#if it's vaguely disjointed it's bc I may have forgotten where I was taking it when I picked it up again

[ace-malarky]

A late (or early) STS for you: I spy a mention of pirates in your intro post. Would any of them care to introduce themselves, or would you mind talking about some of your favorite elements of their story?

oooh ok yes piracy I can do let's go

(STS is a state of mind and I am making a nest there) (this is getting long and rambly and maybe disjointed I am so sorry but not really? pirates be upon ye)

Short answer; the Nightgale clan and their meteoric rise to ruling the archipelago within two generations of being created, the uh. the destruction of the islands and their rebirth as dragon riders then slow slide into nature-reserve-for-the-weird-and-magical. (specific shout out to Jay, daughter of dragons and giver of no fucks, creator of the whole thing by accident because she only ever wanted a ship of her own not... This)

Long answer;

So! Pirates! They originate in Leritheyar which is like. the most fleshed out of the Mist Worlds because it was my only story world for the longest time and then I got too attached to some of the characters (like the pirates) and then everything exploded

but that's not what we're here for!

So the pirates as a whole are The dominant culture of the archipelago that may or may not make up. a large amount of landmass in Leritheyar. I can't do distances well but it's fine it works

this means that I have a wholeass timeline/history of their rise to power, various pirate kings, shifts in families etc etc but the important stuff here;

each family has An Island that they originate on. That's Theirs. and at least one ship, maybe more depending on how big they are! how much power they have! There are absolutely other people that live on these islands but if they are not Pirate Family they do not get on the ships (exceptions being for like. fishers ig. the K'sean are not an exception they are rogue from Anther and the pirates would like them out of their islands thank you but they are small and fast and hard to track)

there is a vague sort of truce that means mostly they don't go in for Big battles but also there are so many skirmishes etc

by far and away my favourite pirates are the Nightgales bc Jay was one of The OG OCs and I will always love her

Jay is not pirate family. She is an orphan on the ruling clan's island, friends with their heir, but she's nothing. Her friend says that once she is queen she will change things, she will take Jay with her

Jay's not about to wait for that, she's got plans. Plans that involve stealing a small skiff and sailing north into the night

Promptly washes up on Riyan, the forgotten continent, where the NightGale lives with her offspring of weird little fucked up creatures. The NightGale adopts Jay because this child Amuses her and everything is fine and dandy until the Sanders pirates come looking for her (possibly at behest of the pirate heir actually. She isn't queen yet but it's been a solid few years and she's worried)

Jay and her not-quite-sister Erris go with them, shenanigans ensue, Jay takes control of the clan. That's her ship now, her pirates. No one's really gonna argue with the teen who bested their captain in single combat and has a dragon on her shoulder and also whatever-the-fuck Erris is at her side.

Her friend (now queen) is delighted by this turn of events and together they are An Unholy Menace. jury's out on whether or not they were A Thing. the queen's son certainly thinks so and has an honest-to-god grudge against Jay, because he thinks she's gunning for rule of the islands

Jay does not give a fuck about ruling the islands. She has a ship, she has a pygmy dragon, she has Erris. All is good with the world. She adopts some of the Sanders kids to be her heirs and they take her name.

She gets herself a mage! She has a treaty with the mages(? I think?), actually, which more or less makes her ships untouchable in the shipping lanes. Her grandson marries the heir to the pirate throne (the king is not impressed with this actually. He's hating life. He tries to kill her and his own mother. He does not succeed (his own daughter may kill him? maybe it's his mother. who can say!))

People say she's still out there. people say they've seen her ship late at night, out in the mist where the eldrii and the akaha play, because for all that the NightGale is the dragon of forgotten things, there are some things that just can't stay unknown.

[her great-grandson is king when the islands are lost and so are the ships but they transition to riding dragons during the war and that's what punts them sideways into another world, where they have... some number of years to set themselves up before their dragons also disappear but by that time they have swathes of land on a sky island that they turn into a sort of reserve for Mythics and Magics to come and heal and rest, and they become another powerhouse to be feared]

[ace-malarky]

A Deal to be Made

... fckn- I forgot resizing the internet window fucken lost everything in a post I was editing because this is a functional site

 Anyhow. bday present for friend (scotchsirin on insta). I may have not entirely followed the prompt but it’s probably fine. (I have yet to send it to them lmao, I guess you’re getting first look. I’ll send it once I’ve posted)

~

This was a graveyard. Oh, it was wild land, once, with a river that cut through the middle. Picturesque, too. Willow trees lined the bank on both sides, but where on one side the trees grew up into a deep and tangled forest, the other was a meadow of flowers. It had been left undisturbed, until the mortals arrived and decided to settle.

They left the wild land as it was at first, and only visited occasionally. It became, over time, a place for picnics, for playing, for sweetly sneaking away. It became tamed.

It isn't remembered who the first grave belonged to. Perhaps they had loved the land, or their family thought this was what they would want.

The gravestones grew from one corner like mushrooms, and bit by bit the meadow became a graveyard. The flowers were dug up and rarely replaced except for cut offerings laid on stone. The willows at the river's edge wept, and the people assumed they wept for them.

The meadow became a place weighed down by a grief so thickly layered through the years that there seemed to be a miasma from boundary wall to river.

They came here with their grief and their sorrow and left it behind when they went.

It was bound to call something.

Mortals start disappearing. They enter the graveyard bent double with the weight of their grief, and are never seen again.

Well, the other mortals say, when they realise. The grief was too much for them. Who would want to live alone with that?

When the disappearances only increase, they wall off the graveyard.

The dead must be left alone. They do not wish us to join them so soon.

The disappearances slow but do not stop. Mortals are enterprising; there are few places they cannot get into if they put their mind to it.

The graveyard, with its near constant fog, is said to be haunted. It is meant to be a warning.

It is not meant to draw in mourners who regret the things they left unsaid.

There are guards posted, mortals who have not yet lost anyone. Mortals who do not seek one last word.

Sometimes they come back from the wall with the memory of music playing in their minds.

The years pass, and the graveyard remains guarded. The mortals forget why, but continue the tradition. No more graves are set up. Those who loved and lost are themselves lost. Gone. Interred elsewhere.

It is the wall guards who notice first, of course. With fewer mortals managing to sneak by and disappear, the graveyard starts to change.

The flowers, dead for so long, start to grow again. Beneath the fog, the colour returns to the ground. Everything grows. The gravestones wear down and are wrapped in a green embrace.

Then comes the day when someone steps out of the fog. Their step is light and their clothes are of an old style.

They lean over the gate, which is so old and overgrown that it is more a memory of a gate, and speak in a dialect so old the guards have trouble parsing it.

The guards, of course, have no idea what to do. No training has ever covered this. They do not want to let this person past the wall.

The mortal laughs at the absurdity of a graveyard being guarded and asks if they were put up to it. If this is all a joke.

They begin to notice, then, that things do not match their memories. There are too many graves they say. What happened? Was there a war? How long has it been?

The questions fly thick and fast though unconcerned as the mortal explores the nearest graves, trying to read the worn words.

The fog does not swallow them, when they step closer to it. They stumble over a worn nub of a gravestone and land amongst flowers, which silences their questions.

One of the guards takes pity and helps them out of the graveyard. They take them to the local inn. The story spreads, and people arrive from all over to watch the graveyard, in case anyone else arrives.

The graveyard does not disappoint; mortals appear out of the fog every day, and every day the fog grows thinner. The guards become a welcoming party to help those displaced understand what has happened. They seek an explanation of their own.

They do not find the right one.

#

These lost mortals, when they realise how much time has passed, do not cry. There is no mourning for the years they have lost, the ones they have left behind. Instead they laugh and they smile and they... they leave.

They leave and don’t look back like this isn’t the only place they’ve ever known. They drift like they don’t know where they’re going. Do they just want to leave? Are they searching for something else?

Mortals are funny young creatures.

Not one of them has an answer, and then they stop appearing. Or reappearing, as the case may be. It has been years. The guards have changed, the wall has grown older. It crumbles and is not repaired.

The fog clears. The graveyard is a field of flowers once more, with the wreckage of remembered death in its embrace.

The forest on the far side of the river is as dark and forbidding as ever. The river runs onwards. The willows weep, and they are the only things to cry in that field.

The mortals do not return.

They leave the field to its own devices. The guards go home. Everyone breathes.

#

And now you. You stand by where a gate once stood, and listen ever so closely to our story of this place. There is something you want.

We can take your grief. If you would like to sidestep sadness, you need only come with us. Find the way beyond.

We can help. Wouldn’t you like to never know sadness again? Never to lose another and be weighted down by their absence?

You need only take our hands and step between the willows.

Isn’t this meadow so lovely? Wouldn’t you just like to stay until you have forgotten what it is to mourn with the passage of time?

The grass is greener. The ground is soft, the sun will shine. Our deal is always there for mortals who are hurting too much to function.