Home Tree application

[satisfactionbroughtitback]

🌸 mun 🌸

🍃 name 🍃 Kalium
🍃 age 🍃 In my 30s. (Or: Old enough to know better.)
🍃 contact 🍃 PM this journal.
🍃 location/time zone 🍃 UK, GMT
🍃 current character(s) 🍃 n/a (recurring player, but no existing characters)

🌸 character 🌸

🍃 character name 🍃 Keymrill
🍃 character age 🍃 49 - around mid-twenties for comparison with a human.
🍃 character species 🍃 As a Grassland Kiarrcat, she resembles a long legged bobcat or lynx with a distinctive fluffy mane over her shoulders and the back of her neck, and a matching short fluffy tail, along with dextrous forepaws that function like hands. She stands about waist height to an average human.

🍃 gem 🍃 Night
🍃 reason 🍃 Keymrill is a good person, sure, but she doesn't always play by the rules and has a knack for getting into trouble, enough for the night gem to call to her just a tiny bit more.
🍃 wings 🍃 White Ermine Moth

🍃 personality 🍃 Keymrill is an impulsive kiarr as she always has been, on the lookout for the next big adventure. She is bold, but has a tendency to overestimate her abilities and land herself in trouble - although she's always been able to get out of it in the end. Her soft spot is her mate Srrith - though they often adventure apart from one another, they always find themselves together again eventually. Little seems to faze her for the long term, and she maintains a strong conviction that whatever happens, tomorrow will be better.

Being a cat she is independently minded and will do what she thinks is best in any given situation without asking questions first. But she is not aloof, and enjoys the company of good friends. Nor is she disloyal to those she considers friends, and will fight to protect whoever and whatever she finds important. She is outgoing and happy to talk to anyone and work alongside anyone whose goals align with her own. However a combination of her inherent stubbornness and past experiences mean that she dislikes feeling used, and she'll become irate if she feels a loss of control over her situation.

🍃 world 🍃 Ryll, a world inhabited by feline creatures known as the kiarrcats, intended as a throwback to early 00s creature roleplays. The kiarrcats are divided into ten species, each adapted to its own biome and each with its own forms of magic related to the land they live in. Ryll is low tech and the kiarr use their magic to get by, living in small clans and sculpting the world around them with their powers.

🍃 background 🍃 Keymrill is from one of the more uncommon stationary Grassland clans, situated in the foothills of the southernmost tip of the Heshroun Mountains, where the plains meet the forest. As an adventurous youngster, she heard tales of great mixed species communities further south, and when she came of age decided to seek them out, setting off into the warmer savannah lands.

Upon her travels she came across a Savannah kiarr who shared her desire for adventure and offered to teach her battle skills. Excited, Keymrill accepted, but discovered that it was a trap. The Savannah kiarr in question, Kyuvarr, was the leader of a small clan that wished to expand their territory, and had a bitter rivalry with a neighbouring clan whose leader was her equal in battle. In her ambition to best him Kyuvarr had hatched an idea: lure in young Grassland kiarrs looking for something more out of life, and train them to neutralise her enemy's fire with their innate ground based magic. Keymrill was exactly the sort of kiarr she was looking for, and was swiftly imprisoned in a network of small caves close to her false mentor's territory, where she could not manipulate the ground and the grass that was her innate focus. With her were several other young Grasslands who all had a similar story.

One of these was named Srrith, and he was especially prized because of his rare talent of precognition, untrained though it was. Together they led the remaining Grasslands in an uprising against Kyuvarr, and managed to escape with the help of Srrith's talent and her own battle prowess. Most of the imprisoned Grasslands dispersed and returned home, but Keymrill stayed with Srrith, finding they had much in common.

Since then she has been roaming the plains and deserts of her homeland. Undeterred by her first adventure, she enjoys exploring long forgotten places. Sometimes she travels with Srrith, sometimes not, but thanks to his powers, they always seem to find one another just when they need to.

🍃 abilities/powers 🍃 Keymrill has the standard Grassland kiarrcat power set - control over earth and certain plants. Her earth based powers extend to loose dirt and soil, but cannot affect solid rock (think ground vs rock types in Pokemon and you have an idea). She can shape and move earth, but not create or destroy it. Her plant based powers cover plants of the grass family - this is easier for species that grow in open plains, but she can handle the grassy undergrowth around the tree with some effort. She can command grasses to move, influence their growth, and given time breed them for specific traits such as food, medicines, decoration, bioluminescence for light, etc.

Being a cat she has stronger senses of smell and hearing than a human would. Her vision is comparable to that of a typical human. As a grassland kiarr, she is a little longer legged than most other kiarr species, lightly built and a speedy runner. She is used to being outdoors and can comfortably live and sleep in the open if needs be.
🍃 power changes 🍃 If too close to the roots of the tree, she will find that her earth based powers won't work to prevent her damaging it. Her plan based powers cannot affect the tree or anything growing upon it.

🍃 inventory 🍃 A set of leather saddlebags (ref) containing some dried food, a waterskin, writing supplies, and several sheets of paper, some of which contain scribbled notes recalling her latest adventures before arrival.

🌸 sample 🌸

🍃 1 🍃
Write a sample of your character finding their gem and their transition to the Home Tree, getting their pack and up to using their wings for the first time.

For a second she looses her footing on solid ground. Her vision blacks out, and a sensation of falling encompasses her, as though caught in a sudden faint. But only for a second, and she wrests back control, all four paws splayed out for balance. As the dizziness subsides, passing as quickly as it arrived, she opens her eyes.

The pillar of light before her is so bright she knows it's there even with her eyes shut. With them open, Keymrill stares, dazzled, for a moment at such vivid, golden tones. It washes over her with emotions - calmness, welcoming, so much so that she forgets the nameless hill-cavern she'd stepped inside to explore. But it's not her thoughts inside her head, and she steps back, taking in the scene before her. This was Desert territory she'd wandered into - is this one of their illusions? "Sprung a trap," she mutters to herself, ruffling her mane in irritation. Illusions, light, she knows how to handle this, doesn't she? Of course.

And she has to admit to a touch of admiration for whoever crafted this one. Her eyes are already adjusted to the bright sun outside, so it's easy for her to step away from the golden light and take in her surroundings - and she's never seen such a vast and complex illusion. She stands within a forest - no, a tree, bigger than the biggest greenmounts on all of Ryll, hollowed out and detailed in loving care. But as magnificent as the forest giant is, her attention slips to the stones positioned either side of the shining pillar. Each gleam and glimmer is modelled to perfection, as though she can touch her paws to the rough surface.

She's walking closer before she knows it, soft paws treading on wood. Just a closer look, before she gets down to finding out who's behind this - and then condemning or congratulating, she doesn't know. Shining the deep blue of the night sky, it looms above her as she bats a playful paw, expecting it to sink into the light-construct's depths - and her paw smacks against solid crystal, no illusion! She hops back with an undignified squeak, her mane rustling before she settles back down. A rough chunk of night-blue crystal clatters to the floor before her, and she gives it a cautious sniff before scooping it up in her paw, standing on three legs and rubbing her thumb-claw over its glassy surface.

"Oh, I see," she says, to whoever's listening (and they have to be, don't they?). "It's not an illusion, it's a dream-craft. Very good. Do I win?" But there's no response, and she's about to move along when she feels the weight at her back, and looks over her fluffy shoulder. Nestled behind her mane, a pair of white moth wings, speckled in black, cover her back. She gives them a tentative flap, enough to be sure they're really hers. A little more experimenting and she figures out the connection, that the wings are there whenever she touches the gem. It's not a difficult leap from there to figuring out she's meant to fly up the light stream, but she isn't about to give whoever trapped her inside this dreamworld the satisfaction of doing whatever they want. Let them wait a little. (She isn't going to let them hear her wonder if there's a dream crafter alive capable of something that feels so real, though...)

But there isn't much else to do here. The other stone is pretty for sure with its sunny tones, but it holds no attraction for her and doesn't respond to her touch. The water wells are too deep to swim. The only other point of interest is a bag rather like her saddlebags, formed from leaves rather than leather. She takes a moment to investigate the contents, but they're no more useful than anything else around here. The stone she can't make any sense of, but the amber is beautiful, and she wraps it up carefully in the leaf cloak that's rolled up beside it before stashing everything inside her saddlebags - a tricker task than before, with those wings in the way.

"Well, you got me for now," she says, to her invisible...captors? If they're listening maybe she can give them a shock, and if not, who's to know she's talking to herself in the middle of a dream? And if she didn't want adventure, well, she shouldn't have gone sniffing around deserted caves in the middle of the desert. Eventually she'll decide how she feels about all this, but right now, she has wings, and who back home hasn't seen the Air kiarrs soar overhead and wish they could do the same? Her wings fan out, and she leaps into the air, through the golden light and higher with a joyous cry!

🍃 2 🍃
A thread or entry of the character, preferably from the TDM but elsewhere is also accepted.

Keymrill stalks through stems that appear as tall as trees, over stones the size of boulders. This is no giant tree, she has been shrunken down. It's plain to see when she reaches out with her innate senses to the grass and the ground. Everything is the wrong scale.

She paws at a bare patch of earth. To an observer it would appear as if she's idly digging up a stone, but her senses extend further than that. Earlier, she discovered a blockage around the great tree's roots, as she might find when touching upon a rock buried underground - that wall-like sensation that her magic is no good. Whatever she's meant to do in this dream-world, toppling the tree isn't one of them. Not that she'd try - it would take a whole team of kiarrs to tear up the earth at this size.

Her tail twitches in irritation at being trapped, unable to wake up. The notion that this isn't a dream crosses her mind, but what else can it be, and where else can all those other, bizarre creatures inside the tree be from? But if this isn't a dream, that means she doesn't know where she is, and that irks her even more than capture...

Well, if she's stuck here she'll need a base of operations. She's used to the outdoors, but in unfamiliar territory it's best not to stand out. Concentrating, she digs her claws into the earth, and with a low thud, a shallow hole opens up beneath her. Vanishing inside, she begins to dig out the loose earth, though she keeps an ear turned to listen to the outside world as she excavates her new den. You never know who's behind you...

🌸 optional 🌸

🍃 more info 🍃
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Keymrill and Srrith: