Application
OOC
Minecraft Username: Junyad
Are you at least 18 years old?: Yes
Have you read the rules? (Link): Yes
(Optional) Were you referred by someone? If so, who: thiefclass
(Optional) Introduce yourself if you’d like, as well as any creations you want to share (e.g. art, builds, skins): –
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In-Character
Read the following prompt:
The rhythmic lull of hoofbeats are a marching drum to the small group of pioneers and variety of folk you have found yourself amongst, packed into a wobbling wagon. The rolling plains of the Southern Reach and a clear sky stretch out all around you, the buzz of excited chatter a dull wash in your ears as your mind strays to your former life and what has led you here to new lands.
“Nervous?”
You blink, returning to the present moment. A kindly older woman sat near you is smiling warmly with a crinkle to her eyes.
“I can tell it’s your first time. Still remember mine,” she flashes a grin and leans in.
“Tell me my dear, why have you come to the Reach?”
How do you respond (in character)? (150 words minimum - please make sure to include some references to our lore in your response!)
The sly fox had ambushed Wichita the very minute she’d set the scroll upon her lap to enjoy the view. A minute was long enough to appreciate her new home but not long enough to get wistful at what was left behind. Up until then, Wichita’s latest invention had engrossed her - enough that she’d looked like a chicken feeding on ink - and the old woman just couldn’t get a word edgewise over the parchment. That’s not because Wichita was shy or preferred solitude. If there’s one thing that Wichita loved more than invention and tinkering, it was the taste of Walljack boysenberry pie when you’re nursing a hangover the morning after one of those rare, notorious parties. A close third was talking about herself and her latest contraptions among newcomers and peers alike, so she let the old woman and everyone in earshot have it.
“Well, you look out there and tell me that ain’t reason enough.”
She held down the schematic with her right arm and gestured broadly to the landscape with her left.
“You can’t look at those rolling hills on a day like this and tell me that ain’t picturesque as a painting and untamed as a Falstoner’s mane. If you’d told me otherwise, I’d say you’re blowing smoke. Guess I’m not used to seeing hills and mountains miles away; you don’t get that in the swamps or the Midlands’ forests. I can see why this wagon’s as packed as my Ma’s larder now.”
She let her arm hang over the wagon as she continued.
“It’s a wild, wild frontier out there, and like butter to bread that attracts the adventurous, the audacious, and the visionaries. Those are my kind of folks.”
Wichita jabbed a thumb to her chest to punctuate the line.
“I’m an inventress by trade, and you won’t find a better inventress in the Valkian Realms. Sure, you’ll find plenty of good smiths and tinkerers plying their trade, but they’re all content suckling the Crowns of Valkian commerce and never innovating. And the traders out there are too scared to invest in my genius. I don’t have a place back there, but out here there are new problems to stare down and like-minded people looking to deal with them. Like…”
She looked down to the scroll and flashed a grin, nearly knocking over the ink vial in her haste as she went to unfurl it.
“You remember when we were stopped along the trail by that fallen tree, right? Folks had to bring out the axes, chop it into bits, and heave it away? Well, take a look at this!”
The scroll unfurled across the wagon before settling at the boots of the man slumbering across from Wichita. The scroll’s latest schematic was illegible. Not only did the unconventional diagrams and Creole footnotes follow no guild standards, meaning well-practiced blacksmiths and tinkerers would have trouble enough parsing through it, but the wobbling wagon had caused the pen’s ink to zig-zag and bump across the parchment where there ought to be straight lines.
The cumbersome device presented in the schematic was a bladed wheel with some sort of cranking mechanism attached to its axel, perhaps more likely to cut a limb than a tree’s branch. Unknown to Wichita, within a week’s time this device would join the dozens of half-baked failures that never even made it to testing - set aside for some other device that captured her imagination - yet in the present she enthusiastically explained its design and how it would make tree-felling and demolition so much easier, if she could just figure out this and that.
“When my masterpieces are crafted and sold from The Spire, everyone back in the Realms will wish they’d taken the wagon with me.”
I’ll make you proud, Ma.
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Character Name: Wichita Widget
Character Race: Human (Walljack)
Character Age: 26
Brief Physical Description:
Wichita is a younger woman with plain facial features, a crooked nose, and a streak of black soot or ink under her eyes where she’s rubbed them. Her lean figure appears to run more on alcohol and self-confidence than grain and meat. The scroll cases and common tools on her hips dully knock against one another when she walks. Her brown and white laborers’ clothing is clean and neat in contrast to her dirtied kerchief and muddied Walljack rawhide boots.
