< 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!
He shivered and crossed his arms, tucking his hands against his sides to try to warm them while Gurk said she did in fact have what he was looking for and then they ducked behind a wall so she could start pulling it all out of her pockets. Rill was consistently surprised by how much stuff she had in her pockets. As she started laying things out on the ground he landed and took a closer look at them all, picking up one thing and turning it over in his hands before moving to the next. He couldn't believe how big everything was compared to him, and again he was struck with the disorienting reminder that he was somehow incredibly small. "One thing at a time Rill." Right. He would deal with that later, when he wasn't freezing and hungry.
The jellybean and the nuts wouldn't be ideal, he decided. Neither would hold up against scrutiny if the shopkeep decided to for example bite the thing to test if it was real. The half a button was a weird shape. But the nuts, the metal ones and not the real ones, he could work with. He hoped the shopkeeper was willing to make trades, anyway. Picking up one of the metal nuts he turned it over in his hands and then pictured what he wanted it to be - a beautiful gold ring with etchings along the sides crafted into delicate vines and leaves and tiny flowers. A bit of summer, he thought, crafted into an ornate ring. Visual illusions were always his specialty, and he watched with a bit of pride as the simple nut was transformed before their eyes. "Do you think they'll be willing to trade?" he asked, looking up at Gurk and holding out the now-ring to her.
[attr="class","gurkpost"] While Gurk would one-hundo-percento say that she was not a fan of magic in favour of good ol' hard labour and artistry, she had to admit that Pill's magic was pretty cool. Watching a metal nut turn and reshape into a really pretty gold ring that was sooooooooo not her style, but was the kind of style she would give to a pretty girl who would be just as pretty as it. Or maybe she'd hawk it for money to buy that pretty girl dinner. Or maybe she'd lose it, yeah, that was more likely.
She snagged the ring from Pill a little too roughly, which tugged the little not-human forwards, and then she held it up to her eye, raised her goggles, then her glasses, and squinted at the thing. "Well hot diggity damn, Pill! That's really good! Guess I better keep an eye on you, huh?" She gave him a wink, and then slipped the thing into the breast pocket of her night coat before stepping out from behind the wall.
"Oh no! No no no, Pillson, we couldn't possibly part with such a rare thing!" Gurk appeared downright horrified at the thought, and pulled Pill by her handkerchief that she'd given him.
Next, she pretended to be Pill (since he was so small it was hard to see his mouth move from a distance, and she was certain she could talk a better game than him) and put on a squeaky yet low voice that said, "But Gurk, we must! We need to eat, and all we have is this very rare, and very impressive Ring."
"Pillson, no!"
"Pillson, yes!"
"Pillson--"
The scene was enough to get the attention of one of the stall owners. Not the butterscotch schnapps, unfortunately, but a man who looked to have an assortment of vegetables. Ew. No, wait. There were potatoes. Score. He interrupted with just the question she'd hoped for: "You're lookin' for food?"
Gurk looked to Pill, then to the man, back to Pill, then down, and she sighed dramatically. "Yes, yes. You see, good sir, we have journeyed many days and nights to capture a beautiful treasure, a relic, this--" She pulled the faux ring out and held it too close to the man's face, "Ancient ring. Said to have been worn by one of Jevan's own lovers many summers ago. Due to the travel, however, we have used all of our rations, so now it seems... Well, we need to survive if we're to find the next relic." She pulled the ring back, looking at it forlornly.
The man stroked his beard, which was massive and a natural, sun-bleached red colour, before reaching out for the thing, "Let me see that, then."
Rill almost tumbled forward in the air when Gurk grabbed the ring from him, his cold fingers moving too slowly to let go before he found himself yanked forward. After what looked like a thorough inspection on her part she complimented his work and said she'd have to watch out for him - "What does that mean?" - before pocketing the ring and starting to walk away. A moment later she was speaking as though to him and she pulled him forward until he got the memo he was supposed to be following, and Gurk proceeded to have a conversation with him but rather with herself pretending to be him, and he tried not to let himself be offended by the voice she put on when she was speaking for him. Also she called him Pillson, which was... well, not any worse than Pill, really. She also called herself Gurk, which was a huge relief to Rill who now didn't have to pretend he remembered any other part of her name.
Her wacky idea seemed to work though, as one of the merchants called out to them and asked if they were looking for food. He followed as she moved closer to him and shoved the ring in his face, going on about how they only had this very rare and so valuable relic with which to trade in order to survive to their next relic hunt, and apparently they were relic hunters now. He tried to look less like a frozen fairy-sicle and more like what a relic hunter might look like, but it was hard when he really was a fairy-sicle and he was wearing a handkerchief as a coat.
But again, her idea seemed to work and the man asked to take a look at the ring. Gurk passed it over with only a token fuss and then the man turned it over in his hands and Rill looked on with bated breath. He knew, he knew he was really good at visual illusions. It was really his forte. But would the rest of it hold up? He didn't know.
The man's finger was clearly too large for the ring, which was really just a nut, but he could feel it was built strongly and when he looked at it up close he could see the intricate detail etched into the side. It really was a beautiful ring, and even if the gnome's story about it belonging to one of Jevan's lovers was false it could fetch a pretty penny with the right person. Maybe even a noble. Worth more than some vegetables, anyway. He bought it to his mouth and bit it gently, feeling the satisfying ting of his teeth against the metal, and then he nodded to the two of them and pocketed the ring. "Alright I'll take it off your hands in exchange for some food," he announced, as though he was doing them a favour. Little did he know he really was.
Rill felt a twinge of guilt for having deceived the man, who looked like he was just a hardworking merchant who didn't deserve to get snubbed like this, but as he remembered his long days of hunger in the box and how hungry he was feeling now he was able to look past it. Besides, lots of fairies did things like this and much worse to mortals, so he was still doing pretty okay by fairy standards. Not that he ever wanted to be what constituted a 'standard fairy'.
As he looked over at the food Rill realized one big upside to the fact that he was so small right now - most of the food was as big as he was! He could eat like a king and it would barely require anything at all. He felt a little better thinking about only having to take a little bit of food. He was about to thank the man when he realized that Gurk had been pretending to be him so if he talked now he might just make the man suspicious, so instead he bowed dramatically in what he hoped would seem like just a normal fairy relic hunter kind of way and then flew over to take a closer look at the food.
[attr="class","gurkpost"] The man examined the ring carefully, and Gurk would most certainly, one hundred percent, admit that she was unsure in Pill's ring would pass the test. Like, she would have bought it, but she wasn't any kind of ring expert. Though she supposed that was why they went to a grocer and not a jeweller. But what if his father was a jeweller, and had taught him all the sweet tips and tricks for jewel-appraising? Or, or, what if he was really good at seeing through fairy magic? Oh god, that would be the worst possible thing. She tried not to look nervous, but she didn't know whether or not she was succeeding, and--
Alright, I'll take it off your hands--
"Now HOOOOOOOOOOOOLD on a second!" Gurk piped up, keeping up the ruse that she didn't actually want to make the trade, "I--" She stopped and looked at Pill, who was already deciding what food to take, and then gave a biiiiiiig sigh. "I guess that's what we've gotta do to survive. You, sir, drive a hard bargain."
And with that, Gurk began to stick potatoes in her pockets.
Most of the food looked familiar. The Feywild had food that could be found in the mortal realm, of course, but they also had things like giant mushrooms that laughed and lava rivers that floated in the sky and he knew that the mortals had always seemed to be surprised by those things as though they didn't have them here, so he knew the two worlds were not exactly the same. He hoped the food that looked familiar was actually what he thought it was, but at the very least he could probably safely assume everything this guy sold was edible which was the most important part.
Gurk seemed to be shoving potatoes in her pockets and Rill realized he could probably pick one single thing and that would be all he could carry, so he looked over all the veggies (how did he have fresh vegetables when the weather here was so terrible? Magic? A greenhouse?) and found that what he really wanted was chocolate. He missed chocolate so much. The elves hadn't had any chocolate and the box had had no food at all, and the last time he'd had chocolate was... well he was pretty sure it was with Endless which only made his heart hurt to think about. "Don't be such a baby Rill." Yeah, there was no use thinking about that right now. Feeling weirdly melancholy, he decided to just take a potato too. It was practically as big as he was. Carrying it carefully, arms wrapped around the middle like it was a giant baby or something, he flew over to Gurk and sat on her shoulder real quick so he could talk to her in her ear and not have the merchant overhear his not-Gurk voice. "Is there an inn or somethin' around here where we can warm up?" he asked her, hoping that she either knew or would ask the merchant.
[attr="class","gurkpost"] With her pockets now much more heavily weighted (her robe now brushed the ground with all the tubers stretching it out) Gurk gave the grocer a quick two-finger salute, and then began her quick walk away. She didn't know how long Pillson was going to keep the magic up on that nut, but she didn't really want to find out.
She felt a weight on her shoulder and had a moment of panic that it was some guard laying a hand on her to arrest her, and envisioned Pill being shoved into a... Hm, how would they imprison fairies, exactly? Did they have boxes that could contain magic? A box in general seemed like a decent idea, since surely they could just squeeeeze right through bars. Her panic had shifted to thought, and so when she realized it was Pill and that he was speaking quietly into her ear it didn't cause her to jump.
"Oh, yes, definitely, the tavern, but..." She thought back to the letter, to the bounty hunters, to telling Pill about the bounty hunters, about his seemingly mild discomfort about bounty hunters, "You don't like bounty hunters, do you?"
Now that he had sat down on her shoulder he realized he was really tired and didn't really want to hop off just yet, so he hoped it was okay if he and his potato continued to hitch a ride just for a bit. After all he had given her a magic carpet ride earlier so it was basically tit for tat.
"Hey whoa it's not like I don't like bounty hunters so much as I don't like the idea of anyone bein' able to just hire a bunch of people to go hunt down someone else, y'know? For any reason or even for no reason. Or for kind of a reason but like the person is clearly evil so their reason is bad and the person being hunted doesn't deserve it. Or somethin'."
[attr="class","gurkpost"] Gurk wasn't often good at figuring out where people were coming from -- both emotionally, and directionally -- but she was pretty familiar with 'blabber mouth' and could suss out that Pill was struggling with something when it came to bounty hunters. Or maybe he was also nervous about the grocer. It was likely one of the two, or also perhaps an option she hadn't yet considered. Whatever it was, he was blabbing now because something was wrong, since he hadn't blabbed before, and a change was something she had to notice. It was like an experiment -- change told you everything.
"You know, if I'm aiding and abetting a criminal right now, I think you legally have to tell me if I ask," She deadpanned, which to her made it clear she was joking, since Gurk didn't really do 'deadpan', "Nah, I'm not against criminality, just like, bad criminality. Just like you're not against bounty hunters, just... Bounty hunters working for bad people, right?" Gurk was fifty eight percent sure that's what Pill had said. If not, the rest of this would be total gibberish to him, "Well, how 'bout you give me your professional opinion on them? You can duck into my pocket, enjoy some warms when I head inside, listen in on the big ol' intro-convo-shadoodle, and when we leave you'll be able to give me the low-down on if it seems like a good hunt, or a bad hunt. Whaddya think?"
Gurk said that she was pretty sure he legally had to tell her if he was a criminal and his heart stopped for a second as he took it seriously before she continued as though she was joking and said she didn’t have a problem with criminals necessarily, similar to his thing with bounty hunters. He let out a tense breath and chuckled nervously. Was he a criminal? Technically, yes. According to the laws of the feywild and Haelrin who was both his king and his god. Which was actually so much worse when he thought about it than just breaking a regular law under anyone else. Oh geez he would really really be in trouble if he got caught. But the thing about the feywild was that he wasn’t there anymore. Was he a criminal in the mortal realm? No!
”Well you did just use illusion magic to steal from that grocer, soooooooooooo you kinda are.”
Oh, right.
”Yeah, right!” he agreed out loud to Gurk, trying not to think of what else he might have to do to survive and find what he was looking for. Trying not to think of what would happen if he got caught again.
Thinking about it anyway.
Gurk continued talking by offering him to sit in on the meeting in her pocket, where he could be warm (which alone was a good enough reason for him) and he could judge whether they were the good or bad kind of bounty hunters. What did he think?
”I’m in! Thanks Gurk.” He was no professional judge of bounty hunter morality but at least now he would know whether or not they were hunting him or his friends. ”You know it’s totally irrational to worry that they’re going after you, right?” Not when there was a literal god possibly after you and your friends. Or maybe just his friends, really. Haelrin would be much angrier about mortals escaping than a fairy, although he had knocked that whole shelf over so he really couldn’t be sure. Probably still more angry about the mortals.
[attr="class","gurkpost"] Pill agreed, and Gurk's grin scrunched her cheeks so much that it nearly reached her eyes. He was going to be like a secret agent! She was going to be like a secret agent. And, well, it probably wasn't a bad thing to have an ally on her side for this... Thing. She hadn't really gotten her invite to this meeting by normal means, and the bounty hunters could most certainly be angry that she had KO'd their friend. ...Should she tell Pill about that?
She looked him over one last time, a little fairy popsicle who was really, really worried about bounty hunters for some reason, and considered that if she told him, he would advise her not to go. That wouldn't do. Nah, She thought, Let the chips fall where they may! ...We'll be fine!!!
"Well hot diggity, then lemme make room!" She cleared out a pocket, putting the potatoes and other items into another pocket that wasn't quite full, and then held it open for him. He hopped inside, potato and all, and then Gurk made her way to the door.
"Here we go!"
[attr="class","gurkfooter"]Notes. Shall we do a new thread post "We're Hunting Bounties"?
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.
