< 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!
Rill praised the gods (all but Haelrin, anyway) when the giant said the trees were starting to look familiar. Well, that was something at least. He wasn't sure how trustworthy she was on the subject given that she hadn't known which way was east but maybe she was better at remembering what things looked like than where they were. And she reminded him it was called Tasark, and told him to listen more carefully. "Oh yeah, I'll be sure to do that, thanks!" He wasn't going to get into it right now. He really couldn't afford the distraction to be honest. "Whoops, Tasark." Turns out your own imaginary friends couldn't really remember something you had forgotten, given that they used the same brain as you. Who'd have thought.
Speaking of brains, his was killing him. The sunshine, the trying to focus on things in the distance, and the magic were all very much not helping. If there had been any benefit to being locked up for so long with literally nothing else to entertain himself, it was that he had gotten better at maintaining illusions for extended periods of time. He did not, however, get as much better as he seemed to think based on all the things he was doing. But that was fine, everything was going to be fine, it was all fine fine fine. Magic carpet. Warm. Fly. Listen.
Listen as the giant announced that their destination was ahead! Rill sighed in relief and like a marathon runner seeing the finish line he pushed just a bit harder, but noticed then that the wind was picking up in a very unpleasant way, and quite quickly too. He was jostled around and had to slow down significantly just to focus on not getting blown out of the sky. And then it started snowing. Not a nice snowing, with big fluffy snowflakes that you could watch while curled up by a fire with some hot cocoa. Oh no, this was mean snow. This was a blizzard.
Little did Rill know that they had gained a follower as they flew, an arial predator that smelled them on the wind and heard their conversation like it was a giant bulls-eye. The Snowsnout brought with it all the wrath of winter as it caught up and descended upon them with a bone-chilling screech.
Rill realized then that he had gotten so fixated on their destination that he had forgotten to be on the lookout for anything else, and the fact they were being attacked now would only add fuel his paranoia of open spaces for the future. Right now, all he could do was shout with surprise as one more gust of wind threw him totally off kilter and sent him tumbling wildly to the ground. He lost focus on the illusions as he hit the cold snow like a cannonball, and as he struggled to dig himself back out he realized he had no idea how his companion would be faring. He didn't know what it was that had made the screech but it sounded scary, and with the addition of the freak snowstorm they would really have to be careful.
Also he couldn't feel his nose or ears or fingers, but that was a later Rill problem.
[attr="class","gurkpost"] Everything happened at a pace not quite too quick for Gurk to process. A blizzard blew in out of nowhere, a hideous screech shook the air, and then a gust of wind struck them and everything went to pot. Gurk had fallen many times in her life, but not quite in the way she was falling now, which was sideways, and along the gale of the wind. When she realized that she had been falling for too long to account for the very small number of feet she was off the ground, she forced her eyes to open and took in a strange and new world.
Trees were growing out of the side of her vision, and she was falling past them as if they were rungs on a ladder and she had taken a horrible mis-step. The sky was to her left, and below her... Below her-- She looked down and saw an unending world of trees and snow but never ground to break her fall. She thought for a moment she was in a nightmare, but as she grasped the branch of a tree to stop herself, she realized something else: She was still floating, and the wind had been blowing her unstable form west-ward. Well, that wasn't good. She wanted to go east.
When the wind screeched again and landed in a small clearing of snow just a few trees up from Gurk, she realized that it wasn't the wind doing all of this inconvenient blowing, and bellowing, and blizzarding. It was a dragon. A true to life, swear to the Gods, kiss your own hiney dragon. "Well, I'll be. You see that, Pill--" The dragon turned it's head towards her and screeched and roared and began stalking and Gurk instinctively let go of the branch, soon feeling gravity retake her as she drifted back down into the snow. She considered screaming, or possibly trying to charm the dragon with her incredible wit and intellect, but then she realized it was sniffing. And that it's eyes were far too small for being eyes.
It can't see. Which means you can't talk... Which means-- Oh God, what horror is this! She pursed her lips together almost painfully, doing her damndest to keep her mouth shut, and then grasped her infinity gear with pink fingertips. She focused on the thing, shaking it somewhat purposefully and somewhat due to the shivers overtaking her, and in the next moment her hand was holding a fresh grenade. She would have thrown it immediately but the thing was getting closer and she didn't know where Pill was. She knew she could survive being in the blast radius, but him? He was so tiny, and likely very flammable.
It was hard to describe the sense of unease when surrounded by snow on all sides. He felt like maybe he should have an advantage to this given his fairly recent circumstances, but it turned out not even the room could prepare him for this. In his tumble through the snow he had gotten buried and realized as he scabbled against it that he wasn't entirely sure which way was actually up or down. You would think gravity might help figure that out but strangely it didn't, at least not while he was panicking about it at first. After a moment though he managed to dislodge enough snow around his hand to hold it up and let it fall in whichever way gravity took it, which was to the left and up a bit, which meant he now at least knew which way to start digging to get out. He tried using his wings to flutter the snow out of place but either because wings were too weak in general or because he was just at that point, he couldn't get it to work. That was fine, he could do this. Not like he had any other choice.
He realized very quickly that he didn't like touching snow with his bare skin but without any other options he just kept piling it to the side until he got out, and was almost re-buried by the swirling snowstorm on the outside. Wow this was something else. He looked around and spotted a lot of what looked like trees all around, and nearby a giant shape that was mostly white on white but he could see it moving, like a cloud or a bird or something. It was when the moving shape screeched again that he realized it was definitely not a cloud and probably not a bird, but rather a giant monster of some kind, and it swooped down behind some trees in a very 'hunting something' kind of way. "Oh no."
He pushed himself into the sky with at least as much force of will as actual wing-power and managed to maneuver his way through the trees to land on a branch at the edge of the clearing where the dragon was stalking his new companion. "Gurkarimel?" he called, somewhat unsure whether that was actually what she'd said her name was. The dragon, which he definitely saw was a dragon now, turned its head his way when he spoke and let out another screech which hurt his ears and he realized maybe yelling hadn't been the best idea. It was hard to hear with the wind though and he worried she hadn't even heard him at all, but she would probably notice that the dragon was distracted and he hoped she would realize it was because he was in the tree. Could the dragon get him when he was in the tree? He hoped not. He hoped this giant tree would protect him. Why was everything around here to huge?
[attr="class","gurkpost"] The thing wasn't huge compared to the trees, but as it began to bear down on Gurk she couldn't help but thinking of just how ridiculously huge it was-- seriously, who decided that it was okay for things to be so big and have teeth like that, and quite honestly she was going to die in the middle of the tundra and not even in a cool way, like in the arms of a beautiful woman, she was just going to die (mostly) alone and really cold and--
Gurkarimel?
She knew that it was her little fairy friend based on how poorly he was proving he had listened to her. She wanted to shout back a correction, but the little voice calling out over the storm had taken the dragon's attention. She had been quiet enough, and the snow had concealed her smell enough, that the thing wasn't sure where she was. It did, on the other hand, know where Pill was, and thanks to the way it locked it's head in his direction, so did she.
She began to count feet - like distance, not feet-feet - and her brain made quick predictions. She was good with numbers, with distances, trajectories, and physics in a way that she wasn't as good with people or words or social interactions (though she would claim she was fabulous at both), which meant that this was a walk in the park for Gurk. She'd get caught within the last vestige of heat, get blown back into a snow drift, Rill might get knocked out of the tree from the rumble it would cause, and the thingie? The dragon-thingie? It would hurt. What it did after it was hurt... Well, that wasn't really a part of her calculations.
"Hold onto your hiney!" She yelled out, yanking the pin out with her teeth and tossing the grenade below the dragon's feet. It smacked precisely where she wanted it, underneath it's (hopefully) soft underbelly, and not a second later--
BOOM!
Gurk was knocked back into the snow drift, which was as good a cushion as any, and felt a curtain of water splash her from the way the heat and force knocked around the blazing blizzard around her. Smoke enveloped where the dragon had landed, trees had tumbled and blocked her view... She didn't know how well her plan had worked, but she really hoped she hadn't just cooked her new fairy friend for her new dragon not-friend's dinner.
Rill was very worried about this dragon thing. It was much, much bigger than he was and it looked like it was about ready to pounce on him. Probably wasn’t a good idea to have brought attention to himself, but maybe it would give his new companion time to run away.
Why wasn’t she running away?
A moment later, as the dragon seemed to be sniffing around for Rill, Gurk yelled out to hold onto his hiney and he realized that she hadn’t been running because she had some sort of plan. A potentially dangerous plan from the sound of it. He grabbed onto the tree branch just as something exploded, but it didn’t do anything because the branch was snapped off with the force of the blast and sent him tumbling. His wings fluttered wildly, trying to right himself in the air as he fell, but he couldn’t get his bearings and ended up landing in the snow with a little poof.
He was beginning to feel like a rag doll around here with how much he’d been thrown around. He wasn’t into it.
But there were bigger problems than that right now, like the dragon. As he poked his head out of the snow he saw it was pretty badly burned and looked a little pathetic now, and in a way he felt bad for it because it probably just wanted to eat, but he also didn’t want to be eaten so it was bittersweet.
It’s sense of smell was probably overwhelmed by the burning smokey bomb smell and it was looking around as though trying to find its prey. He didn’t want to hurt it anymore and he knew for a fact he wouldn’t be able to if he tried so he decided to try a different tactic and that was to lead it away or scare it away. He felt the strain as he focused on his magic and decided in its weakened state it would probably not want to get into a fight so he picked the scariest monster roar he could think of and projected it to the beast.
It worked.
It’s ears perked up and it made a distressed growling sound before stumbling back and taking to the air and flying away from them and their destination. Luckily as it left so too did the swirling winds and snow. Rill was exhausted and getting colder by the second though so he got himself out of his little snow hole and flew over to where Gurk was to make sure she was okay.
[attr="class","gurkpost"] Gurk had thought that the dragon was the biggest of her problems right now, but when something roared that scared off even that... Well, everything became a lot more frightening. She didn't know what made the roar, but it shook her to the core and her fight or flight response didn't kick in. Instead, her 'stop moving and die' response kicked in. Which was about as useful as you'd think.
She could see Rill fly up to her, but he wasn't entirely clear, and she could hear that he was saying words, but they sounded distant. Then again, that second one could have easily been more to do with her bomb than with fear. Her eyes tried to focus on him, and instead focused on the dragon flying away, and then the fact that nothing else was happening. Huh. Weird. Her brain tried to parse it as her body tried to make her ears work again, and eventually she heard little Pill saying something that had actual consonants -- let's get out of here.
Well, she supposed she could do that. "Right, right--" She hopped up, stumbled, fell, then hopped up again, and then: "Jelly legs. Hey, did you have something to do with that rarghragh sound?" That was about as good of a monster impression as Gurk could do. Rarghragh.
Rill watched Gurksomethingorother try to get up and instead fall right back over, and he worried that maybe she had been injured by the explosion. He really hoped she hadn't, because he had no way to actually fix her if she had and they still weren't where they needed to get to. Though they were pretty close now or so he also hoped, because he didn't think he could handle this cold for much longer. He really, really wished he had popped out of the fairy ring just about anywhere else but here. He wondered if he had accidentally sent mortals through the wrong fairy ring before and then they ended up somewhere like here.
Gurkawhatever explained that she had jelly legs, which eased at least one of his worries in that it meant she probably wasn't injured - or at least not enough for her to notice which he supposed could be a good or bad thing. He rubbed his hands together to try to get some warmth and it did nothing. His fingers were practically white. "Yeah, it was way too big for me to fight and I couldn't just fly away and leave you here to deal with it so I gambled that I could scare it away and it worked, thank goodness. Are you okay?"
"She's fine, look at her. Explosion-proof. You think she has any more of whatever that was?" Rill looked back over his shoulder but Fake Endless was only in his head. "I wonder why she had a bomb anyway? Like, what is she going to do in Tasark that she packed bombs?" As always, the voice of the thoughts he didn't want to think about. It didn't matter why. As soon as they got there he was going to find somewhere warm and then find a conjurer or something to get him the heck out of here. "With what money?" Hmm.
[attr="class","gurkpost"] "Wow," She stated matter-of-factly, nodding somewhat as she lifted her legs awkwardly to keep moving through the snow she was standing in. Each step put her at a slightly different elevation, purely dependant on how much gusto she stepped with, and how close she stepped to what had once been a somewhat packed-in path. "Wooooooow wow wow."
"You know Pill, I really don't think anyone's ever made scary monster noises to save me from a dragon before. Isn't that crazy? You're the first!" She stumbled a bit, but got to her feet, and suddenly she had found the part of the path the dragon hadn't covered in a massive fall of snow. Now, they were in business. "I feel like I should tell you, Pilly, people in this world aren't as nice as fairies."
Rill wasn’t really up for flying them both anymore. He was tired, he realized now. Tired and cold. He sniffled as Gurcaramel started saying wow a lot and slogging her way awkwardly through the snow. He couldn’t imagine being grounded like that. Yes he had been stuck in the box for ages and he’d barely been able to fly in there, but to never be able to fly ever? Unthinkable.
He crossed his arms over his chest and rubbed them to try to warm up, but the wind was biting. He was pretty sure if there wasn’t wind it wouldn’t actually be so chilly, like it would be cold but not unbearably so. It would still be uncomfortably bright though, which was something he was both used to and not.
Gurcandle said no one had ever made scary monster noises to save her before and wasn’t that crazy, as though she thought that would have been a more common occurrence, and Rill chuckled which turned into a bit of a cough when the cold wind tickled his throat. Not a good tickle - more like the tickle when you tell someone to stop but they keep doing it anyway and it makes you hurt. ”Yeah, weird,” he wheezed when he could breathe again.
When she continued by saying that people here weren’t as nice as fairies he looked away with a frown. ”Fairies aren’t all as nice as you think,” he replied. ”But luckily for you I’m a particularly good one,” he added, looking back to her with a wink. ”Um, I don’t suppose you have any spare fabric or something in that bag of yours I could use for a kinda coat? I might turn into a fairysicle before we get to town with this cold.” Was she this cold, or were giants more cold-resistant than fairies?
[attr="class","gurkpost"] Gurk wanted to ask Pill more about fairies, especially when he told her they weren't as nice as she thought. Granted she hadn't met any fairies, but one hundred percent of the fairies she had met were great. Which was one. Which wasn't really a scientific sample size, but Gurk liked to look on the positive side of things, and had found that there were plenty of pleasant folks that one might assume were bad at first glance. Unfortunately, she didn't get a chance for such an interrogation, because it was now her turn to be hero to the hero, or else he was going to die of exposure, and that would hardly be a heroic way to die.
"Fabric, fabric..." Gurk dug into her pockets, pricking her finger on needles and dirtying her nails in something that might have been dirt, or might have been breadcrumbs. She twisted her finger around string, and palmed at a book of matches. Finding nothing of use she looked herself up and down. She was wearing a lot of layers, as always, but could any of it really be spared? She was not particularly vain by gnomish standards (which wasn't saying much, since gnomes were intensely vain), but everything she wore had a purpose. A memory.
Then again, so did Pill. She'd have to make the sacrifice.
With a slight sigh, she untied the handkerchief from her neck and then draped it over his head like a circus tent. "Better?"
The skin OTHERWORLD was made by JAWN of WICKED WONDERLAND.
FORTUNA-RPG was created by MELLIE. Images belong to their respective artists. All codes and scripts belong to their respective coders. Please DO NOT take anything without the owners' permission.
