"Where brilliance is good and madness is better..."
Helovia Info
Helovia opened in February 2012! We are an active fantasy equine RPG
Where once the world narrowed into naught but gray dust and desolation, the gods called for life. Wielding the elements of fire and light, dark and wind, earth and water, spark and time, they have created Helovia. The realm is set within the mythical globe of Loorien, a planet rich with all variety of creatures and blessed with all manner of magic. Originally populated by nomadic, tribal characters, they've since grown into massive empires saturated with culture and history. Separated into four distinct segments of Helovia, called "The Regions," each band of horse strong enough and capable enough, took up the power and responsibility of leadership. Unicorns, old, wise and mysterious, took to the north, hidden in forests of mists and shadows and rarely making themselves known beyond their cliffs of the World's Edge. Equines, vast, organized and militaristic, split into two, one group went north to the Windtossed Foothills and the other group went south to the Dragon's Throat. Pegasus remained nomadic, making their homes in various parts of The Wilds in a migratory manner. For many generations, the land was peaceful and calm, but peace was never the way of the gods. With a clash of argument, war and bloodshed massacred Helovia, and in the aftermath, the realm was eerily quiet. Now, as newcomers sweep into this land, they are met with the lingering bitterness of the gods and the struggle to reclaim what was lost. Nothing remains safe or certain while sorcerers and soldiers alike brood and bide their time for revenge, honor and glory.
Site Wide Plots
Kaos :: The Beginning of the End ☼ - 6/2017 - Kaos placed Helovia in a time-bubble for a short period of time, but the Helovian gods are fighting back. But Kaos is powerful- far more powerful than anyone thought. This may be the beginning of the end of Helovia as we know it.
Kisamoa :: A New Kind of Kaos ☼ - 3/2017 - Kisamoa asks Helovians to help him restore the Spectral Marsh. Which side will you choose?
Invasions :: All Out War ☼ - 5/2/16 - New layout and the brand new invasion rules are up! Thank you for your patience and we look forward to getting started with this new adventure.
The Rift :: Gods Do Die ☼ - 8/2015 - Helovia Gods are saving the Rift from corrupt gods! Can Helovians band together against these foreign deities?
The Literal Ship ☼ - 2/8/15 - Oh no! You have to pair up for Valentine's day!
Sky Island :: Murder ☼ - 10/25/14 - Vesta has been found dead on the island, and the gods have called to you to solve the murder!
Sky Island :: Peace ☼ - 7/7/14 - An island has appeared in the sky! Clouds carry Helovians from the Veins to the sky.
Restoration :: We Welcome the Dawn ☼ - 9/21/13 - The sun has finally risen on this day, giving the land new light, but the Time God and the Sun God have yet to be seen.
Endless Night :: Broken Magic Plot ☼ - 8/30/13 - The earth god has returned and is walking across Helovia to heal the land. Every area can now be considered lush and prosperous, but the sun has still not risen.
☼ - 7/19/13 - The moon has risen in the sky, heralding the return of the Goddess of the moon. Lamp trees which light the paths have grown brighter, moon flowers which grow in dark places have begun to grow and prosper and the world is brighter, filled with a new hope.
Endless Night :: Dead Magic Plot ☼ - 6/22/13 - The gods of Helovia, in order to protect the world, have disappeared into the rift, leaving the world sunless, moonless and magic-less in their absence. Only the herdlands have a source of light, but lamp-trees with glowing leaves and branches sporadically line the popular roads and paths from place to place.
Doppleganger Plot ☼ - 6/20/13 - The God of Time is still struggling to close the rift though which the dopplegangers have come. He has requested that his brothers and sister assist in closing this hole, but without knowing why it opened, the task is proving difficult. Magic still remains faulty and hard to control, but the herdlands continue to be places of refuge for those who are fortunate enough to call these lands home.
ORANGEMOON cools off the lands with a a viscious force. Colder than normal, a sign of things to come during Frostfall, Helovia is bathed in a rich tropical lushness - albiet a cold one. The coastlines of the Dragon's Throat are pelted constantly by tidal waves, and the desert climate is humid but chilly. Ice begins to form early in the Aurora Basin leaving the winding trails slick and dangerous. The mists of the World's Edge coat everything in a glistening crystalline shine which encourages mould to grow everywhere. The Spectral Marsh is the only area which remains fertile, blissfully temperature and lush.
Cotm
Character of the Month for
June, 2017
WEAVER, Corporal of the Aurora Basin, is a relatively recent addition to Helovia and has taken it by storm. Branded with the seal of Death on her chest, intrigue and interest follow both her past and present. Though she is assuredly beautiful, her sometimes sharp personality reveals that there is more to this uni-peg hybrid than meets the eye. Proving herself able on the battlefield in the Basin’s warrior ranks, we can’t wait to see her test her mettle against the looming Kaos happenings! Congratulations!
Helovia RPG was created by Tamme and Blu and coded by Tamme also known as Schwartze. All coding, palettes and imagery are copyrighted to the website and are not for use outside of Helovia. Thank you to our ServerMaster for hosting Helovia. A special thanks goes to Neo for all of her coding help and fixing Tamme's errors, Boom, for her loyal service and creation of the Time God, and to Ali for her consistent contributions and dedication.
well someday soon when the spring brings the sun
i'll sleep, i'll finally
feel better when the winter's gone
sikeax
The water hits her like violent redemption. Funny, how she’s sprinting into the water like she’s on fire when it is exactly what she’s been running from, letting it pour from her eyes like steady, small, insignificant waterfalls while sobs catch and release in her throat. Darkness engulfs the world as if the moon and stars that she had been running under had swallowed by something, maybe a whale, whose jaws opened far and wide and devoured everything without thinking about what it affected in doing so. There is nothing in the murky waters other than thin beams of moonlight that barely make it deep enough to kiss her sadden features. Her eyes are closed. There is nothing to worry about while she locks her tears away.
There are no sharks in freshwater. There are no bones in the small grove, tucked away not too far from the sea, close enough for Sikeax’s panic driven galloping to end in abruptly.
Here, she can think, regardless of Hobgoblin’s panicked cries for her, the fear she can feel pounding in her chest that is oddly of both of theirs, the only emotion the two can agree to share and feel together. He is trying to get to her, but the pace is slow, and she knows he is tired.
At the bottom of the World’s Edge, where everything suddenly gave way to the ocean, there had been bones. None of them were the kind that you choose not to blink an eye to, the kind that are just there because that’s how life works, the kind that makes you want to turn and run, that sends shivers down your spine and sets you into a primal instinct mode.
Except for Sikeax, it was different.
As a healer, one can turn a blind eye to death and simply go on with life pretending that it’s not there. People get sick and are wounded, she does everything that the Gods have given her rights to do, and they carry on, live lives and have families, become whatever they become. Through the years, she’s perfected this, and there should be, presumably, nothing to worry over.
But bones are different. She’s seen them live, hang out of bodies that are decaying before her very eyes and yet still BREATHING because how does life work after death, especially when all of her occurrences with the dead have been when they have been coming to get her. Amara, the bones in the marsh - Oh god, do they still walk? Do they still breathe? Are they going to find me because it’s all my fa- “SIA!!”
He breaks her like the stone shatters a window, how an egg will burst when thrown far from the nest. Never once in their joined life has he cared to even call her Sia, something that is typically reserved for love and total fear, and now that he has, she thinks, or quite possibly just knows, that in the future there will no more of it.
To Hobgoblin, she is not Sia nor is Sikeax, the Sun Physician of the Dragon’s Throat who can’t get the cold facade of a doctor with his patient correctly, who wears too many of her emotions on her sleeve, the only daughter of two parents who never really fell in love and never worked hard to raise their child, the woman who cries over children she can’t save. To him, she is his other half, the fellow bearer of his feelings who right now is feeling endless panic in her head and her heart, the soul he had unwillingly been forced to entwine with that planted hate that budded into understanding once he matured.
And right now, she’s crushing him. He cannot bear the weight of her fear. He doesn’t understand and she is refusing to let him know why this is happening, why his head is in a panic and that one thing that would be insignificant to anyone is such a terrible, life-threatening thing to her.
His body sends ripples through the water, and somehow, she knows it’s him. There isn’t violent thrashing associated with swimmers, and his body is made for the ocean as much as she isn’t. He finds her in the darkness with ease, her horn a beacon he didn’t know he needed until now.
He pulls her back to reality with nothing more than a simple touch, pressing his long head against her shoulder for mere moments before his lungs ask for him to drag himself back to the surface.
Without hesitation, she follows, pulling herself from the deep without words and without feelings, and their bond, nearly always vibrant and full of life, dulls in the aftermath. Together, they break. She swims for land, and he follows, lazily sweeping his long body outwards to keep himself afloat as they move at a pace any other day he would have complained about.
She heaves her wet body onto land in silence, dripping water that luckily isn’t tears this time around. The ground is cool, the grind of rough roots along her coat a harsh reminder that yes, despite how dead she feels as of now, there is still a life to live and the world is more than willing to go on without her. Her crumbled up body rests with her head pressed against the earth, stomach leaning into the base of a tree, watching with her once so full of life blues as Hobgoblin lingers in the water no more than five feet from her, childishly creating bubbles.
They are frail and small, short-lived and bursting within a few seconds of leaving the water, but he doesn’t care. She is watching him with her full attention whether she chooses to admit it or not. “Bubbles make You happy?”
No longer is she ‘Sia’ to him, now back to just ‘You,’ the person whom he is taking all of his effort and placing it into making her happy. Neither of them own up to who it is, but there is a faint spark, somewhere in the darkness that they make together, that flickers someone’s happiness, a smile that neither choose to wear.
OOC: In which I learn that Sikeax has PTSD from her involvement in the age-old wraith plot.
Hobgoblin is a Leopard seal for the majority of the post, but if you want to write it out that he was seen leaping into the pond or seen running from the endless blue to the grove, then that time period he was in his wendigo form.
Also, probs not important, but Hobgoblin is using his magic(for the first time!!) to make the bubbles.
This is an open thread! Feel free to come in with whoever you choose.
The sun is a scorching weight against his back, but the call of the western ocean's breezes keeps him comfortable high in the sky. Ilaria's familiar weight is absent from his back, and his mind is quiet through distance and solitude. The wind whispers through his ears, long mane striking back against his withers and eyes hooded against the breaking of the air across his features. Silence is a rare commodity for a bonded equine, but he welcomes it with a wholeness that completes the aching emptiness in his breast. Gone. She's gone. Why did she go? Ilaria is not there to remind him of the better things, to draw his mind away from the turmoil of his gut-wrenching loss.
He cannot fault her for her independence, for she has never shown a real devotion to any divine being in his presence. And any herd would welcome his talented, kindhearted baby sister if they had any knowledge in their brains. But he had been under the foolish, naive impression that perhaps...she might have stayed. That they would grow old together beneath the sun. Disproving the disloyalty of their parents by remaining by one another's sides. He felt so conflicted, left behind with nothing but a gaping nothingness and a thousand unanswered questions. He wanted to hate her for abandoning him like everyone else had. But she was one of the few he'd never be able to really hate. The wind whistling in his ears is the distraction he needs from the furor and turmoil in his normally benign soul.
Without Ilaria, his wandering mind has no steering gale, a ship lost at sea with no lighthouse or harbor in sight. But he is not deaf to the world, and his cyclical thoughts dissolve with a familiar sound of parting water below. Verdant eyes sway between bent knees to investigate the disruption, singular angelic wing dipping beneath the currents to circle loosely above the sun-scorched earth. Cera is a creature of love and affection, and he thrives off the connection he holds with others. The bedraggled, but still beautifully familiar pale primrose bodice is unmistakable. He cannot stand to see her there, a beaten and defeated mass. He feels her loneliness and despair like a sympathetic weight in his chest. There is no doubt in the pious Prince's mind that he has been drawn here, to her, for a reason. He is always there to gentle her calloused hands, bandage and heal what she cannot do herself. Cera is no healer, but he will not leave her to this darkness that looms on her horizon. So engulfed in shadow she cannot even see the helping hand reaching through the light.
As he nears, dropping from the sky on quiet wings, his heart aches for his oldest friend. She is like a ragdoll, limply awaiting her next tormentor, prepared to be battered and bruised once more as her fraying seams give way quietly beneath her eroding spirit. He lands in a whisper of crackling, dried grass. It seems to croon and moan in the brittle wind, trying to speak to him in ominous resonance. But Cera has no time for omens and the natural energies of the earth, which he has always trusted. Not when Sikeax is crumpled and destitute before him, in need of his presence once more. Whatever fate has in store, Cera will not contest. His faith is unwavering, and while his own demons howl promisingly in the shadows (we are not gone, she is only a distraction, we will come for you) he is selfless in his desire to rebuild her once more.
Like a praying man at an altar he glides to his knees beside her fallen form. Even here she is quintessential, and he recalls the love he used to hold for her as a colt, when he had been too big in the knees and too shy to pursue her any further. Romanticism had faded into a dull, bleak canvas over the years. But as he gently positioned himself at her back, he recalled with quiet nostalgia the love he'd held for her. His only friend, the one who had explored and adventured with him when he had still believed the world was bright and painless. But they had drifted apart in time. And they only seemed to return to one another - magnets, searching for their polar north - when life had kicked them back down to the bottom of the pit. They were like lone wolves that came together to lick each other's wounds when they were injured, relishing the temporary sensation of pack and family.
Recalling her easily burned skin, Cera cast his wing across her body, shading her to the best of his ability. He ignored the burn in his radius bone, willing to sacrifice his comfort when she so clearly needed it more. "We need to stop meeting like this," he tried to joke, but even he could tell it fell a little flat. A little wrong. Sighing, the Prince dropped his muzzle to the spot just behind Sikeax's ear, wanting to comfort with physical touch if she as receptive to the motion. "What can I do, Sia?" Whatever she asked of him, he would do it. For her, he would. This was what they did. Propping one another up just enough to keep stumbling further down the glass-covered path, their bare feet bleeding and their hands clutched tight until the time their paths diverged once more.
well someday soon when the spring brings the sun
i'll sleep, i'll finally
feel better when the winter's gone
sikeax
Hobgoblin is desperate, and so is she. She is rolling her side in the husk of the tree, brushing bark against her burns and letting it dig into her frailty and cut away at it, coaxing free quiet tears that she feels like she doesn’t have the effort to push from her eyes. Death is welcomed with wide arms. She wants it, needs it, pleads with the Gods just to go ahead and get her away from how hard this life is because she feels as if she can’t do it anymore.
Hobgoblin pushes out the saddest song she’ll ever remember him making. Low notes hum out of his vocal cords as he sends her a wave, dipping his body into the lake deeper and twirling it so that the water ushers its way to her. He wants to comfort her and keep her safe, take the pain away and let her feel better, but Sikeax is stubborn in a lot of ways, definitely in the ways that she’ll never admit to her own defeat and how she won’t let many hold her when she obviously needs them most.
She needs to learn to trust, but that’s a difficult thing that she’s not ready for.
A sob chokes out of in the form of a long sigh. It hurts more than she lets him know. It touches everything in her that could feel a stitch of emotion: in the heart that weighs a million tons because it’s so full of love that she carelessly and willingly hands away to anyone that will take it(another thing that Sikeax is too stubborn to tell, but something Hobgoblin is willful to preach), in the burning of her throat where cries have cut microscopic wounds into, in the head that is heavy and sinking. She wants to die, and here before her is a means to do so, but life has a place for her, or maybe it’s picked a way to laugh at her. She can breathe in her death, and it’s what keeps her from it. “Not yet. Please, not today little snow flower in the sea.” it tells her, begging with her to stay in this world so that it can admire what makes Sikeax a strong soul.
It sends her one last plea, shapes it into the form of a boy in a man’s body who is the light in her darkness and her happiness, the one who she’s sure she loves more than she loves anyone else. Cera.
Hobgoblin’s familiarity with him is blurred. He only knows him as a face that she sometimes thinks about, on some occasions has searched out, something that she tells him he should care about because he means the world to her in the same way that Sikeax means the world to to Monster.
He accepts just because it is her. She is pitiful, and he is not one to love and comfort, stone-souled and blackhearted, murder minded and scripted to be ruthless.
So this is how when the boy comes to greet her, opening wings and dipping to hold her, that Hobgoblin is not snarling, and is instead tucking chin to neck in a greeting, humming softly as his body turns, sloshing the lightest bit of water possibly as he goes. He sinks into the abyss as he feels the hints of her heart warming, smile gradually finding its way to back to her.
Her happiness is an upwelling, a light in the dark, a hand reaching for her that she takes with so much fierceness and a grip that tells ‘I’ll never let go if you please won’t leave me because I need you now.’
His wing is enough to pull her back. She sinks into his warmth, his sweet smell that breathes life back into her, pushing her wet body into his dry one as she silently begs for him to draw his wing in tight and hold her like he'll never let go. His voice, oh how much she loves it, is all that she is sure she needs now.
He tucks a smile across her features at last, rubbing the same chin she had once so freely pushed into him on their first encounter into him. “I think maybe,” Happiness draws a weak warmth to her words as they flutter like butterfly wings, her heart doing the same at how nice and wonderful and reviving it is to have someone she loves and cares about so dearly to be holding her close, keeping her safe, taking away the pain. “we should meet more often. You’re always here exactly when I need you the most.”
She rises into his touch when it comes, shutting tired eyes away and simply melting into him. Bliss overcomes her. When was the last time that someone had so deeply cared for her and not scared her? When was it that she even felt that someone cared for her? Volterra was a being she was not completely close to, more bound to, but she could only guess he saw her as a woman who birthed his child and was raising more. Amara was a game of cat and mouse, one of wits and fear and taking risks and chances that kill her on the inside. Anyone else- Well, there really wasn’t anyone else. Cera had taken her loneliness in her hand and cured it, her lonely true friend in this place.
It all comes crashing back down within short moments. He offers her the world, the damn world with a handful of words and a nickname that she’s never loved more till it comes from his lips. She’s never felt this important to anyone, yet here he is, proving her worth with small things. She guesses he probably doesn’t even know it.
She isn’t sure what he can do. She thinks about asking him to take her back in time to when he enticed her with a description of a thing that she can never achieve and now haunts her(another thing ruined by Amara, the faint notice of how much the mare has scorned her), to when she swore she was in love with him.
And maybe she was. Cera has made her so important in this life with everything he has done. He saved her from death and in turn, she worked feverishly to do the same for him. He gave her comfort that no one else gave, a friendship for life.
But now, she’s not in love with him. Not that way. She loves him like he’s the world, her friend, very best friend in the whole world. “Would you stay with me? Talk to me? Tell me what I’ve missed in your life. We live so close to one another, but we never see each other enough. Just bring me back into your life and fill me in. You’re my best friend, and I love you so much.” Words she’s never said before. They feel like they weigh both the Sun and the Moon on her tongue and atop her lips when she says them. “You make me feel safe and happy with all that you do, and that’s all I really need right now.”
What a perfect thing he is to her. A miracle in the works, her personal star to wish upon and the ocean current that helps her get to her destinations when she pushes herself too far out into the depth of the sea, her anchor to hold her into living on, and most importantly, her best friend.
Whatever sign appears before her to encourage her to take up arms against the cruel injustice of the world, Cera would never assume it to be his own presence. He would go to her the moment she called him, still bore the faint scars of the proof of his dedication to her. But he was hesitant, fearing her disapproval, her rejection. The memory of her stoicism and dismissal of him, her truthful criticism of how he had failed her as a friend and fellow member of the Throat, would not abandon him so easily. Indecision was not born from his own bitterness towards her, but rather overly fearful that he would not be a comforting presence to her in this dark time, no matter how badly he desired to be. If only so he could lend her the strength to make it one more step, one more hour, one more day. Because while they never seemed to see enough of each other, Cera loved her deeply, and losing her would tear what little was left of his heart since Ranjiri had left.
Except she does not turn him away, this fragile buttercup of a beauty, as beautiful and delicate as the flower itself. Even her companion, the iniquitous creature Ilaria had become so enraged with, dipped a gentle greeting to the Prince that the Golden returned silently, watching him depart with a vague array of emotions. His main concern - his main priority - was Sikeax. She melts into him, as if the heat of his body does not bother her on this scorching day, as if he brings benediction through his very presence. And his heart aches but he cannot deny her, even if he believes her to be deluded to imagine he is anything so grand. If he can be her savior, then he has brought to grace one person more than Cera ever believed himself capable of doing.
His wing drops, instinctual, crowding her closer until the space between their skin no longer exists. He tucks her in like a child, curling his long body around her entirely as if to physically shield her from every dark, blackened thing that had ever hurt her or ever would. So close, he can hear the whisper of her exhalations as she speaks, the soft clack of her teeth as she enunciates her words. They all make up who she is, and he treasures them as if they were precious gems, for he basks in her rarity so little these days.
No matter how far down she has fallen her humor is unmistakable, and it is a measure of her strength that she is capable of it at all. Cera's smile is sad at the corners, in the dark crevices that acknowledge that this is no laughing matter, but he is smiling nonetheless. "Whatever the doctor prescribes," he teases, voice soft so he will not overwhelm or deafen her with how he has pressed himself indulgently against her. Hoping for union, to tuck her into the safe, sheltered space between his ribs where she may live and be loved forever. Unharmed. Capable of being the woman she always should have been, the one she is capable of becoming if fate would simply give her time to breathe.
But his regret is a stinging thing that lashes his tongue into motion, lips brushing idly against her cheek as they form words. "I wish I was here before then, so you would not have to need me." Cera would much rather her be happy continually than swoop in to rescue her from the ledge every time. Even if the thought of her not relying upon him for such an intimate, fragile thing was almost as agonizing as seeing her this way.
What she asks is so sadly simple, and Cera would never even think to deny her. And through it all she speaks what he has always felt, and he has no trouble letting his response fall from between his teeth before he fulfills her request. "I love you as well, Sia. And I always will. For forever and a day." He had loved her since foalhood, since the earliest shapes and shadows of his memories, and it would never change. Perhaps he did not love her romantically, did not feel his heart race with nerves and excitement when she smiled at him. But he loved her like bedrock, like gravity, like all things solid and eternal. It was a love made of comfort and shared loneliness, understanding and kinship. And nobody could tell him that the way he loved her was wrong.
"Whatever I can give you, I will." It's the last assurance he leaves her with before he softly clears his throat and begins to speak, unraveling a thread that spins like a spider's web, all the things she'd missed both big and small. Teaching his sister how to forge, working on the church with Maren, visiting the Edge as an ambassador and how proud he had felt, his conversation with Tembovu, his sister's departure, Ktulu seeking him out. Cera let it all spill forth, keeping his tone level and soft, hoping to ease her heart and envelop her in the easy story of his life. Try to keep her occupied and entertained long enough for her to muster the strength to stand. To rail against the world once more.
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