< atton revisited > The information page for Atton has been fully revised and updated with the new map!
< updated calendar > The Fortuna calendar has been updated in the "Other" lore section! This includes a document which displays the calendar for you to see, making it much easier to understand.
< moving map > The first functional map has been released in the News section! This map is also interactive, allowing you to drag and drop between points in order to determine distances. This is the first iteration, and there's more and better to come!
< first annual awards > The results for the First Annual Fortuna Year-End Awards have been posted! Go and take a look at who the finalists were, and who took home the big prizes!
< new default skin > Our new skin has passed the beta test, and is now the new Default for the forums! If you have any issues with this skin, send a PM or Discord to Mellie.
< human lore update > Humans have been updated with TWENTY-FIVE subraces/subcultures which add numerous options, and a little extra lore and flavour.
< magic lore update > Magical Lore has been enhanced with the addition of a post on Magical Education. From Beginner to Expert, this is how you learn the spells.
< a change to member groups > Member groups are now based on storyline! You can change your displayed storyline by editing the settings in your profile.
Welcome to the world of Fortuna, a land of fantastic proportions. This is an original fantasy roleplay that takes place in a world developed over nearly a decade of work and collaboration. We aim to encourage all participants to have a hand in the stories of the characters here, and the world around them. Your choices are key - so make them with pride. You decide who wins the wars, you decide who becomes King, the world is ours, and together we will bring it to life!
Tinypaw and the sparrow landed on Cherry's shoulder again as they stopped at the beginning of the trampled trail. She broke a fresh piece of grass and compared the two and said she thought it had been through there recently, because the trampled grass didn't look dead yet. "Miss Cherry you are a lady of many talents! It does indeed look like the bear has been through here recently. You're quite the tracker!" She asked if he thought it might be close by and he paused, quirking his head to the side with nose twitching as he sniffed at the air. "Definitely," he determined a moment later. "Its den must be pretty close to the village. We should be careful from here. The usual advice with bears is to make lots of noise so they know to avoid you, but in this case we need to sneak up on it so we should try to be quiet. Lucky for us it's already snapped all the noisy foliage out of the way! Follow me and I'll give a signal when it's time to distract it ok?
The bird hopped off her shoulder and fluttered on ahead, Tinypaw keeping all senses on high alert now that they were coming up on the bear. He heard it before he saw it because it was still stomping around angrily in the bushes and he could hear the sound of claws scratching on tree trunks. The bear was clearly still agitated. The sparrow landed on a branch and Tinypaw turned to look at where Cherry was creeping up behind. Maybe it hadn't been a good idea to bring her. He could probably sneak up behind it without her getting put in danger. If the sparrow flew up behind the bear he could hop off and land on the bear's head.. He should tell her to stick back and he could handle this. This bear seemed really angry and he didn't want to put such a nice girl in danger. He would probably be ok, but she didn't look like she had any weapons and he wasn't entirely sure about her skill set but what if the bear got to her before he could calm it down and she couldn't fight it off? Tsk, he would feel so poorly if she got hurt or died because she wanted to help him. People died all the time, it was kind of the thing they did, but still he tried not to help that happen when he was around.
No, no she had offered to help and she could do it, he believed in her! And she clearly believed in him. And he also believed in him, and in the bear. There was a lot of believing. He waved his arms at Cherry to signal it was time to make some noise, and then the sparrow hopped off the branch and started fluttering over toward the bear with the intention of meeting it halfway as it came charging over.
Post by Cherry Milerand on Feb 25, 2017 16:30:04 GMT -7
[googlefont="Englebert"]
That's a biiig bear
The animal may have been larger than Cherry was initially expecting it to be. She'd seen Ursines plenty of times before, and they tended to stand pretty tall, and Cherry knew that actual bears were probably a bit bigger than that, but wowzers! This beast was massive and it was only standing on four legs at the moment! Still, Cherry couldn't pretend she didn't feel a slight thrill of excitement over the ordeal; after all, she had been right about how close the bear was, despite not really being a tracker by trade, so that filled her with a bit of pride, and also Tinypaw (the most adorable friggin fairy ever) was trusting her to help him out, and she trusted in him to stop the bear, so really, what wasn't there to be excited about?
She caught the little guy's signal that it was time to make their move, as he prepared to fly in and do his fairy thing, so Cherry smiled and nodded at him. The next moment, she was leaping out into the small clearing where the beast was scratching at some tree bark in an agitated fashion, and let loose a loud whoop.
"Hey there, massivepaw!" she called, immediately grabbing the creature's attention. "Lookit me! Nananana boo boo!" She threw in a little dance to go along with her noises, wiggling her arms around. The bear didn't seem to need any further provocation than that. It immediately let loose an angry bellow and started charging towards her, lumbering on its four legs at an alarmingly fast pace.
"Wuh-oh," she said to herself, stopping in her dancing and turning on her heel to run. It was no problem! She'd just duck between the trees! She was smaller and more maneuverable than the bear would be, yes. Although she still hoped Tinypaw did his thing quick because she was pretty sure that in terms of speed this bear was somehow actually faster than her.
Right! Now was the time! The bear charged under him and he hopped off the sparrow to land nimbly on its back on his four paws. He couldn't risk walking only on his hind legs, as the animal would surely just throw him off and he hadn't landed as close to its head as he had intended so he had a little bit of climbing to do. He scampered across its course fur and almost lost his footing once or twice but luckily he was a very good climber and he held on tight. One of the many skills he had developed as a fairy without wings of his own. He knew Cherry was ok still because the bear hadn't caught her yet, based on the fact it was still running. That didn't mean that she would be able to outmaneuver it forever though, so he planned to make this quick. He managed to crawl to its neck just below its ear and it was from there that he would be able to talk to it.
"Hey Ms. Bear! Um, excuse me! Can you please stop running?" He held on tight at the bear shook its head wildly in confusion at the sudden tiny yelling. "Leave me alone!" the bear growled in return, only momentarily distracted from chasing his new friend Cherry. "Excuse me Ms. Bear, you'll find that I asked you very nicely to stop running. This time, the bear shuddered and lumbered to an awkward halt, mostly because the bear didn't want to stop running but Tinypaw was a very, very good animal talent fairy. He wasn't quite so good at planning sometimes when he got excited or distracted though - he realized right now that it would have been probably a better idea to just approach the bear while on the sparrow while it was terrorizing the trees rather than terrorizing Cherry. He was reminded of the other fairies making fun of him for being a failure, but tried to shake off the feeling.
"Cherry?" He crawled to the top of the bear's head and stood on his hind legs to see above the fur, looking for his new friend. "I got her calmed down mostly, she's not gonna chase you anymore!" The bear was not technically calm, but she was not running anymore so that part was true.
Post by Cherry Milerand on Jan 4, 2018 8:15:54 GMT -7
[googlefont="Englebert"]
Captured!
Upon hearing the 'all clear' from Tinypaw, Cherry stepped out from behind the tree she had ducked behind, astounded to see that the bear had indeed calmed down and stopped charging. Something about her still seemed tense, though, as if it probably wasn't her own idea to finally calm down. Tinypaw had said though that this was something along the lines of his special fairy power, or something, so he probably had a way of forcing her docile. Still, being forced to still as opposed to actually calming down were two different things, and Cherry found she didn't quite like the idea that this bear was so mad and wasn't allowed to express it.
But of course, she also didn't like the idea of the bear attacking people. Cherry just wished that they could find some way to help her peacefully resolve whatever was bothering her without her needing to go on a rampage.
Most people would probably be wary about approaching a wild bear, even one under fairy control, but Cherry had total faith in her furry little friend and his powers. So she stepped right up to the beat and crouched down into a squat in front of her, looking the bear the eyes thoughtfully.
"You poor thing," she said, frowning. "I get it, you know? Sometimes something gets under your skin and you just gotta raise a little hell. But you can't go harming those poor old people. Can't you tell us what's got you so upset? Hm?"
She reached out then to pat the bear on the side of her big head, noting that the fur was actually pretty soft! It was nice. She glanced up at Tinypaw, smiling. "Is she saying anything?"
Whew, Cherry had hidden behind a tree! She was safe, everything was good. She didn't even seem afraid of the bear, which really spoke to the strength of her personality he thought. He waved at her from his perch atop the bear's head to make sure she could see him and then listened as she talked to the bear, telling her she couldn't just go around hurting people. Cherry was patting the bear's head, and the bear made some grumbly sounds that wouldn't have been called 'talking' but which Tinypaw understood to be as such.
As the bear 'spoke' Tinypaw's ears fell back and his eyes went wide in what was a very adorable but also very horrified expression, and for a moment he was so upset he went back to all fours and ran a circle around the top of the bear's head before hearing Cherry ask if the bear was saying anything and he hopped back to two legs and pointed in the direction of the town and gasped, "They killed her babies!"
Post by Cherry Milerand on Jan 11, 2018 4:57:56 GMT -7
[googlefont="Englebert"]
OUTRAGE
"What!" she exclaimed in response to Tinypaw's sudden announcement. Did he mean the village? Er, hamlet? Hamleteers? They'd done it? The little old lady they'd spoken to had hardly looked as though she was capable of killing anything, but then again Cherry supposed that not all of the hamlet's residents were as old and sweet as she was.
Besides, Tinypaw had definitely seemed upset by what the bear had said, running around in a distressed circle that had no business being as adorable as it was given the apparent severity of the situation, and he had animal-soothing powers, so he probably knew if the bear was telling the truth or not. Also, she was a bear, and Cherry doubted they really had a concept of lying, so 'telling the truth' was probably a moot point there.
"That's... that's awful..." she said, softening her pets to the bear's head and sticking her lip out in a way that suggested she might have just about started crying any second now. To think that this bear had had some cubs, and someone from that hamlet and gone and killed them? What for!? What did they ever do to anyone!? Cherry was getting mad just thinking about it! "How could they do such a thing!"
She swiftly stood back to her full height, the bear still coming up to her chest even while on all fours, and she took the beast's massive head between her two hands, locking eyes with it. Interestingly enough, she had almost forgotten that Tinypaw was even keeping the beast passive, because she was pretty sure she would have tried to have a long soul-searching eye-lock with the bear regardless of its current mood!
"It's no small wonder you're so mad!" she stated, giving the former mother a firm nod. "You have every right to be, after what happened! But... but you can't go rampaging through a village. That won't fix the problem, and it might get you killed, which I don't think your babies up in bear heaven would like very much. No! We gotta figure out who's responsible, single them out, and make them answer for what they did!"
How would they do that? Well, she wasn't sure. She wasn't about to say 'kill them', because answering murder with more murder wasn't the way of things in her opinion. But they were in Niseca, and she was pretty sure there was some law against this! They could be arrested!
Giving the bear one more firm nod of decisive action, she snapped her eyes up to look back at the mouseling fairy on her head. "Tinypaw, did she understand any of what I just said? Can you tell her?"
Tinypaw could see that Cherry looked at least as upset as he was, though of course neither of them could be as upset as the bear was. Tinypaw could feel her sadness and anger like a tangible force radiating from her and he tried to soothe it with comforting feelings, which he could of course but he also didn’t feel right just erasing her totally fair and understandable feelings.
She deserved to be sad and angry, and she deserved to have the crime against her brought to justice! But being a little more calm and a little less rampage-y wasn’t a terrible idea, so he did make sure to impress upon her a need to be a little more level-headed. Cherry was right - attacking the village wasn’t going to do any of them any good, and Tinypaw didn’t want this poor bear to get killed either.
But Cherry was also right that whoever did this needed to answer for their crime. Not just a crime according to the law of this country, but a crime according to the laws of nature. There had been no reports of the bear or her cubs disrupting the balance, and so by killing the cubs it was truly the humans who had disrupted it, and Tinypaw could feel it.
Cherry asked him if the bear understood anything that she had said, and then asked if he could tell her, and he bit his lip and rocked his head back and forth and said, ”Kiiinda. Animals don’t really speak ‘people’ but like, I can talk to and understand them as if they did. More or less.”
He knelt down and brushed his little hand gently against the bear’s fur and said, ”Who did this?” The bear rumbled and pawed at the ground and bowed its head, which made Tinypaw grab its fur to keep himself balanced. ”They were sleeping,” he relayed to Cherry like a translator, ”and she woke up to loud noises and saw a man at the cave entrance. She chased him away, but when she came back her babies were dead.”
He shook his head in disbelief. ”To kill bear cubs is bad enough, but to shoot them while they’re sleeping? I would rampage too.” They weren’t going to rampage though, they were going to bring the perpetrator to justice. The bear didn’t remember what the hunter looked like, but she did remember his smell. Well enough to track him back to the village, where she had maybe tackled a few people and clawed a few buildings to get a scent before she’d been chased away. ”We gotta bring back her to the village. She can find the man who did it.”
Post by Cherry Milerand on Feb 5, 2018 16:23:40 GMT -7
[googlefont="Englebert"]
Justice!
"Well you're darn tootin' we will!" Cherry agreed to Tinypaw's suggestion. As adorable as it had been watching Tinypaw mumble into the bear's ear and translate her growls and rumbles back to Cherry, that had done nothing to quell her righteous fury. Her hands remained planted on her hips as she seethed over the atrocity that Ms. Bear described. What kind of lowlife scum...
"Tinypaw, please tell Ms. Bear that we will take her back into the village!" she dictated, one finger in the air. She turned on her heel and started pacing back and forth in front of them, her mind racing with ideas and also maybe imagining herself and Tinypaw in fancy inquisitor outfits (a shame she couldn't just change them right then and there), looking fierce and unyielding. "She's gotta stay calm, but we're gonna call forward all the residents, which shouldn't be hard seeing as how there's so few of them, and each one is gonna step forward to be sniffed by Ms. Bear. And please tell her that once we figure out who's responsible, we'll... we'll..."
Well poopers, they would what? They couldn't let the bear kill the perpetrator. Sure, he'd done the same to her babies, but murder was kind of illegal, and if Cherry and Tinypaw let the bear tear the guy apart then that would basically be murder, right? And they didn't exactly have the means to perform any kind of justice themselves... Cherry could always call the authorities of Niseca, who would surely act in accordance with poaching laws over such a heinous thing, but that still felt so unsatisfying, and she wasn't sure that Ms. Bear would understand that justice was in fact being done.
With a frustrated grunt, she turned back to face them, cupping the bear's big head in her hands and ruffling her cheeks in what she felt was a sympathetic manner. "What do we do, Tinypaw? Is there like, a fairy justice system that can punish the evildoer with some magical judgment?? Because going to the cops here just seems like it's not good enough."
Tinypaw was glad his new friend Cherry was so agreeable to the direct action plan. She seemed like that kind of person, from what he'd already seen of her of course. He wondered if after this was all dealt with and he returned to the Feywild would he ever see her again? He hoped so, but the world was a big place and time just passed so fast out here and all the mortals just died to easy... Oh well! He would enjoy today for what it was! Even though this particular situation wasn't exactly enjoyable per se.
Cherry started on about how they were going to bring the bear to the village and bring out all the villagers to sniff out the one responsible, though when she came to the punishment part she trailed off and then went back to pat the bear's cheeks again before asking Tinypaw what they were going to do. Was there a fairy justice system to punish evildoers with magical judgement? He nodded with a very serious look on his face (though it kind of also looked like he was barely holding back a laugh) and replied, "Oh yes, fairies have a very distinct form of justice. I can guarantee that he will deeply regret his actions, and nobody who hears of his tale will repeat them."
One he finished talking he whistled a little tune and a few birds flew down to alight on the bear's head as well, which he seemed to have a silent conversation with before they flew off again all in different directions. Then he scritched the bear's head a bit with his little fingers and grumbled a little bear talk to her and she lowered her head in a nod before turning from Cherry to start walking towards the village. "Time to bring on the justice!"
Post by Cherry Milerand on May 17, 2018 3:02:46 GMT -7
[googlefont="Englebert"]
Time to lay down the LAW
Well gee, for a such a little guy Tinypaw sure could sound ominous. Well then! If the perpetrator was going to be punished (terribly, apparently) but without being killed, Cherry was on board. After all, what kind of monster kills a bunch of bear cubs?? Certainly not one that Cherry was keen on letting roam around Fortuna freely.
"Justice it is, then!" she cheered, pumping her fist in the air and following after Tinypaw, who was currently still riding the bear.
The two of them hadn't been in the woods for very long, and thus it didn't take them much time to return, either. Cherry supposed that if any of the villagers were checking their windows, they might have been unnerved at the sight of the bear approaching, but she hoped that maybe they'd catch the hint that everything was fine once they saw her walking safely beside it. Once they had positioned themselves into what looked to be the center of the small hamlet, Cherry spread her legs to take an assertive stance, one hand on her hips and the other making a showy gesture to the bear.
"Villagers behold!" she shouted, certain that most of the residents could hear her. "The bear is calmed! And really she's not such a bad girl. Just a concerned mother! So, we fairies kindly suggest that you all emerge from your homes now to make peace! Because SOMEbody here owes this girl an apology!"
She glanced down at Tinypaw, tossing him a little smirk and a wink, then whispered. "Follow my lead."
Back in her loud voice, she made another declaration. "And I'd suggest you come out now and do this peacefully! Because we're not above using our fairy magic to pry every door off of its hinges and force you out! And I'm sure no one wants to deal with a doorless home this winter!"
The skin OTHERWORLD was made by JAWN of WICKED WONDERLAND.
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