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.
Post by chanel crestwalker on Jul 16, 2017 15:58:08 GMT
初めまして。
there is nothing outside of the ordinary at the tram station- a rush of people come and pass, trams rush through and a few broomsticks fly ahead. a few odd items left behind my strangers can be seen scattered across the cobblestone- from bags of logs to the odd pair of shoes, and today, even the dusty-looking frame of an old doorway leans patiently against the bench.
until it whirrs to life.
it starts buzzing and glowing, shaking slightly as though nursing something within. and then a girl springs forth- clad in a fashionable green summer jacket and jumping hoop earrings. the girl jumps from inside the broken doorway, landing with a crash against the station's floor.
she wobbles unsteadily, hissing in pain as she dusts herself ad slowly stands up.
[attr="class","gearcore"]The tram station was always filled with work. Sometimes trams wouldn't start or managed to drive (with minor problems) to this shared resting place for repairs. Although there was plenty to do, it was generally easy work, much unlike the complexity of fixing trains that broke down when barreling through the wilds between cities. The latter was his preference, but he'd rather not earn a reputation of only accepting risky, potentially life-threatening jobs. Plus, working at a station was interesting in its own way; the variety of people and objects which showed up to be transported usually had a handful of interesting oddities in its mix.
As he walked from his most recently fixed tram to the next complaint on his list, his coal-dirtied work clothes and clanking tool belt stuck out amongst the crowds of (mostly) well-dressed passengers. His quick stride only paused at the unusual sound of buzzing. The source, an old door, made itself obvious as it began to glow. Stepping back to give the thing some space, Zeph stared in wonder -- not because he'd never seen this kind of magic before, but rather because he knew exactly what it was. He'd made Gates like this before, but hadn't realized that there was anyone else who'd cobbled together a similar device.
"Where'd you get that?" he asked the woman who tumbled through the portal before realizing that wasn't the best way to start the conversation, "Actually, firstly, you alright? That looked like a rough landin'."
Post by chanel crestwalker on Jul 26, 2017 16:54:39 GMT
初めまして。
chanel doesn't really think of other people- it's a hard habit to create if it doesn't already exist. she doesn't think of them, so when one appears and asks her a sudden question her eyes take in ever detail. and her body quickly reacts- she seems visibly taken aback by the man's dreadful appearance- burn marks across his face and the color of coal staining his hands and his clothes.
she wobbles backward a bit, practically scared and undoubtedly insulted.
"why do you want to know?" she snaps, quickly on the defensive. she seems mostly placated by his next question, clearly attempting to decide how suspicious she should be of a stranger. "yeah..." her eyes narrow in suspicion. hard aqua irises scan the man from head to toe like some kind of wary predator.
"i'm fine...don't-" and then the remains of her heel cracked and she freeze-framed for a split second before toppling, like a domino about to set off something terrible.
[attr="class","gearcore"]Although hostility wasn't the most frequent reaction strangers showed him, it certainly wasn't uncommon. The mechanic just took a half-step back and raised his hands to shoulder-level, palms facing forward to show he wasn't trying to do anything shady. "Hey now, miss, I don't mean ya no harm."
He would have answered her question of why next, but the snap of a heel heralded her second fall. Zeph wasn't quick enough to physically lunge forward to catch her, but Spock was able to materialize on his shoulder in the blink of an eye, legs crossed casually and arm resting on the top of his head. His hand reached forward, causing the tiles of the floor to lift up to meet her halfway, cushioning her fall and cradling her like a net.
"So I know now's the moment when I'm s'posed to offer ya a hand, but seein' as I'm a bit of a mess presently, I reckon you'll want t' get up yourself if ya wanna keep that outfit clean," he vaguely motions to his soot-covered figure with his free hand, "But I could fix that heel for ya easy 'nough if ya got a couple seconds t' spare."
Post by chanel crestwalker on Aug 2, 2017 13:48:01 GMT
初めまして。
Chane blinked and shielded herself quickly (all those lessons in fencing having at the least improved her reflexes), but then found that she was leaning into a hovering tile. She blinked, slowly taking in what had happened. When the pieces came flying in together, she let the man have a genuine smile before reaching to her legs and pulling off both her heels.
"I like you," she said, with the prior assumption that was was enough to be a compliment- the exuding confidence something that was not mimicked or trained but born naturally within the heart of someone who had been taught all their life they were superior. "You're honest and you hit the mark, to be real. You know what they say about beauty being skin deep, I suppose."
There was a vague hint of lingering suspicion (or perhaps just general prejudice at the man's demeanor), but Chanel, for the most part, had returned to her cheery looking mood before she had run into Zephyr.
"Oh, really? I'll take you up on that if you don't mind. Walking barefoot in Sundial's a chore. And i'm not quite sure if this baby is running two-ways yet."
She handed her heels to him rather impatiently before turning her back to the blond altogether in favor of staring at her creation arms akimbo.
[attr="class","gearcore"]Zephyr snorts in amusement, allowing a light smirk to creep onto his lips, "Yeh, I might've heard that phrase a couple 'o times." That was an understatement. When his most obvious visual flaw was his scarred skin across his face, comments about anything being skin-deep were either avoided like the plague due to the fear of being insensitive or brought up with unusually high frequently depending on his conversation partner.
As she offers the heels, he wipes the front, then the back of his hands across a (mostly) clean portion of his clothes before gingerly taking one in each hand, the metal of one of his artificial fingers making a light click against the rigid heel. As promised, it only takes a second to examine the unbroken heel and a few seconds more to magically repair the broken one with Quikfix. He watches the crack fuse itself back together and quickly compares the two shoes again to ensure they're the same height before handing them back. "Y'know, ya never did mention where ya got that," he says to get her attention, head cocking towards the Gate, "I ask 'cause I've been settin' up a sim'lar thing between the trains."
But then he realizes -- how many people would wonder if some else's Gate went both ways? If she'd bought it, wouldn't she have known its limitations beforehand? "Did you make it?" he appends the question quickly, though there's a hint of uncertainty in his tone. The types of ladies who wore high heel shoes and pretty clothes weren't usually the type to have an interest in that kind of thing -- though, admittedly, he could count the number of people he knew who dabbled in magical crafting on either one of his hands.
Post by chanel crestwalker on Aug 30, 2017 13:33:46 GMT
初めまして。
Chanel is distracted- the stranger is nothing too important to her right now. She assumes he'll be sitting around behind her mending her shoes back so whatever he says sort of goes in one ear and out of the next. He says something about hearing something a lot, and she hums a distant "Oh, really?" and offers nothing more on the subject.
She does a bit of a half turn, looking at him with mild curiosity as he proposes his question. Her face splits into a grin. There wasn't much more he could have asked that would have made her happier. "Where I got it?" she asks, her tone gleefully playful. "I made it of course," she says, with chilling confidence and thinly veiled excitement about her own creation. So much, in fact, that she nearly misses the whole major gist of what he's saying.
She feels a numbness tingle at her fingers. "You've been doing what now?" she asks, wondering if she had misheard (or rather, having heard crystal clear yet struggling to understand the implications of what he's saying). She looks in muted surprise as he hands her back her heels- the cracks have vanished into an unseen yesterday. Pristine. (Except, her ever-twitching eye notices, a small smear of dirt on the edges.)
Her eyes scan the heels for evidence of repair. "How did you do that?" she accuses, her tone sharp despite how lightheaded she was suddenly feeling.
[attr="class","gearcore"] It seemed like this lady didn't give a single flying fuck about his existence. Normally, that was fine. He understood that people saw the mechanics, conductors, and ticket collectors as cogs in the machine of the railroad network. It didn't matter who filled those roles as long as the passengers arrived where they needed to go. However, when he stepped out of his role (such as keeping someone from falling and fixing their shoes), he usually expected at least a hint of acknowledgement.
But even so, she had created a physical portal, which was incredibly impressive according to Zeph. "Really? Well shit -- is it wood all th' way through? I've been havin' trouble gettin' any nonmetal frame to--" Although he could have very easily bombarded her with eager and genuinely curious technical questions, it seemed like she was beginning to actually hear him. "I've been settin' up gates in the trains," he says again, "Y'know, 'cause there's at least a dozen of 'em runnin' at once an' it's really just a gamble if you'll be on one that breaks down an' have the parts t' fix it, so instead I jump b'tween 'em."
However, by the time he explains this, she seems more interested in her shoes. "I told ya it'd only be a couple seconds," he says with a shrug and just a hint of smugness in his tone. "It's a spell I learned for fixin' things that a friend o' mine thought up. It comes in handy in this line o' work."
Post by chanel crestwalker on Sept 2, 2017 16:54:29 GMT
初めまして。
Chanel's head being lightheaded, she realizes, is the result of a thousand or so questions spinning around it simultaneously like fish in a bowl that's too tight for comfort and now all the spirals and whirlpools are making her nauseous.
"That's--" It sort of occurs to her suddenly that this man is a train engineer and she feels a profound sense of epiphany that yes these people do exist. It's almost like a culture-shock but like everything else thrown in her way, Lady Crestwalker takes in in stride. "--insane! It took me ages to build just this one. You fix trains for a living...How long have you--"
Have you known that you could do incomprehensible things like this?
She's staring at her shoe when the question resounds in her mind- like someone has dropped a coin into the bowl and now all the fishes are observing a single ripple in reverent silence. She realizes belatedly that it's her turn to speak.
"A friend of yours?" She asks, incredulous and breathless at once. Her eyes turn upwards to meet the stranger's and a coy smile plays at her lips. "I'd love to meet that friend," she jokes, flashing the stranger a set of pearly white teeth. Because there is no pretense in that moment, no real reason to do anything but the obvious. Everything melts away in the enchanting whisk of curiosity - she has nothing here to uphold or show off except her own innovation.
She blinks back to his original question. "It is wood all the way through. I just used two spare doors lying around-- Why, what did you do? With your portals? I wanted to try a metal frame initially but--"
A tram whizzes past, rattling on its rails and effectively blocking out half of what Chanel wants to say. She's stopped mid sentence and she sighs, though she seems to have the willingness to follow that up with a sheepish smile (and a pointed look of annoyance). "Hah. We should probably find somewhere less...noisy to talk. I'll check if the portal's working both ways. If not, I can buy you a drink."
Sol reminds her that she hasn't introduced herself yet, but Chanel ignores him. For some reason, she doesn't want to introduce herself to this man quite yet. She cannot comprehend why. She turns around and attempts to turn it back on.
[attr="class","gearcore"] Zeph can't help but laugh as she exclaims how insane it is. He supposed it was -- creating doors through space itself, seemingly breaking all known laws even in the realm of magic. It really was insane, and he was amazed he'd just happened to meet someone just as insane as him. "In your defense, when there's nothin' that needs t' be fixed, I got a whole lot o' down time t' work on my own projects," he admits. It had taken him ages to get the first few Gates working, but he'd been getting faster with practice.
"Yeh, he's the only other one I know who's got an interest in makin' stuff like this," he waves vaguely at the doorframe, not sure how to describe it. Adding magic to otherwise mundane objects was an enchanter's job, but this was different. He struggled to find a perfect definition for it, since, when he and Matteo talked about it, they understood each other without the need for such explanation.
Zeph kneels down to examine the frame as she confirms that it's made entirely of wood. The unpredictable grains had always fucked him over when he tried to use it as a medium. Metal was more obedient and forgiving in his experience -- but of course that could have just been his elemental affinity swaying his opinion.
He turns his head to look at her as her voice is drowned out by the passing tram, though she seems to have no interest in trying to shout over the clamor. As she mentions they should talk elsewhere, he considers the fact that he's still on the job for less than a full second. It was rare for people who were as competent as himself with magic to be working in laborious jobs like this, so he'd become a bit of a golden child among the mechanics. He reckoned he'd need to be found guilty of murder to actually get fired. "Good idea... Ladies first?" he motions to her Gate.
As she vanishes into the frame, he assumes it must have worked and walks through after her. Unfortunately, the gate flickers for just an instant when he's most of the way through. His (prosthetic) foot which hadn't quite made it through the threshold was cleanly severed off, causing him to stumble and nearly fall at his leg's unexpected shortness. Regaining his balance, he looks down at the stub and blinks. "Ah, well, that could've been worse..."
Post by chanel crestwalker on Sept 3, 2017 17:44:25 GMT
初めまして。
"Oh really?" She asks. "Where's his lab?" The networker inside of her sort of glimmers to the surface as Chanel quickly makes sense of an astonishing fact. There are others. Plural. There may be more. There must be more. If that is the case... then why should it be a big deal at all what she does n her spare time.
Lady Crestwalker, a familiar voice mocks from the back of her mind. She recognizes it but dismisses it quickly. There were more important things to be thinking about than the phantoms of some over-dramatized past.
When she tunes back in to reality, she promises that that will be the last time she gets distracted. She heards him say ladies first and smiles absentmindedly at the offhand comment. His chivalry is faultless yet so completely out of place. Chanel cannot help but judge his every action. Yet for once, she doesn't speak a single word.
She steps in through the gate. The scene that greets her is the familiar layout of her bedroom. She had moved the gate away from her lab in case some of those mice ran through on accident (she wasn't letting them around the house after that episode). The other side was a whole different world in comparison to the tram station. It was a huge and spacious room decorated with pinks and purples as well as the careless use of white- the crest of her family was rolled down in banners and sewed into her covers. The walls were wide and tall, the windows opened like doors to the vast wilderness beyond.
There was a clank noise from behind her and Chanel spun around. "Huh. Are you oka--"
Except the person is very cearly not okay. Because half his leg isn't there.
"Oh my god." Her eyes widen and Chanel screams before her hands fly to her mouth. For a few seconds she experiences nothing but absolute horror. Her mind pulls a blank and the air escapes her lungs so fast she doesn't realize when they're empty.
And then she sees it, and it all comes crashing down. "Holy shit-" she exclaims, in the manner of a person who does not curse unless held at gunpoint. Chanel collapses onto the floor as her wobbly knees finally give way. "A prosthetic, a prosthetic," she says, head loling backwards in resignation. She rests her head against the top of her bed for a moment as she collects her thoughts. "It's a prosthetic."
Her face is red with embarrassment. "Regardless, I shouldn't have led you through that portal. I--you--anyone could have died. I'm so sorry." Because Chanel can be a sadistic bitch, but she isn't a real sadistic bitch. She joined the knights for the fancy colors and her family, not for power or getting away with murder.
Alas her tender apology doesn't last long. "Young Lady?" comes a concerned voice from the outside of the room. Chanel glances at the door (which is quite a distance away). "Close it," she says in a dulled monotone. The humanoid figure that initially looked like a suit of armor whirrs to life and moves to obstruct the door. "I'm fine," yells Chanel, and she sighs before lifting herself up. She offers the stranger a hand, concern still evident in her blue eyes as she eyes the lump warily. If they had been a second too late...her heart shudders uncharacteristically. "Well that's the last time I mess around with molecular redistribution."
[attr="class","gearcore"] "Well, currently? It's in a corner 'f the Hovel due t' lack o' funds. He's lookin t' relocate, though," Zeph replies honestly. Part of him wanted to help Matteo achieve his dream, but a different part of him knew that the help would just dilute the other crafter's accomplishment, making it less his own.
As Zeph stepped through the Gate, he found himself completely out of his element. All of the pinks and family crests and huge windows seemed downright alien to him. He was so wholly distracted by the change of scenery, that he entirely forgot that this woman didn't know his leg was fake. That is... until she screamed.
Zephyr jumps in alarm and loses his balance completely, falling backwards on his ass. "Shit-- Waitwait it's okay, I'm fine, it's just metal--" he hastily hikes up the pant leg of the prosthetic in question to prove it, though he imagines the lack of blood would clue her in soon enough.
Thankfully, she does realize it's a prosthetic and sinks to the floor. "Yeh, sorry 'bout that... Prob'ly should've mentioned that first thing when it got cut," he huffs as he summons the severed foot to his hand with witch's call. Her apology seems genuine, and he likely would have had a reply for her had he not been getting his nerves back down to normal levels in the moments just before someone else in the house calls with concern.
Now that he thought about it... the way she was addressed and all of the crests decorating her room were pointing to the conclusion that this lady was far above Zeph's social status. This fact probably would have sullied his opinion of her if the thought wasn't violently interrupted by the sight of a robotic knight obediently closing her door. She said something about messing with something or other, but Zeph couldn't hear her over the existence of a robotic fucking knight.
"What... the fuck--" he pushes himself up, neglecting to repair his severed foot as he hops over to the humanoid creation and grabbing its head with both hands to examine it (and keep himself upright), "-- is this??" he exclaims, albeit in a hushed tone as to not alert the rest of the people in the house. "Your gates just need t' be tweaked a bit t' stabilize 'em and ya could test it out with inanimate objects but this -- this," Zeph motions to the knight, "It listens to commands? How did you--" he begins lifting up its arms and bending the limbs, "This is fuckin' brilliant."
