<div style="text-align: center;"><span style="text-decoration: underline"><span style="font-weight: bold">[Introduction]</span><br/></span></div><br/>Hello, I'm Rare. The plot of this role play is loosely developed and is meant as a way of sorts to ease myself back into the roleplaying style.<br/><br/><br/><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-weight: bold"><span style="text-decoration: underline">[Watchers of the World Plot]</span></span></div><br/>This roleplay was intended to be artistic and not completely plot driven. Thus, I left the plot to be as broad as possible to encourage spontaneous plot and world development.<br/><br/>What we know ; Winter is cold and cruel, and our story finds itself settled in the peak of the cold season. Beautiful nightmarish animals claim land in this fantasy world where magic survives and humans are endangered. In the depths of the mountain wood, a shift in balance and order that harbor secrets could change everything.<br/><br/><br/><br/><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="text-decoration: underline"><span style="font-weight: bold">[Rules]</span><br/></span></div><br/>Please post more than one line and allow room for other to respond accordingly.<br/><br/>Please be somewhat descriptive in your posts!<br/><br/>Feel free to add things to the world or plot through your roleplaying that you see fit.<br/><br/>If you join the roleplay, please make an attempt to stay within it (as opposed to dropping out half-way through).<br/><br/>If you wish to drop out/need to, please let me know (mailing or posting here in an OOC message) that you are doing so.<br/><br/>Don't post character sheets! Describe your character in your first post.<br/><br/>Even though my character is a gryphon, you may roleplay as something different.<br/><br/>You can roleplay as many characters as you can properly manage.<br/><br/>You can roleplay as either mystical creatures or non-mystical.<br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><br/><span style="font-size: 150%; line-height: 116%;"><div style="text-align: center;">[WOTM Part One - Awakening]</div><br/></span><br/>Pines vaulted from the frozen ground into equally cold, black skies like towers trembling in the wind, their silhouettes dark against the heavy storm clouds that bruised purple and swelled against the bitter winds, allowing little of the dying moonlight to abet any travelers that entered the woodland. The bereavement streams cried against the chill that froze their waters, ice splintering where the waters fought and pushed through currents, the turbulence echoing through the timber, cutting through the thick silence of the seemingly dead, overgrown forest.<br/><br/>But there was life in this world, strange and twisted creatures, cruel or compassionate, terrible or merciful, and just as sun was reaching out with her long, warming fingers through crooks in the trees and groves int he mountains, dull with cold and fatigue, two cobalt eyes contemplated the horizon.<br/><br/>The creature watched silently, the strong build of her body rested comfortably in the thick snow as the faint glow of the rising sun allowed light to blink wildly between glaciated branches as they danced against the merciless breath of winter, and reflect brilliantly into the creatures gaze. The wind left ghostly touches upon her pallid coat, ashen and bedraggled from living hard, disheveled years of unenlightened solitude. Feathers that blanketed the foremost of her body quivered above tightly contrived muscle as she trembled, her hindquarters warm with clouded fur that smoothed along her sleek frame in brilliant hues of gray. Wings stretched, and the gryphon known to few as Marlena was awakened once more.