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.
Charani vanishes somewhere between the dusty bookshelves, but to be honest, Ling barely notices at all. She's already far too engrossed in grabbing every book she thinks she might need, muttering to herself fragmented theories under her breath as she wanders along the aisle. Valkea trails behind her with the exasperated fondness of someone who has witnessed this behaviour too many times to count; occasionally, he nudges her away from tripping hazards too. The best familiar, truly.
"Okay, so, I'm thinking those runes were from a 9th century mod, pretty sure we've read about them before. Once. In that book... what was it called?" Dumping everything down on a table ( and on the floor next to it, because truly there are too many to fit, whoops ), Ling flips open three books at once, glances at their indexes, and discards two immediately. The third one she opens to the section on runic modifications for artifact construction and basically starts inhaling the content.
Ling may not be the best witch to contract for missions, but one skill that she does have and is quite fucking good at, is reading and digesting content very very quickly.
"Alternate forms of ansuz... linking god runes together with a crystalline structure... lattice maybe? If the maths works out... Affected by the eclipse..." She's scribbling down rapid notes as she reads, in a shorthand that probably is illegible to anyone save herself; grab another book, cross reference, discard, repeat. Valkea, very familiar with Ling's research methods, helps by bringing over books with the references and information she needs while pushing away the ones she is done with. With his exclusive access to her brain and thought processes, it's actually an amazing system. They probably look halfway insane to the rest of the library ( or like desperate uni students, which is an aesthetic Ling is really not opposed to ), but hey, if it works, it works.
Levi Ling was so busy with her research and books that she barely seemed to register the boy was gone. Tat was fine... he was busy chasing a lead of his own with his magic. Where would he find that kind of thing in this massive library? Just follow the trail to Fairy Tail what was being sought after. This may not be helpful in this research but it was where he should go he just knew it.
"I wonder what this is?" he said as he stopped in front of a bookshelf in the very back of the library. It was literally filled with cooking books and nothing else. Well nothing but a glowing book... well not actually glowing but glowing because he needed to pick it up. There was no title on either side of the cover and the spine was so worn it held no clues. Well better give it to Levi Ling so she could use it... whatever it was. He made his way back to the girl.
"I'm not sure if this book is helpful since I don't know what it is but it kind of... just called to me?." His fingers slowly released the book as close to the rune witch as humanly possible. She didn't seem to be paying much attention to the world around her with the familiar she was with kind of leading her along in her steps. Well that was interesting.
Charani was curious what she was reading and if she found anything out. She was kind of just mumbling to herself a lot. A lot of things he didn't really get or honestly want to understand because it sounded hard and kind of annoying to learn.
Her rhythm of open book, devour, cross reference, keep or discard, and repeat is abruptly interrupted by Charani's return, and she looks up with vaguely dazed eyes before remembering that oh yes, she has a mission partner. That she is currently on a mission, a fact that she had halfway forgotten. How long has she spent researching so far? Ling wouldn't be able to tell you for the life of her.
"Oh, okay. Thank you! What's it on?" She accepts the book, looking over it with curious eyes. The cover is deep blue, noticeably old and frayed at the spine and no indication of title or author. Nothing to hint at the contents either, but Ling trusts in Charani's judgment ( and his divination abilities ) to pick out what's helpful and what's not.
She flicks it open, checking both front and back for an index that is not there, shrugs and starts reading. Stops. Blinks. Looks up at the Knight with wide eyes. "Where did you find this?!" she blurts out, absolutely shocked. "This is- I'm pretty sure- I think this was written by Alexander Kensick, one of the most famous artifacters in history! His books are-" very very rare, and Ling is holding one of them in her hands. The library has a book by Kensick, and none of her fellow runescripters knew about it.
Wow. She just... doesn't have the words.
Valkea sighs and rises to his feet, lightly whacking her with his tail. "Mission," he reminds in a long-suffering tone, and she's abruptly brought back to reality.
"Oh! Yes! The mission!" She starts paging through the book, though taking care not to so much as crease the ancient pages. "I'll need a bit of time to read through this, but it already looks pretty promising..."
"No clue." He had no idea what was in the book as he had no opened it. Ling however was quick to scour the contents of this new tome as soon as it graced her fingers. The pages looked well worn and the words inside looked blotchy and old but still readable it seemed. Ling seemed to be excited about it.
Those sounded like good phrases and words that she was using. So it would be useful in this case at the very least and that was enough for Charani. The witch was taken aback a bit by her sudden onslaught of words and questions. She was speaking a mile a damn minute with obvious excitement.
"It was on the shelf with the vegan cookbooks?" he said explaining where he had found the tome. A book that rare was hidden in plain sight in this massive library that saw so much foot traffic each day. It was in the one place nobody would ever look. Nobody.
"Okay. Let me know if you need anything else? Imma just sit here all quite like..." He could just sit there while she read all quite like. He could read one of the books in his bag! Maybe the one about daring sword fights, magic spells and a prince in disguise! But wait he's read it all ready... but also it was his favorite. Especially the part where she meets prince charming for the first time... not that she'll figure that out until chapter 3.
"Vegan cookbooks?" The phrase is unexpected and weird enough to pierce through Ling's research mania, and she looks up with an expression of baffled disbelief, before shrugging and returning to the pages. "Maybe that's why no one else has found it before..."
She hums in agreement at whatever Charani says next, already too deep into the tome again to really register anything else; a full on earthquake could occur and there's a very good chance Ling wouldn't even notice. Or at least, not notice enough to care. Valkea sighs and hops onto her lap, curling up there and closing his eyes. They're going to be here a while, he knows. It's a good thing the Knight had brought his own entertainment.
"...linked to the ebb and flow of mana fields... careful construction of conflicting fractals... modified god runes... Okay, I think I've got an idea!" Who knows how many hours later, Ling finally resurfaces from her books and notes, closing the tome with a definitive thump and waving her notes in the air like a victory flag. A particularly heavy victory flag, because she's written enough to be a small book in and of itself. Which is not inaccurate, because holy heck the runework on the artifact had been more complicated than she'd initially expected, and she can totally see Kensick's theories inciting a small revolution in the runescripting community after this.
"This is still an estimate, and I'll need to go back and take another look at the artifact, but I'm pretty sure it's something meant to draw and contain electrical power from either a storm or elemental techniques, and then convert that power into a source of energy to be drawn upon later. Or something like that. The artifacting part of runescripting isn't really my specialty," she explains sheepishly.
"I didn't even know we had that kind of section here... though we do have one of the largest libraries in the area...." It was the Helios Knights library after all and if he knew one thing it was that the Knights loved to have all scraps of information possible about every subject imaginable. It could be useful later after all. The Knights were all about knowledge to increase their own goals and power.
He really didn't understand what she was talking about though. It was a bunch of techno mumbo jumbo since he didn't really... you know get really how runescripting worked besides the very very basic part where runes made magic happen. It was like writing magic to make it work or something like that? He didn't really get it.
A few hours and to be honest two bathroom breaks later the girl seemed to jump up with excitement with her discovery that she decided to grace his feeble mind with. In other words she tried to explain her findings to someone who had the bare minimum knowledge on the subject so he kind of only understood some of what she said. He got the part about electricity and storing power for later use.
"Okay. So it's like an electrical conduit? Maybe its like a core or something? Why else would you need that much energy unless it was to power something..." But to power what? Maybe it was to power up a witch? Like an extra supply of mana for fighting? Or was it for some kind of machine? Something a crafter would make? Or maybe a focal point for summoning? Instead of a summoned creature drawing upon the user's mana pool for attacks it could draw on the artifacts. Many options.
She taps her lip, considering Charani's words for a moment. "Uh, less like an electrical conduit and more like... a giant battery? Or, like, a power converter, from elemental magic to mana. Or something like that. Like I said, I'm not quite certain." She shrugs. "I think it could genuinely be an attempt at something meant to power something else, though what kind of battery needs such a fancy design, I really don't know."
A minor pause. "The design is really cool though. Maybe it's an ancient student project? Honestly, I've seen weirder for those." And isn't that the truth. One time she'd followed a fellow Jester to Lux for a brainstorm session for final projects, and wow some of the stuff she heard being discussed were wild. A clanking mechanical turtle that could make a hella strong cup of coffee as well as detect the presence of alcohol, for one. An attempted summoning spell for a bug-spy that ended up being able to shoot mini fireballs instead, for another. She's even seen some rudimentary designs for what looked like a mechanised mana-powered death ray - though she doubts any of the professors would have approved of that particular idea. Or, who knows. Some of the Lux professors are hella cool people.
But yeah, back to the mission ( focus! ). "We should probably head back and take another look, check if anything's changed, check if it responds to any more of your divining, and then write up preliminary reports if nothing wild happens," she muses, casting an eye at her notes. It's gonna be one hell of a task, but hey, practice for when ( if ) she finally gets into Lux, amiright? Ling stands, stretches ( isn't it the most satisfying thing in the world to feel your spine cracking after a good long study session? ), and grins. "Coming?"
"Maybe they just committed really hard to the aesthetic. Some people are just kind of extra like that..." While probably not the case it wasn't unheard of for this to be the case. There was some case a few years back he remembers being the talk of the city how they figured out a magic urn they thought was designed to create holy water as a tribute to one of the old sea gods was just their version of a brita water filter for a museum gift shop based on an even older civilization. It was essentially a fancy water purifier based on an even older culture's design.
They should make their way back to the thing. It was the best thing to do since her research had al but been concluded on what it could possibly be. More than likely it was a mana battery used to possibly store magical energy or to power something that they didn't know about. It was honestly kind of cool but kind of lame at the same time. That was academia after all. It was why he didn't go to Lux University. He simply didn't have that kind of drive for research like that.
"We could always try scrying. Or purification to see how it interacts with mana. Then again it could possibly lead to the objects destruction or negating it's effects so it becomes worthless. Hmm... would it be possible to recreate the runes on something else? Something less delicate we could test things on... ya know?" There was so many things they could do or would probably need to do. On the other hand this was something probably best in a lab with plenty of other witches and... you know safety equipment. No need to explode part of the tower.
They'd make it back up the the object quickly. The walk wasn't super far after all. Time for the moment of truth. Them versus that damn magic box thing. This was the final boss of this saga and by saga he meant current day. Maybe astral projection? Could something happen if the object is touched in a nonphysical body or plane? Who knows. Divination and purification were also on the table. Time to figure out what to do.
She laughs. "Yeah, yeah that's true. Wouldn't be the first time elaborate decoration has been mistaken for an artifact of great importance." The museum is, in fact, quite full of them; it seems like every few months some aspiring archaeologist digs up a piece of old history and announces it to be the next great discovery. Ling's pretty sure this thing they're studying is in fact a genuine thing, but hey, she admits to bias y'know? No good scientist discounts such a possibility for their results, and she definitely tries hard to be one.
"Welp, I'll leave those to you then. I'm just the runescripter," she jokes lightly, but quickly settles back into a more serious state of mind. "Yeah, yeah no you're right. Better not to test it out on the original." She taps her lip with a pen, swiftly considering the options before shaking her head. "I can certainly try and transcribe the runes out, but that'd take some adjustment for shape. Not to mention, something this complex is most likely linked to several different factors that go beyond just rune choice and configuration. Best to just write up a preliminary analysis report and leave the experimentation till after it's been studied a bit more, I think," she decides.
The artifact is still sitting there innocuously as they walk in, no lightning aura or sparking or anything unusual this time. Ling shakes her head at it. "Yeah, no, I'll check the runes again, and then I'll go write up a preliminary runic and arithmetic analysis report. Don't think there's much more we can do now. D'you wanna write up the divination bit?"
"Runescripting seems so strange and hard though. I commend you for being good at it..." He didn't seem to understand runes at all. It was kind of like a weird magic alphabet? Or something like that? He didn't get it much but it made some cool things! That was about all he knew.
He really shouldn't do any scrying on the object itself. Maybe he could use darkness to see something about the past? It usually worked but... like it was very hard to get a coherent story with darkness. Maybe it was because he wasn't very familiar with that element. To be honest the only darkness person he ever knew was Percy. Sweet sunshine percy with that tanned skin and perfect lips. Oops don't slip into those thoughts again. Not now.
"You're right. If we could make a copy we'd already have a better idea of what it could do. If only it was that simple." Oh well. At least it was a shot in the dark. To bad that idea wasn't good. They should write up their reports though. It would be the next logical step. Maybe they'd figure out something else with some more time and research later.
"Okay I'll do that. Let me know if you come up with any other ideas?" He had none. She was a smart girl though. She'd come up with something. Right? Right. She'd for sure think of something.
She shrugs a little, embarrassed at the ( unwarranted, she thinks ) praise. "It's really not that complicated once you understand the underlying principles..." she brushes it off sheepishly, absently tugging on her braids. And, well, it's her natural affinity, so she's got a bit of an advantage over a lot of people in that aspect.
"Yeah, okay," she replies, giving her partner a quick thumbs up before getting to work scribbling. Valkea takes a moment to remind her to actually use her neat handwriting because 'this isn't for just your eyes, Ling, I'm sure the other researchers would like to know what they're looking at'; she mentally sticks her tongue out at him but does take more care in her penmanship there on after 'cause her familiar really does have a point. "Hmm... I can't really think of anything else right now. Usually decoding stuff like this takes a lot more research and time than we've done so far."
The transcription itself doesn't take too long, not even with the extra time taken to make sure each rune and configuration is exactly right ( or as exact as anything written on a 3D shape transcribed onto a 2D piece of paper can be ); writing the report though, now that is what eats up most of her time. "Do you know if we have to finish this mission today, or if we have some time? Cause I don't think figuring this out exactly today is possible unless one of us has a spontaneous brainwave of inspiration."
"You can always tell someone has talent when they do something so effortless without even thinking about it." He feels that way much more about his purification skills than that of his divination. He didnt think he would ever get the hang of it... or actually more like the control of it.
The two would start drawing up their reports. His handwriting was thankfully always neat and very much readable. Thank you private tutors and a strict grandmother for that penmanship. That and having a bunch of sisters helped. Those were the people he mimicked writing and most of them had nice bubbly or curvy writing.
"I dont think they are expecting some magical solution after just a day of research. At least I hope not." Oh heck no. That was just unrealistic. Sure maybe the information they had could be helpful to the others or maybe given more time they would uncover something else. Who knows. All he knew was that this wasnt something that could be solved in a day.
"I think itd be fine if we tried this same time tomorrow. Im sure if we keep doing this for a week or two we can come up with something. Or at least something helpful for their researchers? Like a missing link." You never know. They had time though. Hopefully theyd figure out what the heck it did.
The object had to do something. They would just have to research more. Maybe he could consult the tarot cards later or try some kind of astral projection to look at it on the non physical plane from home. That might be helpful. All he knew was this wasnt getting solved today.
She laughs brightly. "Well, I guess I'm highly talented at talking a lot, eating junk food, procrastinating, and being a general nuisance, then!" she says cheerfully. If there's one thing her covenmates can say about her, it's that she's constantly underfoot, kinda like she's a stray cat who one day wandered in and then refused to leave. Which is not exactly inaccurate, if she thinks about it.
After the first page of writing, she beings to wish she had a thesaurus handy to look up alternate phrases for words she's repeated five times already. Report writing, unfortunately, does not look like is a talent of hers. 'You can't use the word 'stuff' or 'weird thingamabob' in an actual report, Ling,' Valkea tells her drily. She firmly disagrees, mind you - they are both perfectly legitimate terms when there's a strange unidentified object without a good name - but takes his advice anyway, 'cause she's learnt the hard way she should probably always listen to her familiar.
"Well that's a relief," she says in response to her partner. She grins with mischief sparking in her eyes. "If they complain, I'll submit a piece of paper that has just 'RESEARCH TAKES TIME' written out in capital letters in the middle. I'm sure like every researcher at Lux would back me up on that."
She scribbles down one more sentence, and her best ( terrible ) attempt at a conclusion, then slams her pen down on the table with perhaps a little too much dramatics than the situation warranted. "Alright!" she announces ( also dramatically ). "Done! I'll write a proper report later if they want, but this is good enough for preliminary stuff. If you're done too, I can hand it in for both of us?"
"Make sure to bold, underline and also highlight that. You know... for emphasis." That was a joke. Obviously. Research takes time in large font with so much emphasis. They both knew that wasnt a thing they were actually going to do. I mean it was true but still.
The report done. He handed the small packet of papers to the shorter witch with a small smile on his face. She had offered and he had a red headed date to get to. Okay so not really a date but like you know. Maybe some day. Not that he realized it wouldnt happen in the coming months. Or how those feelings would grow to betray him later.
"I would appreciate that. I promised my friend aiden emerson that I would meet him for dinner. It was a pleasure working with you Miss Lu-Xi." He would bow to the girl before starting to pack up his belongings so he could meet his friend for dinner. He felt warm and fuzzy thinking about it.
Of course little did they know of her latent talents. Little did they know of what was to come. Maybe they would meet again some months later on this project again. Who knows. All he knew was that he was hungry and he wanted to meet a nice boy with hair like fire.
She snickers at the joke, playing along with a wink. "Of course! We're hardly amateurs. And I've got some coloured highlighters too, gotta make sure all those key words are highlighted as well, right?" Some day, she'd really like to hand in a research essay or article highlighted in all the colours of the rainbow, just to see what the response would be. She's sure Valerus would be proud.
Ling takes her mission partner's papers ( one peak tells her that his paper is indeed much neater than hers, unsurprisingly ), stacks them neatly on top of her own pile. "Oh!" she exclaims, surprised. Wow, speak of a small world. "You're friends with Aiden? I know him, too! Tell him I said hi, 'kay?" She wouldn't say she knows the redhead super well, but enough that she counts him as a good friend also ( even if his fashion sense is... questionable, at times - no, that's just part of his charm. )
But- "wait," she pauses, brain finally processing the rest of Charani's words. "Lù-Xī? Uh... My name's Ling..." She's halfway out the door already, but something about that name, something about those syllables, they feel like something to her, in a way she cannot describe. They feel important, and she doesn't know why- Is this something of Charani's seer abilities shining through?
