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.
it is a distinctly strange feeling, riding out through the sundial gates in broad daylight, no need for covert sneakiness nor trickery beyond her assumption of xinmei's skin. the city sprawls out behind them, a gleaming creature of history-soaked stone and shining spires and crimson flags fluttering in the breeze, slumbering in the sun-gold noon. ahead of them stretches a path, a road of possibilities and the wild, wide world leading on towards an uncertain future. a glittering river winds through the grass-sea like a ribbon of silver, which will eventually give way to the vast plains and roiling hills of the riverlands. it feels like sin, reaching out for the heat-hazed horizon with her brother-cousin by her side, it feels like salvation.[break][break]
meifon cannot help the smile that persists in lingering around her lips, lungs swelling with the sweet countryside air. there is a peaceful quiet, the only sounds being the soft wind-song of the grasslands and the steady clop-clop-clop of their horse hooves eating up the road below. [break][break]
"hey," she says, a while later. sundial is a mere shimmery smudge to the east by now, and the midday sun weaves gold into their hair. "zhihao. what d'you think is in the package?" said package is a curiously small one, wrapped up in nondescript brown paper and strangely heavy for its size. nothing had been revealed in their mission description beyond the fact that its contents were not dangerous, and to keep it dry. it is an idle curiously, nothing more; meifon is far more occupied with the simple happiness of freedom and her closest friend's company.
farther past the gates, the earth begins to speak, so loudly he cannot spell the difference between the horse’s breathing and the sway of the wind; even as the sun peaks and spells warmth into their skin, all he follows is the beat of stone and soil; the rhythm of the river and the sky, cutting lines across ground and running, endlessly, away from them. [break][break] when it is just this sound, and just this breathing ( the exhales of two cousins, turned two siblings— or perhaps turned back into two siblings, born as scales instead of halves ), it feels less like a war chant and more like lullaby, like the hills and the grass and the water have nurtured them as children, like the crooning of their mothers was but a distant prophecy whose crystals had been shattered and strewn across a sitting room floor. [break][break] he looks to meifon — xinmei, skin stretched over dragonhide — and then glances to the small box, a fine brow raised and fell before looking back to her from the corners of his eyes. “could be some enchanted thing. could be books; important ones.” [break][break] or dangerous ones, he leaves unspoken, hanging, listlessly, in the space between them. [break][break] he leans over, barely, with his next words, a tilt of his lip betraying wonder. “what do you suppose?” he asks, eyes flitting over the package once more before his spine straightened and he looked again out in front of him.
she hefts the package, glancing critically at the nondescript brown wrapping as if it might contain some clue of its contents. a moment of deliberation, and then she shakes it. nothing interesting happens. she shrugs. "doesn't feel like books. might be an enchanted item though, you're right. either way, it can't be too dangerous, what with sending us fledglings out to deliver it." [break][break]
but it can't be just a normal package, not if one is willing to pay for two knights to play courier, even if they are of low rank.[break][break]
a thought drifts into mind and she laughs, turning to her brother-cousin. "i hope it's not drugs. or anything else illicit." now that would be quite ironic.[break][break]
as the green hills and summersoft noon drifts by with the rhythm of horse hooves, the breeze tugs on her hair and streams it out behind her, whispering freedom and the promise of sky into her ears. the air is comfortable, in the way their house could never be. she stretches idly, shading her eyes towards the horizon, to the smudge of clouds, to the stardust sun. "i like this," she comments lightly.
zhihao hummed his acknowledgement, a few slow dips of his head accompanying a sweep of the land around them. “right— what could we do, really?” he supplied, tone plain but eyes wicked, dauntless and burning. he wonders, idly, if they had been given the package to undermine its importance; who would go after weakly protected loot unless they knew it’s worth? [break][break] now it felt like wasted fruit, bruised from a fall onto gravel, juices spilt over the ground— like bones with all the meat picked off; all the marrow sucked dry. [break][break] “that would be something to write about,” he scoffed, a smile now making home on his face. “scandal of the family— we’ve become smugglers. didn’t know we were so low on resources.” zhihao laughed then, low-bellied and full, and he would sooner lie than admit it had nothing to do with the indignant faces that would twist upon their elder’s cheeks— admit to anyone aside from the witch beside him. [break][break] they broke off into silence, or as quiet as zhihao was allowed, for now the leaves screamed in his stead— like they could feel the broken boy with torn lungs grasping the man’s rib cage, hurtling against bone and blood, never quieted, never tamed. [break][break] but the forest made up for his absences. it never let him forget what it meant to breathe. [break][break] “yes,” he said, finally, eyes closing for a beat. “it’s so much— there’s so much more out here than in there.” he did not bother specification; he doubted its necessity.
she meets the whitefire backlighting her brother-cousin's eyes and smiles herself, quicksilver and steel curving the edges of her lips like a secret strung between them, cradling the same starbright intensity that burns in him at her own breast too. what could they do indeed, meifon and zhihao lin, they who were born with battle in their blood, wardrums beating in time with their heart. they, who share their soul with creatures of fable, monstrous and awesome and terrifying. what could they do indeed.[break][break]
part of meifon, the part that lives for the song of steel and the rush of adrenaline, that revels in the freedom to fight, that part of her that is savage and wild and fey, that part almost wants for them to be attacked.[break][break]
the better part of her though, the part that is human and logical and knows something about risk and reward, that part of her knows a quiet, peaceful mission is best. she laughs, sunbright. "oh god. the faces the elders would make." a second of consideration and she grins, wicked as any faerie. "you know, i bet xinmei wouldn't be beyond it, what with her potions and stuff." a little thing like laws and rules wouldn't stop her firebird of a cousin, not with her phoenix heart.[break][break]
sometimes, she stops and realises how beautiful it is, the understanding she and her soul-twin share, she and zhihao and a bond like lightning and thorns and blood between them. "so much more to be," she agrees, thinking of the magic simmering beneath her skin, the feeling of dirt beneath her bare toes. "and so much less." names hold no meaning, out here.
his horse bristles against a colder breeze, knocking its head, making a noise short of irritation. zhihao’s hand lurched forward, soothing the short hairs of its neck twisting into its mane; the creature calmed, and with it the handler’s grip. [break][break] there was something about this wild life— unbothered by societal rules and customs, making its way with its own families— that drew him away from people and toward the uninhibited. but even now, this beast beneath him was trained and coaxed to another’s hand, and it hit him that freedom no longer had meaning beyond the artificial; with a stone of dread in his throat, he wondered how long it would be until even the most insignificant parts of life no longer held control of their own existences. [break][break] “they’d have at least six separate conniptions at the thought,” he quipped, failing to fight off the deepening of the smile already settled on his face. “i think we’d be threatened with disinheritance within five minutes.” [break][break] part of him would relish the sight; another would be achingly, painfully empty— like purpose was further thrust away from his hands. “much more organic,” he agreed at last; he resolved that name did not equal purpose; family did not equal birthright.
she snorts at the thought. six may even be an understatement, given the nature of their elders. "i'll keep that in mind in case i ever need to be, y'know, properly disinherited," she quips, though an undertone of seriousness runs beneath her humorous words. if ever this ruse failed, if ever she truly needed to tear the jade out from underneath her skin and break herself free, well. there is little, she admits, knowing her soul, she would not do.[break][break]
but those are serious matters, consigned to the glitter-gold bars of her room back in sundial and the smell of sandalwood and scented oils. those thoughts, heretic her father would have branded her for them, they are for an unhappier time, when freedom is a mere dream and not a reality dancing with the wind, against a backdrop of a soft orange-pink dusk creeping across the horizon.[break][break]
"i think we're getting close," she says, glancing at the dark crop of trees slumbering across the hills ahead.
his brow rose and for a moment it seemed his smile was mere plastic— there was mischief and humor in his eyes, but a lapse of grandeur; it was easier to forget out here, where nothing cared about names or family or duty, where life flourished and thought not of frivolity and wealth. “it’ll come in handy for sure,” he says at last, when his voice had returned to him, and the pang of his chest aching for normalcy subsided back into the box he kept it in. “it would surely tip the scales in your favor.” [break][break] ( but he knows, so harshly, that he could never understand— that he was birthed into the most freedom the family could afford him, that he would never grasp the experiences; a spectator to the slaughter of daughters and children. bandits of innocence; no care for cutting their losses. ) [break][break] “oh.” he had been lost in the clearing, though the edge of canopies called to him now from across the way. he looked up suddenly, to a plainly clear sky, and then toward his sister-cousin, a mask of concern on his face. [break][break] “looks like it’s going to rain,” he urged her, sewing prudence over his eyes. “that’s not to get wet, is it?” [break][break] “we should really hurry along.” with this, his grip on the reins tightened, and he ached to feel the creature fly forward in a sprint. with this, he allowed a chip in the illusion, a look of unbridled energy, sparking, waiting for the words to unleash. he wondered if he could dance around it— imply the question without speaking the words.
there is a pause too long, something bitter and storm-dark lingering in the air, unspoken but known too well. when zhihao speaks again, there is a sombre note to his words despite the light tone, the jesting words. reality has reasserted itself against the dreams of liberty, sky-high and windy, like a shadow, a veil.[break][break]
"i'm sorry," she says to that note, that minor chord in their major song, helpless against the way it burrows into her chest and reverberates in her bones. sometimes, living in a beautiful illusion is the only way to be happy, even if it is for only a little while.[break][break]
oh but zhihao, her wonderful cousin zhihao, he knows far better than she the best ways to drive back the cheerless shadows, to reach back out for the easy levity strung out between them like stardust and gold; he looks at her with his face set in false-concern, eyes gleaming challenge. she smiles back at him with dragon eyes, shaded in the ferocity of one who wants to win; "oh no," she says worry so fake a deaf man could hear it. "you're right. guess we should get there as quickly as we possibly can, yeah?"[break][break]
a wink, and she ducks down, urging her horse into the fastest gallop he can safely manage, a thundering in her ears and laughter spinning galaxies in her wake.
meifon is apologizing, though zhihao finds himself wishing nothing warranted it, not from her mouth. he loses the feeling, rids it as if with a pass of his hand, and carries forward with a dip of his head and a calm slight of a smile. here is not the place to dwell on the dark rooms of the house of jade bricks— they can worry the walls down when the air is constricted by city walls. [break][break] but she catches his meaning clearly, and he has forgotten worry, and he is all but yelling his words in the moments following, where the earth seems so real and so alive, where the forest now is dancing and calling and coaxing, this minute where it feels he could do anything. “yes— it would be bad for business if we dawled, really,” he returned swiftly, but she gone before he can finish, and he is chasing after, perhaps overeager but the horse is sure-footed and free, and the two are running to the forest, trees who do not know the color of jade, a place that sheds every mask either had ever had to wear. [break][break] here there is weightlessness, he realizes; here is where the still of water meets beginning of ocean tides, where wind brushes against the dizzying of hurricanes, the spark before the flame. [break][break] these moments, he thinks, are places war begins.
cry thunder! there is a storm here in the rhythm of horse hooves against the solid ground, a beat in time with the pounding of her heart and the lighting in her veins. there is freedom like silver and stars in the wind racing by her ears, hair streaming behind her in a river of ink. exhilaration is something golden, something between windchimes and a cacophony of drums loud enough to shatter glass; it is breathlessness and the world focused through a fractal lens and the primal desire to throw her head back and scream.[break][break]
here is something so few people understand: she and zhihao lin are twins. not by blood, not by age or name or identity, nothing so material as that. they are twins in the sense of binary pairs, of things that bear no meaning without the other, things that are only half a concept by themselves. you look at one and the other is right there too, half a step apart and walking in tandem; and like the twin-pair they are, zhihao is right there on her tail as their horses race down the road, fleet as the galewinds.[break][break]
she crashes through the treeline like a river swollen on spring rains, drunk on the rush of adrenaline-wine and joy. "i win!" she yells at her brother-cousin-partner, knowing deep in the marrow of her bones that they arrived at exactly the same time. she laughs, because she can, because she does not have to hide it, and slows her horse down to a trot with a nudge of her knee.
in the height of action, the earth grows still. [break][break] he doubts he has ever gone as fast as his horse was taking him, that he has ever heard the rumbling of desperate hooves hitting soil with urgency, that the rhythm of the earth would silence itself and make way for their noise to break the calm. [break][break] in their chase there is no clear image, simply blurs of stormsong and earthshatter, dragonhide and tigerpelt, gaining and losing in the same number of steps. zhihao likes to think they keep balance here; like circling koi fish, like one the moon and one the ocean, like neither could swim without the presence of the other, and as they burst through tree trunk doorways and into a waiting meadow, there is not only one. [break][break] “you won? maybe in your dreams tonight, but certainly not now,” he scoffed, teasing indignance, rustling his hair back into place as his horse steadied from its sprint. he breathes out a laugh of his own, half breathless from the thrill of it all, and half overjoyed; indescribable, but familiar, and welcomed. [break][break] but here there is a crack among the trees, and zhihao realizes that though the race was over, the forest had not resumed its dance. [break][break] silence, as still and lifeless as this, pregnant with unease, spoke of nothing good. the leaves were fervent. the soil was tense. it seemed every stone sunk deeper into the ground. [break][break] "would you look at that," they say, from between the places neither could see, behind obstructions and hindrances. "they’ve delivered themselves to us." [break][break] his shoulders still, but his gaze is anything but motionless— he speaks not, but listens desperately, though it seems not a flower in the mud is willing to talk. [break][break] and then— they step out from behind cover, and the earth goes mad.
"i think you're losing your sight early there, dear brother," she ripostes back, delighting in the lighthearted banter. "clearly, i crossed the treeline half a second first." brother she calls zhihao even if they are not by birth, but brother is a title she would bestow upon him sooner than she would upon any other. their horses step in time forth, flanks still heaving from the full-paced gallop of moments before, and the twilit forest is quiet with night-hush.[break][break]
too quiet.[break][break]
her eyes dart to zhihao, understanding and grim determination burning in them; a breath later, there is a taunting voice, and multiple shadows detaching themselves from the bushes and the trees.[break][break]
the thing is, meifon is not worried, not really. one look at the bandits is enough to tell that they are the less dangerous kind - they are not polished fighters with silver-sharp swords and magic swelling beneath their ribs like a tide, a flood, not dangerous like an assassin steeped in blood and darkness; nor are they the cutthroat type, the ones with careless cruelty so engrained in their bones that they need not even think, the ones with ruthlessness sharp as any sword and the scariest sort of pragmatism on top. no, these bandits with their ragged clothes and scavenged weapons and dirty faces - she could take them on.[break][break]
the thing is, out here past the city borders, there are no familiar restrictions. and, well, meifon has not called upon her familiar to materialise on their ride for a reason - her and zhihao both. she glances at him, a split-second look with a question and a plan she hopes he understands; but first, a little bit of reconnaissance. "hello," she says to the bandit group. "are you here for the package? or for us?"[break][break]
“oh, please,” he bites back, “i don’t need glasses to see a sore loser when they’re right in front of me.” it is easy to snap with her; to jab and prod and quip with ease, a natural pace they fall into, something he covets and keeps dearly to his chest. sometimes he wonders if meifon wears xinmei’s place too well for him; it is so easy, so simple, to slip sister onto his tongue and the fondness behind his eyes. [break][break] but his words have died on his tongue, and he is thirsting so badly for a fight, and now the moment is curled back into minutes— ticking, one at a time, mocking him for seconds of inaction, and the plants are so loud, and so fervent and feverish, and he has to stop himself from pressing his palms to his ears and screaming just to quiet them— [break][break] but meifon looks at him, fleeting, and when he glances back over, it clicks; they are twins in more than manner, he remembers, and here there are no rules. [break][break] “both seem promising,” they whisper, eyeing the subtle dignity of the house they were born to, and the crests they carry with them. “i don’t see anything wrong with a bit of greed.” they inch closer, their rusted blades glinting, sickening, against the sunbeat of the sky. [break][break] zhihao lifts a hand, his words swift and derisive, cutting their path in two. “you can have what you’d like if you’re betting men. if you’re not, i’m afraid we won’t be so willing.” [break][break] and now they are interested, and they are glancing at each other like lost sheep, and zhihao schools himself impassive, but nudges meifon’s foot with his own— an agreement, a bid of trust. [break][break] “what’s your wager?” their leader says, finally, rolling their weapon in their palms; zhihao thinks they all look like children with stolen butter knives, playing knight in the streets, and knowing nothing other than the name of duty, rather than duty itself. [break][break] he looks around them, all of them, at the beckoning leaves and the crushed flowers, weeping under their footfalls; he centers again, and speaks, and hopes the timing is just right, for now the tiger is rumbling deep in his chest, and she does not take kindly to chains. [break][break] “how about your courage?”
there is a nudge at her foot and she knows zhihao has understood, has agreed - and no small part of her thrums with anticipation at what is to come. there is lightning spreading from her chest, a rumble in her bones - lei agrees, then, all teeth and storm-scales and voice of thunder. a dragon is not something to carry lightly, and neither is a dragon's battlelust.[break][break]
but first there is a performance, a script to set the scene. she eyes their mismatched swords, the edges pitted like they have never heard of a whetstone, rust streaked down their lengths like trails of copper rain; she almost wants to lift her blade and duel them sword to sword, simply to see if she could possibly break their blades in their very hands, and then drill proper sword care into their heads.[break][break]
oh but that is not the play, not this one. the leader looks confused at zhihao's words before his face twists into a deep scowl. "what? that's not a proper wager!" he raises his sword again, advancing a step with his men following suit, "hand over everything and we might just leave you alive."[break][break]
a shadow falls. the earth shakes. meifon lin smiles sweetly at the bandits, the way she vividly remembers xinmei smiling before she strikes, one of the most viscerally terrifying things she has born witness to. "you might want to look behind you," she advises. thunder crashes in her chest, and lei-feng coils beneath her skin, ready to fly.
[break][break]
