Beqanna - The Ruins

it's very strange to me; any

Tue, 29 Sep 2026 16:38:48 -0400

it's very strange to me

She is a peculiar thing, there amongst the rubble.

Her sunrise eyes could be alluring, if they weren’t so unnaturally bright. Her face could be comely, if it wasn’t drawn and serious, focused on her latest obsessive task. A sound pulls her attention from it, momentarily, and she looks over a teal shoulder to find the source. Others are drawn away from her like opposing magnets, usually. They feel a sense of increasing doom or perhaps the brush of death the closer they get to her. It is engineered by her to be so.

Or had been.

Vael twists her spine further to eye the now vacant bit of mane her seashell ward had once occupied.

Right.

Loneliness gripped her heart and squeezed under the light of the last full moon. That too, was peculiar. Because she had never been lonely before in her life, not really. She had so many friends: bugs and bats, snails and seagulls, foxes and frogs. Even the ferns and the oaks and the clover. How could loneliness happen upon her like a sneaker wave?

Oh, what a silly thing. To be lonely when life blossoms and grows and exists all around!

Vael had tried to banish the shadow over her heart, but it persisted. So even as she turns back to the Ruins and shaves the rockface with her fortified horn (pulling the remnants towards her with a hoof), she has one ear swiveled behind her. Hoping that it is not impending doom they feel but curiosity. She already feels it within her.

Vael

we were fine without you, sarah pony

Sun, 27 Sep 2026 18:45:54 -0400

selaphiel—

It had spread by degrees.
Slowly at first and then all at once.

It had spread like disease, exponentially. Until the ice did not live only in the cracks of his skin but in the skin itself. If there had been anyone around to ask him, he might have told him that it happened over the course of several days. He’d woken one morning to find his pasterns stiff, cold. And then, days later, his knees. And then.

And then, well.
Perhaps some part of him understands that this was the fate that had always awaited him. And so he does not ask from where it has come, this ice. He understands that it has always been a part of him. From the earliest days of that wretched darkness into which he and Este had been born into, it had festered. He’d felt it in his chest often, the strong heart stifled by it.

He hopes that soon the heart will turn to ice, too.
So that it will no longer ache for the things he has lost.
So that, perhaps, he might close his eyes and sleep.

Today he doesn’t try. Today he wanders, as he is wont to do. A homeless, aimless thing. And eventually he stills and he turns his nose to his own shoulder, testing. It comes away cold.

And in this there is some relief.
Relief to think that no one will touch him now.

these days i don’t pray when i close my eyes,
i just bite my tongue a bit harder—

to become a melody without a name; any

Fri, 11 Sep 2026 11:48:28 -0400

to become a melody without a name

There is an untethered sort of peace held within the crashing waves and salt-laden scent of the ocean. It is a peace many have felt, and even more, admired. An overwhelming sense of dangerous freedom with each crest and roll of the unsettled water. The pull is undeniable, drawing creatures like locusts to a perfectly golden field of wheat.

For Eridya, it is intimate. As much a part of her as the air is to the birds or the earth is to a worm. The sea is her birthright, linked so intricately to her that it may as well be the blood rushing inside her veins. So for her to leave it makes this day an auspicious one, even if few would ever know it.

Auspicious, yet entirely unsurprising. Like the winter storms that tear through and ravage the lands, she rarely stays in one place long. For a creature of the sea, land holds an undeniable fascination in the same way the restless depths do for creatures of the land. Fortune must truly have smiled on her to allow her a freedom so few others have, for Eridya is a creature who can traverse one as easily as the other.

Her translucent skin glimmers in the weak light of the sun, the water sluicing from her sleek form, sending rainbows cascading across each curve and hollow. Her tail swishes sharply as she steps fully from the lapping waves, a shower of seawater spreading across the beach with the practiced movement. Her slender gills flutter and widen as she familiarizes herself with breathing air once more.

It is a mildly unpleasant process for the brisk air to chase the fluid from her lungs, but she endures with the disinterest of familiarity. It is the price she must pay to walk so completely in two worlds, and it is one she will gladly surrender. Perhaps it is foolish of her to be so certain, but she retains no doubt this venture, and thus the price she just paid, will prove well worth her while.

eridya

no grave can hold my body down, I'll crawl home to her;

Mon, 13 Apr 2026 19:34:46 -0400

I think my father loved my mother.

He thinks I don’t notice when he flies away at night, a snowy white owl drifting across a starlit heaven on a cool breeze; when he returns, I pretend to stir—as if I haven’t been waiting. I tuck my body close to his and sigh, comforted by his warmth while he shivers at first against my chill. He grows a thick, woolly coat, then sprouts raven wings and shelters me under his right wing.

Nikolas, my father, has never stopped looking for my mother.
I don’t think he ever will.

Sometimes I wonder if he blames me.
Other times, I know that simply isn’t true.

He loves me as much as I think he loved her.

She had been confused when I was born.

For whatever reason, when I arrived, I didn’t move or make noise—I was stiff, cold to the touch, and in her anguish she simply… vanished.

Nereza, my mother, had very strange powers.
My father thinks it was her undoing.

He has been taking care of me ever since.
In his own way.

Sometimes we’re horses, other times we are birds; once, he had taught me how to shift into a wolf, and I had waited nearby and watched while he hunted down a doe for us to eat.

“Vegetation isn’t always available,” my father had explained afterwards when our bellies were so swollen that my tummy hurt, bloody from his face down to his chest and legs. “When it isn’t, we hunt.”
“We survive by any means necessary.”

I amble along aimlessly, my skunk-colored tail flicking to ward off the flies. I keep my head high, my ears twitching and swiveling towards whatever sound comes my way. For the most part, it’s just the wind and I sigh when what sounds like a wailing banshee is just a gust forcing its way between two large stones.

I’m not sure where my father is, exactly. I know he isn’t far, he never is, but I appreciate the fact he has decided to let me explore a bit on my own even if the land is… well, dead and barren, for lack of better words. He hadn’t wanted to take me to the Forest or the River, explaining that there were too many others present, and I sigh loudly at the memory.

everything that's mine is a landmine, zohariel

Mon, 22 Dec 2025 02:11:45 -0500

Ryatah

WHEN I WAS SHIPWRECKED I THOUGHT OF YOU

IN THE CRACKS OF LIGHT I DREAMED OF YOU

The thought of calling his bluff had crossed her mind, sharp and undeniable, but bright red like a warning.

If it had been anyone else, she would have.
There has always been a sick part of her that relished in exactly this—in their leaving, so that she might splinter and break around the ache of it. It was a high she couldn’t get anywhere else, a rush that only the aftermath of self-destruction could bring, and she hates herself for being able to admit that she has never regretted doing it a single time.

She might miss them—she might spend nights wondering what if, what if, what if, while all the scars across her heart flared to life—but nothing healed her shattered heart quite like letting it fall in love with someone else.

But Carnage is different; she knows he means what he says.
And for all the twisted, wicked games they have played, never before has he threatened to leave.

She believes him when he says it, just as she believes that she would never even be given the chance to beg him to stay.

Instead of quieting the panic that had taken root in her chest, she let it blossom.
She needed that quickened pulse and that desperation, she needed the image of stars collapsing in on themselves, and black holes she will never find her way out of, because she needs to think that is what is waiting for her on the other side of this should she fail, should he leave.

She goes to the Ruins, because she likes the haunted, graveyard feel of it. They are well into the thick of the night, the sky a near-black and glittering with stars in the space between the soft gray wisps of clouds, and the quiet around her feels taut. She doesn’t know how she will choose; she only knows that she is not made for this, and she hesitates.

She hesitates, and something alights in her veins, the thread that binds her magic to him suddenly like a livewire, and instead of being afraid she wants more, wants him.
She cannot fail, not this time.

And since she is not made for this, she makes herself into something that could be, something divinely terrifying and unrecognizable.

The stark, glowing white of her skin remains, but that usually amber-soft glow of a halo disappears into a nearly blinding light, enough to obscure her face and make her difficult to look at for too long. From her back erupt two sets of wings, golden and showering stardust, but across their entire expanse are innumerable pairs of nearly-black eyes, just like her own, some staring, some blinking slowly. Every scar that had once marked her body—her chest where her own heart had been ripped, a jagged slice across her throat, Carnage’s brand on her hip—bleed a glittering gold, leaving tracks down her porcelain-white skin.

She finds her, the girl carved from night, and simultaneously knows she is the one while wishing she weren’t.
Memories flood her mind unbidden, of someone else she had known that had seemed to be crafted of the night itself, of the way he had whispered angel into her neck countless times, and how she had broken every promise she ever made to him.

“Don’t be afraid,” she tells her as she approaches, and her usually soft voice seems to split a hundred different ways, the sound dissonant and jarring as the vocals layer on top of each other, the seraphic glow seeming to chase away the dark. “I knew someone who looked like you, once.”

AND IT WAS REAL ENOUGH TO GET ME THROUGH —
BUT I SWEAR YOU WERE THERE

this picture's frozen and I can't get out

Sat, 25 Oct 2025 00:51:16 -0400

this picture's frozen and I can't get out

She has been wandering, trying to collect memories of a life that seems to have been a million years ago. Searching to find a place that triggers something familiar. She knows there is something to who she is. The blank slate she woke to was once full of memories that she just can't dig out of the heavy fog in her mind. Her dreams have been wrought with flashes of blood and ear-piercing shrieks. Memories of a war that she knows must have existed. Fuzzy visions of her mother, green like her, but harsher and cold. She knows she has siblings. Or had siblings? A pink sister, a brother with tattered wings, and several siblings in varying shades of green. Likely all long gone, as home seemingly was.

Dead land and the stench of death accompany the shrieks and blood of a war rattled land that she must have once called home. There isn't a feeling of fear that comes with these flashes of memories and dreams, though. Her mother, she is certain, thrived in the conditions. A death pit. Sacrifices. Strange and wicked ideas. Things that should make her uneasy, sick, fearful - she feels no such thing in her memories. Did she enjoy those things as a child?

She has wandered through the meadow, found a river that spread to the ocean, and now has found her way to the ruins, green legs carrying her over the terrain carefully. The land feels haunted. She could swear she can hear whispers of those gone past. She stops, swishing her black tail across her green haunches as she scans the area. She can smell death, feel it slicking over her skin on the breeze, but this isn't home. Or at least it doesn't call to her like she thinks home should. The ruins scattered across the plain don't feel familiar or look familiar.

Razaranje knows this is the world she was born into, but it is also not. She closes her dark eyes and takes a deep inhale, allowing the strange scent to fill her lungs in hopes another memory might come out of the depths and into the light of her mind. As she exhales, though, the land is no more familiar than it was before. On top of the smell of death and pain oozing from the earth she picks up on the scent of another stranger. She turns to look, curious who else may be wandering this strangely haunting ground.

razaranje

Photo

i'm breaking down and you're breathing slowly, israfel

Thu, 23 Oct 2025 23:34:19 -0400

these days i don’t pray when i close my eyes—

He has grown numb to it, the stench of death.
It has so fully infiltrated his senses that it has gone from something worth noticing to simply the way the world smells. For how many times could he punish himself for all the things he could not change before he grew numb to that, too?

He had not been able to save Mazikeen. He had not been able to save his mother. And now there have been so many countless others that perhaps he cannot make each of them as important as the last.

Which is all to say that he is tired, Selaphiel.
He is tired of the grief of it. The split-bone agony of knowing and never knowing.

See how it has taken its toll. See how there had once been hope in those eyes, see how it’s gone dark. He had been so alive with fear once that he couldn’t sit still with it. It had sent him to pacing, sticking to the shadows where perhaps they wouldn’t find him. Perhaps they wouldn’t send him away.

And he sticks to the shadows now, too, for the same reasons. Perhaps they won’t find him. Perhaps he won’t have to pretend. Perhaps he won’t have to dig up whatever energy he has left for a smile, a conversation, prolonged eye contact.

He has always been a solitary creature, Selaphiel, but this is a specific kind of estrangement. He has not seen his mother since he’d apologized for not being the one to protect her. He has seen Mazikeen’s daughter–his niece–more recently than he’s seen her. He hasn’t seen Este since before he’s seen any of the others.

Could he bear to look any of them in the face now?
Probably not.

So he loiters where perhaps they won’t find him. He lingers in the Ruins, as he has for years. Because it smells so strongly of death here that he has convinced himself that this is simply the reality of the world.

—I just bite my tongue a bit harder

The Ghosts

Fri, 03 Oct 2025 12:40:14 -0400

A hot summer day cools of unnaturally fast when the sun sets, giving an unmistakable chill in the air. Is it a change in the winds? Or does it have something to do with the pair of ghosts that drift through the Ruins together, trailed by a fog that spreads far beyond them and slowly encases the entire area.

If you look close, their translucent bodies are mangled. Showing signs that their deaths were anything but peaceful. They seem to be, though.

So is it worth the chance on approaching them?

Happy Spooky Season!
- this drop is open to the first two characters to reply (only one per player)
- gifts will be randomized but autumn-themed
- if you miss out, don't worry! Keep your eyes open every Friday this month for more chances.

life's a beach

Mon, 24 Feb 2025 11:13:19 -0500

It’s taken Neiko quite a while to be as comfortable in the water as he is now – now he moves through the waves like a Nereid should, smooth and quick. He can keep up with the seals and play with the porpoises, but before, not too long ago, the seas had him by the collar. He was punished by the cold and dark depths rather than intrigued by them. He could not shake the very organic fear of drowning, which is natural to his earth-bound body… but to fear the water is to deny his heritage, to deny his Gods given magics, his gifts.

And overcome it he did. Through sheer will and determination (and a bit of force), he boldly conquered the shadowy corners of his mind where his fears dwelled. He now, very proudly, moves with confidence through Beqanna’s lively waters. Most of his time is spent in Baltia, a haven for the water creatures, a world away from those bound to the land.

Today seems like as good a day as any to wander away from his comfortable ocean spaces and find his way back onto land. It’s been a while since he’s let his hooves have touched beach, months since he’s shed away his scales for sleek golden and blue fur. He shakes, sewing up his form to let go of anything Nereid; embracing his fully equine form as he ventures off of the beach and up into the gloomy timberland ahead.

It’s a stormy afternoon, a gray sky choking out the sunlight and threatening rain. Soon a drizzle will start and the mists moving between the big trees will get thicker. He’s comforted by the presence of water all around him still, even as he moves farther and farther from the sea.

he's walking through the misty forest around the ruins, i figure they can "bump" into each other out here somehow lol

Take the past with you

Mon, 17 Feb 2025 23:47:00 -0500

The ocean gives Tiasa up reluctantly beneath a sliver of an autumn moon. Beqanna is dark and the vegetation on shore looks eerie. Uninviting? No, not exactly. It’s become an unknown for her but that doesn’t make her want to turn away. It draws her in - this world she was born into. Isolation gave her everything she wanted. She lived the life she had dreamed of, free of ties and free of others.

And then, like a chill creeping up the back of her spine, she realized it was not what she wanted anymore. She was lonely. Which was such an embarrassing thought she had put off doing anything about it for years.

But now she was here.

Discomfort settled in a thick coat, leaving an itchy residue that made walking onto shore a greater task than it should have ever been. Small puddles fill up the prints left behind her in the sand, black pools glittering with that thin silver light.

When sand gives way she stops. Not because she’s afraid (though she is) or because she doesn’t know how to deal with her discomfort (that’s what ignoring things is for).

She simply just does not know where to go.

Did she have a home here? She must have been born in one place or another, must have had somewhere she preferred to linger. But there is nothing, no memories swimming up to guide her. It’s not that she doesn’t remember anything of course - there are memories - there just isn’t anything significant. No emotional pull driving her one way or another. This place is a blank slate for her. Fitting, she supposes, since she is one too.

TIASA

Open to any!

the stars a bright tonight

Sun, 17 Nov 2024 11:56:31 -0500

It is a cool spring night in the meadows. The stars are bright overhead, and though there is something always a bit eerie about The Ruins at night, there is something beautiful here too. Particularly tonight, the bright moon illuminating the new growth of spring, little of that though there may be in this land. For whatever reason though, death does not hang so heavy in the air here tonight, replaced instead with adventure.

Two stars - hmm, are they stars? - dance strangely close to the ground, darting too and fro. They seem to be beckoning anyone who might dare to explore here tonight, calling them closer. If you dare to answer their call, they dart away and the game becomes clear. It is a game of tag, and the stars want to play.

***

First come, first serve for the first two characters to reply. Must be a “real” post catching an orb but no word minimums.

i swallow the sound and it swallows me whole

Sat, 09 Nov 2024 15:19:06 -0500

FAZIA

The Fazia that had climbed the mountain in search of something more, in search of a way to become the daughter she believed her mother deserved out of her, had not done a very good job so far of taking steps towards those goals. She had lingered the spring, summer, and fall away and now that it was cold everywhere her ambition was at war with itself. Yes, it was time to make a move but also yes, she wanted to just wait out the chill in the warmer waters of Baltia and deal with all of this in the spring.

And then, how can she bravely call herself the daughter of a general when she allows such thoughts to take control of her?

So despite her discomfort, Fazia returns to the surface. The sun is already drifting towards the horizon again even though it feels like it just rose, and the glow of her translucent body begins to shine a little brighter on the stones and thin snow blanket of the Ruins. She stands out here so easily, deep red and purple and the gleam of her diaphonized body.

This time, she does not want to be noticed just yet.

This time, she finds herself some shadows created by the ruins and allows herself to become invisible there. And then - well she just tries it. She reaches out her mind, seeking any potential host in the area, and just tries to possess them. As if it is as easy as that.

open to any!

drown my daring heart

Tue, 24 Sep 2024 08:57:29 -0400

Graves. So many of them. Stone pillars, mimicries, structures and whatever else – all dedicated to those beyond the veil, constructed by those broken hearted souls they left behind. Tragedy after tragedy piled so neatly on display. In the ruins there lies many things, many forgotten nooks and crannies, many abandoned gardens and haunted mazes of dilapidated walls. Claudia is never far from the water, but here, among the shambles of history, she is also at home.

The tall bay moves with feline grace, stalking over ad under and through until she’s at the center of the graveyard. The old crypt entrance howls with underground wind, moaning through the opening as if it is daring the mare to slip inside.

She snorts in response to such a beckon…It is not I that would be so daring – not alone, anyway. She laughs to herself, creeping around in the darkness to read more graves and admire more sad statues. The midnight hour, only a half moon to light the land below; it is a perfectly spooky spring night.

- - - - -
C L A U D I A
ivar x wrena

[hic sunt leones]

Tue, 18 Jun 2024 21:57:35 -0400

Nocturnéahic sunt leones

One land dies, another springs forth from its ashes. That was the way of eternity.

Night lay thick on Bequanna's ruins, casting everything in sharp contrast of moon and shadow. Deep within the darkness, the lady formed once more. Tendrils of shadow twisted, writhed, and came to life in the form of the dark goddess. For the first time in years, golden eyes blinked away the haze of sleep. Nocturnéa rolled her shoulders, letting her claws stretch and rake the rubble beneath her paws. A shake of her head tossed long locks of ebony against her thick neck, revealing the curling rams horns that twisted about her crown. The last tendrils of shadow became a long lion's tail that swung languidly against her hocks.

Oh, how she had missed being corporeal.

Those shrewd golden eyes, slitted and cat-like, looked with interest and disdain upon this strange new land. All around her, the realm bore the marks of great battles lost and won over the ages. Beneath her feet, the leftovers of a once great castle were little more than pebbles and moss-covered cobblestones. A quiet whisper of wind echoed hauntingly through the abandoned place. In the distance, she could hear the crash of mighty waves against a rocky shore and the taste of sea salt settled upon her tongue.

"Well well well... where have the gods deposited me now?

"Vocalization." | Actions | Companion

OOC | The queen of the night descends upon Bequanna! feel free to come and bother her.

Be the Anchor [Deiti]

Thu, 23 May 2024 22:14:58 -0400

Nothing is as it once was.

When mother and father died, I found it was the perfect time to retreat into my safe space. The cave - one that mother had inhabited until her death - once had seemed comforting and familiar. When chaos broke out across the land, I did what my mother did - hide. She was an agoraphobic, that woman, barely stepping out into the sunlight, save for the occasional meal. Perhaps that's why I decided to tuck myself away for so long - it was in my blood.

Though, I always knew that wasn't the only thing that coursed through my veins. I was a child of the Wraith - the one who raped my mother, the one who terrorized these lands for years before I came to be. The one I never met, but whose red eyes haunted me - because I shared them with him. I heard his name in mother's nightmares before she died. I watched my father - the one who truly raised me - gently awaken her and then hold her. Well, perhaps, that's why I decided to go into hiding - if I bore the blood of a devil, it was only a matter of time before I became one myself.

There was another whose blood I shared, however. My sister - who in reality wasn't my sister at all - Deiti. I thought of her in my seclusion, I dreamed of her during the day, I talked to her at night. I had always wished to be more like her...brave, adventurous, cunning. All things I hoped to be, but failed miserably at. I looked back at our childhood fondly; our made up games, our midnight gossip, our longing to be anywhere but...there. Mother and father loved us, perhaps too much - they hovered. Only Deiti found the courage to leave though, while I stayed to care for mother, and then stayed even as she rotted because I knew nothing else.

Maybe that's why I found myself here, in the ruins and rubble of what once was. I had always struggled with change, where Deiti sought it out. The unnatural silence is all too familiar to me...I was used to the quiet, used to only my thoughts to keep me company. I can feel the pain that lingers here, the echoes of hurt that refuse to subside. I understand their agony, as I lived it for decades. How can you claim to be anyone when you've lost everyone?

"Deiti!" I scream suddenly, listening as her name reverberates off the rock formations. I'm not sure why I call for her; all I know is my heart aches and it has since we departed. My sister...she was the only one who truly understood me. "DEITI!" I scream again, this time through sobs.

I beg the wind to carry my call to her as I listen to my own torment - the only sound for miles.