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.
zhihao’s skin burns with impatience, with the stillness of the moments before the hunt, the time where they must watch, and wait, and sit for the prey to fall into ambush. he feels like tiger coiled into underbrush, eyeing boar, anticipating the strike. [break][break] nüwa is curled beside his ears here, the real tigress, with tooth and claw and vicious eyes, with a roar to drown out the loudest rumble, and a bite to match it; she is restraining herself, and zhihao knows to trust her; he keeps the scene rolling, waits for the prey to show their bellies— for the moment of the kill. [break][break] “funny how you’re unsure,” he drawls; now his eyes have steeled over and locked, but his grip is loose and his shoulders have unravelled from their stress. he is calm, and unbothered, and yet so precisely aware; only half of his lip has cut his cheek now, and his chin is raised, dispassionate and arrogant ( if only they knew the wild behind the cage ). [break][break] when lei breaks hold of the sky, nüwa leaps from the earth in the same instance, towering over treetops, rippling fur and dazzling stripes ( daggers, embedded, in the tint of her flesh ), and gaia is stillborn at the sight. [break][break] to say they are screaming would be to say the plants are merely swaying in the breeze; an understatement of reaction; a laughably inadequate picture. [break][break] “what is this?” he hears faintly, and picks false bravado out from the group. [break][break] nüwa lowers down to the forest floor, the crack of tree trunks like fire starters under her weight, and there is a deep rumble from her chest. zhihao smiles, so charming and so bright, the jade of his eyes glinting off her teeth. [break][break] “i like to call them our insurance policy,” he says. “we did offer you a deal, after all.”
when lei descends unto earth, it is with a crackle of lightning and ozone like live-wire in the air. in his eyes rages a never-ending storm; his teeth shaped like daggers and twice as sharp, scales rain-slicked and dark. there is a flash, white-hot - it races down his body, all 50 feet of it, backlighting his bones with stark, harsh light, before the tempest drowns the lightning and he is made of stormclouds once more. an azure crown rests upon his brow and he towers over bandits and trees both like a king, a god.[break][break]
where lei-feng takes the sky, nüwa rules the earth. a queen, born from the gold and jadeite of the caverns below; a queen, with tectonic plates shifting beneath her feet and the trees bowing to her name; a queen, with a helm of daggers and a battlesong-soul - a queen arrives, and the earth trembles.[break][break]
so do the bandits, and they are not quiet about it either.[break][break]
meifon slides a smile across to the man who had spoken, kind and soft and sweet, like how one might slip a dagger between an enemy's ribs. "and you agreed on our wager, did you not?" she leans a little closer, lei coiling behind her like some awesome, monstrous shadow. "nothing wrong with a little greed, am i right?"
nüwa lets out a breath of air, and upon her lip curls a low-toned snarl, the stones around her trembling with the sound. she shifts her nails, and with it the earth cracks, and those closest to her trip over vine and misplaced limb to retreat from her, only to be met with the sparking wind that was lei, perched and dangerous, with eyes of slits, hiding daggers in their midst, and suddenly they are out of places to run to. [break][break] “i’m afraid these—” he looked to the familiars ( to the gods ), and shied away from their gaze, grimacing at the bite of his own words thrown back to his cheek. “were not a part of the deal. recall them.” [break][break] zhihao almost laughs, breaks character, lets slip of the charm and gauding and the arrogance, but his familiar beats his timing. [break][break] “who are you to order it of us?” she huffs, slowly but with thinly-veiled disgust; her lip curled once more, and her shoulders shifted with her stance. [break][break] the man does not answer her, and his peers are shocked still to move, unsure which myth to look at— unsure, even, whether they would be permitted the sight. but what he does not know is that nüwa is demanding and sure; she has no fondness for wasted meat. with a raise and thud of her paw, she unleashes assault of noise, a roar striking the birds to flee and the deer to run, for every mouse in every crevice to burrow back into their homes. [break][break] “she’s right, of course,” zhihao says now, after the silence has descended and deafened the absence of fury. “you and what army?”
meifon has to give the leader some credit. where his compatriots are gibbering in terror ( she distinctly hears one near the back whimper something about his mother ), the leader instead has found enough confidence to order them to dematerialise their familiars. she almost laughs, and she does not have to glance at zhihao to know he is similarly incredulous.[break][break]
nüwa speaks for them, her voice akin to the rumble of a quake. she does not envy the bandits, not with the way the massive tiger is eyeing them. she also finds a very effective ( and visually impressive ) way of demanding everyone's complete attention, of dropping silence unto the earth. meifon approves.[break][break]
one bandit, closest to her and thus lei-feng, evidently has enough and decides to bolt. the dragon-snake erects a STATIC FIELD directly in his trajectory, and then smacks the man once with his tail for good measure. neither she nor lei spare the bandit a second glance. "i think," she says gently, directly contrasting the ferocity in her eyes, the lightning on her tongue. "you should think carefully about your next move. and your future."[break][break]
and she smiles, again. she has learnt how to say a lot with a smile, over the years.
the foolish underling is thrown back in spurts of motion, losing control of his movements for a moment before toppling headfirst upon the earth. zhihao eyes him with disinterest, though to know him is to know his wicked grin, one he is battling from showing face. their leader flips his sword ( zhihao wonders, idly, if it could be called that; it looks like it would break when faced with even the most still of wind ) in hand again, though the weight seems heavy. [break][break] “word of advice? one gambler to another,” zhihao offers, and if now is the time to end the charade, he is not opposed; from behind him, he finds leaves willing to bend to his sway, and they creep up, past the horses and along the floors, sharpened on the grass beds, rising, with a target in mind for each, to look at their counters. if one had time to assign numbers, they would see each person had one earthen blade with their name etched into the stems. [break][break] zhihao knows they could not do much, not now, not at whatever meager level of power he is capable of in the moment; but these men know nothing of the twins— they know only the courage they lost in front of them. [break][break] “next time, you might want to wager something you know you have in your pocket,” he continued with a sly tilt of his head. [break][break] the leader looks to the both of them, and looks back at his fellows, and tucks his weapon into the waistband of his trousers. he says nothing, merely nods, and looks to lei— to the air around him— with apprehension. he looks then to nüwa, though she gives no ground. [break][break] “if i’m cutting my losses here,” the bandit says carefully, weighing every word against his throat, like the blade was already pressed against it. “are we allowed to leave?”
the leader has not backed down yet, hand still on sword. she wonders, for a moment, if they will have to fight after all - if so, a rumble in her head informs her that lei-feng will not hesitate to squish everyone he can reach, and shock everyone he cannot. ( although, as a fifty foot long snake, there are presumably rather few things he cannot reach within their immediate vicinity. )[break][break]
in the end, the leader is smarter than to force a fight he cannot win. perhaps his mind was made up by the army of leaves zhihao calls up, a whisper through the forest like a thousand silent assassins, just waiting to strike. or perhaps it is the dragon of wind meifon calls up, shimmering and ghostly and just enough to be a pointed thread. this is a performance, the forest is their stage: meifon and zhihao are dangerous yes, but they are fledglings still. but more importantly, they are well versed in the art of the masquerade, and they have monsters at their backs in case.[break][break]
she watches the bandits go, trooping off into the forest with the occasional backwards glance at the tiger and the snake still watching with predator eyes. "well," she says after the footsteps have faded into the distance. "that happened. i think i like that leader, just a little," she comments idly.[break][break]
bringing her mind back to the present, to their mission, she shoots zhihao a wry smile and hefts the package up, gently nudging her horse. "shall we? before they decide to come back, or something."
zhihao watches now with amusement plying through the veil he has set for himself as the group retreats with careful tread and weary eyes. he looks to his hands in mock-boredom, the leaves taking their brutal and dropping from his command. nüwa shifts her gaze to her witch, and where there was fury and danger and death in her features, she has softened to regal, warm— comfortable, though she seems expectant. [break][break] zhihao’s eyes roll at her insistence, before allowing a gracious slip of words. “xiè xiè,” he murmurs, bowing his head, and nüwa dips her own down, chuffing affectionately before returning to the plane she came to him from. [break][break] his horse nickers, and he looks to meifon, that very wicked smile now finding its rightful place beneath his eyes. “he was the only one i suspect didn’t entirely wet himself,” he agrees, letting out a short bark of a laugh. [break][break] he nods then, looking up to the sky, not for rain but for time; “yes, wouldn’t want to be any later than need be.” he urges his horse forward, keeping pace with her, and wondering, like a soft whisper in the dark, what his mother was doing in the same moments the both of them had bluffed the very odds she always warned him not to take.
her brother-cousin thanks his familiar, something soft and warm between them; but meifon looks back at her own familiar and knows deep in her bones that it is not gratitude lei-feng wants. the dragon-snake arcs his head to meet her gaze with his lightning eyes, a wonder-terror creature who's heartstorm she can hear still howling in her ears. "DO NOT FORGET YOURSELF, MEIFON LIN," he rumbles, and side-slips away.[break][break]
do not forget herself, indeed. her familiar is as cryptic as ever; a glance at zhihao and nüwa and she wonders, when will she and her familiar share a bond like that? when will she learn his true name?[break][break]
but those are thoughts for another time. their horses trot forwards at a brisk pace, towards the completion she can see up ahead; a few minutes later and there is a fork in the road, and a small signpost in peeling green paint, barely visible in the dark. it is the agreed upon meeting spot, and there is an old man leaning against it, clutching a lantern and a well-worn cloak. he peers at them with visible relief. "you made it," he says. "do you have my package?"[break][break]
she hands it over with little fanfare, feeling slightly off balance that there is such an anticlimactic ending after such a dramatic stand-off. but she is not complaining. "here you go. safe and sound!"
[break][break]
