OoC: A Voice from the Storm

[Luca]

I'm thinking a bit more about development of the as-yet unnamed empire on the other side of the forest.

Current concept right now:

• Large political "union"


• Very careful not to make it seem like this is some Star Wars faction of obvious baddies, but some place that holds onto power with strong military force, probably a bit too strongly. Their arrangement has substantial pros and cons.


• Highly developed, wealthy capital


• Self absorbed but reasonably competent teenage emperor


• Whispers of a few secretive sort of counter-culture factions trying to expand democratic ideas


• White-red colour scheme


• Magic-oriented society, a series of influential nobles head various parts of society and carry out tasks that maintain the empire's stability.

I've done a rough draft of a flag concept for the wiki to be improved down the road~

Thoughts on any of this?

[Rea]

I really like your idea of the leader. I think that could make some really interesting plot points and character interactions. My question is, if the military is so strong, why'd they make a barrier out of trees? Or did they do it or someone else?

[Emily]

To be fair, the Kingfisher forest has been around for over 1000 years. A lot can change in the dynamics of a country in that time. Maybe they were constantly held back by the eastern civilisations and only once that distraction was removed could advance.

I'm really into the idea of the empire and I can't wait to get there and explore it further :3

[Rea]

Aaaaah, yes that makes sense. In that case the civilization could be however whatever, so it works xD

[Luca]

I was thinking something like the empire is old, but not really that old? The forest was constructed by mages and maybe the ruling powers that be are of the mind that if it isn't broken, they shouldn't fix it when there are other things to worry about.

[Emily]

Mm! I like that a lot. Since the empire is a political union, one of the nations that was absorbed into it could have been the source of the forest. Or maybe not even that, there aren't many countries that are 1000+ years old.

[Rea]

Oooo, so the forest is, like, double mysterious.

I like it!

[Casimir]

Hey there friends!

So I've been reading up about the progress which has been made, and was wondering if I could perhaps put up a post about Ramår ere long.
As I've figured most of the dramatis personae are now in Kingfisher Forest, I was imagining perhaps they could notice lights vanishing into the forest, then contemplating the options of entering the forest or staying at the village, and ultimately choose to venture farther than just the edge of yon forest.
I would imagine Ramår's herbalist training and enchiridion of natural philosophy might perchance come quite in handy at some point in the near future.

As for the empire on the other side of the forest, I really like how the ideas concerning the treeline blend in with its pseudo-established characteristics. How wide is the forest supposed to be?
Vis-à-vis the motives of the military establishing a tree-based line of defence, although Kyrie's assumption seems reasonable, perhaps the forest (once) acted as a perennial, pseudo-natural border beyond which people were too afraid to go.
As well as setting in stone (well, wood) the borders of the nation, the military might also have been using it to shield people against the potential dangers of lurking into the area, percase due to some pollution, sickness, or (more likely, considering the magical properties of the forest, at least at its edges) some curse set on the land, and perchance even anterior to the settlement.
Pioneers exploring further and further may have at length recieved a wretched predicament from settling in the area, which was then planted. Maybe they aren't trees at all, but rather people who might've suddently been...entified? All of this is a bit of a stretch to be sure, please correct me if there's a canon explanation I missed.

Sorry again if my prose is too verbose <3
/C

[Emily]

Casssss, play with us!

I'd love for you to join with us! Since you've been reading along, you know that there are two people within the range of the party who can speak (one much more easily) to the forest itself. Between them and an herbalist, I imagine our party will be well-served on navigating the forest. Yeah, just have them have seen the lights of the party while Rizali/Kaegan/Lyndh were looking for firewood and been following them since that moment.

As for the forest, I imagine we'll learn more about the origins of it when we arrive in the empire. It's so old that the real reasons are likely lost to history save those people on that side of the divide who are reasonably interested in maintaining that history. I had a thought for why it was made, but I don't know whether I've listed that reason anywhere. Probably not

[Casimir]

Yeah, just have them {having} seen the lights of the party {...} and been following them since that moment.

Sure, that sounds fairly easy to work out. Is it known how far into the forest the party is as of today, in terms of days' walk from Ceadaichte Mòir?

[Casimir]

By the way, I've been working on Ramår's second post, and I'm trying to figure out how I want their character and personality to evolve through the course of AVftS. They're actually extremely condescending right now, too much for my liking if I'm honest, though I'm also figuring that could make for some opportunities for some character development (albeit a somewhat bland one).

I'm afraid my post is wayyy too long and has wayy too little dialogue. As Ramår's a rather secretive person, afraid of the people of Ceadaichte Mòir, I only have as of right now a few lines of dialogue from three lumberjacks at the edge of the forest, whom Ramår actually hides from and doesn't interact with. Anyways I hope that's not too much of a problem with y'all.

If everything goes well with it I'm hoping to be able to put the post up tonight! I felt really inspired by everything that's gone on since my last one.

[Emily]

The post seemed quite good, actually, especially for a solo post. Between the last one and this, I've gotten a great feel for them, and also the writing style you've employed in your most recent post is highly interesting and fun to read. You've reached and made the prose very artistic and evocative.

You've also found the balance of where your questions' answers lay, without me having noticed your questions or answered them. For the record, Kaegan, Rizali, Leeva, and Lyndh are approximately a 90 minute walk into the forest, surely no more than a few kilometres. Great job! I'm looking forward to reading more <3

[Casimir]

Thanks a lot, Kyrie!
I actually didn't mean to post it this early and couldn't delete it afterwards so I just edited it as it was there :p I also significantly reworked the dialogue (monologue?) and downplayed the unwelcome aspects of Ramår's personality so that they now just have a few misconceptions about hillsfolk.

I must admit I wasn't feeling so sure about the whole 'torchlight' arc. Does Keagan's party actually have torches in their possession? I'm pretty glad they're only 90 minutes into the forest, that allows Ram to blend into the story much more realistically. (At the very first I was meaning to make them walk about twelve hours in a straight line in the forest so with hindsight I'm glad I reworked it to not specify the time they spent looking for everyone) <3

Anyways thanks for that!

[Rea]

Hey Cas!

I just posted a reply, it's a collab post between me and Kyrie that we've been working on, so now we're all together ^.^

I might have missed it, is there a description of Ramar somewhere? I have no idea what they look like.

ALSO do we have three nonbinary people in one place? Because WOOT where's my flag???

[Casimir]

Top of the evening to ya, Rea!

I don't recall ever describing Ramår's physical appearance in much depth at all, if I'm honest. It just didn't strike me as actually important.

███████¹ However, I've been figuring them as a young person of ambiguous gender, with curly ginger hair.
███████   They wear a fairly long, oversized vest of dark green felt. They're also rather short, but other than that
███████   I'm not sure I have a single clear physical representation of Ram. Us enbies transcend our physical ids.
███████   As for their voice and accent, they speak in a medium-pitch voice, and love overstressing the English /r/.

They also use an accent similar in most ways to a Kerry Irish accent and have a strong tendency to use the interjections 'aye', 'so' and sometimes 'like' at the beginning or end of sentences, or between independant verb clauses.
They adore using relative/interrogative directional adverbs like whithersoever or elsewhence, and they also often use 'yon' instead of 'that'.

Thanks for including me in that post, by the way. Now I just have to think of something to say to fecking Leeva. I really like reading about them, by the way. The writing style you use to convey their emotional and perceptive particularities is really refreshing and eldritch <3

¹I'm actually not that big of a fan of the enby flag? I don't usually like purple in flags but here it doesn't really look bad, it's just the black is too.. depressing?

[Emily]

As far as flags go, I don't really like any of the gender-identity variants outside of the basic trans flag. Genderqueer/fluid/nonbinary all have strange colour schemes I don't care for.

I'm really enjoying all the activity recently though I appreciate all of you so much.

[Casimir]

Aye, it's all really thanks to you, Kyrie. You make this place so damn welcoming

[Emily]

  Don't be so quick to give me any credit, I just work here.

I think a good community requires having a lot of people putting in the time and focus to make things consistently better. I just try to make sure I live up to those standards I have set.

[Rea]

I actually didn't know what the flag looked like, haha! There are so many flags I really don't keep track.

If you waved a flag with a pineapple with sunglasses on it and told me THAT was the enby flag, I would go with it.

I'm excited for Ram's reply to Leeva, Cas :3 Don't be nervous, unpredictability is the spice of RP!

Thanks for the description, it helps me to know how Leeva can react if I know what they're seeing. Like I didn't know if Ram was tall, tiny, furry, young, old, etc. Now I do :3

Leeva appreciates appearances of all kinds!

[Casimir]

Oh shet, now I'm wondering if Ram shouldn't be furry like. To be fair, it might make more sense since just a felt vest shouldn't keep them very warm in the snow and frostlands.

Anyways I'm thinking of writing a post but since I'm going on holidays I figure I probably won't put it up for a while. As for Ram's answer to Leeva, what language did Leeva actually address them? Common tongue or something else? This may be my first real dialogue in writing yet <3