< 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!
While Rill was incredibly grateful that she didn't immediately say 'no way' he was also beginning to wonder why he didn't just hightail it to town on his own - they were almost there and he could fly way faster than she could walk, so what was keeping him here with her? Some sense of loyalty, maybe, to this giant who had helped him out a bit? Wanting to help her out, like he wanted to help the mortals who got stuck in the feywild? "Afraid to be alone again," fake Endless chided. He wouldn't admit even to the figment of his imagination that it was true.
Luckily he was distracted from his thoughts when Gurkindling's kerchief flopped down over his head and he grabbed onto it and wrapped it around his arms and tied two of the corners behind his back to keep his wings free while securing it from flying away, and when she asked if it was better he nodded. It wasn't very warm, but it did stop most of the wind and that was worth its weight in gold right now. "You're a lifesaver," he replied gratefully."Thank you."
Next step was to get to town. Next next step was to somehow find Endless. In this entire big wide world, he had to find one boy. Or.. one man? How old would he be now? "This would be much easier if you had any idea how long you were in the box," his helpful head-voice commented. One feywild day to every seven mortal plane days. In the about a month he spent recovering after his escape seven whole months would have passed here. So much could change so quickly. For all he knew, Endless might not even be alive. Maybe he never had escaped and the story he'd heard was someone else who attacked the castle.
"Alright," he said, pushing all those thoughts to the side and firmly deciding not to think it, "let's get rollin'. Can't be too far now."
[attr="class","gurkpost"] A more socially astute person might have noticed Rill (yes, a more socially astute person would also know his name) wasn't quite all he seemed. That person might question the wrinkle in his brow, or the way he seemed to be thinking about something so far removed from the time and place they were now. That person might realize Rill was... A little unhinged.
Gurk was not a socially astute person. She was intelligent, extremely so, but with numbers and angles and combustible chemicals. So, instead of noticing, or questioning, or realizing, she just grinned and pointed towards where several small curls of smoke lifted from what must have been a building of some sort. "Tasark, ho!"
As they walked, Gurk talked. She talked mostly about nothing, but eventually she came back around to Rill: "So, Pill, what's the plan for you once we get to Tasark?"
Rill was glad for Gurkleenex’s incessant rambling as they continued the trek to Tasark. As long as she was talking fake Endless wasn’t, and he didn’t have to think about anything. It was comforting to hear a real, actual person talking even though he didn’t have much to add to it. It was just nice to be around someone who wasn’t a figment of his imagination. At least, he was pretty confident she wasn’t a figment of his imagination. The longer they walked (well, she walked and he flew) the more he began to wonder if she really was just a figment of his imagination but he couldn’t imagine himself imagining a giant like this Gurcrumble as the first being he found in the new realm. He had imagined a lot of things while in the box but nothing like her.
Oh kittywhiskers it turns out even with her talking he could get all caught up in his thoughts anyway. At least it kept him from thinking about how cold he was. His fingers curled into fists, slowly as the cold made his extremities awkward and unresponsive, and he dug his fingernails into his palms in a well-practiced effort to ground himself. The cold numbed the pain, but it was then that the giant said his name - or close enough anyway - and he was jolted back into the moment.
What was his plan when they got to Lasark? ”Ah, uh, probably to warm up first! But then... I’m not sure, exactly. I need to find my friends but I don’t really know where to start with that. I’ve heard of fairies who live in this realm so I might search out them first to get a lead on things. What about you? Must be something exciting!” He hoped she would take the opportunity to do what she did best - talk more. It might even be interesting, and hopefully didn’t include plans to blow anything in town up.
[attr="class","gurkpost"] Wowza, he really hadn't thought through his plan, had he? It was one thing to not have a clue where people you hadn't seen in years had gone to (she had absolutely zero clue where her family was these days, but of course she hadn't really looked), but to not consider zapping yourself from fairyland to fairy island and instead going to the middle of Tundraland McNowhere was just... Well, it was dumb. Pill wasn't smart, she decided, he'd just had a stroke of genius with the scary beast noise thing. Even a stopped clock was right twice a day, after all.
Thankfully he did not ask for her opinion on his plans, though she definitely considered giving it anyways. He saved himself admonishment by asking about her, though, which was a topic she was always happy to discuss. "Exciting is my middle name! Not actually though. Exciting would probably a pretty boring middle name, actually. Did you know some gnomes actually use existing words for names? Lack of creativity, I guess. A little sad when you think that there are twenty-six letters in the common alphabet, and a whole lot of ways to stick them together. Why I think--
"Oh, what were we talking about? ...Tasark, plans, yes, right! I in fact do have some very exciting, very top-secret kind of plans. I'm--" Her voice dropped to a normal outdoor volume from the obnoxiously loud setting she had just been in, "Joining a group of bounty hunters. Pretty neat, huh? I got a letter and everything-- (she shoved a hand into her pockets to try and find the thing) It's-- Somewhere here..."
Rill was glad in a way that Gurk was so talkative. He was pretty sure if he’d been out here alone or even with someone who was silent he might have driven himself crazy by now. The world was so bright, the sky was so.. huge, and everywhere, and there were no walls and nothing but snow and some trees in every direction, except for Tasark ahead. He felt so exposed out here, it made him want to retreat to the comfortable walls of his box. He didn’t miss the box of course. He would never go back to that hell. But he did find that somehow the world felt different now that he was out of it than it had before he’d gone in. He used to fly long distances in the open air without a worry, but now to do so made the hair on the back of his neck stand up, like anything could just swoop down from the sky and attack him. No walls, no ceiling, nothing to protect him.
Her voice changed, growing quieter, and he payed more attention, ”Focus Rill,” as she admitted she did have a top-secret plan. She was going to join bounty hunters. His blood ran cold - colder than it already was, What with him freezing his wings off over here. A bounty hunter? What kind? What would she hunt? Did he have a bounty on his head, because of his escape? Did Endless?
”What exactly are you going to be hunting?” he asked, trying to go for casual but failing when his voice squeezed juuuuust a little.
[attr="class","gurkpost"] As Pill's voice inflected strangely, Gurk assumed there must have been another monster around. Her hand shot instinctively to the infinity gear, and she sucked in a breath to blow into the thing, but then she realized that the growling she heard was just her stomach. Hunger. Pill was probably hungry, too. Maybe that's why he wanted to know what she'd be hunting. Did fairies not have stores where they bought things pre-hunted? Fairies were strange.
"Oh, I don't know," She responded, putting the gear to her lips pensively, "I'm sure some bad something or other, if they've got a bounty on their heads. I'm more interested in the where than the who, so the why doesn't matter entirely too much. Why, you interested in joining up? I can sell us as a package deal!"
"Oh no, no thanks, very kind but I'm on a quest of my own already y'know? No time to hunt down other people when I've got people I already gotta find, but thanks for the offer! Very kind of you." She said it must be some bad something or other in order to have a bounty on their heads, but he knew that wasn't necessarily true. Depending on who put the bounty there of course, it could be a bad something or it could just be an unfortunate soul who got tangled up with people they shouldn't have. He really, really hoped it wasn't him.
"Come on Rill, why would it be you? Why would it even be Endless? Stop being paranoid, there's probably thousands of people with bounties on their heads."
Right, fake Endless was right, there was no evidence that Haelrin even knew he was here in the mortal realm. Well, he was a god so maybe he did know. Oh no, what if he did know? What if Haelrin knew he was the one who escaped - "Of course he knows you're the one that escaped," - and he had put a bounty on his head here in the mortal realm so he would get caught and returned and put back in the box and never, never, never get out again.
[attr="class","gurkpost"] She shrugged at his refusal, certainly not fluffed by it, and took a deep breath as if to go on a fresh tirade, but before she could, Pill pointed out Tasark. Yes, there it was. Ah, familiarity! There was the tavern, where she would need to go to meet with the bounty hunters in short time. Then the lawspeaker's office, manned by two guards with spears that looked both decorative and dangerous. A few shops and stalls run by people who didn't seem to have any problem with the cold, and, mmm, one of them seemed to be serving hot butterscotch schnapps, since the spell of spices and sweet oil was filling her nostrils and making her stomach gurgle with desperate hunger. Food, yes, food she was all over getting food. Maybe before the bounty hunting. Definitely before the bounty hunting.
With eyes wide as saucers Gurk began to lead Pill over to the stall, but stopped mid-rummage of her coat as she realized she had no money. "Hey, hey Pill, got any money? Er, or fairy treasure or something? Or can you just magick money out of the air for me? Like, as a thank you for my awesome service in helping keep you alive and bringing you to Tasark? Hey, Pill?"
As they approached Tasark Rill realized something that gave him pause: verything was huge. Like, every building was gigantic and every person was bigger than him and even bigger than Gurk! Was this a city of even bigger giants? He found himself doubting that, because he was at least pretty sure anything much bigger than a normal mortal would just be a monster, not a civilized city type creature. He might be stereotyping though, and he supposed since he had never been here before he couldn’t be sure of that exactly. However the closer the got the more he realized that the people were unreasonably large compared to him, and it reminded him that earlier the trees had seemed unreasonably large as well. But what if they weren’t unreasonably large? What if... ”By the gods, I shrunk,” he exclaimed to himself, looking down at his hands as though they had betrayed him somehow. Had he gone through the portal wrong? Oh no oh no oh no oh no, what was he going to do? Could he get it fixed? Was he really the size of a handkerchief??
The second thing he noticed was the same thing that his apparently-not-a-giant friend had noticed which was the smell. He realized he was hungry too, in addition to being one step away from frozen solid, and the thought of a warm something or other was almost too much to handle. The feeling of being hungry was familiar, but also and always uncomfortable. He gladly followed when Gurk led him towards the stall.
When they stopped he looked over at his kind of friend as she asked him for money, or treasure, or anything really as like a thank you for keeping him alive present. It was true that without her direction he never would have known where the nearest town was, despite the fact that staying with her had taken way longer than if he’d just flown here on his own. And she had helped scare away that dragon earlier. And she let him use her kerchief.
The problem of course was that he didn’t have any money. He didn’t even know what money in this realm looked like. Was there different money depending on where you were? She had suggested he could try to magic up some money out of thin air, and he felt a little bad about that. If he made fake illusory money then it would be like stealing, and that was assuming he could magic it good enough to convince the shopkeeper it was real because if they saw through it they would both be in trouble. But.. warm. And it smelled so good...
”I don’t have any money buuuuut I might be able to whip somethin’ up,” was his reply. ”Do you have a little rock or a button or something?” It would be way easier to make something that already existed just look like something more valuable than have to make a fake thing that looked and felt like something more valuable (especially after using a bunch of magic earlier), and the ground seemed to mostly be ice and snow so he couldn’t see any loose rocks he could borrow for the purpose.
[attr="class","gurkpost"] Man, Pill was a little insane in the membrane, wasn't he? While she had concerned herself with searching for new pockets she didn't yet know she had (that maybe, possibly could have a coin or jewel or two in them), he had gotten all up in arms about his size. Yes, he was very small, but all fairies were small, and so if he had shrunk, wouldn't it not have been by much? A millimeter hardly seemed liked something to fret about, but she wouldn't go on him about it -- after all, she related to being small. Maybe that was why she liked him as much as she did. It was pretty neat to tower over someone like wham! Whabam! I am giant! You are puny leetle fairy! Quake before your--
Pill seemed over his initial fright over his height, and got down to business, and so Gurk would, too. She listened intently to what he said and then snapped her fingers in a way that did not at all seem conspiratorial, but that she very much meant as conspiratorial. "You bet your pixie pinky I do!" And then came the work of extracting everything coin-sized from her pockets. She pulled as she walked, finding a wall to duck behind so they wouldn't look too terribly suspicious, and then knelt down and began laying options on the ground. A half a button, a few mismatched nuts with no bolts. Some washers. Actual nuts. And a single jellybean. "Take your pick!"
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.
