Eara Meraia

this little story about the House of Tainted times, Necrovion library was inspired by my real working place. Many things I describe in there are real experiences, altered and adapted to MD. So all thanks to my beloved library :) Apologies to all those who dislike long posts and to those who are into perfect english grammar. As for the rest - I hope you will have fun with it. [spoiler] You turn the key in an old heavy iron door. You hear a squeaking sound when you try to make a turn, so that you start doubting that you can even open it. You push the key a little more and it turns with a click. You make one step behind and push the huge door with your both hands. The door obeys, opens with a loud sound and you do your best to see something in that complete darkness of the room in front of you. Nothing. You feel heavy dark and dry air coming out of the House of Tainted Times on your cheeks, you can smell a weird odour of old paper, leather and something else, yet intangible in your nostrils and you decide to come in. Yes, this place is truly a part of Necrovion. You are getting more and more curious and decide to step in, ignoring your fear. You light a lantern, take a deep breath and step inside. Suddenly the heavy door swiftly closes behind you with a loud noise. Your lantern light vanishes. “Great”, you think, trying to get used to the darkness instead of being taken away by panic which grows somewhere inside of your soul. After a while your eyes get used to the darkness of the place and you make a few steps, bumping into a low table standing just in front of you. Instinctively you start searching for matches on the table and oh, happiness you find a little flashlight! You turn it on immediately and breathe out with relief. You look around and can’t help being impressed by the view. Hundreds and hundreds of book shelves, full of books big and small surround you. You smile; realizing how stupid was that to hope to find candles or matches here. Fire is its place biggest enemy, it’s obvious. There are no windows in this place and you wonder how the air stays relatively fresh. You raise your head and see little holes in the stone ceiling made…yes…deliberately made for ventilation, a creation of some very smart architect, or, maybe, magic? Oh yes, one can easily believe that this place is full of magic. This is strikingly silent, just as it is strikingly dark and yet… you hear voices, like whispers coming from each and every corner. You freak out realizing that fact, but calm down thinking “if they wanted to kill me, they would have done it long time ago”. Maybe there is some mechanic device that produces all those whispers or maybe you’re just overwhelmed and they are solely produced by your brain. You decide to take a closer look at the books. In the end there’s not much else to see in here… First shelves seem to contain books which are relatively new. You wonder – how can it be? This place hasn’t been entered for years it seems! Years…you notice this word doesn’t mean much in the place like this, just as other time relations. Time stopped. You notice that some shelves have been left empty at the end of the row and you smile realizing that it is meant for books that are still to be written. You pick one of the books from the shelf which is closest to you, reading aloud “H.P.Lovecraft…Necronomicon”. The whispers suddenly getting louder and you realize they come out of the book. Instinctively you shut the book. Whispers disappear…you feel relieved. The name of the book’s author doesn’t say much to you, but the name seems fitting. You smile and continue going deeper and deeper, occasionally reading names on the books, not daring to touch them anymore. Jung, Freud, Nitzsche, Mesmer, Kardec…names names and more names and you wonder who all those people are. You keep on walking deeper and you notice that books appearance changes – they are getting thicker and thicker. Their cover is no more paper but some kind of brownish-grey and sometimes colorless leather. Names of those books are written with ink, with nice handwriting and can barely be seen in the light of your flashlight. You slowly overcome your fear. You stop and pick one of those books. You open it a little bit and take a pick inside. Suddenly the book opens widely and whispers fill your head repeating “Voynich”. You don’t close the book this time but continue looking inside while the pages slowly turn on their own, letting you see beautiful pictures of various plants and symbols, made by some skilled hand. Though you fail to read the text, since the language looks unknown…The book closes and you put it back to the shelf. You are impressed. All those pictures are still wandering around your head and cannot get rid of them…and don’t want to. But you start moving again. You notice that after some time books change into scrolls of paper and leather, looking so ancient that you don’t dare to touch them, since you think they fall apart into dust immediately. You wonder what is in the end of this long row of books… You keep walking and walking and you don’t really know how much time passed already – hours, weeks, years? Suddenly your flashlight starts to flicker. You curse. No, please, not now! But it’s too late. The little lamp gives away the tiny little ray of light and dies. You stand in a complete darkness. What now? You decide to keep going the same direction following book shelves, hoping that there is some kind of door in the end. Wait book shelves? You feel around for books hoping to use the shelf as a guide or maybe even take one of those books with you to study it later, but you find nothing. No books, no shelves, only a bare stone wall, darkness and silence. You scream, but the next moment, you realize that screaming is absolutely useless in the place like this. Your echo screams back at you and you continue walking. After some time you suddenly see the ray of light in the end of the tunnel, full of joy and happiness you run to it and with all your strength you push the door, which is surprisingly not closed. It opens widely and you fall out of the tunnel into a soft grass. Blinded by a striking sunlight, overwhelmed by the amount of oxygen streaming into your lungs you faint. The last thing you remember is the sound of a door shutting behind your back. [/spoiler]

for a young player like you, Witty, TS is a nice creature and very helpful, I wouldnt sell it :P If you need silver so badly - find me ingame. Sir Blut, I gladly take your tormented soul if you don't want it.

I am in. what time on 20th are you going to start? I might be off until the evening, would to know how much do I miss.

this is an interesting...change. hope we will be able to talk soon.

first of all - thanks a lot to everyone for submitting their songs in time and also apologies for a little delay on my side. Each of you (participants) got a forum pm from me now with a song about your character. Please judge it carefully according to the instructions in the pm and send me the results as soon as possible. The faster we get the result - the faster we can publish them on forum and distribute rewards. 2 players failed to submit the song, so some of you unfortunatelly will not get anything to judge. Sorry for that.

I took this picture in MY grandmas house, dst...do I maybe know you? :D

definitelly cats. why? because they are awesome and they RULE! here is a picture of one of mine...in the process of rulling :D

all participants received their tasks. I am looking forward to see your answers! As I promised some final update for the reward list and..something else.. Updated final list of rewards: Place 1: melodic charm, imperial aramor, 3 GC Place 2: 2GC, imperial aramor, toadspeak stone, mirrorritual stone, teleportpapercabin stone Place 3: 1 GC, toadspeakstone, mirroritual stone ATTENTION: players who get to places 2 – 4 have a chance to win the second melodic charm! For that they will have to participate in the second round of the challenge with a quite difficult task to fulfill (which will be the same task for each of them and the same kind of task they had in the first round. The exact details about the second round challenge will be announced after the first round results are published). If somebody of those who got rank 2-4 refuses to participate in the second round, the player of the rank 5 will have a chance to do so.

happy birthday Friend. send you best possible vibrations!

this idea defintelly belongs to the category of useless stuff I don't care about. If it is useful in your eyes, doesn't mean it is useful for others or useful in general.

red of course

registration period ended. Thanks everyone. You will get your tasks (and some further details about rewards..and something else) on Monday 1.09. Have a nice weekend.

the killer wanted murs exclusive bones for a bone collection killer wanted a nice company on the cemetery

1. he killed mur to get rid of a slavemaster 2. he killed mur to be able to build the world of his own 3. he killed mur to look whats inside :P

wanted to see if MD still exists when Mur is dead.

maybe just click on "who's online"?

thank you for those volunteering to participate. BUT this is very important announcement for me personally: please do sign up for the quest ONLY if you really want to participate, NOT to reach the number of participants. WHY? If you register and be a part of a draw, but NOT submit your entry, this will mess up all results and somebody will get no song!!! So, if you are NOT going to submit anything or if you are going to find ANY song, without giving it a proper thought, please, ABSTAIN from registering. I want this quest to be FUN for everyone in the first row and not a reward hunting. I will be happy if we get over 20, but those people should really be interested in the quest, otherwise it makes no sense at all. Thank you for your understanding. NOTE: not knowing the person is a part of a challenge. It is clear that you might get somebody who you don't know well. The art of winning this challenge includes gathering of information or even (as an example) secretly approaching a person to get to know more. MD is about communication and information and most of you are very skilled in it.

honestly, I will not have time (and no motivation) to check for each song when was it posted and when lyrics made etc. Even if it will be the case for one or two of them. I think that the pool of englishspeaking songs is big enough to fulfil the task, so please stick to it.

consider dsts argument very good and since I had a toothache with the subtitles thing myself as well, I state that only songs with english lyrics are allowed. Sorry for all those folks who like songs with their native language lyrics, but official language of MD is English, and so should it be in the quest.

the song with english subtitles provided will be accepted. Though I think you will agree with me that a song loses a lot of its charme if you don't understand it in its original language. So I would not recommend this option. updated the original post again.

updated the reward list!

I think it should be in English to avoid language barriers and inconveniences.

This is meant to be a little in between entertainment for those who enjoy music of all kinds. In this tiny quest you have a chance to be both – participant and a judge at once. You have to be able to think musically and know a couple of songs to fulfill the task. How does it work? Sign in in this thread (until Aug. 29, 23:59 ST) Get a randomly assigned person (from the pool of people who are also participating) After you found out the name of that person (name must be kept in secret) you have exactly 1 week of time (Sept. 1 - Sept 8.) to find a song that characterizes this person best of all (we are talking about MD characters, not real people!). Both music and lyrics will be counted. During the week you send me the link with the song and a short paragraph (up to 150 words) explaining why this particular song matches the person so well. The song and explanation will be forwarded to a person and 2 more judges, who will decide how much does your song matches the character. (judges will have a number of criteria) You will have to judge a song and a passage somebody else (persons name will be hidden until the end of the quest) wrote about you. After all judges and participants made up their minds the scores will be counted and the winner announced. You have to be ready that both - songs and explanations are to be posted on forum for amusement of the rest of the audience. Songs should be in English language. Updated final list of rewards: Place 1: melodic charm, imperial aramor, 3 GC Place 2: 2GC, imperial aramor, toadspeak stone, mirrorritual stone, teleportpapercabin stone Place 3: 1 GC, toadspeakstone, mirroritual stone ATTENTION: players who get to places 2 – 4 have a chance to win the second melodic charm! For that they will have to participate in the second round of the challenge with a quite difficult task to fulfill (which will be the same task for each of them and the same kind of task they had in the first round. The exact details about the second round challenge will be announced after the first round results are published). If somebody of those who got rank 2-4 refuses to participate in the second round, the player of the rank 5 will have a chance to do so. Final list of participants Lania dst Aeoshattr Rophs rikstar Sir Blut AmberRune JadenDew lashtal Intrigue Marvolo Menhir Lazarus Ars Alchemy Assira Valoryn Princ Rhaegar darkraptor Eagle Eye Change Krioni powle