Your First Steps on Solustus...  As a first-time visitor to Solustus, you must be commended for making the trip in one piece! The waters and airspace surrounding the island are notoriously difficult to traverse, and those without a great depth of magical knowledge and power are rarely able to see the journey to its end. As you step out of your aircraft with the small travelling party you'd cobbled together, shaking and exhausted from the long voyage, a local catches your eye and grins at you with a burst of energy you cannot fathom returning. As you politely try to break eye contact and turn to address your group, you hear the frantic slap of eir shoes on the tarmac and are forced to reckon with your immediate fate:
Ey appear to be wearing a kitschy souvenir t-shirt from somewhere off-island, and you shudder to imagine the lengths ey must have gone to on eir own trip across the punishing seas & skies to acquire it. If it was anywhere near as harrowing as yours, however, ey doesn't show it, instead linking an arm through yours as ey continue eir frantic greeting; with barely a pause between each word, ey are already scrambling to pick up your crew's luggage and hoist it onto eir shoulders,
Biology then catches up with em as eir arms fill up with pounds of suitcases and backpacks, and ey are forced to finally take a breath,
As your mind begins to wind down from the harrowing flight you'd only just survived, you begin to remember all the things you'd read about Solustus and its inhabitants before this journey - the incredible physical strength & stamina of conikyrns that allows them to survive easily on one of the most dangerous places on the planet. Despite their lack of active magical ability, their relationship with their island and the ethereal forces that flow through it are clearly imprinted on their bodies, ever changing, in constant communication with the invisible forces of their world. As you study your impromptu tour guide a bit more closely, you can easily begin to pick out telltale signs of eir Inland heritage & upbringing - patterns on eir fur that resemble textiles, adopted by the fur as a natural result of a life surrounded by fashion and cloth making. Eir long tail sweeps out behind em as ey babble relentlessly about your impending mile-long trek, and you take a moment to survey their double sets of eyes, one set sweeping over your crew as ey speak while the other flits impossibly fast in all directions - this is the set of eyes evolved for keeping an eye out for the constant danger of Solustus's wildlife. Before any of you can formulate your own ideas, this baffling new companion has jerry-rigged the few rolling suitcases among you into something resembling a train, attached to em by an even less-sturdy looking knot of bags and purse straps around eir waist, and has hoisted your entire crew either onto eir shoulders or gripping onto the suitcase-train for dear life as ey take off into a sprint, pulling your crew along behind em. |
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Welcome to Clarux! Once your guide has brought you into the city, there are information kiosks, less hyperactive tour guides, and books galore that can help you to better understand the glittering city sprawled out before you. You can now read the compendium of Inferbis wisdom at your leisure, without holding onto a strange pink beast for dear life! | |||
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