Welcome to the final recruitment and official founding thread for the Marrowbound Kingdom!

@Eythan @Aeroth @Felina @Vianne @Xerxes
Also open to anyone looking to join last-minute!
This thread will remain open until Groups reopen officially across the board.
There's no post order, just to keep things moving; but please don't double-post!

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Marrowbound Kingdom

#040302 | #80693d
Carni; Tunetur - Eythan; Consilium
Yuma; Magis - Xerxes; Virtus - Vianne; Auget - Felina; Ingenii

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He had flown through the caves all morning, yelling like an idiot.

"CANIS RISES! JOIN ITS RANKS! THE KINGDOM OF BONES LIVES AGAIN!"

His throat was sore, wings tired, by the time he'd arrived back in Canis, landing on a central perch of bone. He would wait there, wait until those he'd recruited or those who'd heed his calling came to see what all the fuss was about. Oh, wait, there was the matter of Eythan, still. He'd have to be present, and he couldn't hold the meeting so close to the new gemlings.

He fluttered over to where he'd last left Eythan and prodded the sleeping leopard cross.

"I've called a gathering. You should attend." The hybrid only rumbled back at him and the smaller brother frowned. "Try to listen in, then. I hope you'll be more affable once you're healed." He scolded, but in a gentle, patient manner. He turned back and hoisted himself back to his perch. It was close enough. If he changed his mind or not, Eythan would be able to overhear if Carni remembered to speak up.

So he sat, regal in his crown of bones- but notably absent of the old cloak- upon his bone perch, waiting for the first of his kingdom's people to finally, at long last, arrive home once more.

Yuma A bleached white deer skull, filled with salvaged black goop, eye sockets burning with a flame that fed on the matter within, surrounded by yet another configuration of the same five rat corpses he'd used for the last ten projects... The small aye aye's face was dimly lit by the flickering flame from within one of the darker crevices of the cave. In his right paw he held a grub that had wandered too close to the smell of rotting flesh and his other hand, blackened by scooping the tar-like substance into the skull, was occupied holding his head up in boredom. CANIS RISES! JOIN ITS RANKS! There was that strange winged cat-thing again, yelling at no one in particular like a madman. Another bite of grub, another twinge of hunger pain diminished from inside his form. How did anyone stand it in here? Was he so odd to notice just how little there was to do? The cave had been interesting enough at first as he had found novel ways to kill and unique ways to use the bodies, but most of the talking ones didn't even do that! Of course they probably weren't even aware of the monotony. Talking ones, non-talking ones, every single thing in the cave except for him was probably an automation of some sort. At least that was the only good explanation he'd been able to come up with. They might look like they have thought and feelings and free will, but in the end it was just a ruse. If he punctures skin would they not all react the same way? Even if that were false it didn't really matter. Should they be creatures of actual thoughts and feelings that wouldn't change that fact that their minds were completely alien to him. He was alone in a world that had lost all its charm. CANIS RISES! JOIN ITS RANKS! Actually... Perhaps he was alone. Perhaps the small amusements his early days had afforded him had faded into dust. Perhaps he would always have to exist in this perditious state. That didn't mean that he had to give up completely on finding an anathema to his boredom. The others existed; the others acted as though actions actually meant anything at all. What would happen if he pretended to be one of them? To act only on inputs, spit out only the expected outputs, to perform tasks with the goal of finding the machinery of their action? It was a useless pursuit, but how much more useless was it than creating art? A new emotion beat at the edges of Yuma's mind, a sensation he hadn't even considered for cycles upon cycles. Interest, intrigue, excitement! This was something new! Something that could hold his attention, if only for a while. Emulate and observe the others. See how much happiness he could make them display. See how their emotions worked and how they could be manipulated reliably. If he got too bored he could always move on to a different talking creature and either kill or abandon the old one. With a start Yuma threw the last of his grub into the deer's flaming eye and jumped up to emerge into the lit portion of the cave, a black stain on the left side of his face from the tar. There! In the distance he could see the cat-thing land. They would be the first he would observe, the first he would follow. It took a long while with his miniscule body, but eventually Yuma made it to the base of what was to be a gathering spot for this new group. "Canis rises." he parroted in what he assumed to be a respectful tone, bowing briefly before looking up with unblinking red eyes and a much-too-wide smile, "And with it rise its denizens."

Tags: @Carni

"CANIS RISES! JOIN ITS RANKS! THE KINGDOM OF BONES LIVES AGAIN!"

Felina was stalking a squirrel for her next meal. She was just about to pounce on
him. The loud voice, however, spooked the bushy-tailed rodent. He scampered away, eluding Felina's unsheathed claws.

She huffed softly, as if sighing over her loss. "I may as well check out where the voice came from. Maybe I'll find something to eat while I head over there."

Felina started walking, following the voice's source. It took quite a while, but the runty female bobcat finally arrived in Canis. As if she wasn't already very hungry, the bones scattered all over made her empty stomach growl louder.

She looked around. Her eyes took in all the piles of bones. At the moment, she couldn't spot the hybrid standing so far above her.

The eerie tableau made her quite anxious. She couldn't find where the voice came from. Was it better to leave...or stay there a bit longer?

@carni, @yuma

Vianne lifted her head upon hearing a call. She recognized the voice - it was one she had heard not long ago. She rose, having been lying down, and carefully picked her way towards Canis. She entered the area, the place full of bones. She didn't let the sight faze her, and continued, walking carefully so as not to trip.

She saw Carni, settling upon a perch made of bones. She walked closer and sat at a place nearby, looking up. She didn't see many nearby. Was she early? How many were there going to be? Movement out of the corner of her eye alerted her, and she calmly turned her head, seeing a small cat looking around. She decided not to approach - not yet. If she still seemed lost, she'd help. If Carni didn't speak first. She turned her attention back to him.

@Carni

First to appear wasn't someone he'd been expecting. The strange little corpse-ripper from when he'd first met Aeroth. The female feline had scolded the small oddity. Carni regarded it as misguided and curious. Certainly evil didn't breed itself.

"May we rise to great heights together." He responded, sounding regal as he regarded the strange new recruit. Mm... bone keeper, perhaps.

Next to arrive was Felina, who had trouble spotting him. He whistled with a birdish voice down to her, going so far as to shake a feather free, so that it fell in front of her.

"I'm glad you've come. Welcome!" He greeted her, in turn.

Next came Vianne. This doe had been a welcome new friend, so her appearance sparked a burst of relieved excitement in the small hybrid, who seemed to brighten at her arrival.

"Vianne, welcome!" He regarded the three gathered with a swelling pride and swung his tail back and forth in his bristling anticipation. "Welcome home, those who'll stay this day forward, and to those who'll choose to leave, all the same. Welcome to Canis." He spread his wings and stood on hind legs to gesture to the cave they sat in the mouth of. Beyond him, the bone beds had been cleaned and sorted, catacombs of tidied fossils of times long past.

@Yuma @Felina @Vianne

Yuma As Yuma stood there, hands just inches off the ground in the remains of his bow, more creatures approached. First a cat, large to him but paling in comparison to most of the cats he'd seen about. Soft noises could be heard from within its body, similar to the sounds that pain made from inside his own. Talking ones expressed not liking pain, even if it was just another sensation like hot or cold. Perhaps later he would kill something small to offer as a gift. Cats really liked eating dead things with bones... except for that one cat he'd met before, they seemed like they did eat bone creatures but didn't want to eat right then. Next approached a deer, a non-talking one perhaps? Such a strange occurrence, but perhaps to the living-things here the winged cat's call had been mesmerizing. The deer had probably brought itself here to offer its flesh to the cat-king and go back into the void of nonexistence. The aye aye would have to watch, see how a siren's-voice cat took down its prey. See! Already things were getting interesting. Lowering down into a crouched sitting position Yuma waited. And waited. The cat wasn't making a move? Was it waiting for more deer to come? When the creature did act it was not to bear down the weight of death but rather to... greet the deer? Vianne, it seemed, must have been talking deer like the young master of the mosses had been. He'd played around with humoring a talking deer before but never kept one under observation for very long. Yet another subject for his attention! Oh! More speeches. The aye aye's gaze stayed fixated now on their host, remembering to blink once every few beats in an attempt to look more like the talking automations. From what he could gather from the words Canis was now to become a prison to them, and should they escape they would win the game and not be hunted down. He'd spent most of his life in this chamber so that wasn't much of anything different, but it could be fun every once in a while to try to sneak out. He said nothing in response but simply looked from one audience member to the next to the speaker with split intensity and interest.

Tags: @Felina @Vianne @Carni

((Pardon the deer jab, Zev. Yuma is... not the brightest star in the sky))

Aeroth grumbled as she shifted, shaking bones off of her coat as she scrambled up the stack of bones clumsily. Looking up at Carni with a tired scowl. "What in the name of the caves are you yabbering on about Carni? 'Canis rises.' 'The kingdom of bones lives again?' I mean I'm curious but what are you talking about at all?" She yawned and shook her head, looking up at the white hybrid as she stretched and laid down, head facing uphill as she stretched out along the side of the pile, facing him and looking up into his eyes. "At least if you have some grand master plan you haven't told me about it." She also looked down at the little aye-aye further down the hill, giving a slight growl "There's something about him I don't like.." but she turned back to Carni, deciding to just let things play out.
"Speech"
"Thoughts"
Tags: @Carni @Yuma @Vianne @Felina
Notes:

Vianne smiled lightly as Carni greeted her. She nodded in response back, not wanting to speak, much less yell so he would even hear her. She listened as he continued to speak, looking around at the other gembound. One, a small, white creature, was looking around at them all, gaze flitting from one to the next. It unnerved her slightly, though she paid it little attention and continued looking around.

Someone was speaking, and she turned her attention to them. She seemed to have approached late, only just getting here. Flicking an ear as they finished talking, she turned her attention back to Carni to see if he would speak more. Her curiosity was piqued, though she at least had some idea of what this was.

@Carni @Yuma @Felina @Aeroth

Yawning awake, he cursed serendipity yet again for not being in his favor. Good fortune was one of life's greatest desires, but fate was a fickle creature. Eythan's pelvis had healed over the past few weeks, but the soreness of breaking it and being bedridden for weeks was persistent. Shrugging great wings, the gryphon hobbled out of the den and into the light, blinking blearily. His beak cracked open in a small tch! as his legs buckled slightly over a pile of bones. Pathetic and disdainful of the renaissance as he was, he had to represent alongside his brother—who was blessedly free of that cloak. He made a slight note to later give that thing a proper burial.

When he did, maybe he would bury their festering grief, too.

Rising sloppily on heavy wings, the rosetted hybrid scrabbled up and onto the perch. He fell into place alongside his brother, brushing uncomfortably against his pale white shoulder. "Wow, everyone and their dog's here," he grumbled, a sad attempt at good-natured humor.

Xerxes spent his morning hunting through the tunnels surrounding Eridanus and the cave itself, gorging himself on the lesser gembounds while he could. He promised himself to the Marrowbound and wouldn't - shouldn't stray too far from Canis, but here he was, prowling through the trees like the hunter he was.

He caught himself a cave deer rather early on in his hunt and it made it rather easy for him to fill his belly. Just moments later, a familiar voice rang through the tunnel nearby and soon into the cave and overhead -

"CANIS RISES! JOIN ITS RANKS! THE KINGDOM OF BONES LIVES AGAIN!"
Xerxes looked up in time to see a glimpse of the white hybrid flying overhead in between the leaves and branches of the jungle trees. He knew others would gather soon, but he was already here in Eridanus where there was plenty of food. He paused, looking down at his meal, then around the cave. Gorging himself on the remaining bits of his own deer, he decided to hunt another as quickly as possible. There was no way of knowing if there would only be carnivores at this meeting, but Carni and Eythan would at least appreciate the offering. With a strip of the hide, he could at least also bring back some berries or grasses should he find some.

It took some time to find another deer however, and Xerxes was about to give up and just head for the meeting empty handed and give some kind of explanation as to why he was so late... but he heard something in the grass a few yards ahead of him. Lowering his body and creeping forward, he saw the cave deer just a pounce or two away now.

Leaping at the deer, he swiped at it and got it down easily without much of a chase. It was small enough to heave over his back and carry back thankfully, especially if he was able to find some berries.

Searching for those didn't take long either. He didn't know much about them, but they looked friendly enough and he hoped they weren't poisonous. Ripping a chunk of flesh from the deer, stripping it away from the muscle, he inverted it and used the pelt side to place the berries he gathered. He made sure to gather plenty, although it was hard with large paws and no opposable thumbs.

Finally, he swung the deer over his back and gathered the collection of berries and began the trip back to Canis. The deer wasn't too heavy, but to avoid it slipping off, he had to be careful and walk slower than normal. By the time he arrived, others had gathered and even Eythan himself sat at Carnis side.

Walking right up to the King and brother themselves, he shrugged the carcass off and placed the berries down beside it.

"Forgive my tardiness. I was hunting when you called and figured it'd be rude to not bring food for everyone." He dipped his head slightly towards Carni and Eythan before stepping back and taking his place near the front.