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.
[attr="class","lyric2”]heck yeah site events[break] (applies to all my characters)
[attr="class","textbod"]
There is colour in her dreams.
There are colours in her dreams - streaks of a rose's soft pinks, fade into primrose yellows and rich deep magentas and the delicate lilacs that remind her of her mother's favourite perfume; cerulean like the brilliance of a sky she barely remembers, gold like the shade of her father's laughter, quicksilver like the bell-chimes in the wind - and nothing else even registers, and nothing else is important, and she looks around and remembers;
and she loves;
and she experiences fully what she had once had, what she has now lost, what she hopes for and dreams for in the uncertainty of her future;
and she wakes up and the world is terribly. echoingly. dark.
And this time, this is the second time she has lost her vision, but this time she is conscious and aware and it is a gossamer-fragile dream dashed against the immovable mercilessness of cold reality; everything she has ever selfishly hoped for wrapped up in the multi-hued paper of vision. And it is torn away, fragmented into jagged shards that leave her bleeding at the heart and lacerating the struggling breath shivering in her oesophagus and slicing tears of absolute loss and desolation into her useless, useless eyes. Her chest is empty and her bones ache with grief and Aisling curls her fingers into her palms until they leave bloody crescent marks and she cries.
Paradise - she had forgotten what the world truly felt like with colour and light and sight and there was nothing, nothing that could have prepared her for it. Paradise - truly so, and Aisling wants to beg and scream and yell herself hoarse; why?
Why give her this glimpse, this beautiful, tantalising glimpse, then tear away the breathless joy from the delicate cup of her hands and leave a gaping hollowness in its wake? Why brush this fleeting, fluttering kiss against the slant of her cheek and flitter just out of reach from her desperate, grasping hands when she wakes with tear tracks drying on her skin and the remnants of an anguished scream dying in her throat.
Why, why wake her at all, when there is Paradise waiting just beyond the pearly gates, when life is cold and bleak and death brings with it the brilliance she had thought beyond her grasp forever?
Aisling wakes, and opens her eyes, and wishes she had not awaken at all.
Zari now had a new goal in life. Aside from becoming a rich and successful witch, she needed to find a way to stay up all night. She wasn't sure how exactly, but it had to be possible. Maybe a potion of some kind. Just imagine all of the extra time that could be spent working or studying to become the best. Find a way to sell it, and she'll be the famous witch who conquered sleep.
Most importantly, she'd never have to dream again.
This wasn't even the fifth time of vaguely-but-not-really dying in a dream, but once was enough. Zari wasn't about to get used to dealing with this nonsense on a regular basis. Like, nah. Considering the likelihood of her finding the person behind all of this--if there was one--it seemed easier to get rid of sleep entirely. Didn't solve the main source of the problem, but it should give everyone more time to figure out the source.
Zari accidentally thought back to the first round of nightmares and felt a chill run down her spine. Most of that experience had been blocked out for her own sanity, but she remembered how it nearly broke her. Afterward, she barely convinced herself that this world was the real one. The decision to quit worrying about it only worked if there weren't new dreams to add on more doubt.
So she ignored this one, and would gladly pretend it never happened. Besides, this dream just gave out some dumb advice that wasn't even worth taking seriously. Even if all of that singing or whatever took place in real life, Zari would not have listened. The world's a terrible place? Who cares? No one ever gained anything from quitting. Only losers came up with ideas like that, trying to blame everyone else for why they suck when they simply need to try harder. She couldn't accept the coward's way of living.
Paradise sounded like a wonderful place, her standing at the top of the heap where she belongs, but she had t get there by her own hand. If Zari can't earn her way to the top, then she'd rather die trying. Letting her family suffer because some voice said quitting will all work out, in the end, was absolutely not going to happen. Besides, if doing nothing would lead to perfection, then she couldn't screw this up. She needed a hobby to kill time until the world nearly ended, so why not continue working in the meantime?
Wherever this dream invading singer asshole really was hiding, they really needed professional help. Or a puppy. Being super depressed about everything couldn't be healthy.
443 WORDS
TAGGED
events? of course! you guys could drag me anywhere
[attr="class","gearcore"] Zephyr didn't understand the message -- or, rather, he chose not to. It was just a bunch of gibberish. False dualities. False promises. False condemnation and hope from a preacher's lips.
So why was he crying?
He wasn't entirely sure himself, and was having trouble sorting out his thoughts enough for his concerned familiar to understand. She was patient, however, and simply rested her head on his pattering chest, occasionally wiping away a path blazed by a tear across his cheek.
"They hurt." He didn't trust his voice enough to speak aloud.
Spock's fingers pause. She could begin to feel it too as it worsened, the sensation of her knees and toes twisting at unnatural angles, despite physically remaining unmoved from their resting position. Since, long ago, there was some time between Spock's first physical materialization and the fire which had lost Zephyr his legs, they both knew that the source of the pain (as nonsensical as it seemed) came from Zephyr, not her. "It's been a while." She speaks only when they're alone, when the silence is too thick.
"Haven't dreamed about 'em in a while, either," he notes, revealing the content of his most recent dream -- or was it a nightmare? -- as Spock repositioned herself to sit upright on her human's abdomen "I thought... it was just for a second... they felt real. It's been years since I had those dreams..." His thoughts stop abruptly and he jolts up a few inches when he feels a sudden, additional pain in his thigh. Glancing down at Spock, he could see one of her knives pointed towards her own thigh. "Some warnin'?" he asked out loud.
"I didn't want to interrupt," was all she offered with a shrug before pricking her own leg again. The two of them had discovered this solution to Zephyr's phantom pains years ago -- by feeling the sting of the knife from Spock's legs, he could feel their position, and this caused the sensation of unnatural twisting to stop. "Is that why you're upset?" she asked.
"Yeh... well, no..." Zeph huffed as he plunged his head back onto his pillow. "It's part of it..." He waited for some of the pain to subside and for his thoughts to reorder themselves before continuing. "There was a blue haired preacher lady talking about a bunch of bullshit 'bout kings an' gods an' dreams."
"Sounds like a pretentious bitch," the monkey chimes in.
"Hah," Zeph chuckles, wiping away some lingering rouge tears, though they were subsiding, "Yeh, she did."
"Do you think she was real? Like that other Nightmare?"
Zeph hesitates to answer. "... I don't think my own head thought up that shit. But it wasn't like the other one... She said I should get liberated from duty an' enter paradise."
'That sounds like she wants you to off yourself."
"Well... I guess not too different, then..." He huffs. His nonexistant legs are beginning to feel normal again (or as close to "normal" as they could ever be), albeit with rows of tiny cuts along the side. Now that he thought about it, he had the same ache in his chest now as when he felt as if he was isolated for days in the nightmare: the same sense of being lost, the same sense of incompleteness, and the same sense that he was looking for something he'd never find. "Do you think someone would have taken me in if Aeris hadn't had that obligation?"
Sprocket gave him a sidewards glance. She didn't have to say anything for it to be obvious that the question had seemed to come out of the blue.
The silence made way for the opening of his thoughts' floodgates. "I got picked up by some Leviathans because of the coven's obligation to my parents, and Aeris brought me in because of his obligation to the coven. Anyone I know from Leviathan I know 'cause we're workin' towards the same goals so they're forced t' cooperate with me, an' anyone I know outside the coven likely wouldn't wanna know me if they knew the kind of shit I've been hiding from 'em." He had so many half-families -- Leviathan, the Rothscuses, the locomotive workers, Jester's Den, even Spock -- but he fit into their groups at odd, sometimes forced angles. When he pressed all these half-families together just right, they could feel like a whole one, but some days the illusion fell apart, leaving him feeling incomplete in more ways than physically.
"You've earned their respect -- or at least their friendship -- regardless of how you first met," Spock reminds him as she rests her head back down on his chest.
But he isn't sure that his heart believes her.
ooc --
tldr; Zeph's "paradise" is feeling whole & pls drag him to events, yes
there's an old man sitting on the throne that's saying
that i should probably keep my pretty mouth shut
[attr="class","rotation"]
[attr="id","invite"]
Darkness embraces her
like an old friend. Darkness is her element, one of the few things she's always found comfort in. It's different this time, though: When she opens her eyes, she's realizes she can't see. For the first time in years, the cloak of darkness that surrounds her is playing not in her favor, but against her. When she opens her mouth, she tastes emptiness. An emptiness so heavy she's certain she's drowning; she's never experienced such a thing but she knows, somehow she knows, she's sinking and there is no one to save her.
Correction: there's only her to save herself.
She stands at the edge of a cliff, overlooking a sea of whites and grays. This is when she realizes she's dreaming, again. Only in a subconscious state would she be able to come up with such a dramatic scenery. The corners of her lips are lifted, but the smile doesn't quite reach her eyes. She can hear the disembodied voice all too clearly. "You must turn your back to enter paradise," it says, and she believes it. The world as it stands would never be close to what she envisioned; a safe haven for the unbiased pursuit of knowledge.
The lines separating each shade of gray start to blur. She reckons the message couldn't possibly be literal, but she turns on her heels even so: unsure of what to expect, unsure if she ought to expect anything at all.
Erin's bed is king-sized, and way too big for her. She wishes she'd gone with a single bed, but the apartment had been sold to her furnished, and getting rid of the current bed sounded like more of a chore than purchasing a new one. Her eyes open again, and this time they meet the white of her ceiling. She wakes up in the same position she left her consciousness in; the same way she always sleeps. Siri is on her as soon as her first breath leaves her mouth, greeting her good morning and giving her a summary of everything she had to do that day.
"'Morning." She's not groggy, but she requires her familiar to recite her schedule one more time before she's got her full attention.
"Are you feeling unwell?"
Erin looks up, surprised that Siri's chosen this moment to actually speak. She frowns, shakes her head. Unwell? No. That's not what I'm feeling. Siri should know, given their emotional link. Asking questions is unnecessary. The enchantress is already stepping outside her bedroom when she finally answers, verbally that is, "Let's get to work."
She feels like she's missing something, but then, when has she ever felt otherwise? She could stop worrying when she saw Leviathan rise above every other coven, and above the Sundial Council.
[attr="class","cassbody"]When Cassidy lays her head to sleep, she finds that it comes easily, unlike most nights. She greets the darkness like an old friend, and descends. In her state of unconciousness, she usually rests easy--and yet today, she can't shake the feeling that there is something wrong.
Her lips part, but no air comes in, and she struggles to breath. When she breaks into the surface, deprived of oxygen and her lungs on fire, she nearly collapses on the ground. Cassidy stands, and her world morphs from darkness to washed out greys, the edges of a cliff a comfortable distance away from her.
Stark blue hair contrasts strongly with her dull grey world. A voice sings, strangely loud despite the distance, and she lingers, uncertain. Paradise awaits your embrace, they end, and she finds herself idly wondering what her idea of paradise really is.
She wakes to sunlight piercing the lids of her eyes, and sleep slowly, eventually fades. Like most days, she finds it difficult to wake. Sleep tries to pull her back into the dream, and she drearily reaches forward, hands grasping at it's lingering trails, left empty and hungry for more.
Cassidy warms to the idea of paradise, but she truly wonders what it is. Is it a life of opulence, of riches and wealth and luxury? Or is it with her family, in Leviathan and her friends? To be a powerful witch, remembered for centuries? They're pleasant dreams, but she must admit that many of them do not belong to her. They are not hers to keep.
Would I like to go to paradise? She thinks, Would it be worth losing everything else?
She rolls and lays on her back, hair splayed behind her, eyes drifting lazily across the ceiling. Vali materializes next to her and yawns. He paces around the room, tail flickering in slight agitation. It's not far cry from how he usually is.
"Good morning." He says, his voice gruff but neutral, "You seem difference today."
She sits up and lurches forward, her expression more distraught than usual. That dream was strange, but it wasn't a nightmare per se, just. Different.
"I'm alright." She says, swinging her legs over the bed. She stands and makes her way to the bathroom, leaving Vali in the dust. She's not someone who easily shares her sentiments, even to her familiar, whose relationship to her is already shaky as it is, or Juls, who is her current boyfriend.
These feelings will fade eventually, and she doesn't seek to share them.
this concludes the sweet slumber event. thank you to everyone who participated in this event. you have all received 80g. we look forward to your participation in the future!
