Court Of Stones

Court Of Stones

Behold! The grand Empire Of Obsidian And Marble! Stretching from the northern deserts to the southern ice plains, from the eastern archipelagos, to the great western mountains, ruled by the Stone Emperor. He has been ruling for hundreds of years, using secret sorceries and malicious magic, forcibly uniting the various tribes and races of a vast sub-continent. Aided by a cadre of Stone Lords, heinous henchfolk, who have been given a smidgen of the dark powers, the Empire is plotting, for the time it can finally cross the western mountains, and finally take over the rest of the known world. But for now, tentative non-agression pact with the western powers hold...

But things might change soon. The Stone Emperor has gone on an expedition to the colonies on the eastern islands. He only took his personal guard, and did not divulge the reason why he left. He has not returned for months. The Nobles worry. What if he won't return? Who will control the magic holding the empire together? Will it be one of them? Should the people know that the Emperor is gone? Can the empire survive, or will it fall apart?

Mmmhmmm.... maybe it is time to make... their move...

Name: If you still remember it that is.
Species: What is your species? How did becoming a Stone Lord change you? You will have right to dictate Lore about your original species.
Title: This has mostly replaced your name. What is your job in the Court Of Stones? What responsibilities do you have?
Your Office: A portion of the castle, all for you. A humble room with a bed and a desk? Or maybe the dungeon itself?
Short history and description: Tell me about thyself.
Are you brave enough to openly nominate yourself for the position of Stone Regent? Yes/No
And lastly: A true fact about the Emperor, and through him, the Empire. Was he tall and fond of tall people, perhaps?

Reserved for Lores...

Name: Flint Rockbiter
Species: Redcap. Redcaps are an angry and short species that like to eat things, and have an incredible ability to eat an unfathomable amount for their size, and to be able to stomach nearly anything. They tend to have red, yellow, orange or bright brown hair and similar eye colours. They are as heavy as a grown man despite never growing taller than the size of a child, and have the strength of grown men too.
Flint Rockbiter had a particularly fierce maw, and propensity for consumption, and since his elevation has gained the added ability of vomiting back up items he has stored in his gut for safe-keeping, safest place for them he says.
Title: Master of the royal treasury. Flint Rockbiter's job is to look after and protect the royal items and collect taxes and so on and such. Anything involving acquisitions and the protection thereof, is his duty.
Your Office: Flint Rockbiter has a small secure room with a 32 digit passcode required to open it, the inner walls are lined with titanium and to get to his room you have to enter the entrance to the safe, so he can see anyone coming or going to try and enter the even more secure royal vault.
Short history and description: Flint Rockbiter was born as the seventh child and so had to fight fiercely for the scraps at the dinner table and settle for hand-me-downs and seventh hand clothing. He has become fiercely independent because of this, and incredibly possessive of his own belongings and duties. He used to chew on pebbles and stones as a boy to sate his hunger, which was larger than his parents believed and had worked his way to his 12th set of teeth by his 13th birthday.
Are you brave enough to openly nominate yourself for the position of Stone Regent? No!
And lastly: The Emperor would always offer people to suggest their own tribute first, and if he deemed it unacceptable he would take everything from them, but if it was particularly gracious or pleasing or amusing to him he would remember and reward them later.

Name: Never really had one, but then the Emperor graciously bestowed one upon him. Phyl. The story is occasionally changed from his full name being Phyl Lament, to Chloro Phyl, but it doesn't matter, only the Emperor gets to call him by this precious name.

Species: Rovers. Sapient gatherings of moss and algae that drift along lakebeds and the bottoms of rivers, seemingly having come there from the ocean ages ago, and wandered around since. Their rolling leaves them nice and round, and it was quite popular among the nobility to keep them in little jars with their prized fish, until Phyl came along and that got capital-a-Awkward. They don't speak, but they can pass feelings to each other via exchanging their filaments, and some of the hunches they have are... very, very old, and concerning. They know it is wise to be wary, and so they tumble along, out of reach of much of the world. But not the Empire, apparently!

The Stone Lord business changed EVERYTHING for Phyl. It changed his form to a humanoid... ish one, and let him speak, and boy THAT was a riot before he figured out how to do it right. Have you ever heard the sound of the feeling of indescribable disbelief and elation? No, you haven't, but the Emperor got to, and it was FUNNY. Anyway, it basically entwined his many filaments with fungus, and turned him into a lichen-person who can say things and have hands and stuff. God, he loves hands. He clings to a nice unfinished rock to sleep now. Sleeping is awesome. As much as he loves learning and stuff, that's one of the best perks.

Title: The Deploratorian. Something akin to the head scientist, or perhaps alchemist, of the Empire. Going through reports from research institutions, delegating subjects of study, taking requests from the Emperor, and doing his own personal research. All compiled together with his ancient hunches, to give more wisdom to His Greatness.

Your Office: The Deploratorium, of course! A cavern underneath the castle, fortified so it doesn't take the place down with it every time it blows up. All finished with fantastical scientific equipment, and whisps and.......................... other things to experiment on. It's pretty messy, he leaves outcroppings of his filaments on the walls as notes.

Short history and description: Phyl knew he was himself and not another memory when he discovered... ambition? He wanted to know more about his great great great great great grandmoss's feeling of unease toward a strange waterway around some tall, tall structure to the south. It was pretty frustrating to know that, and not know why they were uneasy, but this frustration was not shared by anyone around him, who promptly returned his filaments. This is unusual, a filament is a gift, it is knowledge, and that was one no-one cared to have. They already knew it was bad, they didn't need to go die finding out why. Well, that just sounded like a bunch of crap to Phyl. He was going to take his chances. He was going to learn something, and stop living a cowardly life with the herd.

A few weeks later, a tiny ball of algae rolled up out of the moat, and the Emperor, smitten, decided to play with it. With some messed up magic. Phyl was born anew, and for a while he served only as a curious companion, but the Emperor soon saw some use for all that hunger for knowledge. Over years of adoration and reckless well-funded inquiry (and the ethical restraints of a just-born mad scientist), the Deploratorian came into his knowledge, and position.

He is as humanoid as a fruticose lichen can be, and four feet of round, shrubby, dusty olive green. He likes to wear a maroon hooded poncho, because he thinks it makes him look more mysterious and smart, and so yearns for the Emperor's high opinion.

Are you brave enough to openly nominate yourself for the position of Stone Regent? Well of course, I know the Emperor best! I know what he would have wanted.

And lastly: Oh, it's so hard to pick! He's so kind and loving- well, that 'tough love' as I've heard it said, and generous and wise and beautiful and- oh! There's something! He is such a snappy dresser. His clothes are all covered in gems with beautiful symbols on them, so tantalizingly mysterious- but he won't tell me what they are! Must be some kind of rune- but nobody in the castle seems to have a clue. Only that if we were to see one on someone else, they must immediately be reported, for only the Emperor is allowed to wear those patterns, and only a dangerous miscreant would dare to.

Reserved...

Name: Varamelius Setgar

Species: Sandrali are humanoids, with skin that runs a variety of shades from blue to green to grey, and feathery-textured clouds of voluminous puffy hair in even more colours. Fairly unexciting as species go, they are known for their keen senses and swift movements, as well as their odd predisposition towards sleeping standing upright, which other species find creepy.

Varamelius Setgar is short for a Sandrali, at only about five feet tall, and he is also very fat. His rotundness is the butt of a few jokes, and he has been known to join in the laughter when such jokes are told, which honestly takes most of the fun out of them. His skin is pale grey, and he is completely hairless. He wears formal court suits that are fitted to his form, usually sticking to the dark blue hues of the Commissariat but bringing out something more colourful on lavish occasions.

Title: Lord Justiciar of the Spiritual Fortification Security Commissariat (SFSC)

Your Office: His private office as the Chief of the SFSC is small and modestly appointed, with antique wooden furniture and a large bookcase. The walls are polished stone, and carry a few large masterwork paintings. He has bugged the place to hell and back with a variety of enchantments, of course, which he can enable or disable with secret desk-tap rhythms or clandestine command words. The main entrance is a lavish wooden double door, which leads out to the palace corridors, and is always flanked by two Commissariat guards. There is a hidden door behind a painting of the Emperor, which facilitates easy access down a winding stair into the SFSC headquarters, as well as to a personal escape tunnel that he'll probably never use.

The SFSC headquarters is in the lower levels of the palace, and has a number of surveillance monitoring stations and interrogation rooms, as well as facilities for the staff that fully separate them from the rest of the castle servants. From there, stairs lead down further to both the SFSC's private courtroom (they don't use the Emperor's Court for something as base as passing judgment on Commissariat captives) or to its lightless holding cells. It is basically a tiny palace unto itself, which Setgar wields as his personal fiefdom.

Short history and description: Setgar has a friendly, jovial attitude, always smiling and laughing and getting along well with everyone. He's a spellcaster, specializing in divination magic, seeing visions of things from afar and reading surface thoughts as a party trick. He was never nearly as powerful as the Emperor, but he claims that he was taught a few tricks by him. He became a stone lord long ago, having been personally chosen by the Emperor for reasons unknown. He was blessed with resilience like iron - it is said that if anyone managed to cut him, he would bleed cinders - and an equally iron-hard will. He swore to safeguard the Empire against secession and corruption, maintaining the purity of the people's spirit and their loyalty to the Emperor.

He did this by creating the Spiritual Fortification Security Commissariat, the Emperor's secret police apparatus. Their role is to watch others for disloyalty, keeping tabs on the entire empire for dissent, and using judicious use of extensive magical surveillance to keep the people in line, as well as encouraging and rewarding those who would turn in traitors among their neighbours, friends and families. When needed, Setgar employs raids, kidnappings, forced confessions, reeducation and extrajudicial executions to ensure the Emperor's rule goes unchallenged (and to deal with anyone the Emperor wanted dealt with). Among those who understand the full power of the Commissariat, he may well be the most feared man in the Empire after the Emperor himself, and the least loved bar none. The Lords of Stone know him to be a heartless, calculating monster. Still, in spite of this, he goes on smiling and laughing, treating everyone like a friend.

Are you brave enough to openly nominate yourself for the position of Stone Regent? Yes, of course. Who else is more qualified to keep everything stable until the Emperor returns? After all, everyone knows who really runs things around here...

And lastly: It is said - heresy and blasphemy, I know, and don't let the Commissariat hear you say it - that the Emperor did not always rule. His ascent, told in the oldest histories, was a thing that brought storms and earthquakes across the whole region that would become his empire. He was once a man, of a species since lost to time, but he reforged himself into a form of flawless and unbreakable white marble. Even then, it took centuries for him to take the Empire. And it is said, as his reign had a beginning, so too would it have an end. It was prophecized, even. And the search for that prophecy, to seek to find it and understand it so he could thwart it, consumed him in his latter centuries. Some would say it drove him to the brink of madness, pushing him into ever greater acts of tyranny at the slightest hint that it could have been found. Some say it's even the reason he went east to the islands.

But that's all blasphemy, of course.

I am going to give a deadline for signups November 6. Beware!

Name: [REDACTED]

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Spoiler'Black Talon' Actual name: Gelpan 'Redfeathers' Somaqaa

Species: [UNKNOWN]

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SpoilerHeralding from the more arid but wealthy regions of the nations 'united' by the Emperor, Tsepra are one of several related biped demi-avians with distant common ancestry from the Northern Desert provinces that are treated with a mixture of mistrust, belated respect, caution and anger depending on who and where you are. Most are feathered across their bodies with three or four long crest-feathers on their upper neck, though plumage varies across individuals depending on climate. Those closest to the mountains remain in down feathers all year, whilst the rest only possess them during the cold winter months when even the desert can freeze over, with no seas or lakes to moderate temperatures.

Historical clan structures have broken down substantially over the course of Imperial meddling, with the power of clan matriarchs almost non-existent and both political and fiscal power instead being hoarded by Princes recognised and supported by the Empire. Instead, most live either in one of several thousand isolated communities or a few large cities that monopolise trade routes across the desert.

Your Office: [DATA DEFICIENT]:

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SpoilerIt is unclear exactly how, but it is believed by some that Black Talon has some measure of access deep in the hear of the Empire, due to their unnerving ability to act only at time and in places where the watchful eye of the Emperor and his minions is absent. If the stories are to be believed, it is perhaps only a matter of time before a search is made to determine who the mole is, or perhaps if the Talon himself is there, hiding in plain sight.

Short history and description: Formerly independent, the Northern Protectorate were forced first into tribute, then as suzerainty before finally being annexed outright, with a handful of representatives in the Court being one of the few indicators of their past as a begrudging ally.

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SpoilerLittle is known about the mysterious Black Talon and the movement that surrounds them. It is often said, mainly in public fora, that the Black Talon does not exist; he is a fictitious figment of peasantry imagination that has captivated a few foolhardy and pitiful dissidents. It is known that the North has chafed in the past, either out of annoyance at the growing disrespect they receive from the rest of the Empire despite their significant wealth, though most of it is now in the past. Their biggest treasures are underground, as most of the mines had already closed or were forced to close due to past wars. it is quite possible that they could rise again somehow and if the descriptions of the Black Talon are to be believed, that could be one of their motivations. Almost all descriptions of the Black Talon mention a tallish, slim build, a mask and fully-concealed feature and symbols reminiscent of the northern avians though not enough to identify their origin. Reports are often muddled with contrasting or contradictory 'evidence', making veracity of statements hard to use. It is debated if this is intentional. As spies descend upon the Court in anticipation of looming anarchy, the Black Talon might not have a presence there much longer.

Title: [CITATION NEEDED]

Several 'merchant-princes' (each representing one small portion of the tribal confederation that once existed) live in the capital and have a reputation for sloth, gluttony and avarice in contrast with most of the region's inhabitants and their own servants, attaché and handmaidens that can occasionally be seen running various errands or hawking their goods in the markets. They may have the means to fund a rebellion, but none have shown any such inclination and all seem intent to preserve their own status and profit than plot, assuming they could find time for it between meals, massages and masquerade. That said, they do occasionally hire folk to carry out sabotage against rivals or defend against attacks by their peers...

Are you brave enough to openly nominate yourself for the position of Stone Regent?: HaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA no

A true fact about the Emperor: It is said that the Emperor thought little of the Northern Provinces other than their sell-swords, hot springs, gemstones and... women.


((message me if you have questions or want me to unspoiler my full app))

Apps are closed now! I will work in this soon, but i need to clear up a few things with CSJ (check discord please).

I am really tired nowadays, so I don't think I will be able to work on this... sorry :(

It's okay dude, we understand. Maybe in the future, Flint Rockbiter will bite some heads!