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+---- Thread: [open quest] everybody's waiting for the next surprise; round III (/showthread.php?tid=31945)
everybody's waiting for the next surprise; round III - Carnage - 10-13-2025
lord, I fashion dark gods too;
He enjoys seeing what they do, when they’re free.
(It’s not really freedom, of course – it’s a pretend sort of autonomy, ushering them through this awful jungle, bloated with life and crafted to take and take and take from them, in every way.)
They move and stumble through the jungle, and one by one, they are consumed. He watches as one of his beastly creations feasts on flesh, vines curl about their legs and lungs and heart, as the leather-winged bats swam pick at whatever they can find. He laughs a little as one is taken apart by ants, enjoying how even some of the smallest creatures in his kingdom can take down these horses he has foisted into this land. Another is consumed by the earth, then one by fire.
One way or another, they end up at the river. Or, their bones do.
He had been a skeleton king, once. Reanimated in his wasteland, a slow knit of bone back to bone after having lain in a facsimile of death for years. It had taken too long for his flesh to regenerate.
He, in his endless kindness, will not make them wait half as long. Skeletons can break too easy.
He appears to them, finally. He stands before them on the other side of the river. He is always a strange thing to behold – almost plain, seeming nothing more than a finely-made stallion the color of storm clouds, the only decoration to him two dark orbs embedded on his chest. But there is something - the way the world seems to bend around him, a creation recognizing its maker. A looming, almost gleeful portent in the wine-dark eyes.
“If you want to be whole again,” he says, his voice amplified, booming through the forest with its promise of restoration, “just swim to me.”
His gaze falls on the river, whose movement stops abruptly. The surface becomes flat, the only movement left the darting of fish and the slow sway of plants as, for the first time, they learn what it is to be still. It has gone from impassable to inviting, the new stillness showing a gentle slope of silt.
(Never mind that you can’t see the bottom.)
“That should do it,” he says, and he waits.
OOC:
Congratulations, you have unlocked one (1) river!
You can now cross to Carnage – so it seems. But as you swim, the river keeps continually expanding – you never seem to get closer to him, but if you try to turn back, the shore seems as far away as Carnage’s side, so you eventually get tired and sink (or start swimming down, or are dragged down – whatever). The good news is, you’re a skeleton so you can’t drown! Once you make it to the bottom, you can walk the bottom surface, and you are slowly ‘remade’ back into your old self from random river materials (e.g. plant weeds become your mane). Your horse can finish morphing from river material golem into their old self in this journey as much as or little as you want.
Once you’re ‘rebuilt’, you’re pulled down into the earth/into blackness. And you wake up in a small (stall sized ish) little prison cell, no long underwater, but no idea where you are. There’s also Carnage’s ‘brand’ (a design of your choice) carved somewhere on your body.
As a reward for making it this far and bringing me so much joy with your wonderful posts:
- If you like, part of the rebuilding process can leave your character with any 0 or 1 space appearance trait. This is genetic and expressed.
- As another part of the rebuilding process, if you would like any expressed or carried traits to be re-rolled for possible upgrade/downgrade/mutation, let me know in an OOC note in your post what you would like rolled.
Round IV will be up no earlier than October 22 around 7 PM CST. likely later, again. I love you all.
If you have any questions feel free to DM me here or on Discord
c a r n a g e
RE: everybody's waiting for the next surprise; round III - Wayfair - 10-14-2025
chaos in your soul & lightning in your veins..you my dear were made for wild and wondrous things
Gods do not announce their arrival. They have no need of such trivial things.
Carnage is no different. He is a God after all. He is also her father, though she does not know him as such.
He slithers through the molecules of oxygen and appears from nothingness. The surrounding atmosphere becomes filled with static, though it does not spark against her flesh; it cannot spark against something that isn't there. Her skull rattles with his power and had she still possessed eyeballs, they would be rolling within their sockets. As it is, she can do no more than turn her hollow sockets towards him, seeing without seeing and feeling without feeling.
His voice spills over her, and it is more a feeling than a sound. It oozes from his mouth like a fine bourbon, smooth at first but burning as it makes its way over her bones. "Come", he says, his voice carrying across the torrid water. To a fool, it seems easy enough. True, she arrived at the top of the mountain a foolish girl with a gypsy heart, but her eyes are wide open now. She is no ones fool, not even a Gods.
A sigh would be fitting here, but she has no lungs to expel air. Instead, she shakes her head and for a moment, the clanking of bone against bone is almost whimsical. Her first step brings her to the mud, her second submerges her coffin bones and fetlock joints in the eerily-still water. Step, step, step until there is nothing remaining of her on the surface but her skull.
She begins to paddle fiercely, determination settling into her chest where her heart used to be. She's tired of being a pawn in a twisted Gods chess game. If crossing the river is what is required, then crossing she shall do. "Come Hell or high water." she thinks, fully aware that ironically, she is fighting through both.
The filthy water laps eagerly at her skeleton, but she pays it little mind. Though her skeleton cuts through the water much like a knife, the going is hard without the benefit of air in her lungs and muscles on her frame. Bones lack a certain bouancy, and she finds it increasingly difficult to keep her face towards the shoreline. A shoreline that, impossibly, seems further away than when she started. With a gritting of her teeth she summons the wind, hoping that she can harness its strength to push herself across and onto dry land. The water churns around her, but she remains much as she was; paddling uselessly. Without a solid frame, she has no sail for the wind to shove against. Instead, it cuts across her bones as if they were nothing more than skinny branches on a tree.
In her madness she loses control of the wind. Perhaps the storm-cloud stallion has taken it from her, or maybe she simply created something she could not control. Whatever the case was, she soon finds herself slipping beneath those churning waves. Once more she spares a half laugh at the realization that she at least doesn't need air.
She does not fight her descent. Already her bones ache from trying to stay afloat, and she has no energy left to spare. Instead, she allows herself to sink gently and slowly. For all its might the river isn't horribly deep so her descent doesn't take long. With a slight buckling at the knees she lands on the river bed, swinging her skull to and fro as she gathers her wits. It is calmer down here, though the murky water is hard to see through. It does not fight her like the surface did; perhaps bones were always meant to sink. With her goal still in mind she trudges forward. Forward seems to be the only place to go in this world.
She does not know how long she walks. Having no need of air she doesn't bother to keep track of the time. She only knows that all manners of river life have accumulated on her bones as she journeys across. River mollusks cling to her bones, filling in the emptiness with their own selves. Along her neck is a tangled mess of water weeds, though they are the same inky black as her original mane. For eyes, she has somehow gathered river pearls. Rare things, river pearls, but their beauty is unmatched. She is not quite whole, but certainly more substantial than she was.
The longer she walks, the more whole she becomes, and the more whole she becomes the greater her need for air. Flesh replaces river life, mane replaces grass, and bones becomes hidden once more. Bubbles rise from her nostrils as she fights her way onwards, each one a precious reminder that she will need air sooner rather than later. Her head swims and her lungs ache, and when she can take the pressure no more she finally takes in a watery breath, content to die here and now for no other reason than to escape this hell. Drowning would be easier than whatever this twisted game is. As the water fills her lungs, the darkness drags her down....
She awakens into confined darkness. The area is small and smells of decay. She is surrounded by walls, though she can't make out what material they are made from. Perhaps this is death? Hell, most likely. She can't be sure. This whole journey has been its own sort of hell, so nothing would shock her this late in the game. Whatever it is, her body appears to be her own again, at least in manners of appearance. Clenching her teeth, she calls on the wind, determined to blow the walls down and escape. It does her no good, though the howling of it breaks the silence. She takes some comfort in that sound.
What she cannot see are her eyes, which now seem to glow like lightning-filled clouds. Nor can she see the other mark, the one on her pretty face. Burned into her snow white jaw is a "c" shaped cluster of Oleander flowers. A beautiful flower, but deadly poisonous.
Much like the creature she has become since venturing to the top of the Mountain. Beautiful, but deadly.
Wayfair
Ooc- Wayfair now has a "c" shaped cluster of Oleander flowers on her right jaw where Carnage branded her. The river pearls were also replaced with Glowing Eyes. Her eyes only glow (white, like lightning behind a cloud...think Storm from X-Men) when she uses her wind manipulation
RE: everybody's waiting for the next surprise; round III - Tipitina - 10-21-2025
The river waits like a held breath as Tipsy stands at its edge, bones slick with moss and the thin shimmer of decay. What remains of her has been bleached by sun and hunger—her skull tilted, her sockets catching the glint of still water. Around her, the jungle hums and seethes, every leaf swollen with damp life, every shadow whispering its hunger. The air presses close, heavy as breath, and she can feel it cling to what’s left of her.
Across the water, he waits.
Mysterious and storm-eyed, the maker who had loosed them here only to watch them die. The river between them mirrors him perfectly—smooth, silver, deceitful. Her antennae, thin as reeds, tremble in the silence he leaves behind his words. If you want to be whole again, just swim to me.
She steps forward. One bone, then another. The water licks up her legs, slow and cool and alive. It slides through her ribs, curls around her spine, tugs at her gently—like the jungle had found a new way to hold her. For a moment, she almost believes in the stillness, in the illusion of mercy. Then the river moves.
It doesn’t rage; it breathes. The current slips beneath her bones and draws her deeper, further, until the world above dims and hums. She walks because she must, and when she can no longer tell if she is rising or sinking, she lets go. The water folds her into itself. Something stirs and vines begin to reach for her chest, winding through her ribs, blooming soft and green where her heart used to be. Petals unfurl, delicate as sighs, until a crown of water lilies rests upon her breastbone. Their roots curl through the empty hollows of her form, knitting her together from the inside out. Her mane becomes a drift of riverweed, luminous and strange, and her eyes fill again—not with sight, but with reflection.
The pain is gentle this time, a soft ache of becoming. The current hums through her like a heartbeat. Her body remembers shape, color, skin and she feels herself remade from mud and water and ruin. When her hooves find the silt, she looks up through the shifting dark. Somewhere far above, Carnage’s voice echoes faintly, distorted by distance and the water’s weight. Tipsy only smiles as the lilies on her breast bloom wider. And then the world folds in, black as ink.
For a long while, she thinks she’s still beneath the water—the heaviness of it, the way sound feels slow and far away. Then the dark sharpens, gains edges, walls. The air is dry and it hurts. Tipsy wakes with a gasp that tastes of iron and rot. Her chest rises, stiff and new, her skin slick with the memory of the river. The lilies remain, pale blooms unfurling from the hollow between her shoulders, their roots threaded deep into her skin as if she has always been part of the river’s garden. They pulse faintly, matching the rhythm of a borrowed heartbeat. She blinks, and the world comes back in fragments. Stone walls, close and cold. The floor beneath her is damp, smelling of moss and metal. A slow drip echoes somewhere, patient and eternal.
Then the pain finds her.
It starts at her shoulder, sharp as lightning, the brand searing as though it’s being carved anew. She jerks, breath hissing through her teeth, and turns to look. There, it gleams in the dimness nestled upon her right shoulder, is an ornate beetle with its wings spread wide, the letter C tucked within the design on its abdomen. The flesh around it burns, angry and raw.
Tipsy stares for a long moment, the corner of her mouth twitching—not in fear, but in confusion, in awe. She knows the dark god's touch now.
“Well,” she murmurs softly, voice still touched with a kind of dazed wonder, “that’s new.” The lilies on her chest tremble, scattering droplets that glow faintly before sinking into the stone. She pushes herself upright, unsteady, her neon-tipped mane clinging damply to her neck.
There’s no door, no clear way out. Only a thin line of light ahead—faint, like the memory of the sun. She drifts toward it, drawn without thinking, until her face presses close to a set of narrow iron bars.
OOC: Tipsy now has a floral growth of water lilies blooming from her chest and a lil bug brand with the letter C on the beetle's abdomen
RE: everybody's waiting for the next surprise; round III - Harrowed - 10-23-2025
harrowed
Fear and confusion and that new, heavy sensation of being lost swirl through Harrowed’s mind and bones as he stands there on the bank of the impassable river. There is no progress towards a solution for himself when someone appears on the opposite bank. A stallion, who would look harmless if not for the strange aura around him – as though this jungle recognized him.
And this jungle shouldn’t be trusted. That should be a clear warning sign for this skeleton.
Still, he offers a solution and Harrowed jumps to it without hesitation because any path forward is better than lingering here in uncertainty. The cessation of the river’s wild current only encourages the young stallion who moves into the water. The calm surface reminds him of the lake in the Dale where he had grown up, playing in the waters with Evade. This is just the same as that – seeing if he can reach the opposite side, only with a higher chance of success this time.
So it seems, for a time.
Harrowed keeps his attention on the stranger on the bank, his determination inspiring each kick of his legs, and the desire to be whole and out of this forsaken place keeping him from realizing what is happening for too long.
That figure, the bank that promises relief, isn’t getting any closer.
Still he tries, because he won’t go back. He doesn’t even consider it – the ants are there! – and eventually his body wears out. The muscles he doesn’t really have tire and each stroke becomes heavy and difficult until his skeleton body is trembling from the effort and finally, finally, he cannot make another movement.
And he sinks. Fear swells through the exhaustion until Harrowed realizes he is not drowning. Well that’s something. So now there’s no fear and the exhaustion fills him up again. He settles on the bottom of the river, a cloud of grey silt rising around him.
It is difficult to tell whether he can’t move or if he just doesn’t want to. He could stay here, safe from the horrors that exist in the forest above, safe from whatever trick had been stretching this river out.
Harrowed stands still so long the silt settles around him again and some of it sticks to his bones.
It is so tempting to stay.
But…
Without even a clear thought, he begins to move. Later, maybe he’ll piece together these feelings. He’ll see this as the moment he decided there was more to do, more to live, if only he could survive this.
Right now he’s too exhausted to think, he just walks. Harrowed’s body is bone and then it is more. Driftwood and plants and even a fish carcass collect first inside his rib cage and then on top of his bones. Turning him back into an approximation of himself.
He continues to walk because he knows that is what he needs to do until something collides with his face. The final piece to the puzzle makes him too heavy — or perhaps weight has nothing to do with it and Harrowed is just doomed to drift in and through situations until he finally dies — and Harrowed sinks.
He sinks past the water and loses consciousness completely be the time his bone-and-wood-and-silt head slurps beneath the substrate. He sinks past where it should be possible to sink and further down down down.
Solid ground beneath his hooves jolts him awake and Harrowed finds that he is confined to a very small space. Barely enough room to turn around. He can feel his body again beneath and through the collection of stuff amassing on him, can feel a new wound on his shoulder, and this terrifies him. If his flesh can be restored that means it can be taken away again.
He cannot allow that. So he rages. Slams his body and hooves into the sides around him and he screams out the thundering anger and fear.
Scrambling offerings: Bodach, and carried: shadow camouflage, angel shifting, glowing
RE: everybody's waiting for the next surprise; round III - Fret - 10-23-2025
i'm torn from the truth that holds my soul i'm down in the grave where I belong --
Everything clicks into place when the maker of this world reveals himself, but there is no relief to be found in knowing. He doesn’t know who Carnage is to him, but he knows who he is to Beqanna as a whole, and this knowledge breeds a different kind of fear. He suspects that they will make it out alive, but at what cost, he isn’t sure.
Swim to me, he beckons, stilling the river as if he is doing them a favor and not baiting them into another impossible task. Fret wonders briefly what would happen if he turned his back — if he would be struck down where he stood, if he would remain trapped in this jungle hellscape for eternity, or if there was some other punishment his half-simple mind could never conjure.
In the end, he follows the command.
He steps into the water, black-bones disappearing beneath the surface the further he walks, until he is forced to swim. He tries to focus his attention on the opposite shore, to find encouragement in the idea that it was growing closer. He isn’t sure how much time passes before he comes to the realization that the shore is forever out of his reach, and that he is sinking.
Once he is fully submerged, it is as if some other force pulls him down. It no longer feels like sinking, but like falling, the surface ripped away from him at such a speed that he has hardly the time to fight it before he is nearly crashing to the riverbed below. The impact sends mud and sand cresting upward, clinging to his bones where they thicken into muscle, his skin and then armor knitting themselves back together over top of it. Instinctively, he tries to push himself upward, only to be forced back down. He walks, the movement unsettling the sediment where it floats upward - building his face, his horns, the armor of his spine.
And then he is sinking again, and he realizes that he is so tired of falling into other worlds, and wonders if this might finally be the end.
It isn’t, of course, reality slamming into him as he hits solid ground and the air rushes back into his lungs, distracting him from the sharp, sudden pain of something being carved in his side just beneath his wing. His heart beats a thunderous rhythm in his ears as he foolishly spins in a circle, and finds himself wondering if a deadly jungle is worse than a cage.
-- f r e t
This is a phone post and I am sorry for that
also could he have shadows (0 space) pls & thank you
RE: everybody's waiting for the next surprise; round III - Sirin - 10-23-2025
sirin;
“If you want to be whole again,” he says, his voice at once like a beginning and an end, “just swim to me.” Just swim. She wills her feet to move towards the water, its surface suddenly stilled. Swim. It could be so easy. It could take no time at all to get to the puppeteer, to get back to the wholeness she had before. For surely he will grant her that - her wholeness, skin and hair and all - when she climbs onto that far riverbank?
Having been swallowed by the earth and defleshed must have been penance enough for whatever sins she has committed.
Right?
Sirin makes that first step towards the silvery, unnatural river and then the next ones are easier after that. It is strange, though, as the water pools around her ankles. She feels it distantly through her bones, like there is a pocket of air between her and the water, softening the sensation. It could be frigid water or it could be scalding, and she’s not sure she would be able to tell much either way.
The skeleton slips further into the water. As it slips over her like satin, she decides that she prefers the water sliding over her bones more than the air. There is buoyancy in the unmoving current that helps her feel less alien. Almost like she is more whole again, the water taking up the space that her organs filled before. The clicking of bones is even muffled underwater. She doesn’t mind as the river reaches higher the further in she wades. This will be easy, Sirin even thinks with a lipless smirk.
And then the distant riverbank pulls away.
Or it seems to, their dark god now a speck on the horizon. Farther away, perhaps, but still with the same halo of power pulsing like lightning around him.
Sirin’s bony appendages begin to kick more frantically, unable to override her own instincts. But it is no use, she has moved too far forward and the slope of the silt has disappeared from under her. Only open water stirs under her panic, and she begins to sink down -
Down to the bottom where she passes streaks of jewel-bright fish and streamers of viridian aquatic grasses as she goes. She tries to scream - and maybe succeeds - thinking it is the end. It will not be an earthen grave, but a watery one that is marked for her. It is more fitting, at least. All of her wickedness has been played out by the water. The little girl she had tricked into bringing her home. The men she had teased and deceived into keeping her at their side to give her all the attention she needed. The River worked for her and now, it seems, she will feed it back with her very bones.
Sirin lands at the bottom after her slow freefall and finds she is as alive as she had been while facing down the stallion across the water. Alive is relative, of course. She tries a step, finds success, and keeps going. Alive becomes more so as she goes. Impossible, but the feeling is there all the same. The bottom of the river is a wonder, a whole other world through the aquatic portal she traveled through. But she has ‘eyes’ only for what is happening to her body.
The riverbed begins to reshape her, throwing a curtain of mud over her skeletal form and then revealing its work slowly. Driftwood knits along her back, fusing with her spine before it begins to reflesh. Oysters climb her legs, opening and clinging like barnacles. Cattails fall like hair over her reforming neck and swish against her hocks. Raw carnelian, amethyst, and quartz fuses around her feet, fills her eye-sockets, peppers her skin. She is a creature of the depths, resembling what has always lived inside.
Appropriately, she does not rise.
She sinks, again.
This time, there is little inclination to save herself. Sirin’s instincts have fled her, it seems, in favor of quiet acceptance. Whatever comes next cannot be worse than being exposed for who you truly are, she thinks. What is left to take? And no sooner than she thinks it, a sharp burn blossoms under her cheek. Where a lover might press a kiss, or an unsuspecting stranger taken by her wiles. Forever marked as a monster. His monster. For all the world to see.
Please give her Jewel Touched and scramble wings and horn - thank you!
RE: everybody's waiting for the next surprise; round III - FyreFox - 10-28-2025
Fyrefox huffed a breath, or at least tried to. Come to me he said.. she wasn't sure weather to believe him or not. Her eyes narrowed, wait could her eyes narrow... if she was a bag of bones how was she even seeing? She shook her head slightly, needing to concentrate on everything around her, this unnatural world, what was happening to her. She ideally wondered if the others were going through the same fate... maybe.
She had no where else to go but towards him. Stepping towards the river weariness turned to suspicion when the river slowed. She was under no illusion that he was making things easier for her. No, this was just another of his tricks. However, she had no other choice but to walk straight into it.
As she start to swam her eyes must be playing tricks on her, because that shore line wasn't getting any closer. She turned her head back to where she had come from. Same distance, so this was yet another trick of his. She was really starting to hate him.
She jerked as she felt something wrap around her forelimb, how she could feel anything was a mystery, but not one she needed to deal with now! No the seaweed wrapped around all for limbs was much more of a concern, causing her to panic and thrash as it tightened until she was was pulled down at a rapid speed.
Her heart, where ever it was, was racing before she realised she wasn't drowning. Of course she wasn't... seemed all these games were meant to scare, not harm. She relaxed, shifting her limbs, watching as the seaweed wrapped round her limbs freely. It was no longer controlling her movements but stuck to her like a second skin, allowing her to take a step forward, and then another as she slowly started walking along the river floor.
It was as if she was a magnet, different plants being attracted to her skeletal form. Brown Kelp covered her legs, green sargassum formed along her top line, joining the patterned diatoms that was coming together to form under her belly and neck, seagrass wrapping around her facial features. Red tipped eel grass where her mane should be and bunched spirulina where he tail was finished off her 'new' look. In truth she wondered what in the sea monster horror stories she actually looked like as she pulled herself up onto the shore. Glaring at the one in front of her, she was just about to speak when the ground beneath her collapsed, pulling her down in darkness.
She groans, blinking eyes open to find herself in a box of some sorts. Feeling groggy she stands, looking around and noticing the same horses who started this journey in similar predicament to herself. She noticed a brand on a few of them, causing her to suddenly turn her head to inspect herself. She seemed back to her normal form an couldn't see a brand on herself. She wasn't foolish enough to think he hadn't done the same to her though, it was just somewhere she couldn't see, a perfect flame red C in a joined circle.
(OOC: Thank you so so much for waiting for me Cassie. So her brand is basically the copywrite symbol lol Bit confused re trait does it have to be related to there river form? I'll message you for more details)
