[FoA] White Flower Game (Baneful)

[Baneful]

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INSTRUCTIONS
This game is ongoing, and you'll be able to participate as often or as little as you'd like to get a beautiful white familiar for your kin.

In this game, you'll roll dice to collect flowers, with the aim of collecting enough flowers to obtain a white familiar. You may try three times per day, in a location of your choice from the list below. You can change locations as often as you'd like - they're purely for flavor, in case you do want to roleplay. Make sure to keep count of your flower total in your posts!

Locations

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Magnolia Grove
A cluster of white magnolia trees stands to the north of Ghost Turtle's mound. It's known for lush, white blooms, but the problem is that it's well-known: everyone will be searching there, which means that the nicest flowers are likely to have been picked through. Who knows, though - you might get lucky!
To search for flowers in the magnolia grove, roll one four-sided die and check the list below to see how many you've found.

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1. +0 flowers.
   
2. +0 flowers.
   
3. +7 flowers.
   
4. +1 flower.
   

Riverbed
Honestly, there aren't very many species of white flowers that grow by this particular river. But they tend to grow in clusters, when they are here, and the relative scarcity means no one else will be looking here, so the flowers you'll find are going to be yours alone. Why not give it a try?
To search for flowers by the riverbed, roll one six-sided die and check the list below to see how many you've found.

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1. +4 flowers.
   
2. +0 flowers.
   
3. +0 flowers.
   
4. +3 flowers.
   
5. +2 flowers.
   
6. +3 flowers.
   

Hilltop
There aren't very many hills in the swamp, but plants definitely grow on them. Making your way up the hill is a bit of a trek, and white flowers definitely don't grow in lush groups, but the ones you can scrounge up look perfectly lovely. The bigger problem is really sorting through all of these for the ones that look most white.
To search for flowers on the hilltop, roll one eight-sided die and check the list below to see how many you've found.

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1. +1 flower.
   
2. +3 flowers.
   
3. +4 flowers.
   
4. +3 flowers.
   
5. +2 flowers.
   
6. +0 flowers.
   
7. +2 flowers.
   
8. +1 flower.
   

Available familiars are in the post below - there's only one of each, though!

Roleplay is not required for this event.

 

[Baneful]

Flowers were not his domain, not really, not the kind that existed to look pretty, coax in a mate and then die anyway. He liked the ones which killed the unwary, which eaten by mistake would drag you along an endless corridor of nightmares from which you might never actually awaken.

The hilltop was barren mostly with low laying hardy grasses. The flowers here endured harsh colds and unsheltered scorching sunlight when they had to. Many of the white flowers he found he felt were white from exertion, even the buttercups scattered here and there a sickly and pale yellow.

He preferred them to the rich lush ones down in the loamy swamp.

Total: 2  

[Baneful]

He tucked the flowers he found in his horns alongside the flowers he always carried there, white stars against a constellation of toxic blues. The bees didn't seem to care for blue much and he wondered if they could even see it at all. Perhaps to wanderer he looked white rather than the rich purples and blues everyone else saw.

If he looked like that he'd look like the twins he realised and he dwelled on that no longer than he had to.

Total: 5  

[Baneful]

And there nestled in a secret hollow next to a tuft of grass was a hardy group of white flowers, almost out of sight but not too far from sight. He picked some and left the others because there would be other seasons, there would be other times and they would need white flowers too.

Total: 7  

[Baneful]

Rivers were not his favourite places in the world, but he found himself drawn to them time after time. After following one so far out he could almost taste the ache and with memories of the cold hungrily claiming companion after companion there was something almost meditative about the incessant burbling of the water. This was his shrine where he came to honour the memory of the ones who the water had claimed. His favourite things needed nothing more than water and the darkness to grow, feeding on life and death alike, water was the end and it was the sustainer of life, for more than just flowers.

He made his way through the stones, hooves clacking against rock even over the sound of the water, his tail bare and with nothing to grow sodden in the stream.

It didn't matter that there were no flowers and he'd almost forgotten he was looking.

Total - 7  

[Baneful]

The river didn't give if you asked, it didn't listen when you stumbled, overwhelmed by hopelessness by its banks, it simply kept on its way, out and out to wherever it went, pursuing some undefined and nameless thing. It had kept him going when nothing else had, it didn't stop therefore why should he?

Here it was friendlier, with shallow pools here and there and deceptive and merry burbling sounds which invited one to chase the fish in the stiller parts. He knew better than to believe the river's friendly words, for he was harsh and old and would pull you in.

King was old and harsh himself and he'd lost too much to forget.  

[Baneful]

The river's cool even in summer had a bite to it, a chill which slithered up the extremities and into the bones. After a time you fooled yourself that relative to where you were standing the shallows were warmer, the darkness seeming to have a chill all its own, but the shallows were muddy here and there and the still waters ran deep.

Concentration was hard, with so many memories tangled in the water and when he saw his reflection, all antlered against the sky he almost didn't recognise himself. You could lose yourself riverside, far too easily and the stories told so many tales of the same.

He had not found anything the first time he'd followed the river and he found no flowers here today.

Total - 7
 

[Baneful]

Total - 10
 

[Baneful]

Total - 11
 

[Baneful]

Total - 14
 

[Baneful]

The faint sound of familiar laughter draws him back to the river, but once he arrives it's difficult to tell if it was just the sound of water.

He could hear them all the time. Sometimes in the wind blowing through the trees, sometimes in stranger places in the dead of night, but most of all he heard them by the river. He'd been there already but like a fool he returned, head held low as he stepped out into the shallow water, crunching gravel underhoof.

He wasn't really out here looking for white flowers, not in a literal sense. There had been other white flowers in his life, beautiful and strange and his pride and joy.

Following the sound of what was almost quiet voices out into the stream he saw the glimmer of white on the river bank, and drawing nearer found a bundle of flowers clinging against odds to the earth behind a rock, he picked them up and using his tail stowed them in his antlers.

Total - 18
 

[Baneful]

He missed them but he didn't talk about it. He missed what they would have become, he missed seeing them grow up, he missed knowing if they'd have been like him or like her. He missed everything about it and the grief, even now, returned from such a long journey still sat in his chest like a leaden weight.

It was supposed to be a festival for celebration of life but the free time only left him more and more with his thoughts, to think about how it could have been and to regret.

This time he almost stumbled on the flowers, growing in the shallows where the water had pooled in only recently, dooming the half-submerged plant. And there were two of them, two small and half-closed flowers untouched against all odds.

He picked them with a surprising tenderness and then turned his head to wipe one side of his face and then the other on the soft fur of his back.

Total - 20
 

[Baneful]

They'd never be forgotten now, he knew. The items he'd brought back to the tribe would endure long after even he was gone, with curiosity and imagination shaping them into a legend of the fairy twins, the two princes who still even now explored the swamps unfettered by their frail little bodies.

He encouraged Lackwit and his playwrights and storytellers to spread the word, to embellish the legend and to lend them a life beyond even the life they led. The gems and curiosities became relics and artifacts of their adventures, his own long journey to retrieve them from the river forgotten.

The adventures of eager youngsters made good stories, the grief of a father did not.

There was another flower and he added it too to the vast array of flowers now speckled like a starlit night through his branching horns.

Total - 21
 

[Toshihiko Two]

On the top of the hill, there was another kin nosing through the bounty of flowers. There was little else for him to do, since their tribe was only taking part in the festivities instead of organizing. He wasn't interested in some of the more...ribald activities, and found himself not very hungry either. In general, he was not a festival kind of kin. If King hadn't gone, he would have been extremely happy to be left guarding the territory with the other hoof-full of lucky tribe members who had been left behind.

He started, however, at King's appearance, sitting quickly and hiding the single lush, white flower he'd collected behind his back.

"Oh! S-sire, I didn't ah, see you, there. How are you faring?"  

[Baneful]

He didn't notice Stalker until he was almost upon him, so wrapped up in his thoughts was he. When he did, he halted with the same degree of surprise. His antlers, in addition to their usually carefully placed larkspur were positively bristling with an array of white flowers of all shapes and sizes.

He smiled, banishing the slightly sad expression of moments earlier. "Hello Stalker." he said, inclining his head slightly. "I am well. Enjoying the festival?" but the question was asked with the smile written into it, he was aware of the other kin's less than party-oriented nature and out of a playful sort of sadism just wanted to see him wrestle with politeness over it.