[SOLO] WP05/W06 - Murkcrow

[Tiarana]

Transferred from Gaia Online. WP05 Mechanics, WP06 Mechanics, Original Post

You awaken, and there is a quality in the air that says clearly: this is not the Swamp. When you open your eyes, you find that you are, to put it mildly, far from home.

This prompt can be played solo, or with friends!

Roll 1d6 to choose a prompt at random, or pick the one you like best. Make a new thread in the RP forum labeled [WP05] (Kin1, Kin2, etc.). If you are open for other, random users to join you, please put OPEN somewhere in your title as well! Your first post should include your Kin waking up and his reaction to his strange surroundings.

As far as your Kin knows they are definitely, certainly, 100% randomly waking up somewhere that is not home, but don't worry--they will find themselves safely back home, we promise. Your Kin will not end up stranded if you choose to play this prompt

While your Kin may find *signs* of other Kin unless otherwise noted, they will not find other Kin besides the ones you are playing with (if any). They may find other native animals unless otherwise noted.

Your Kin can explore, try to find an exit, or attempt to relate their surroundings to gossip or stories they've heard. Maybe they engage with some of the native flora and fauna, chasing and eating new things. Maybe they are injured by strange beasts unlike any from the Swamp. It's up to you!

1. You awaken in a lovely grassy plain, studded with low-spreading trees and shady copses and running with streams and creeks. If you are a native Kiokote, you recognize this as your homeland. A strange, smooth-sided tower of grey stone rises in the distance. Native Kiokote may or may not recognize it as a landmark.

2. You awaken on the shady side of a towering sand dune, near an oasis. Birds with long, brightly-colored tails fly overhead. If you are a native Acha, you recognize this as your homeland. A strange, smooth-sided tower of red stone rises in the distance. Native Acha may or may not recognize it as a landmark.

3. You awaken on a briskly-cold but brightly sunny day on a rocky slope. The vegetation is sparse and the wind is biting, but the air is invigoratingly fresh. If you are a native Totoma, you recognize this as the foothills of your homeland. A strange, smooth-sided tower of black stone rises in the distance. Native Totoma may or may not recognize it as a landmark.

4. You awaken underground, the echoing sound of running water in your ears. It is dark, but the walls are dimly illuminated with glowing mushrooms. In a cavern at the end of a long and twisting corridor there is a strange, smooth-sided tower of white stone slimed with glowing fungus. Native Zikwa may or may not recognize it as a landmark, but have certainly heard an interesting variety of stories about its ancient purposes.

5. You awaken in a place devoid of color, flat and featureless, the earth made of pebbled stones. A track is beaten through them that suggests the passage of many, many hooves, although it is utterly silent and there are no signs of life to be seen. You hear cold, mournful wind, but you do not feel it: the air is still and cool. A strange, smooth-sided tower rises in the distance and glows from within with a light like the moon. If you approach it, you find it surrounded with strange symbols, but touching it hurts--unless you are a Legendary, in which case it triggers floods of ancestral memory, not just from your own race (as expected), but from all of them. You remember snippets of lives lived by dozens of Kin of all types.

6. You awaken in a thicket of things that are not quite trees but seem as though they might be related to trees. Flowers in strange, unsettling shapes blossom, and although the clamor of insects and bird is immense, you do not see any of them. You are beset with a strange sense of urgency and wanderlust. You may stumble across a strange, smooth-sided tower that glows from within with a light like the sun. It is surrounded by strange symbols half-overgrown with the alien vines, but touching it hurts--unless you are a Legendary, in which case it triggers an aching moment of insight that is gone as soon as it arrives. You feel as though you have learned a great and vital secret--but it is gone.

When you've finished the prompt and have a minimum of 500 words, post in the STICKY THREAD with the name of the prompt (WP05 - Far From Home) and a link to your thread. You can use a link to that post as an RP requirement for Legendary or other RP-related tasks!

All participants in the RP must reach word count individually, and post the completed thread individually.

You may do this prompt for multiple Kin, provided you reach word count for each.

This prompt will remain open for one week. At the end of that week your Kin might learn a little more--or might be even more mystified than  before...

[Tiarana]

[imgright]http://matope.pixel-blueberry.com/image ... ow_tia.gif[/imgright][WP05] 2. You awaken on the shady side of a towering sand dune, near an oasis. Birds with long, brightly-colored tails fly overhead. If you are a native Acha, you recognize this as your homeland. A strange, smooth-sided tower of red stone rises in the distance. Native Acha may or may not recognize it as a landmark.

Warm. It was so ungodly warm. Murkcrow rolled over and groaned. Summer must have come early, he thought, until he realized his tail was brushing against ground that was decidedly not swamp. Murkcrow opened his eyes a crack and peered around him. Sand...lots of sand. Murkcrow thought he must be dreaming and rolled over again and went back to sleep.

When he woke again a couple hours later to the same barren, sandy expanse, Murkcrow figured there might be something strange going on. He sat up and took stock of his situation. He had heard tales of this place from Acha who had migrated to the swamp. The desert. He could see sand in every direction, and the distant mountains of the Totoma. Murkcrow didn't know how far the desert was from Matope, but he was pretty sure even a kin at a hard run would take several days to travel this far in...and that no kin would be so foolhardy as to attempt to run across the desert. There was no way he wouldn't notice a kin dragging him through the swamp and across the desert while he was sleeping, so the only logical conclusion was that this was still a vision, or a dream. Or some unnatural force had brought him here, but that was so unlikely as to be considered impossible.

Either way, it was sweltering. The sun had risen high while he slept. And it was dry, bone dry. Murkcrow could feel his lips cracking in the heat. He gazed at the oasis, wondering if it was some sort of trap, but finally gave in to his thirst, trotted over, and jumped straight in. He felt refreshed instantly in the crisp, clear waters. After a few minutes spent paddling around in the oasis, Murkcrow climbed to the top of the sand dune he had woken on to see what there was to see. In the distance he could see - he squinted - the narrow, branchless trunk of a tree struck by lightning, or a thin protrusion of rock, some object that jutted straight out of the landscape like nothing he had seen before. That strange landmark, the distant mountains, and the oasis were the only features the vastness of sand seemed to possess.

"Alright, alright," Murkcrow muttered. If the Motherfather wanted him to examine bizarre desert landmarks, he would do as directed. Murkcrow pulled a branch laden with fruit from a date palm growing near the oasis - vision or not, he knew he would be thirsty - and set off towards the tower. He soon learned it was much, much larger than it first appeared, and much, much farther away. It took Murkcrow the better part of the day, and most of his dates, to reach it, and he slumped next to it in exhaustion. This was by far the longest and most vivid dream he had ever had, he reflected. After a quick rest, he stood up again to examine the thing. It was certainly unusual: it appeared to be made of red stone, and it was perfectly smooth. Murkcrow walked around the girth of it, looking for...anything different, but he found nothing but smooth stone the whole way around. And it was tall, taller than the tallest trees in the swamp. No kin could have made it, but it was clearly not a natural object either; there were no more tall stone trees ("tree" was the only word he could think of to describe it), or short ones, or broken ones, anywhere to be seen, and as smooth as it was...

"Well, I saw it." Murkcrow groaned and stretched out on the sand to wait for whatever was going to happen next.

[Tiarana]

This prompt can be played solo, or with friends!

And then, just like that, you're home. Or maybe it's not that simple...

If you did not play the last prompt, you can still play this one! Just assume that your Kin ended up in one of the strange locales from the last prompt, and play accordingly. This is a 100% RP prompt with no dice!

Match the number you rolled or picked in your first thread to the prompt below. If you didn't play the last prompt, you can pick whichever place you want your character to have been. Start a thread to reflect on what happened, to assess your location, or to talk to other people who experienced this strange phenomenon...

• 1. A wind sweeps down over the plain, rippling the grasses, and when it passes over you you are overcome with sleepiness. You cannot help it: you must find a place to rest.  For some reason you feel you must do this at the foot of the standing stone.
  
  2. You are suddenly, urgently parched, and must drink at the oasis. Even if you have already indulged there, this time you realize as the water hits your stomach that perhaps things are not exactly as they seem. You are first drowsy, then sleepy. The effects cannot be mitigated: you fall asleep--but first you feel an urgent need to lie down at the foot of the tower.
  
  3. Snow begins to fall in thick, heavy flakes. You feel a strong, unbearable need to shelter under the tower. As soon as you lie down, you are beset by powerful sleepiness, and unable to get up.
  
  4. You hear a rumbling as though a large animal is running overhead, aboveground. The ceiling begins to fall in in chunks, letting in shafts of light. You feel a powerful urge to follow them, and you do, back to the cavern with the stone, where the ceiling has completely given way and moths dance around the tip of the spire. One of them lights on your brow, and your eyelids are suddenly and strangely heavy. You curl up at the base of the stone to sleep.
  
  5. At first it seems as though nothing has changed. And then you realize: the phantom wind is a real wind, stirring your fur. It blows harder and harder until you are pushed inexorably back towards the stone, and then into it. If you are not a Legendary, there is no pain this time, but there is definite and sudden blackness, and a lingering moment of consciousness before you sleep, heavily. If you are a Legendary, you are swallowed up in the memory of a foal in the sac or the egg or the womb, until you forget who you are.
  
  6. The vines abruptly begin to move and shift in a way that suggests that they are alive, and one of them suddenly snakes around your ankle, and then another. No matter how you struggle, you are pulled back towards the standing stone. The vines are gentle: they do not hurt you, but they cannot be beaten. When you touch the stone, you are swallowed up by instant sleep and a lingering moment of awareness, if you are not a Legendary. If you are, you experience an instant of what it must be like to fly higher than the highest bird, and higher still: you see the hazy curve of the edge of the world, the rivers and oceans spread below you like threads and puddles. And then you begin to fall, peacefully and without fear.

For all participants:

You awaken where you'd fallen asleep, exactly there and nowhere else, before you'd found yourself far from home. The time you spent away is there, but the memories are strangely elusive, like snippets of a dream. You can, if you focus, call them back up, but some of them are distorted and strange.

So it was a dream, then, you think, and you rise, and are alarmed to find that your hooves ache, your legs burning (and perhaps you shed sand from your coat, or snow, or the petal of an alien flower--perhaps you feel a lingering ache where something attacked you in the dream, or taste for an instant on your own breath the foreign fruit you'd eaten), as though you have walked a long, long way...

When you've finished the prompt and have a minimum of 500 words, post in the STICKY THREAD with the name of the prompt (WP05 - Far From Home) and a link to your thread. You can use a link to that post as an RP requirement for Legendary or other RP-related tasks!

All participants in the RP must reach word count individually, and post the completed thread individually.

You may do this prompt for multiple Kin, provided you reach word count for each.

[Tiarana]

[WP06] 2. You are suddenly, urgently parched, and must drink at the oasis. Even if you have already indulged there, this time you realize as the water hits your stomach that perhaps things are not exactly as they seem. You are first drowsy, then sleepy. The effects cannot be mitigated: you fall asleep--but first you feel an urgent need to lie down at the foot of the tower.

Nothing happened. Nothing happened for hours. Murkcrow fell asleep and woke up several times, always to the same vast, sandy wasteland. Finally he ran out of dates. And then the thirst hit him. Murkcrow had no idea if it was normal to suddenly feel like you had had nothing to drink for days, your mouth full of sand, sweat suddenly run dry. He had been panting while he lay under the tower, but he clamped his mouth shut.  He gazed across the sand in the direction of the oasis and groaned inwardly. He would have to walk all that way, again. And it was full dark, now. At least the moon and his own glowing eyes illuminated the sand enough to follow his trail back, and the blazing heat of the desert had edged off, somewhat.

Finally, Murkcrow made it back to the oasis. The sun was rising now. That was one good thing about the desert: beautiful sunrises. He threw himself into the oasis and guzzled his fill of water. Being in the desert was so tiring, and when he slept, it was only lightly. Because I'm already asleep, he remembered. Now, now Murkcrow was bone-weary. He tried to lie down on the edge of the oasis, but he had an overwhelming need to return to the tall stone tree first. He grabbed another branch laden with dates. He had a sinking suspicion the Motherfather was just messing with him, but he managed to drag himself back to the tree and passed out, exhausted.

This time when he woke up he was not in the desert. Stalker was standing over him looking as concerned as she was able. "Where have you been?" Stalker demanded.

"mghhhrrrfrrdl," Murkcrow muttered at her. His whole body ached like he really had spent two days traipsing back and forth across the desert and he was having a hard time shaking off the dream-feeling. He shook his head to clear it. "Here, asleep."

Stalker shook her head. "Your body was, but you did not wake up. For at least a day. After I found you."

"A day?" He could believe it, as bad as he felt. He stood and shook the sand off his coat - why was there sand? he was just dreaming, wasn't he? - then realized with some shock that his nice bed of leaves had become a nice bed of sand as well. "Did you do this?"

"Why would I do that? There was a wind, right before you woke up. It dumped all that sand on you. And me too." Stalker scowled and tossed her head. A large quantity of sand fell out of her hair.

"Err...sorry," Murkcrow said. He guessed it was his fault, somehow. What was that dream? Maybe a Chosen kin could tell him. "Hey, could you help me find one of...those really old, wise kin?" Stalker, he knew, was pointedly unspiritual. "I was having a very...strange dream."

"You were having a strange something," Stalker muttered, but she followed him anyway.