Archive | October 11, 2013

A Week of Settings – Day Three: Stranded

Oct11

Stranded Verse

The world is made of magic.

The world is made of connections, and in the ability to understand and manipulate those connections lies the magic.

The world is made up of the sparks of life, of creation. Every spark connects to others, and that is both magic and the building block for magic.

All of those are true in Stranded World, and yet all are untrue – just metaphors for an existence few understand well at all.

The world has connections, that much we know. Everyone and everything make connections. Those connections are often pictured as multicolored strands, tying everything together until they world is made.

Some people can reach out and tangle these strands, complicating everything. Some can smooth them. Some can tie bows in them, and some simply understand them.

In the RoundTree Family, Autumn, Winter, Spring, and Summer, they have one of each.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/578631.html. You can comment here or there.

Cult, a story for my Real World Prompts

Oct11

To Wystie’s prompt: ~A cult~

Nancy hadn’t, really, meant to start a cult.

It had started innocently enough, after all: she’d been lonely in her new city, so she’d made a list of things she could do and liked doing. Then she’d put together four of the least weird, and put out an ad on craigslist.

They’d met in her apartment, at first. It wasn’t the best idea, but the thin walls in her complex and her nosy neighbors, usually flaws, meant that any screams would be quickly noticed.

Three people showed up to the first meeting, seven to the second. By the third meeting, she’d rented them a room in a local church for their meetings; by the seventh meeting, she had to move them to an old storefront a couple blocks away.

Word got out, not just from the cragislist ad but from word-of-mouth; her original core of people told more people, who told more people, and soon she was charging $20 at the door just to cover the price of punch and pizza, rent and supplies.

She hadn’t realized she had a cult until she had to appoint people to guide groups of new recruits. Those first three attendees were her choices, of course, Maxine, Erica, and Terrance.

That’s when stuff sort of took a left turn. Maxine was fine, dealing with people who were mainly interested in the crafts and the cooking. Erica took the people who liked the old-fashioned stuff and got them building a library of resources. But Terrance, Terrance found all the people who really, really wanted to belong to something.

When Helen showed up and they had uniforms, she knew something had gone horribly wrong.

When they put the Grand Poobah hat on her head, however, she questioned the wrong part of the equation. After all, it had been her idea, right?

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/578545.html. You can comment here or there.

Getting Ahead of Myself: Character notes for Steam!Reiassan – Enarēnarē

Oct11

Enarēnarē
(eh-NAH-ree-NAH-ree)
Still need a better way to indicate sounds.
15 years old.
Female

Enarēnarē wears her hair long, as is common for most Calenyna, even in this day and age. She keeps it, normally, in a series of six braids, although she will go with far more elaborate arrangements in formal situations.

Her skin is a mid-brown, lighter than Tīrrēkkē but a bit browner than (third unnamed character). Her hair is a medium chestnut brown, and her eyes are bright green, a mutation that showed up in the Calenyena royal family four generations back.

Her nose is longer and narrower than the Calenyena norm; she has a nose closer to the Bitrani stereotype (A roman nose). This look – lighter than the Calenyena norm, with mid-brown hair – is becoming more and more common in the Calenyena royal family, to the point where it’s now considered “the royal look.”

She’s a couple inches taller than Tīrrēkkē, 5’9″ tall (or she will be; I think they’re both 2-3 inches shorter than that at this point), although, again, primarily long-torso, not long-legged. She’s a little further into puberty than her friend, and her body is beginning to develop a bit more curve. Still broad-hipped and broad-shouldered. She has, for her family and ethnicity, amazingly full lips.

She spent the first five years of her life down in the far south; her parents were on a mission to deal with some of the rebel elements down by the Southern coast. They were called back to the capital for a few years, and then they moved to the Arran Cities (West Coast). Thus, Enarēnarē has spent much of her life travelling. She thinks she’s more worldly than she is, and has a bad habit of lording it over people. However, her formal schooling has suffered a bit.

She’s cynical, in a way that doesn’t suit her. She’s had to deal with
situations above her age, and it’s colored her views on the world. She’s also something like 79th in line for the throne, and this makes her even more tired/cynical about things. She’s the Bad Kid. She’s going to need to learn the value of formal schooling, and learn not to lord her other knowledge over others.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/578061.html. You can comment here or there.