump. And he’d lived in dumps. “You’ve been here for around 2 months correct? Have you encountered anything strange in the past week, or overall while living here?” Heath asked, watching the hobo unblinkingly. Despite the possibility that…all the stranger happenings had probably been Cassius, he decided to ask. He thought, if anything, he could at least have a column piece. It was a little amusing to confuse a squatting hobo with a supernatural phenomenon. “Odd sounds, flickering lights?” he prodded, his focus on completely on Cassius as Sinclair roamed the lighthouses, sniffing lightly and investigating on his own.
He settled down as Heath began to ask him questions, taking them all in. He could tell, however, that this person was silently judging him, and that made him a little peeved, but he could understand. He had been living in an uninhabited shithole for a month, so he supposed it would be only natural that someone assume the same of him, "That's correct, I am a member of Jester's Den. And I would ask that my name and coven be stricken from the record of whatever article you plan to write, as they need not suffer for my decisions."
He leaned back in his chair and let out a deep breath at his next question. "No, I haven't seen any sort of lights flickering or unexplained noises. There are no ghosts or spirits here that I have yet to notice." He rolled his eyes at the notion actually. He knew of many beliefs in the afterlife, and didn't scoff at them, but the existance of a ghost in the lighthouse made little sense to him personally. There were rules about these sort of things. The place they inhabited had to be decrepit and haunted-looking, had to be inticing to just-of-age teenagers to go camping out at without parent supervision, there had to be a large body of water nearby for some to go skinny dipping in, and oh my god this lighthouse fits all of those.
As realization began to dawn on his face, he turned to the reporter. "you don't actually think this place is haunted do you? I mean, those tropes are just tropes right? Not some supernatural checklist of things they require to haunt a place right? You don't think we are actually in danger right?"
Post by heath ambroise on Oct 11, 2017 3:27:34 GMT
Heath nodded ambivalently as Cassius spoke. He merely moved to let the guy know he was listening. Cassius claimed he hadn’t seen anything out of the ordinary. Of course, they could be mistaken and it could’ve been Cassius doing all along. But then, if people were wandering around wouldn’t they have noticed him sooner? Even the thought if the supernatural seemed to amuse his companion. He didn’t seem affected at all, until he thought about it a little longer. Heath snickered quietly as his panicked thoughts spiraled into out of control ramblings. “You said you moved out here about a month or so ago?” the blonde asked, seemingly unaffected by Cassisus’ sudden fear. “And that you haven’t noticed anything right?”
“Yes, he didn't! Just like he hasn’t noticed that Godsawful stench or the peach fuzz on his face.” Sinclair hissed as he kicked over a bit of trash from a corner. Heath cast a glance at his familiar as the nosy coati continued his own investigation. “What I was trying to get at is, you would know better than I right? But there’s also the fact that…as your familiar mentioned you may have been a little out of it for a bit. Maybe enough to not notice the beginnings of something eerie.” Heath truthfully didn’t know what to believe. That was the reason he had bothered to investigate in the first place. He was a reporter, it was his job to look into matters for the facts. Unlike detectives and police, he didn’t work for the Sundial government so his subjects were far more open for him to pick and choose. Naturally he had asked about the possibility of a haunted building and if could write about it; no one had stopped him.
“Anyway, what I think matters very little. I’m here to discover what the actual truth is.” He stated. “Although, considering how long you’ve been here, if there is something amiss, I’d bet money you were the cause of it.” The journalist added as he jotted something down. “After all, I don’t think poltergeists like sharing.” He let his words hang in the air before quietly calling his familiar who eagerly moved away from the trash he had been rummaging in and stood by his side. Heath then clapped his hands loudly, once, to get Cassius’ attention once more. “Since you’ve been here so long mind giving me a tour of the building please?”
He chuckled a bit as the man asked for the tour, getting himself up and giving a low "Sure, I suppose so". Beck flapped down from his perched and landed on his master's shoulder as he gestured about him. "Well, as you can see this is the ground floor. It has been a mess like this since I moved in, and as such I spend most of my nights outside with a campfire. I prefer the natural air to the stuffiness in here anyhow."
He kicked his way through the trash to the long spiraling staircase, working his way up with Heath in tow. The steps creaked with age and brushed with the occasional rust spots. As they slowly spiraled their ways up, trying not to trip, he pointed to a lightbulb whose light flickered sporadically. "I don't know what's up with that thing, I've actually tried replacing both it and the wiring, but it seems to want to keep flickering." Both he and the bird didn't pay it much thought, and he worked his way up to the top, the large light spinning slowly to cast its beam over the ocean.
"And up here we have the light. Simple enough, and quite visible from far away, or so I would hope." He chuckled a bit about this, dismissing the quote unquote GRAND TOUR, and wondering why the journalist would be interested in this whole place. "Now if you'll excuse me, I'd like to get back to my fire and cook me up some dinn-"
He found himself cut off by his own mind, for as he rotated about the platform, his eyes came to rest on something new. Upon the glass, written in a way that he would be able to read it, were big bold letters, seemingly made out of liquid blood reading "LEAVE NOW". He tilted his head a bit, trying to comprehend the lettering, before speaking up.
Post by heath ambroise on Nov 25, 2017 2:13:05 GMT
He followed the stranger and his duck upwards, glancing around at the dilapidated walls and making note of it. He paused to squint up at the flickering light bulb. “The…wiring you said?” he repeated finding the phenomenon odd, but not entirely scary. He didn’t have enough technical knowledge about electrical wiring to know for sure if that was unusual, but it seemed to be within the realm of possibility for something to keep flickering despite changing out wiring and light bulbs. Maybe the power was just terrible here.
He stopped to admire the top of the lighthouse, his eyes drawn to the spinning pride and joy of the tower. The journalist stared at it, mesmerized for a moment before looking over at Cassius as he cut himself off. “What?” he managed before turning to look at where the man was staring at. Heath’s eyes widened, and Sinclair tensed angrily. The hair on his back stood up. Heath’s own neck felt prickly and a chill came over him as he read over the…blood? Whose blood was it? Normally the cold wasn’t a bother to him. His blood was always cold it felt. Just a strange side effect of the element he wielded. But this felt different to his powers. It was the fear of that creepy unknown that all humans hated. They hated not knowing. That fear manifested itself in the blonde’s desire to write, to investigate.
Although, now he felt an urge to investigate elsewhere. He turned to his companion and cracked a nervous grin, attempting to normalize the situation with sarcasm. “That wasn’t included in your open house?” he asked. Heath forced down the instinctual panic that came with the unknown. “Maybe we should double check the lighthouse once more. I just want to make sure that-” he pointed to the red words. “Isn’t the only new thing you’ve missed.”
He was still reeling a bit mentally from having just witnessed blood scrawled upon the wall, so it took him a moment to realize what exactly was going on. "Yeah...yeah let's do that. Just in case though..." He focused on the shadows, focusing through Beck to have the shadows crawl up to his shoulder and form a blackened pseudo arm.
He was a bit shaken. It wasn't that he believed in the supernatural, if anything he considered himself a skeptic. That being said, above all, he was still a practical person, and if this was a person or a, dare he say, ghost, he wanted to be prepared. Like the wizard scouts said he guessed.
He started to make his way back down slowly, taking each step with caution, not for the age of the lighthouse, but rather for the sake of caution. Each creak seemed to echo more than it should, every breath, resonate off of the walls, every beat of his heart like a timpani in his head.
He felt a deep shiver run down his spine.
He felt like it had gotten colder in here, much more so than it should have.
Post by heath ambroise on Apr 20, 2018 14:36:24 GMT
“What trickery is this?” Sinclair snarled as he fearlessly moved towards the blood scrawling while Heath slowly followed his companion instead. “Stick with me, Sinclair.” he warned his familiar as he paused long enough for the coati to run towards him. Though, confused Sinclair could sense the fraying edges of fear that Heath was struggling to hold at bay. He was unnerved but they both had to keep on. Sinclair, eager to get the job done,didn't tease his witch. Once panic set it was hard to get Heath to think straight. He moved recklessly. It wasn't a good time for anyone. The pair caught up with their host after taking the steps two at a time. “Any other rooms of interest here?” Heath managed to ask as he gathered himself after that sight.
“Sh-Shouldn’t you clean that up?” he added, frowning as he tried to rationalize where it came from. “On that note, have there been...uh.. any other things here like the flickering light bulb?” he added quickly as he began scribbling down notes again. "You've been here for a couple of weeks right?" Again, was he supposed to believe that this was just getting worse now? What had Cassius been doing that he hadn't noticed his own home was possibly acting strange. Or, perhaps he only used this place for shelter and spent most of his time in the wilderness. But still, had none of this been concerning or had it worsened only once the number of intruders had gone up?
