The Heart of a Faun, the Heart of a Forest [OPEN]

<OOC> Anyone is welcome to join and contribute! Here's the call to action: Random faun wanders into Stonevale, explains that the Brokenthorn forest is overrun by earth elementals. The heroes travel to the Brokenthorn to investigate and try to put a stop to the madness. Bunny any NPC's you want (and even me) if you need to keep the story going! -Z </OOC>


"HOOOO, THAT WEE GNOME GOT YA AGAIN!", Dellen cried as fat tears of laughter rolled down his cheeks and soaked into his beard.


Zeph looked mournfully at a mound of foam floating around the bottom of his mug. "Oh, come off it Dellen, you've had your laughs. Now give it back." He held out his hand for the brown leather book that the squat dwarf was holding.

"Aye, I'll give it back, but only under one condition", said Dellen, "You've got to explain to Kalli and the boys exactly what you've done this time!" This sent the dwarf into another round of hysterics as he knocked his mug against the wooden bar countertop. "KALLI!CUMMERE AND LISTEN TO WHAT THIS PEBBLE BRAIN DONE THIS TIME!"

The bartender, hearing her name from across the room, set down the cup she was polishing and gave Zeph an apologetic look. "Alright Z, I think we both know he ain't gon stop until you're out with it, so might well get it done and over. Plus, I've had it in my headto ask what gots ya bringin a book into the bar, you've never needed one to help you drink before."

"Fine. Fine, I'll explain, but only after you make that criminal give me MY LEGALLY PURCHASED GOODS back." Kalli gave a nod to Dellen and grabbed the dwarf's mug for a refill. He grudgingly slid the tome down the bar to Zeph, who snatched it up before the little man could pull it away again.

"So you remember how I told you all about this book on Earth Magik?" The two listeners gave Zeph a nod. "And how some people claim they can sense the spirit of others from miles away, over mountains and through walls?" More nods. "Well, I found it... or at least a part of it." The nods were replaced with blank stares. "I'm serious! Look!"

Zeph opened the book up to the last remaining page. It used to contain much more, but sheets had been ripped out long ago. The final writing was in black handwriting on an otherwise blank page. It simply said:

Beyond the darkness lies a kingdom shrouded in greenish light. This is Sparta Majoris, sparkliest nation of Madness. Here waits Kloraag; the keeper doombringer. He ejaculated many bees which founded bee-rocracy.

Dellen chewed on a corner of his mustache to keep from laughing out loud, but his stool still rocked so hard his beer sloshed over the top of the mug.

"Oh, that's... not what I expected", said Kalli in a confused tone of voice.

"Well," Zeph murmured, "I mean, I found the cover of the book." He pointed to ancient runes and symbols that decorated the leather inside of the book's cover. "Someone took the original text out and rebound some other nonsense in the old cover. And then apparently some kind of cult member got ahold of it" he said, re-reading the last passage skeptically.

"I'm certain you'll find the restof the book eventually" Kalli said to him encouragingly. Zeph simply began banging his head against the countertop.

"I just still can't believe ya bought it without opening it up!You shouldn't never judge a book by its cover, that's what my gran said. So I just don't ever touch the things, I don't have to worry bout it that way!" Dellen took another swig of beer.

Zeph was starting to make a decently forehead-shaped indent in the wood when a commotion sprung up from outside the door. Kalli stood up on a stool behind the counter to try to see out the window. "We'll take alook for ya Kalli" Dellen said with a wink, and he grabbed Zeph by the elbow and pulled him off his stool.

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Outside, a group of drunks low on booze and high on free time was prodding a mangy Faun down the cobbles. Dellen leaned against the oak beam that held up the sign for The Pickled Miner, and Zeph stood behind him. "Ain't our business getting involved I suppose" he muttered, "for all we know he knocked over their beer or summat like".

"I still don't see why that's a good reason to parade someone through the streets" Zeph responded. "Although I suppose there's a dozen of them and two of us, so not necessarily odds I'd like to get into if I can help it".

They stood by and watched as the crowd jeered and tossed mud onto the drunken creature, but eventually, the gathered mass stumbled on in search of higher spirits. The faun propped himself up on one elbow, and tried to stand; it was a good effort, but gravity won out against his intoxication and he plopped back down into the mud.

"Danger's passed", said Zeph, "I suppose we oughta bring him in and see if Kalli's willing to warm him up". Zeph and Dellen stepped off the porch, down the steps, and into the street towards the pitiful creature.

When one looks at her they sometimes assumed the worst. Striding down the street, Philomel had the swagger of a natural born seductress, born from early years of training and practised through the art of sword-mastery. Hips swung, head was held high and she patted her lips with little to no breaths, yet held a perfect pout throughout. This was her natural stance, however, one honed as a dancer perfects their art and cannot help but waltz through the streets. It gave her undue attention and unwanted assumptions, especially from the various people who stopped her in her path.

This particular one, today, was called "Frent". He was heckled by a friend and sent to, "Go get that whore.'

"Hey sweetheart," his breath stank of beer and tobacco. "You're a bit ... unusual aren't you?"

His eyes wandered up and down her long lithe body, going from her carefully bloused torso, down the length of her belted waist and then the span of her muscled, furry legs. The sight stopped at her hooves, drinking in, for a moment, the sight of the unusual single undulate, and then swept back up to her stunned, large eyes.

"How much for you, huh?"

She blinked, eyebrows rising. "Excuse me?" her voice was full of shock and horror, not thinking her attire - a high necked top and enough fabric at her waist to blanket a horse - was at all inviting.

"I said 'how much?'" Frent grinned, his friends punching each other in the cold narrow street behind them. "How much for a good night?"

A fast hand and she slapped him, hard across the face. Fury was written clear in her eyes for the sake that no one spoke to her in that way any more. A large ugly welt appeared on Frent's cheek and he stared at her for some time before his lips began to tremble.

Philomel twisted her hip, glaring at him with a gaze so deep and hateful that it could have killed. Then, without another word, and no desire in anyway today to have any sort of company that she had solicited, she turned and left, leaving him in the dirt. On the cobbles of the slowly dying dusk, forgetting the pub she had considered going into, abandoning all hope of a good day on this, the first day of a holiday.

That was until her ears picked up the comments of his friends. She paused, shocked, but after a moment she kept going, resisting the urge to twist and call out - but onwards she went. But faster. More eager. Looking into her mind and contacting her dear Veridian, fox companion because something had occurred.

A rare being had been found in this, their holiday place. Where Philomel had not come for ... Well. Professional services

What the men had said was thus:

"Not like that other faun, huh?"

((OOC: @philomel yes please! My overall story arc here involves deep-earth magics from the mining in Scara Brae effecting the Brokenthorn forest and its inhabitants! So having an earth mage to advise would be very helpful!))

“I hope he doesn’t die on us, I really don’t want to deal with that today,” Zeph said from his perch on the fireplace. He poked the snoring faun with the toe of his boot, which elicited a muffled grunt.

“Oh, I doubt it,” Kalli replied, “He’s only about as bad as you were last week!” She and Dellen started laughing, pantomiming Zeph stumbling through the inn, knocking over stools.

“And then he asked the Orc if he could hold his toothpick, I was worried he was done for!” Dellen wheezed. Zeph grinned back at them.

“And don’t forget how I managed to convince that girl to tell me what shop she worked at.” He said. “Now, if only I had written it down, I’d be a happy man. I’d probably be married by now, five kids and a stable job, and you two would be stuck here drinking alone every night.” He shook his head. She had had the prettiest eyes but the rest was still pretty fuzzy. A whole bottle of rockwine did that to a guy.

They poked fun at each other about past drunken escapades until the fire burnt low in the grate. Finally, Kalli announced she was heading to bed, and that they’d better keep an eye on their guest or she’d have their hides decorating the wall behind the bar. Zeph said he’d take the first watch, and pulled out his knife and started adding to the decades of carvings that covered the wooden mantle of the fireplace. Dellen pulled a warm cloak from his cupboard in the back hallway, settled into a deep chair, and promptly fell asleep. When he was certain that he couldn’t fit another stylized “Z” anywhere nearby, Zeph stood up and wandered over to the bar, poured himself a drink, and took a seat staring into the coals of the fire.

He awoke to the sounds of Kalli yelling at Dellen, “One job! Did ya hear me when I turned in, you granite-skulled menace? WATCH THE FAUN. That’s all ya had to do, but no, that’s too hard. You can’t even manage to LOOK AT SOMETHING.” Zeph rubbed the sleep from his eyes and looked at the floor by the fireplace, where only a patch of dried mud and a rumpled blanket showed that the faun had been there recently. He tucked down lower into his cloak, trying to avoid detection, but even his skills were no match for Kalli when she was on a path.

“AAAAAND YOU!” She hollered across the room. “Don’t try to hide from me Zeph, I’ll hunt you wherever you go, I’ll string you up, I’ll skin you! I’ll start with a hangnail. I’ll just peel it back until your whole skin comes with it! And then I’ll –“ She was interrupted by a loud repetitive banging from the direction of the bar. A single mug was lifted above the bar, repeatedly being smashed on the counter, until everyone stopped talking.

“there we go”, came the quiet slow voice. “god. damn. peace. and. quiet. I was quite enjoying *hic myself until your caterwalling started up.” Dellen, Kalli, and Zeph rushed to look over the top of the bar. Sitting on the floor, mud still wedged in the cloves of his hooves, was the faun they had pulled from the street. He was drinking a beer, eyes closed, with a relaxed look on his face. His head was leaned on a shelf that was just the right height for being sprawled on the floor.

“And exactly HOW do you suppose you’re going to pay for our hospitality, SIR?” Kalli said forcefully.

“oh, that’s easy” the faun replied, “I don’t. I just drink until you throw me out, and then I find the next pub.” A wide grin spread across his face, and Zeph and Dellen physically restrained Kalli from jumping over the bar and strangling the faun then and there. They struggled for a moment, then finally Kalli said, “Alright, I’m not gonna kill’em! But I’ve got some questions I wanna ask.” They dragged the faun out from behind the bar, and plopped him into a chair stuck in a corner so he wouldn’t fall out. He struggled against them, but he was too sloshed to be of any real resistance. His captors pulled up stools and sat around him in a loose semi-circle.

“What’s your name?” Zeph asked him as an opener.

“My name’s gofuckyourself, but my ma always liked to call me Terry.” Terry seemed quite amused at his own joke.

“Ok Terry, and what brings you to Stonevale?” Zeph asked, always trying to be the peacemaker.

“Oh, you know, I popped in for the attractions, lovely weather this time of year, nice babes, I was hoping to stop by the library and do some light reading before I moved on”.

“We have a library?!” Zeph excitedly asked his two companions. Their dark looks informed him that there was, in fact, no library in town. Zeph looked disappointed.

“Alright smartass” Kalli said cutting into Zeph’s line of questioning, “either you tell me everything I want to know, or I’m going to go find every barkeep on this whole island that you’ve screwed over, and we’re all gonna have a nice little sit-down chat with you. Together.” The look of fear in Terry’s eyes indicated that the number of people who would be interested in such an evening was even higher than they had assumed.

“ok ok ok, it’s fine, no need for that. Um, I’m Terry,” he said, gesturing to himself dramatically, “I used to live on the edge of the Brokenthorn forest. But then they came and ran me out. The Earth Elementals that is. They just came storming through, didn’t seem interested in poor old Terry, no no, they just made a path right through the middle of my house in between wherever they were at and wherever they were going.” He paused, and the three stared back at him silently. He looked at the door, considered, then continued, “Don’t know where they came from or why, they just decided that’s their pathway now, and I had nothing else to do. I’m homeless now. So I just wander around, and I bounce from inn to inn, eating and drinking when I can. I’ll pay you back right away, not a problem, I’ve just gotta nip over to the … inn … place … where I’ve got my coin! I was just joking about being broke, totally good for it.” He gave them all a half grin and tried to see if they would buy it.

"So what exactly is this place?" She asked her beloved, looking at him from across the table.

For two days now there had been searching through the streets of this small town - Stonevale. Simply her and Veridian had come here for both a vacation from the usual patterns of life. After their recent adventures in Salvar, and the steady disappearance of Shinsou vaan Osiris from her life, Philomel had been concentrating on the raising of her daughter and heir, Celandine. The little faun had been educated fast over the last month, with much focus on the promise of becoming the true heir of the Gilded Lily empire. But it had been exhausting, at least ten hours every day of chasing around one of the brightest, most excited beings in the universe, and so Philomel had left. Letting Gosling, her secretary, take over lessons.

Left to come here, to these islands and train her own mind to go back to her goddess and focus.

And now they had word of a faun, one of the rare of her species to also be outside of their hidden homeland.

Veridian, her fox-form earth-spirit, partner-of-her-heart, looked up from his bowl of stew that he was obsessing over. They sat opposite each other in a quiet bar, right in the heart of the town, though away from the main street. The light was dim, the wood that made up the place a deep chestnut that gave a hearty atmosphere. A tiny fire in the distance of the room have what little heat was really needed.

It's a mining village, he explained, At least in history.

Philomel thought about the various grubby people she had seen, as well as the various shops for equipment.

"Well I know that," she agreed, having come to the assumption herself before. In her hands she had a warm mug of whiskey and she observed the russet animal over the top of it. "But what ... Kind of place in terms of emotions? I mean, they say they saw a faun, and you said you had read things about earth magic connections here before, but what is it?"

The fox blinked twice before delving his head back into the stew. Brown sauce drowned into his fur.

No idea. But we have avoided any more unnecessary attention, even if it was by rumours of your hardy slap.

Philomel looked down at her hand, frowning. "How does that help me find another one of my kin?"

No idea, Veridian agreed. But the food is good.

She sighed and leant back, looking around the dark but welcoming pub, where not many other people sat. Her horns curled from her head like a monarch's crown into the atmosphere of the place.

"Anyone seen another on of me?" She asked the awkward room hopefully.

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sorry for the short posts. Thinking phi will walk into zeph next post?

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((OOC)) Sorry, the week got busy! But the weekends are for writing and drinking and imagining. I'll have something up soon :D ((OOC))