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 Posted: Sun Sep 30, 2018 10:31 pm
Warning: The Image below contains a kid that may set off a Tryopophobia/Growths trigger!Starts: Now!
Ends: October 28, 11:59pm MST
In a world of nightmares and daydreams, the boogeymen of Haunted Hallows are known as The Four Horsemen: Death, Pestilence, Famine, and War. It's said that they appear in dreams and visions, and there are magics, mediums, and fortune tellers devoted to interpreting the messages they provide. While some view them as a portent of coming disaster, others consider them merely harbingers that warn dreamers in the hopes of preventing grief.
Have your NN/DD ever encountered them?
Write an account of the hallucination, nightmare, or night terror in which one (or more) of these Four Horsemen appeared.
You can use one of your existing NN/DD as the protagonist, or you can write from an obscured narrator if you don't have a pet yet.
Be sure to include in your form which of the Horsemen you are addressing, as they will choose one clairvoyant NN/DD to follow home at the end of Haunted Hallows!
This contest is completely free.
You may enter for all of the Horsemen, but only win one (1)!
Please use the form provided.
Anyone may enter, whether they are a newbie or not!
Staff may not enter this contest.
Winning a prize from this event does count towards your event win limit.
Keep in mind you are limited to winning one (1) kid in total from the Haunted Hallows games!
Whining, guilt-tripping, or generally misbehaving over the contest will result in you being disqualified.
Make sure you've read the Guide to the Worlds forum in its entirety!
You may not proxy for another person.
You may not gift your prize away, and cannot re-home for the first 60 days.
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Posted: Tue Oct 09, 2018 12:53 pm
Riding In...Username: Ebonrune
Horseman Chosen: Death
The Encounter....: Helja didn't feel emotions easily and was used to being detached from things that might disturb or upset others. Still, when she found herself walking down a street she didn't recognize, she had to admit to being a bit unnerved. The lights were strangely few, and what lights there were flickered or outright didn't work. The wind was cold, and felt like fingers caressing her skin. How had she ended up on this street? Why was she here?
A fog began to roll in, and she wanted to turn around and go back more than anything, but for some reason she kept walking forward instead, as if her feet had made the decision for her. She felt more lost than ever before, and wished she could remember where she was even trying to go. Somehow she had to get there though, and that lay through the fog. But why was she here?!
Ahead she spotted movement, and finally in her shocking terror, she managed to stop. She stood there, shaking like a leaf in the cold and the fear that by this time had gripped her so deeply she was crying from it. What was going on? She was so lost and afraid, and if she moved whatever had crossed into her path was surely going to strike!
"Shh." Came a soft voice, like a whisper of leaves crossing the ground so she wasn't sure she'd heard a voice at all until it spoke again. "There's no need to fear, child. I am not here to harm you."
The voice was soft and gentle, but Helja was not assured and wrapped her arms around herself. "I don't know where I am." She said, hating how plaintive her voice sounded. "Please, where am I?"
"You walk my road, child." The voice replied, the fog swirling around them, giving Helja glances at their appearance but no clear look.
"I don't understand." Helja whimpered.
The figure moved closer, the sound of their movement much like their voice; soft and very much like dry autumn leaves. "You walk the border between life and the eternal sleep." The voice explained. "I have come to invite you through the Veil, if you wish to cross it."
"The Veil?"
The fog seemed to draw back briefly and Helja got a clear look at the speaker's face; an eyeless skull draped by dark oily hair. "Do you choose the Veil?"
Helja felt absolutely frozen by this time, but she tried to take a step back when she saw their face. "I...N-No. I don't."
The figure stepped closer, and the fog parted entirely. "You may not have a choice."
Helja woke up choking and staggered out of bed to the bathroom where she threw up until her stomach was empty and collapsed against the opposite wall, shaking and completely certain she had just narrowly escaped something truly terrible.
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Posted: Wed Oct 24, 2018 6:47 am
Riding In...Username: Kaefaux
Horseman Chosen: War
The Encounter....:
If life was a box of chocolates, sleep was a gamble with weighted dice so far as Kismet was concerned. There was never a winning roll, just sometimes the prize wasn't as painful as others. She'd settled herself reluctantly into bed, a nest of blankets, pillows, and random articles of clothing she'd haphazardly removed on various occasions upon crawling into bed. Typically ones where she'd already spent a night or two--or more...--evading the call to slumber and could resist no longer.
This time? Her blackout blinds were in place, bags heavy under her golden eyes as her tails curled around her small form. She'd managed only till about midday following a full night up and working before she couldn't take it anymore. The pull was thick and weighed on her limbs. Small cat naps weren't going to cut it to keep her going this time.
Perhaps for a reason, she thought grimly, in the small corner of consciousness that lingered as her eyes closed and her brain began the processes that had her slipping into sleep. In to dreams.
"Took ya *%@#in' long enough there, sweetcheeks."
The overpowering smell of copper and acrid, sulfuric stenches she wasn't familiar with singed her nose and stuck to the roof of her mouth with a metallic zing. Her eyes weren't even open and already she was gagging and coughing till she was bent over and her eyes watered, a fact aided by the thick black smoke that billowed through the creeping winds. More copper, more acrid-sulfur-metallic stenches, accompanied by the odors of burning flesh and hair and fur and...
"$&!#, easy there, kiddo. Ain't got your field lungs in, have ya?" A large paw slammed against her back a few times, and Kismet nearly toppled over. It was only the swift skuttle of moving her paws to shift her balance that saved her from landing face first in the burnt muck. She forced her eyes open, staring down at the torn soil, pocketed with boot prints and holes and gullies and gashes, stained a medley of browns and blacks and red tints unrelated to what she suspected was the ground's natural components.
"Water," she coughed out, holding a hand out towards the massive figure beside her. It was a brute, a jackass, loudmouth and incredibly difficult to contain once things really got going...
...but War was nothing if not well-stocked in its endeavors, and when circumstances prevented it, War was disturbingly skilled in adaptation to facilitate its efforts.
A massive black-furred paw shifted out of the corner of her eye and she could hear a sack being shuffled about, zipped open, and further clinks and shuffles before a cantine was presented. Red claws left small slices against the leather holster holding the metal container as she pulled it from the other's grasp. The water itself carried a sort of metallic aftertaste--nothing to do with the container, she was willing to bet--but she drank freely and took the time to collect herself. She paused occasionally between gulps to try and steady her breathing, forcing her mouth closed to fight against the gagging and coughing. Bit by bit, she straightened. Her ears were nearly pinned back against her skull, distant ratta-ta-ta ratta-ta-ta ratta-ta-ta and pops and bangs and crashes and booms echoing in her head as much as they vibrated through her paws. They stood within a deep gully, a trench, bracketed by splintered remains of palisades. Metal debris and shrapnal littered the ground and stuck deep in the massive trunks they'd helped to demolish. High above, smoke twisted amidst the clouds, sickly and heavy grey tinged with reds and oranges from fires below.
She'd learned long ago not to bother asking where she was. It never mattered--or well. Almost never. Occasionally the whole point was the where, the when, the how, the why, the who... But that was if they felt like being extra special generous with what message they were conveying. Kismet had heard of some being so lucky, getting such specific and pointed visitations.
She pulled her lips from the rim of the cantine and screwed the attached cap back on. Water sloshed as she handed it over. "Thanks. Why am I here?" Finally, she turned her head to look at the figure of War, the shape it had taken to present itself with to her mind's eye. It was a hulking beast, muscle and fur and scruff and torn flesh. Sunglasses hid the form's eyes from her, but did little to dispell the sensation of its weighted gaze. She squinted slightly at the dog tags hung round his neck. Duke was the only part she could make out from the scratched and dented surface. A new form, a new face, a new name chosen from who knew what sort of hat.
A deep, sharp exhale came from the immense figure. His breath stank of sulfur and chemicals and some faintly sweet, herbal edge. "Why ya still needin' $&!# like that, anyways? Ya ain't no blue-head, ain't no reason for ya to be clingin' to those crutches." His words were slightly mumbled as he spoke with a cigar clutched between his teeth, adding to the already gritty and rumbling quality of the voice he tended to take on when speaking to her. She merely shrugged, staring up at him without bothering to comment. Her reliance on corporeal functions while maintaining an incorporeal form within the confines of her mind was a problem she was well aware of. War was hardly the sort to drag her along to wherever this was just to prattle about her failings.
Though, really, who better to talk to about how to adapt and change?
He chewed on the end of the cigar and gave another huff. The stenches of whatever battlefield he'd replicated inside her dream were beginning to numb her nose to even the odors on his breath. "Ya ain't no pup, either, sweetcheeks. Should know what me showin' up means." War gave a grunt as he shifted his grip on something in his far paw. Kismet glanced towards it and quirked a brow. A gun of unfamiliar making to her, was at least her only guess. Didn't seem to have the same crystalline style she was used to seeing from weaponry, though that hardly meant much--physical confrontation methods were a large unknown to her.
He pulled the weapon in front of him, a thick strap rounding his shoulders taking the brunt of the burden. It hissed and ground against a strap of small cylinders that also rounded his torso. War jutted his chin forward, gesturing towards fractured stairs leading up out of the trench. He took the lead, and she followed in silence. Mud and charcoal slid and slipped beneath their steps, the wooden stairs sinking deeper into the angled muck, creaking and snapping further beneath their weights--mostly his, to be fair. Now and then Kismet had to grab ahold of the grimy, slick wood to pull herself further up, her claws on both paws and hands sinking in to keep herself from slipping back down the slope. At the crest of the trench wall, she stood anew beside the large male that barely seemed to struggle with the assent. Before them, scorched land stretched far and wide. More trenches were dug and rendered useless, judging by the gashes in the earth and shattered metal and wooden defenses that littered the grounds. Large tracks of burnt ground fell in streaks--energy blasts, she guessed.
"Surprised your brother isn't here." The term was used loosely, but one long used by that point.
"He's 'round. Been through few times as it is. Where the rest of us go, he's sure gonna follow," he said simply. There was no laughter to his words, she noted. Merely a stated fact. Her ears flicked back and she was grateful the dreamscape didn't include the remains in that case. "Ya can't keep *%@#in' 'round and 'voidin' us. $&!#'s comin' no matter how much ya stick your head in the sand." Far above their heads, lightning crackled and hissed through the rumbling clouds. Centralized, it tangled among slowly circling vapors and threw more charges into the air, fueling the process further. She recognized the green tint to the electricity, the smell of sulfur and ozone that it brought along. The air hissed and buzzed, a humming echoing in her skull. Crackling sparks of green flame joined the lightning and swirling clouds. Thunder rolled and rocked the earth, shaking up charred ruins. The humming began to warp, shifting into shattered, stuttering screams and whines and pulses that clawed inside her head. Building pressure. Building and rising and pulling her towards and up and out.
It would break her. Shatter her. Unmake her and add the pieces that had once been all of her into the cacophony of it. She understood then why there were no remains. Why the ground was sliced haphazard with black, burnt marks that bit deep into the earth. Pieces that had been ripped apart and shattered and condensed and stretched until everything it was was nothing more than insignificant fragments that would add to it.
Kismet stepped forward as the lightning and smoke and smog and green flames whipped and swirled, funneling slowly towards the ground again. The screams in her head shook the ground beneath her paws and she felt blood begin to flow from her ears. Moisture on her face--tears, or blood? The pressure in her head grew, spreading down into her chest where her pulse thundered and shook and jerked about. Into her limbs--were they growing heavier? Or lighter? Was she even touching the ground any more? The green lightning flames crackled and hissed and roared and licked at her fur and flesh and everything within that made her, her.
"Is this my fate?" She didn't have a mouth to speak anymore, did she? Yet she spoke, and she could hear her voice over the din and turmoil.
No longer did she have eyes to see, or ears to hear, yet she could see his great shoulders shrugging and the cigar between his teeth wagging. "Who's t'say? s**t's beyond me." A corner of the mouth she no longer had twitched upward. She actually heard that swear that time, no longer the strange scratching sound that seemed to fall in place when he spoke so freely. The green lightning overtook everything, burning away the world and all of her, and she felt for a moment weightless and nothingness and calm.
War. Wyrre. Werre. Werra. Werzō. Mixture, confusion. Werran. Verwirren. To confuse, to perplex, to bring into confusion.
Conflict was approaching fast, and soon would drive her life into chaos and turmoil. War took many forms. Body, mind, soul--just as much within as against outside forces. Golden eyes opened, a clawed hand tapping at the screen of her cell phone. 3:33 p.m. She sighed and drew herself out of bed, forcing her sore body and groggy head towards the kitchen and setting the kettle to boil water. She needed tea. Strong tea. There was work to do.
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Posted: Wed Oct 31, 2018 6:15 pm
sint you two were the only entrants, congrats! Lemme know within 24 hours if you accept your win!
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Posted: Wed Oct 31, 2018 6:50 pm
Kivras sint you two were the only entrants, congrats! Lemme know within 24 hours if you accept your win!
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Posted: Wed Oct 31, 2018 6:51 pm
Kivras sint you two were the only entrants, congrats! Lemme know within 24 hours if you accept your win! I accept!
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