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Game Info!

Hello, hello! And its that time for another event! [And act!] With the Hongshan fearing they may be forgetting the pride they've fled, they've decided to rekindle the spirit of their homeland by honoring an ancient festival. [And maybe teach the firekin a little culture in the process! Got to class these savages up!]

New Years in the Hongshan is marked by several things- staying up all night, feasting, good friends, and most importantly: stories. [And maybe a little bit of drama too!]

While feasting might be out of the question, the reagents have approved that anyone off duty may go and partake in the evenings festivities!

But, I mentioned those stories, right?

To the Hongshan, the most important aspect of the New Years is sharing the past year's experiences through story. While not always entirely true... the night isn't complete until everyone gathered has shared a story or two to the group. It's about learning, laughing, and getting into fistfights over past experiences!



arrow The top two stories will receive a prize! One firekin, and one Hongshan!

And who knows what other things might unfold...!

Mpeko settled with her group, bright eyes flickering excitedly. Normally her life was dull, but tonight, tonight she would weave a story! A story! The lioness stretched, feeling sand under her paws and smiled warmly as she drew others close by the way she sat. Moved, Smiled. It was as if she held some secret nobody knew of only she could, some story nobody thought of. She preened once the group had gathered and beamed.

"Tonight I'll tell you a story, a story, yes,of a very lucky kill." She smiled, bidding others near.

"See it was several days ago, as I hunted in the sands when I came upon a stray, thirsty Wildebeest and thought it fine for catching. So, as it moved, so did I, through crevasse and corner, hither and tither, up dunes, into arroyos, until I managed to pin it in a small canyon, not so far from home. As I killed it, the sand gave, oh, did it give. I was limping weeks but not one bone broken! And entered into a cave upon landing. I didn't climb right out, though. I went in, following nothing but scent and echo as I went deeper. Was I scared? Not really, but I was sore, until I found bones. The bones were QUITE startling, because they were like chimp's, but far larger, And on them, were pretty things, jewelry... So I took it. After all, it's only a dead thing."

She stretched, smirking softly.

"And when I turned to return, the cave rumbled and gurgled and the Earth shook, forcing me to run, as the sky itself in there began crashing in. I barely got out to where I'd fallen! And my kill? Ready, easy to move, and I climbed up to return. As for the jewelry.." Mpeko laughed, tossing a long beaded necklace out, and many more.

"Gifts for all!"

"Aw, and here I was thinking you'd tell the story about the time you found me lost in the desert, Mpeko." Nur'yu whined, grinning all the while as he settled next to the female on the sand. He threw Veru a large grin, crossed his paws, and settled in for the night. He was certainly not planning to sleep and miss out on all the fun. No doubt there were going to be a lot of things to see! His tail flicked against the sand in thought and, with a wrinkled snout, he cast a look between them.

"I don't know...I was told that all stories have some truth to them." He pointed out.

"Oh, oh, oh, speaking of which, I have a story!" His orange eyes flashed with pride. "It's definitely true, too. I was sneaking around in the desert one day - as you do - and I ended up overhearing this argument between Fia and--OW!" He flinched, rubbing at his snout, casting his attacked an offended, doe-eyed look.

"No one wants to hear that story." Fia huffed. She was certainly in a...jolly mood. She paused to look over those gathered there and gave a contentious look. "Now I have a story to tell. Someone around here decided to give some nosy rogue the rank of Historian without telling me first." She flopped heavily in the sand and turned her head away.

Nur'yu laughed, reaching out to give her a playful shove. "Now, now, Auntie Fee-fee, this is not the time to be grumpy. I don't think that's the kind of stories we're supposed to be telling." He glanced back at Mpeko. "You should follow Mpeko's lead and tell a fun story."

"Alright, alright." Veru interrupted, pulling himself up into a seated position. "As much as I'd love to hear Fia's idea of a 'fun' story, I think I have just the one to spare us from it."

"Now, believe it or not- the place I grew up in was not all that different from here. It was a rough country of stone and canyons. No desert... but not much else either. It was mostly lions there, but occasionally you'd get the odd hyena passing through. And there was this one fellow I'd always see sunning himself up on one of the canyon peaks," he said. "A fat old fellow. You could smell him long, long before you saw him. He was covered with scars, and who knows what else. You could hardly say he looked like a beast at all! He looked like a rotten piece of fruit."

Naseera scowled. "This is a fun story."

"The fun part is coming up. So, I used to wonder to myself how this old fellow got anywhere. He was all the way up on that ridge, but I swear, his legs barely touched the ground. So, being the inquisitive youngster that I was, I came up to him and asked him how he did it," Veru continued. "How did you manage to climb all the way up there?"

His face changed as he voiced the other part. "I flew up, he says! Which naturally, I didn't believe for a second. So I started to try and think about how the old fellow was doing it. It was a huge rock that jutted straight out of the earth. There were no other rocks near it. You couldn't simply do a well placed jump from the top of the canyon either!"

"It might seem silly, but it annoyed the hell out of me. I couldn't even climb up that rock, and I had a rather impressive set of talons on me. It was just too high for a straight jump, and too smooth to get a hold on," he said. "I even staked out the spot in the morning, hoping to catch him climbing up the rock from some secret path. But nothing! Every time I tried to see him, he never came."

"So finally, I gave up. I went to the old fellow, put on my best handsome face, and asked him to tell me how he was climbing up that giant stone." The white lion leaned forward. "To my surprise, he agrees to show me how he does it."

"Stand over by the rock, the old fellow goes. So I do. Then, he runs straight up my back, and hops onto the rock. 'That's how,' he says!" His face broke into a grin.

Naseera turned her nose up. "Veru, that was the worst story in the history of forever."

"I think there's a valuable lesson in it."

Kasi moved amongst the groups of people quietly, not making an effort to speak up – yet. She was interested in listening first. To see what others had to say, what other things had been happening for people. She knew what had happened in her life recently, but she had missed much of the pridal happenings while she had been caught up in her own 'world'.

Her stomach was swollen lightly, only the barest of hints of what was to come later. The festival gave her reason to ignore her secret condition – a reason to forget that she was bringing new lives into a deadly drought.

She had stepped close enough to hear Veru's story, and cracked a smile. That was a fun story – clever, too. Did she have anything to say that would be interesting? She had lived within these lands all her life, she had no stories of foreign lands to intrige others. She could always tell the story of one of her duels. She hid a grin. Like her and Xenneks first duel. A little bit of boasting wasn't bad was it? Afterall, besting a joining 'warrior' was quite a feat, though Kasi felt it slightly hollow since Xennek had been so distracted.

Spying Nur'yu in the crowd, she gave him a nod of greeting, but the sight of him gave her pause – thoughts of her condition rushing back to her and draining some of that earlier joy from her. But, no. She was not going to let it ruin the festival. Tomorrow would come, but tonight was for fun.

She paused to listen to Nur'yu and Mpeko's story, with a slight smile.

Settling next to Mpeko, he gave a slight purr at her friendly affection and listened to Veru's story with great interest. And, when he reached the end, the lion's eyes widened with surprise. "Wow! That's one smart lion! I never would have expected that!" He had, clearly, enjoyed the story; dismissing Naseera's point of view with a wave of a paw.

His eyes caught hold of Kasi and he gave her a friendly grin. "Hey there, Kasi! Come sit with us!"

And then more came to join; Tarsa and Hraga and he shifted a little to make room in their gathering circle of lions.

Fia gave a gruff sound of acknowledgement to her brother and, because he was a brother, decided not to chide him about his carelessness in reaching them.

"Okay! So!" Nur'yu leapt to his paws. "This is the story of the day I got lost in the desert and was saved by our heroine; Tracker Mpeko." He flourished a paw towards her in a dramatic fashion, seeming not to mind that he was letting everyone know that he wasn't so good at his desert geography. "As she said, we decided to head back to the lands at a bit of a detour. I wanted to learn some more about the territory whilst I was there and Mpeko thought it a grand idea! So there we were, walking and walking, until we reached a part of the desert that seemed to be battered by much stronger winds. The winds had created these funnels in the sand, smoothed over and some deep enough that we could barely see over the tops of the 'walls'. Well we were just wondering whether we should turn back and attempt another walk through when a gust of wind ended up collapsing the tunnel behind us. My guess is that they probably do that a lot. Shift and change depending on what the wind was. But anyway, we had to go on now, so we did."

He paused, collecting his thoughts. "And then we came across the den of some monstrous thing. Honestly, we never saw the owner of the den but I don't think I would want to. There was a big rock that must have prevented a cave-in, but the floor was littered with the bones of all sorts of animals; birds, lizards, snakes and other things. Maybe even lion bones! Well, I didn't fancy sticking around there too long because you never know when the owner might return or when the undead might just decide to wake up and say 'hello', so I told Mpeko that we should make a hasty getaway whilst we still could."

He hunkered down a little, mimicking a creeping motion."And then, just as I was walking past the last of these bones, one of the skulls starts to move! I give it a good swipe with my paw and it goes flying across to land amongst the other bones and then more of them start to move! By this point I'm quite freaked out by all of this so I'm telling Mpeko to run. Run, run, run!"

He laughs now. "But then Mpeko tells me to stop being so silly and, as we watch, we realise the bones aren't moving by themselves at all. Something else was moving them." He threw his tracker friend a large smile. "So we watch and in hardly any time at all, we see little furry faces appearing amongst the skeletons. That's when I realised; it was a family of rats; moved in to help the monster clean away his scraps." He chuckled away to himself and took his seat once more. He had felt so silly at the time, but he had never really minded looking silly in front of others.

Fia, on the other hand, gave a groan of shame, covering her face with a paw. Was Nur'yu really a relative of hers?

Rising to his paws from where he'd been laying with his mate and cubs, Kosuke walked over and sat at the edge of the center. "This isn't exactly something from the past year, so I suppose this being the first time we're doing this, I should hope I can get away with it... This ONCE..." He motioned with his paw at the scars riddling his body. "All of these, came from two lions. First, from my mother..." He eyed the white-marked lioness, lounging off at the edges of the group. "The rest..." He motioned over. "Came from that old lump of bones. And every one was worth it." He sat back, rising up slightly were he sat. "Oh, they were fights of persistence, where I tried to beat the old man, but finally, I gave him a sound kick in the rear and declared Shula my own!"

He couldn't see Kosuke well, just a blur, but Bodaway grinned. "Oh, you jest, Kosuke, because I only let you have my daughter because you're persistent! And I hope your sons are as persistent as you are."

The younger male let out a good-natured huff, while behind him his mate giggled.

Bidding her mate back to their cubs, Shula got up, gently swatting him with her tail. "You big goof!" She then went and sat toward the center, turning to address the rest. "This is a story with no basis within this pride, the one in it likely doesn't exist. It's a story of love, trials, and pride." She motioned with her paws a bit. "Imagine, if you will, a land far and away from here... A very different land, lush with grasses growing tall and green, dotted with the odd tree... And down the center of it all, a mighty river, deep and wide, flanked in only one spot by a pair of cliffs, the closest the two sides ever come along the whole river's length..."

She reached down, drawing it in the sand. "And on each side of the river, a pride of lions. Oh, they were mighty lions, each side, boasting of their greatness, never knowing that once upon a time, they were one pride, divided by this river. So long forgotten was this history... The prides were in a silent war. Because of this river, they never actually met, often using those cliffs to shout insults across at each other. But then, one day, during the height of the dry season... The river dropped."

Using some sand, she filled in part of the rut she'd created for the river. "Neither side noticed, so wrapped up in their own problems with the dry season to really care. After all, it had been some unspoken rule to never waste energy during such a time. But two young lions, one male and one female, from each side, dared to shout at each other, day and night, professing how well their prides were doing. They then dared something else, something unthinkable... They picked their ways down the river banks, meeting at the shallow river, the male braving the crossing to meet his opponent... And as he pulled himself from the river... He was smitten. With her coat of rich reds, he'd never seen a lioness so stunning a sight." Shula squared her jaw. "And then she kicked his tail, and he only fell harder, going so far as to follow her up and down the river bank, asking her name, asking her to pay attention to him, to not fight...

"In secret, she, too, had found him to be stunning, in his striking patterns of blacks and white. She was proud of her pride, refusing to fall for him, when she stumbled across a cave under the cliff on her side of the river. The rains had chosen an opportune moment to return, and they had no choice but to flee into the caves. It was here, they found a third pride, dwelling in the caves under the prides - Their caves even went under the river! And it was here that the pair learned the truth - That their prides were little different.

"You see, generations ago, when the pride had been one, they attempted to cross the river at these cliffs. Many made it across, before a group fell to the river, believed lost. The rest refused to cross, and they stayed close together, divided by the river and cliffs. As the generations passed by, the surface prides forgot their shared history, why they both stayed where they were, season after season, and why the cave-dwellers had remained, remembering the history and wishing to rejoin the three prides together. When the rains ended, the pair found their ways back to their prides, and began to try and convince them to rejoin.

"Neither pride would listen, but both agreed on one thing... They used the caves to go to war with each other, following the path down to the river and along it to where the entrances were. Being caves, they were dark, except for some strange parts where they glowed. The in-betweens were used to this, as well as sneaking out to hunt, but the rivaling prides were not, and both got lost.

"When the prides finally met up, it was only because their forgotten brothers and sisters had helped both, and up close, they realized they had no differences. Together, the three prides reconciled, exiting the caves together and taking up their home proper, as one pride, on the surface. When the herds moved, so, too, did the pride, utilizing the caves.

"As for the two lovers... Well, their great-great-great grandchildren were still telling the tale to any new cubs or rogues in the pride." She grinned a bit, hoping some of the cubs liked it, as well as the adults. There was no real violence, true, or anything else like it, but it showed that sometimes... Pacifism could work. She turned, padding back over to Kosuke and their children, rumbling as she snuggled against him.