JediMaestro

Curious how the 15 people on Reddit found LotC.

Somewhere in the wilds of Azuras, an elven hermit raises a glass of honeyed wine to a dwarf who was once a bronzed brother-in arms.

Reniril Zimrabar had no interest in drinking or fighting or gambling, but she clapped her hands and danced around anyway. "Yay, Aedie!" She chirped, making a mental note to come and support her cousin's endeavor. That is, if she could keep the date in her head long enough to remember. The event promptly slipped out of the flighty girl's mind just as quickly as it had entered as she spotted a friend in the distance and scurried over to gossip with them.

A gentle, chilly breeze caressed Solveig's skin, and as she slowly drifted back to consciousness from sleep, she supposed that she had found herself in another dream of her now-distant homeland. But something was not quite right; rather than the rustle of the wind through the trees and the chill of the air, she could hear a strange droning whine in the direction the cool air came from. Slowly, she opened her eyes. In an instant, she was fully awake, instinctually pushing back on her feet and sending the chair in which she sat crashing back into a wall, which clicked and turned into a cabinet. To her left, there was indeed no winter breeze, but instead a small device that whirred and sent pallid air drifting in her direction at a constant rate. Solveig massaged her head, looking around her in confusion. In front of her, a strange signboard sprawled. On it was emblazoned a peculiar sign. She leaned forward to read: TAKE NOTE OF EXACTLY WHERE YOU ARE IN THE MODERN DAY, REAL WORLD, PROBABLY 2026. YOUR MOST-USED OR FAVORITE CHARACTER APPEARS DIRECTLY WHERE YOU ARE, RIGHT NOW... Solveig looked down where she sat in bafflement. Around her, mysterious devices sat, jumbled with sheafs of pure-white paper that spoke of "summons" and "petitions." Her eyes narrowed. Had she been summoned by some strange ritual then? Glancing up, a map caught her eye of a territory wholly unknown to her. Fear began to eat at her. This all felt so real; could it really be some fantastic dream? And if it wasn't, how could she hope to make it back to her children and her darling husband? She stood abruptly, moving around the desk at which she had sat and then froze as a person in an adjacent room swiveled to look at her and open their mouth in confusion. Turning, she grasped at the door handle and tugged, but the door would not budge. As the person in the other room began to rise and approach, Solveig turned on them, drawing the aurum dagger at her belt, the one gifted to her by Nicky so many years ago now. "What is this?" she spat. "Where have you brought me, demon? Send me back. Now." The stranger wasted no time in calling security, and after a brief attempt at flight, Solveig was promptly tracked down by the police, tased after a tense standoff, and taken to the police station, her dagger and other curious personal effects confiscated. In her jail cell, she curled up, desperately trying to go to sleep and to wake back up in her cozy home next to her husband . . .

It depends on how relevant it is to the RP I'm doing. When I was actively on the run from Idunia, I didn't use soulstone at all for several days because using CT as a hub/hangout spot to avoid detection feels cheap to me. Likewise if I'm on some kind of timer or the travel is otherwise important to the RP, then I'll go by foot/horse. If I'm just bouncing between my regular RP spots looking for RP though, I'll soulstone since 99% of the time, I don't encounter road RP anyway.

Jin sat on his bed in his room, staring down at a copy of the missive posted all around Kurai-Kuni and wondering how things could have gone so wrong so quickly. Only a year or so before, there Jin had stood with Naesan-Gun in the streets of Alduun in front of the clinic. "All life is precious," the Won-In had wisely intoned to a rapt Jin, who, though he gave pause at Naesan-Gun's beliefs regarding this 'King,' had become excited at the prospect of traveling with Naesan-Gun to become a Heaven Guard, to protect the helpless, to learn the old ways of the Won-In that his mother had seemed so keen to prevent him from even hearing. Then, just a few days ago now, Naesan-Gun had tried to kill a defenseless child. Not just any child, but Jin's own yeodongsaeng - his little sister, Sora. As Jin sat there, once again his fingers balled into fists, nails beginning to dig into his own palm. Again he bent forward, eyes squeezing shut as tears began to drip down onto the sheets below. For the first time, however, in the isolation of his room, a whimper escaped him, one built up from days of standing strong for his sister, his eomma, his nation. Now that the whole sordid affair was over, Jin felt like blinders had been taken from his eyes, and he was seeing the world clearly for the first time since he had met the accursed Naesan. From the very beginning, this stranger had been violent, dismissive of the ways of Kurai-Kuni despite his very life having been spared when it rightfully could have been taken for attacking Holly. It had taken him no time at all to appeal to Jin's ego, to whisper to him of secret truths that his parents and mentors didn't want him to know. And Jin had believed all of it, without thinking critically even once. Because it was what he wanted to hear- that he was special, that he, a half-Won-In and half-Oyashiman half-elf, understood what it meant to be Won-In better than his own full-blooded Won-In mother. Even when Sora had warned him how untrustworthy this man was, he had brusquely dismissed her, demanding that she not interfere in his own private business. A sob escaped Jin's slumped form. Because of his own guileless ego, his sister had nearly died. For the umpteenth time, Jin longed to rewind the clock, to dismiss Naesan's words out of hand as the ravings of an insane stranger. Or at least to have been there when Naesan drew his sword on a ten-year-old child, to have beaten the man back himself and been the one to drive his dagger in, to see the light leave the Won-In's eyes. No sage was he - only a con man who had duped Jin and received the death a charlatan like himself deserved. And now this brother of his had appeared out of nowhere, declaring war on Kurai-Kuni and a death sentence on Jin's own mother. Slowly, he straightened, catching his breath. No more would he be a stooge for the plots of others - and no more would he hold any patience for the ways of the Heaven Guard or their 'King.' In his zeal to connect with one side of his heritage, he had nearly abandoned the other half, and that was something Jin now knew he must not do. Because he had rejected the Oyashiman part of himself in favor of a radical Won-In, the war in the mainland had now reached the shores of Azuras, and it would continue to rage unless Jin took responsibility and finished what he started. "You almost killed my sister, Naesan," Jin whispers in the dark, his voice now perfectly even and full of vitriolic confidence, "Now I swear to you before all the spirits you rejected that I will be the one to kill your brother."

Dear Mrs. Zimrabar, You don't know me, but the name's Angus, and I'm one of the mailmen here in jolly old Ildon. Your daughter Reniril came to me and told me how she had just moved here from your farm to stay with your big-city relatives, and how you had asked her to send letters back home. She brought a bunch of pictures she'd drawn of her adventures so far, and she was awful keen on showing me all of them and explaining them. It's a slow mail day today, so I offered to write up an explanation of each of the drawings for you, as Miss Zimrabar hasn't learned her letters well enough to write a whole letter yet. Drawing #1 - Race in the Fields Drawing #2 - Apples and Odors and Ologs, Oh My! Drawing #3 - Oh, To Be A Pirate! No doubt it won't surprise you to hear that Miss Zimrabar could have drawn and told me stories all day, each more fanciful than the last, but I think that these three best convey to you how she is adjusting to life in Ildon. She seems to me to have settled in well, already making friends, and she is an inquisitive young lass with boundless energy and an appetite for learning. I will be teaching her some basics in how to swim in the next day or two; with the city itself built on the water, being able to stay afloat is a necessity here, and it will enable her to board and explore some of the ships that are moored farther out in the bay. Perhaps I might even be able to send her out to deliver mail eventually, so she can earn a bit of an allowance. I will be sure to remind her to write you every week and will help her out in writing until she can write well enough to do so on her own. Miss Zimrabar sends her love (and hugs and kisses). ~Angus of Ildon

Bronze Band adjacent party mentioned in 2026, we are so back, boys.

Reniril Zimrabar falls to her knees and asks GOD why He gave her a skygod that would be at work during that time.

As Solveig lay next to Nicky in warm, comfortable darkness, somewhere between sleep and dreams, a memory from the isle of Kalldur rose unbidden to her mind . . . a chance encounter with a small cursed child, her gentle mother, and her enigmatic father. Solveig remembered how well she had gotten on with the woman--Rhianwen, was it? Solveig was surprised she could recall the name--and how she had hoped it was merely the first encounter that would lay down a friendship with the couple, who seemed to so delicately walk the line between gentle kindness and cold hostility. But no, like so many other things on Kalldur, it had been but a single meeting, and the family had vanished into the immense continent of Azuras without a trace. For a moment, Rhianwen's warm smile, Khelman's clinical fatherliness, and Halom's inquisitive and cheerful face rose to view in her mind's eye as plainly as if she had met them yesterday. Like as not, she would never meet them again. Solveig slipped into slumber, her memories of Kalldur melding with dreams until nothing was left.

When Solveig hears of the woman's death, she knows little else to do but to light a candle. Watching its flame flicker, she reflects how little she truly knew of the other in the end. She never knew a name - the moniker of Aloisa Barclay would mean nothing to her, much less any of the other aliases that followed in its wake. Nor did she ever hear the woman's story - neither any of the good deeds done in life nor any of the wicked ones done in the unnatural half-life that followed. Nor even, really, had she heard tell of the good deeds of the one she knew - the one called the Martyr. What she did know, however, was the actions of a single day. A warm smile given on a day when the world was at its starkest and coldest. Succor in a hostile and uncaring world. A single act of kindness, offered without much consideration of its import, which reshaped the world around Solveig into somewhere worth living again. For that, the Martyr would always have her admiration and love, such as it was. So, although Solveig scarcely knows the woman--not her name nor her life, not a relationship long enough to call her a friend nor deep enough to truly reckon with the impact of her loss, neither knowing which god to pray to nor even what to ask of whichever god would bend ear--nevertheless she bows her head for a few moments and mourns her, just as she had mourned the couple whom she and the Candleborn, at the behest of the Martyr, had sought unsuccessfully to rescue. One didn't really need to know someone to mourn them, after all; it was enough to recognize the senseless loss of life and to grieve that the world should continue on without stopping to mark the death of one of its own denizens. After a few quiet moments, Solveig rises and continues on with her day, remembering well from this and so many other tragedies to cherish her children and never to miss an opportunity to remind her husband of her love. Before too long, the Martyr's sacrifice joins the dusty annals in the back of her mind along with so many others who have fought and died in the periphery of her life. There the candle sits, burning for a time, giving shape and warmth and coziness to the area just around its flickering light. And then, minutes or hours later, without any attention paid by the very world to whom it gave light, it snuffs out.

Reading the posted order on the wall of a building in rain-slicked Kurai-Kuni, Jin hopes that peacetime will give the warriors he looks up to so much time to finally train him. As he reaches the final part of the notice, he looks forward to spending a moment or two to honor An Cheong-Won, the grandmother he tragically never had the chance to meet.

Instantly outpriced before even placing a bid . . . we live in a society.

Dance of Eternity by the songstress, Bloom-Bird I had no dancing partner at the ball, Was forced to watch as others danced with grace. Much worse, I had no prospects – none at all – But then approached a strange but smiling face. Though others showed him naught but rude disgrace, He took my hand, said, “May I have this dance?” And soon I laughed and smiled in his embrace, Forever grateful that I took that chance. Each falt’ring step, each shy but tender glance Enthralled me, though the band played faster yet. And from those fumbling figures came romance, Chaseéing ‘til we turned a pirouette. Until the end of time, ‘neath starry sky, I’ll dance with you, my darling Nickolai. OOC: Art by the amazing @Cally. . . yes, this whole post was just an excuse to show this art off.

Is that a real bid? 😔

Waking Nightmare or What Matters Most OOC: Please don't metagame :) For the third night in a row, Solveig lay in bed, wide-awake. Before, she had stayed awake mourning what she had lost the day before. Tonight, however, she feared what she might lose in the day after. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Three nights ago, Solveig had slept like a babe. Snuggled up against her snoring husband, Bronadron Callaghan, she hadn’t bothered to sit up and look around their beautiful cottage home. She hadn’t sat out in the family room next to the twins’ room and watched the fireplace, reminiscing on when they had hosted the Prince of Idunia on that very same couch. She hadn’t walked through the kitchen, eyes lingering on the kitchen table where her family had sat for breakfast and dinner every day since it began. She hadn’t walked outside to listen to the murmuring lake or to sit at the little bench where she and Bron had lazed about and cracked jokes and next to which Bron had trained her in the use of a sword. Why would she? This was the house they had shared together for the past ten years. It was the home in which they were watching their children grow up. It was the home in which they would grow old together. And so, bright and early the next morning, Solveig had donned the nun’s habit she wore every day, ate breakfast with the family, and then had headed to Alduun for her duties. As she had picked her way through the dense trees to reach the road, she had not looked back for one last glance at the home of which she had dreamed for as long as she and Bron had planned a future together. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Two nights ago, Solveig had tossed and turned fruitlessly in a strange bed in a cramped safehouse in [REDACTED]. Next to her, Bron had been silent: whether due to a sleep of pure exhaustion or whether he too could not sleep, Solveig had not known. She might have spoken up, shared her thoughts and fears with her husband, but only a few feet away, the twins had slumbered peacefully in their own bunk bed, assured by Bron’s jokes and Solveig’s assurances that everything was under control. Despite urging Bron to rest, Solveig had found sleep elusive. Her head had spun with the travails of past, present and future. She had endured an exhausting day: a panicked escape from Idunia with her two children in tow on foot, with Bron having already gone ahead. After having received a letter from Bron and leaving Alduun in a panic (though without being stopped), she had hurried back to Tir-Glas to find the house already packed and moved, with her children, Andor and Muriel, awaiting her return. Off they had went, on foot and carrying nothing. Setting forth on the road towards Petra, Solveig had turned towards Adria and walked along the banks of its gentle river until she had reached its gentlest and narrowest segment. There she had forded the river, lifting the twins above the waist-high water that might otherwise have carried them away. No sooner had they arrived on the other side than Solveig had slowly started to pick her way up steep, snowy hills, stopping now and again to give her children a leg up. She had walked down that long, freezing, Norlandic road, hand-in-hand with the sleepy and confused twins, with the sun swiftly setting and the evening chill setting in. All the way she had gone to the capital, just to find a place where she might send a letter to Bron about finding a place to meet. With the letter sent, she had waited what felt like hours. And then the reunion and then the journey to the safehouse and then the hushed conversations. And yet still, on this night, Solveig hadn’t slept a wink. In that strange silence, she had done all the things she had not done the night prior. In her mind’s eye, she had surveyed each room of the house and walked outside to the lake. Though she had done all of this, Solveig had found it wanting. Their house was forever gone, an artifact of a time now lost, a period in their shared history as idyllic as it had been turbulent. For all their troubles: the secrets they had kept, their continual clash with Iudas and Idunia, their struggle just to live as other families did - yet they had also had the sweetness of shared domesticity, jobs that helped others, loving family. These things, which had once seemed like basic necessities, had now become luxuries for Solveig and her family. It had not been only bitter nostalgia that had kept Solveig awake that night. Though cloistered far beyond the reach of whispers and rumors, Solveig had known how likely it was that hunters already swept the four corners of the continental Empire to find Bron, to punish him for telling Idunia’s leaders an unwelcome truth about its own. She had feared any moment that Bron might find himself given up by traitors or that she might wake to the sounds of their safehouse under siege. Too she had pondered on their future, what a life as fugitives of the High Kingdom might look like. After all, they could not live in a safehouse forever. And though sleep had eluded her the whole night, she had stayed in bed all the while, ruminating. She had not shifted to look upon the face of her sleeping husband. She had not kissed his forehead or put her hand into his. She had not whispered “I love you” into his ear with all the sweetness and sincerity that filled her heart every time she said those words. Why would she? They had made it safely to a safehouse that Solveig knew was borderline unassailable. It was a place that would serve them well for as long as they needed until the Idunians got bored and stopped searching. His was a face she would look upon in delight every day and night of their stay here. Whether here or somewhere else in Azuras, someday they would grow old together. And so, bright and early the next morning, Solveig had risen, quite sleepless, to find the safehouse still safe, to hear her husband’s yawn and the children stirring, to prepare a breakfast of rations and hastily-packed food from the pantry. As Bron had risen and announced he was going to check the mail, Solveig had not glanced up from her play with the children to regard the man she loved more than life itself. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ One night ago, Solveig had lain, sobbing, on a bedroll under the stars in [REDACTED]. The children slept safe at a distance from her, closed up behind walls that would obscure the sounds of her desperate crying, allowed the peace that Solveig would now never have, if only for one more night. Only a few hours ago, Solveig had spoken to an old friend, and he had confirmed the worst: Bron was dead. It had been confirmation of what Solveig had already known in her heart since the moment that she had gone out after Bron to the mailbox and found him missing. She had heard from those around that Bron had been snatched by a group of hunters, and her blood had run cold. She had collapsed to her knees then and there, knowing that only one possible fate had awaited the man to whom fate itself had never given any quarter. Despite offers to assist, to take her to the Idunian capital, Solveig had refused, knowing that only death or capture would await her if she was recognized, knowing that her children now depended solely on her for survival. It was with that keen knowledge that she had gained the strength to rise to her feet and return to her children, telling them only as much as would explain away Bron’s absence without causing them to worry. A turbulent day had followed, full of deception and struggle. But all the while, the day had passed like a dream before her eyes for the simple fact that her Bron was now gone: unkissed, unheld, unloved. As she had lain in bed, wracked with grief, she had replayed all of their loveliest memories in her head, held Bron in her arms in her mind’s eye, and rained kisses on his face. And yet, it had comforted her not a whit with the knowledge that Bron was forever gone. What she had come to take for granted - their quiet chats at the kitchen table or surrounded by friends at the tavern at Alduun, their moments teasing and playing with the twins together, the way they would hold each other close - she now would have paid all she had or severed a limb just to experience one more time. After hours of weeping, when her throat had grown raw from the wrenching sobs and her eyes had reddened, when at last she had grown quiet while the night was still dark, she had resolved to no more take things for granted. She had risen from her bed and walked to where the children slept. She had bent over and kissed each twin on the forehead after wiping her eyes free of tears. She had whispered to them softly, “I love you.” Despite all she had lost, despite the enormously heavy cost of this lesson, Solveig would not become so consumed by what had been that she would lose sight of the only precious possessions she still had left: her own children. Though she had longed to die and join Bron wherever his soul found purchase, she had resolved to live for her children, to see them safely to adulthood. And there the matter might have ended: a grim but practical view toward the future, except . . . ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ For the third night in a row, Solveig lay in bed, wide-awake, in a drab but cozy space in [REDACTED]. Across the room, the children dozed in peaceful slumber. And next to her . . . next to her lay Nickolai, the man once known as Bronadron Callaghan, her husband. The matter beggared belief and defied all description. Having sat with her children the rest of the previous tear-soaked night, Solveig had risen, beyond exhausted. Again, the day had begun to pass like a dream as she had striven to remain focused despite her profound lack of sleep. She had met new people, created plans for the future of what her family’s life would look like. But then had come a thunderclap: a letter stating that Bron was alive and well and holed up in the safehouse where they had started this whole sordid affair. In that moment, Solveig had felt terror and confusion. The friend who had told her of Bron’s demise was not one to spin tall tales or to exaggerate: he had told her that, though he had not been allowed near, he had known for a fact that Bron had died with dignity. So what could this letter mean? In Solveig’s view, there had been one likely explanation: a trap set by Magister Iudas to ensnare her and her family and drag them back to Idunia. And though terror had consumed her, a yet more terrifying emotion had glimmered in the corner of her mind: hope. It was beyond reason to believe that he could be alive. Still, love too was beyond reason, and so Solveig had convinced others to come with her, either to fight for their lives against whatever Idunian forces lurked in secret, or else to reunite her with her lost love. There, dozing gently with a peace Solveig had not known in days, had sat the man she had believed dead. Solveig had tearfully reunited with Bron, who, having now experienced Idunian hospitality, had rejected his Idunian name in favor of his birth name: Nickolai. Doubtless he had been pleased to see her, and yet confusion had filled his eyes, for according to him, he had not died, only awoken in a forest after being beaten senseless. It was for this reason that Solveig now feared to let her drooping eyelids fall, despite her entire body screaming out for rest. The past few days had been a waking nightmare for Solveig, in which she had constantly longed to wake up safe and sound in her precious Tir-Glas cottage. But now - now that something altogether inexplicable had happened, now she feared that she would wake up in the same place with the bed empty, a delusion conjured by a deeply wounded mind in desperate need of cheer. Solveig knew that her time was limited. Soon, her body would force her to shut down into sleep, and she would wake up to discover that today’s intoxicating joys had been a fantasy. In this moment, she could not take anything for granted. She had dreamt of cutting off her right hand in exchange for one last touch, one last kiss, one last conversation. Here, she had the chance to earn it for free. Sitting up with some effort, Solveig placed a hand on Nicky’s arm, causing him to stir. “Solveig...” he said sleepily, “Everything ordak?” “It will be. No matter what happens tomorrow. I’ll make sure of it.” Solveig responded gently, staring down at his face, willing the last waking neurons of her brain to etch that memory into stone, to savor no matter what. “Nicky?” she said, tears rising to her eyes. “Hm?” The man was already half-asleep again. “I love you.” “Ea love vy...” ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Solveig awoke slowly, blinking as she adjusted to the balmy sunbeams drifting into the room. She turned her head to look next to her. The bed was empty. Mechanically, Solveig rose and dressed herself, heading up the steps to where she could hear the children playing. There, crouching down to giggle with the children, was her own Nickolai, as real as the grass underfoot and the lazy afternoon sun that beamed down on them. Turning, he caught sight of her and broke into a goofy grin, rising to greet her. In her heart of hearts, Solveig knew that she would revisit that terrible place where Bron was still dead in her dreams. It still haunted her in the day, so that she could hardly bear to let Nicky and the children out of her sight. She supposed that she would always be clingier than she used to be, always more prone to bouts of teariness, always tending towards a gloom that she herself could not fully explain, living part of her life in a world where the bed next to her remained empty. And yet, that fear, it would keep her from taking for granted what she ought never to have done. It would remind her every day of what mattered most. There, in the crater of what their life had been, among the seeds of what their life could be, Solveig greeted her family with a hug and a kiss each. And she smiled. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~