SUMMER

Angkar: Wet season. Precipitation is common during the late afternoon and evening hours. Vegetation grows significantly during the summer, but flooding is a danger due to the monsoons that ravage the country. The rainforest sees evenly distributed rainfall throughout the season.

Ashoka: Desert: Extremely hot and dry. Violent, heavy downpours following long dryspells. Jungle: Hot and humid with frequent, violent rainstorms.

Morrim: Relatively hot and dry, but with a chance of thunderstorms from time to time. The heat may cause forest fires.

Soto: Hot and humid, tree cover is dense while ground growth is restricted. Thunderstorms see the most amount of rainfall during the season, and it can be very windy. On occasion, there are flash floods that can destroy homes and farms built on flood plains.

ANNOUNCEMENTS

March 30th, 2018 As you might have noticed, Elenlond has changed hands and is now under new management! If you have any questions, please direct them to DaringRaven! As for the rest of the announcements, including a season change, you can find them over here at the following link!

January 16, 2018 As you might have noticed, Elenlond has a new skin, all thanks to Mel! Don't forget to check out the new OTMs as well!

December 2, 2017 Winter has settled on Elenlond, bringing sleep for some and new life for others.

September 26, 2017 With the belated arrival of autumn come some interesting developments: new OTMs, a Town Crier and the release of the Elly Awards winners!

July 14, 2017 After a bit of forum clean-up, Elly Awards season has arrived! Head on over to make your nominations!

May 31, 2017 Summer has arrived and so has activity check! That's not all though – we also have some new OTMs for you and some staff changes!


WHAT IS ELENLOND?

Elenlond is an original free-form medieval fantasy RPG set on the continent of Soare and the Scattered Isles, which are located to the south in the Sea of Diverging Waters. The four chief nations of the western side of the world—Ashoka in northern Soare, Soto in western Soare, Morrim in eastern Soare, and Angkar, the largest of the Scattered Isles—continue to experience growth and prosperity since the fall of the Mianorite gods, although power struggles within the countries—or outside of them—continue to ensue.


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    Ashoka: In an otherwise peaceful times, Ashokans are beset with the relatively minor inconveniences of wandering undead and occasionally-aggressive giant rock worms. There has also been some controversy over the recent re-legalisation of human sacrifice.

    Morrim: Rumour has it that Emperor Leofric de Hollemark is mustering forces for a war. Though the threat from Soto’s forests has passed, the forces previously employed in watching the forest now linger at the border. Rumours also circulate of a small group that has been dispatched to make contact with the tribes of the Do’suul Mountains.

    Soto: The Sotoans have defeated the fey and liberated themselves from Méadaigh’s oppression! Preliminary efforts have been made at rebuilding the city of Madrid, which had been captured at the beginning of the war. However, the Sotoans are hindered from recovery famine. Méadaigh’s magic caused summer to persist in the Erth’netora Forest through the winter. Her power has been withdrawn and the plants die as if preparing for winter – even though it is now summer. The Sotoans must sustain off what food they can get, what creatures they can kill and what can be imported into the city from Morrim and Angkar.

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    Elenlond is an original medieval fantasy RPG with a world that's as broad as it is unique. Calling on characters of all kinds, the sky's the limit in a world where boundaries are blurred and the imagination runs rampant. Restrictions are limited and members are encouraged to embrace their creativity, to see where they can go and what they can do. It's no longer just text on a page - it becomes real.

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    The Unlikeliest of Whisperers; Closed
    Topic Started: Jun 15 2016, 11:53 PM (115 Views)
    Sara
    Member Avatar
    ~Hail, Mysteria -- I shield my eyes...~

    The fall of Madrid had had its consequences on Ylsa's property (though she didn't ever really claim it as her own past the paperwork the city had demanded), but she had made herself such a house in such a place that the sudden boom in enchanted wilderness only added to the enchantment already there.

    Spirits had always gathered happily near Ylsa's house -- she naturally attracted them, and happily allowed access for forest spirits of peaceful intent, and placed enchantments and incantations of her own to keep out those of evil intent. As an exorcist, this was no different than any other day, really.

    Whether the spirits she attracted were curious about her strange nature or felt comforted by her presence, Sara didn't really know, but it mystified her and left her feeling just a little wistful. Ordinarily she would have felt massively inferior by comparison and developed a toxic sort of internal jealousy that she would never show anyone. If only because she was embarrassed by such a character flaw.

    She had discussed this with Ylsa once. "I just don't ever feel jealous of you," She had confessed, baffled. "Anyone else, though. Even my closest friends aren't immune."

    Ylsa smiled and tipped her head inquisitively. "Why not jealous?"

    Sara trusted Ylsa enough to know that the query was sincere curiosity. "Well... you're immortal, right? You're kind of a purified yokai saint, occupying both worlds at the same time, yet neither. A bodhisattva."

    "Oh!" Ylsa looked astonished, and blushed a little. "Goodness, no!" Then, she laughed. "Well I do exist rather... outside of time, but my physical body is just the same as yours, if a little augmented. It is born, it grows up, gets sick. It dies. I am not a bodhisattva."

    "But you remember all your lives, and you stayed here to help people, right?"

    "It's true," The mystic had replied. "But I was rather thrown into physical existence. I did not choose to live. Indeed at times I cursed it, and I cursed remembering. But eventually -- and it took many, many tries before I got it right -- I began to understand that this was my... no, not my punishment. It was a chance to make penance, and I was being given as many chances as I needed. I happened to make my penance by cleansing the spirits I can, to help them experience their own peace and move on to worlds that would have been impossible for them to access before. And then... they get chances to make penance of their own, and I trust that blessed Nailah has given them as many as she has given me."

    Sara sat in a kind of haze, wrapped up in the emotion of the story, feeling a little sad for herself. Everyone else's stories were all so much more beautiful even in their tragedies, filled with so much more experience and so much more meaning, while her life was quite possibly the dullest. She felt trapped in a world where people killed, raped, beat, tortured, and hurt each other in so many ways. She was barely eking out an existence, going through the motions to live, yet not even living. She was surviving, but not living.

    She was dead.

    Suddenly it was as though the contents of her entire body and soul fell through the floor and were swallowed by the earth. There was a hollow, burning sort of pain. Ylsa leaned a bit closer.

    "What's wrong, dear?"

    Sara didn't know how to answer. She looked up, and a face that normally would have been screwed up with tears and sobs and puling was expressionless. "I'm dead."

    There was a silence between them. Ylsa thought about this -- dead. Before she could come up with a reply, the girl stood up, still void of emotion. "I'm going for a walk."

    "Be careful, sweetheart. Burn some incense as you go." She watched the girl leave, and thought again about what Sara had meant. "Dead"..? Or perhaps...

    Ylsa looked out the kitchen window and watched the willowy girl disappear into the thicket, lamplight glowing and smoke wafting protectively from the hanging burner below it. Yes... dead perhaps, but that meant the chance to come to life.

    It was a game Ylsa knew very, very well.

    ------------------------------------------------

    Sara didn't think much while she was walking. She followed an old stepping-stone trail that lead around towards the city proper, now choked with vines and leaves. Not so much that she couldn't still walk, which Sara thought rather odd. But at that point in her depression she didn't honestly care enough to pursue the oddity itself, and just kept walking.

    In her old habit, she stared at her feet as she walked, lantern hanging dispiritedly at her side. She had walked for some time before she stopped, and felt her blood turn to ice in her veins.

    There was a pair of feet in front of hers, facing her. The shoes were black and immaculately polished, clearly feminine. Sara raised her gaze to find a woman standing in front of her, wearing crisp, well-kept Daroan-style clothes, with beautiful black hair, a cloth tied over the lower half of her face, and a very large pair of shears in one hand.

    Oh. Sara thought. I think I'm in trouble.

    "Do you think I'm beautiful?" Kuchisake-onna asked.

    What in the Nine Hells is a yokai doing out here? Was her first question. Unless they actually didn't care about geography. Or perhaps Ylsa had accidentally carried one back with her from her last visit to Daro.

    Either way, Sara responded quickly, remembering all the things Ylsa had told her about dealing with this particular yokai. If she did it right, she might live. If not...

    Well, she wasn't enjoying herself much anyway.

    "Yes, you are beautiful." She smiled pleasantly. Suddenly, it was as though something great was rolling over in the empty cavity where her heart had been before it fell through Ylsa's living room floor.

    Step one passed, Sara remarked calmly. Perhaps it was the herbs burning in the holder beneath the lantern, but she was beginning to feel...permeable. Step two...

    But Kuchisake-onna was already on the next one, removing the cloth from her face. Her face had once been very beautiful, but now her mouth bore two slits from each corner, one leading nearly up to her ear and the other to her jaw. Sarah could easily count every single one of her teeth. Almost on command, blood began flowing from the grisly wounds as if fresh.

    "Do you still think I'm beautiful?"

    There was no right answer. Sara knew that if she said no, she would be cut in half by those shears. If she said yes, she would be given a slit mouth herself.

    All the same, she gazed at the yokai. These were the very beings Sara had never met, but had always been fascinated by. Ylsa's stories had turned them from monsters to creatures like any other in Sara's mind. Each had a personality. Took some digging to find it sometimes, but it was there. Each was sentient, and though their minds were black and clouded by the smokes of Hell, and their minds as hotwired and uncontrollable as a lightning storm, they possessed the ability to make choices. It wasn't something that had ever been documented, but Sara wasn't willing to believe that it wasn't true. She couldn't.

    How could she when this yokai, who had once been a woman murdered by a jealous husband, surely felt so, so sad.

    There were few things Sara was able to really, personally identify with (the entire human race, for instance), but at that moment, she was sure this woman felt as dead and hollow as she did.

    Sara smiled. Her voice softened and warmed. "Yes, you are."

    Kuchisake-onna hesitated for a moment, but like clockwork advanced with the shears. It seemed Sara would earn a bitchin' glasgow smile for her compassion, but she remembered the most important step in this macabre dance. She stepped back, and softly, hopefully called:

    "Do you think I'm beautiful?"

    Kuchisake-onna stopped. Her grisly head tipped one way, then another. Some emotion, some confusion, and her brow furrowed.

    It was at this point that Sara was supposed to be making her escape, but she couldn't leave. If she left, she would have nothing from this encounter, nothing to prove that it hadn't been a complete dream -- or waste of an opportunity. Instead of turning and running, Sara stepped closer. The yokai stepped back.

    "It's so sad," The girl remarked out loud, watching the slit-mouthed woman twitching in further confusion. "What happened to you. Is there something I can do to help you?"

    Kuchisake-onna had heard enough, it seemed. She slowly scraped those deadly shears against each other. They were rusted, doubtlessly from all the blood of this creature's victims. "Yes. You can become beautiful like me."

    As the yokai advanced, Sara put her hands up to stop her, but slowly, and stood her ground. "No, this isn't about me," She said. "This is about you. This is about what I can do for you. Something I can give to you."

    "I want nothing that you have." The spirit croaked bitterly, angrily.

    "Yes you do. Well, I mean. Don't you want to feel happy, or peaceful?"

    This question appeared to stump Kuchisake-onna. Sara knew from conversations with Ylsa that happiness and peace were concepts that seemed to exist outside many types of yokai, so she understood the source for the sudden halt, the tilted head.

    "Peace...ful...? I... do not know..."

    The thing in her gaping inner wound rolled over completely, and Sara smiled again, and stepped closer, arms outstretched. "Here, have some of mine." As her arms went around the woman and their foreheads touched, Kuchisake-onna went stiff, the arm and hand holding the shears positioning instinctively to cut the girl in half -- but the blades didn't bite down.

    It didn't occur to her, being dead with occasional bursts of life-type activity, so very unhappy and unfulfilled and not so much peaceful as calm with her misery, that Sara had no happiness to give. But in that moment, being that close with such an amazing and incredible creature -- smelling the rot in her breath, the smooth skin of her brow, her hair tickling Sara's cheeks -- she was peaceful. She was with, ironically, one of the few types of creatures she actually understood, and loved as much as all the creatures of the wilds and beyond, and even as much as her cat. And it was real. For that moment, Sara came to life.

    Finally she released the slit-mouthed woman, smiling, and turning around to go back to Ylsa's house. The vines creaked and it was difficult to navigate through the disappearing light, but Sara made it back to the enchanting hovel, feeling the effects of her encounter fade away, replaced with that feeling of deadness, neither unhappy nor happy.

    It was strange though, that she hadn't been cut in half on the way back. With a frown and a bit of trepidation, Sara turned and looked behind her.

    Kuchisake-onna had followed her, having gotten past the protective wards Ylsa had carefully constructed, but didn't appear to be in aggro-mode. When the girl stopped, she stopped, and her stance was less threatening -- in fact, she looked mostly very, very tired. Like she hadn't rested in aeons.

    The door creaked open, which made Sara jump.

    "Jeepers Ylsa! You spooked me."

    "Oh, sorry, dear." Ylsa smiled, and looked behind her friend. "Have you brought a guest?"

    Sara stammered. "Uh... I.. I guess?"

    "Well invite her in, she looks so tired. It's warm in here, and I was just about to put some Blue Lotus in the pipe. Will you join us?"

    Both women stood aside and allowed the yokai to peer inside, to judge her own comfort. Comfort... a thing that had, until a few minutes ago, not existed for her. Ylsa understood the strangeness of this new feeling all too well. Slowly, Kuchisake-onna stepped towards the door, stood at its threshold for a few moments, then finally stepped inside.

    And vanished.

    Sara stared at the empty spot, blinking stupidly, unsure what had just happened, and a little sad. "But... where did she go?" She looked to Ylsa, and found the mystic smiling at her.

    "She has gone onward." She said, and Sara looked back to that empty space where the yokai had been. "Whatever you did, you opened a door. We invited her to step in, and she did. Wherever she is now, she has now already begun learning."

    Sara remembered the stories again. "But won't that be really hard on her?"

    Ylsa put a hand to her smiling mouth, and her eyes began shining with tears.

    "What..?"

    "You. It was because of people like you that I am the way I am today. Because you gave her a chance, because you care so much about how she feels when no one else does.

    "It will be difficult. But Nailah is generous -- we must trust in Her to hold the torch, so this new soul can find her way."

    Sara wasn't sure how to feel. Ylsa smiled and pulled Sara close, enveloping her in an embrace, her voluminous sleeves like a blanket. Sara had always loved Ylsa's kimono-hugs. She closed her eyes and breathed in all the smells that were Ylsabet Troy: incense, plants, her pets, smoke from the ashes of an ancient world.

    "Thank you." Ylsa whispered before releasing the girl and steering her inside. "Now come, we have a beautiful pipe who wants to kiss face with us. What say you?"

    The lost and confused pilgrim still hadn't absorbed the emotional context of the event, feeling a little afraid of its intensity. But...

    "You know I'd never say no to a pipe."

    ---------------------------

    The next morning Sara awoke to find a red silken sash draped over the footboard of her bed. After consulting Ylsa the two deduced that Kuchisake-onna had left it, and from that day on Sara wore it herself. Mostly to remind her that sometimes, under the right circumstances and with a little incense to get by, she could come to life.
    Edited by Sara, Jun 23 2016, 04:00 PM.
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