Survivors of a Lost Holt

We're a Holt that has been around since 2004 and we're still alive and kicking!

The above banner leads you to our forum. We've been on hiatus for a long time, but we seem to slowly be getting back to an active phase

This Holt focuses on the remains of a Wolfrider tribe (formerly called Tall Tree Holt), who are fleeing from an attack by the trolls that live next to their old Holt. During their travels they've run across a few other elves who've joined the group.

Our elves' goal? To survive, to free their kin who were captures by the trolls and hopefully to find a new Holt to call their own.

The Story So Far

The Tall Tree Holt was a peaceful home of elves for several generation that sadly is no more. The elves there found a stone, fallen from the sky, they believed to be magical and brought it back to the Holt. Inventive as they were they named it "The Stone from the Sky".

The nearby trolls, allies who'd begun to distrust the elves as more and more magic users were born, were none too happy about this. Combined with the quite recent birth of the tribe's first Metal-Shaper, this was the last straw for the trolls. When they couldn't trade for the Stone they broke all contact with the elves and retreated into their mountain.

They didn't stay there for long though. One evening, just before sunset, they attacked the Holt. Many elves lost their lives and many magic users were captured, taken into slavery by the trolls. But some managed to escape. They were the revenge hungry Bloodmane; the soul siblings Branchwalker and Dawngazer; Brighteyes, son of the dead chief; the brothers Childwolf and Lizardstalker; the sisters Cloudbird and Eveningsky; Eclipse, the loner; the huntress Silvereyes and her father Greyspear, an elder who was very close to the chief; Squirrel with her two children Quicksand and Redstreak.

A mere third of the once large Holt, wolves and all.

With escape and search for safety as their main goal they fled the Holt, which had been set aflame by the trolls. Greyspear, as the eldest, took the lead, Brighteyes being far too young to take on the role of chief. Both luck and misfortune followed them. They met a wanderer named Riv, a youth with a somewhat violent attitude. They also found more of the kin; One-Edge and Longsong, a Recognized pair grieving over the loss of their young son. Young Eveninglight also proved to still be alive and free.

But the trolls hadn't given up. A small scouting party caught up with the survivors. Some elves were injured in the resulting brawl, but all are believed to have escaped alive. After the ambush the elves were split up. Brighteyes, Cloudbird, Eclipse, Greyspear, Eveninglight, Eveningsky, Redstreak and Squirrel were nowhere to be found. Wounded and exhausted the survivors could do nothing but hide from the trolls and grieve once more. Some joy was found in the appearance of a new wanderer, Sunsleaf.

Then came the question: what do we do now?

Dawngazer and Longsong, inspired by the newcomers, remembered old stories of a group of bird-blooded elves that once were part of the Tall Tree Holt.

Dawngazer therefore suggested to seek out other elves and ask for assistance and to be especially eyes-high for the bird-bloods. Old family was still family - the could possibly be more inclined to help and there was that half forgotten ledgend of them possessing a powerful magical object...

Thus the group set out onto the Plains. There they finally found some decent prey: longrunners (horses). After another moon on the run they met two more strangers, BrightStar and ClearIce, two brothers from much colder lands.

They offered to share their shelter and although hesitant at first the survivors accepted. After Dawngazer explained to them how the Tall Tree Holt had burned, BrightStar and ClearIce asked to join them.

Although the first day at the shelter started out somewhat tense, the mood lightened after a while. Even the bonds, different as they were, came to some sort of agreement of peace.

The next night, refreshed from sleeping in warm furs and sheltered from the harsh winds of the plains, the survivors split up to get more food, as well as tools. Bloodmane and Sunsleaf took it upon themselves to gather useful herbs and something to make baskets of. ClearIce went fishing. The rest of the group went hunting for more longrunners.

One-Edge and Childwolf, because of their injuries, stayed in the shelter together with Longsong and Treebreeze to watch the cubs.

The hunters found a herd of longrunners. Everything seemed to be going fine, but panic suddenly broke out among the prey, as if they were being chased by something.

Not wanting to lose their prey the hunters still tried to take down as many longrunners as they could, while avoiding being trampled. Still, Riv ended up with a longrunner falling on him, BrightStar broke a few ribs and Eveninglight fell into a deep hole in the ground - a trap made to capture longrunners.

Meanwhile, back at the shelter, Bloodmane and Sunsleaf return to hear quite a story from the cubsitters. Not long after the others had left Longsong had begun telling the cubs a story. Just about halfway through a sound of stone hitting stone and two hurried footsteps could be heard outside. But only two.

They got no reply to their sendings. One-Edge went outside to get a closer look, finding a small, blue crystal obviously shaped by magic, as well as the scent of an unknown elf. One-Edge gave the crystal to Longsong for safe-keeping and went to follow the tracks of the stranger.

Back with the hunters, what had scared the longrunners proved to be other elves. A hunting party from The Children of the Oaks had been after the same herd as the survivors and the resulting chaos made an enemy out of the strangers' hunt leader, Claw.

After some hesitation and injuries the survivors accepted the strangers' offer to follow them back to their big camp - a gathering of all the Children's small tribes, called 'Branches' for a huge celebration they called the New Turn Feast.

In their hunting camp the survivors found Eclipse, who seemed quite at home with the Children and greeted his tribe mates with lukewarm interest.

The Feast was unlike anything the survivors had seen before in their lives. So many elves in the same place, so much noise and music and a to top it off, a huge bonfire in the middle. Some were overwhelmed, others delighted.

The Children of the Oaks proved to be friendly and fairly used to visiting elves...excepted none of them had ever heard of a bond-friend before. This resulted in some supicion and one crisis, when the pack's leading female wolf Softpaws decided to give birth in one of the food storage tents.

Other happy surprises were also in store. First Haze and Redstreak found their way back, half starved and thristy. Greyspear and Squirrel caught up with their kin, together with the stranger Sureshot. Soon after them Gale, who hadn't been seen since the first troll attack, also proved to be alive and kicking.

The reunion wasn't all good though. Sureshot appearantly came from the same tribe as Sunsleaf and she wasn't at all pleased to see him.

Around the same time the Children of the Oaks found out about the survivors actually sharing blood with their wolves, which got a mixed reception so serious it ended in a challenge among the Children's chiefs! Sadly for the survivors, the First Chief Keensight had to step down, leaving Palepelt in charge - an elf not in favor of mixing elf and animal.

Worse yet, the Child of the Oaks Claw challenged the leaderless survivors for rule over them. She lost the challenge, but other Children of the Oaks have meanwhile attacked the wolf Softpaws who has newborn cubs.

As if that wasn't bad enough, a High One like elf appeared in the middle of the camp, only to vanish again after having flamed the conflict between the pureblooded and wolf-blooded elves. That elf's departure was followed by a lot of the Children of the Oaks starting to act strange. Strange to the point of mindlessly attacking all the wolf-blooded elves they could get their hands on. All our elves can do now is flee!


Summary last updated: 5th of September, 2015 (yes, this really needs updating, sorry)
Blue = Has a player
Green = Adoptable!
Black = Non-Player Character

Just giving this thread a little bump; we're a slow-paced Holt, but we're not closed

Good luck and fun, Sofia!

Thanke yee very much, Embala!

Bumping this thread again, just to avoid people thinking we've closed

The closing of both Photoshop and our original website host made this post very out of date for a little while and I completely forgot to update here! But new website and image hosting sites are now fixed, so everything is back to normal.

I'm glad to hear so, Sofia!

Hiya, Embala! Wish I had time to be more active here on Father Tree to hang out more with the cool people here Oh well, hope everything's good with you and that you're having a great time here on the forum

Giving this thread a little poke just to show that this Holt isn't closed. We don't have any participation demands, which is why activity goes up and down a lot. We know that's not everyone's preferred rp-ing pace, but if that sounds like something for you, e-mail me at shadesofia[at]yahoo[dot]se and I'll get you up-to-date on what's going on in the holt

You can of course also check out our forum! But the Out Of Character part on the forum has now been made for members only, since people had written some personal information on there. So there is forum activity right now, it's just mostly hidden.

Poking this thread 'cause it seems this Holt might be getting a bit active again

Hey Sofia - Hopefully I am not stepping on any toes; but I saw the maps you had on the forum that were hand drawn. And had recently come across an wonderful world map of ElfQuest.

So I took what I saw on the hand drawn maps and put them on this map, if you wanted to use it. If you don't, absolutely understood since someone took the time to hand draw the current maps you have.

You can right click and save this link, if you want it:
http://tawmis.com/images/soalh_map.png

hey, beautiful map, thanx for sharing it, now I can localize a little bit my Sea Raiders location at the start. It might be the Vastdeep Water but it might also be the Skyglass sea (it is something in the north). Now I just need to know, what is the continent , where the Final Quest ended? Maybe someone knows here?

Tymber wrote:

Hey Sofia - Hopefully I am not stepping on any toes; but I saw the maps you had on the forum that were hand drawn. And had recently come across an wonderful world map of ElfQuest.

So I took what I saw on the hand drawn maps and put them on this map, if you wanted to use it. If you don't, absolutely understood since someone took the time to hand draw the current maps you have.

You can right click and save this link, if you want it:
http://tawmis.com/images/soalh_map.png

A very kind thing to do, thank you! Yes, my map scribbles are definitely more functional than artistic XD We happen to be playing on another world than the canon one (despite the very similar shape) so I think I'll stick to my crappy MS Paint version for now, to avoid confusing the players, but it was a really sweet and thoughtful thing to do! Now toes have been stepped on

To Yeee: Sadly not sure where on the map the Final Quest ended - but I hope someone knows!

Sofia wrote:

A very kind thing to do, thank you! Yes, my map scribbles are definitely more functional than artistic XD We happen to be playing on another world than the canon one (despite the very similar shape) so I think I'll stick to my crappy MS Paint version for now, to avoid confusing the players, but it was a really sweet and thoughtful thing to do! Now toes have been stepped on

Absolutely understood.

Hey Sofia, now I know, it`s at the Homeland.

Yeee wrote:

Hey Sofia, now I know, it`s at the Homeland.

That's great! Good that you found it

Nope didn`t find it, but a friend did.

Good either way

Oh, forgot to add. Survivors of a Lost Holt's forum now has a section where you can post without having to log in. This is so people can post on the forum without having to be members, and to do away with people having to e-mail to join.

Ah, Wanderers are closed for now? Any idea when/if that might open up again?
I've never been one to adopt someone's character, myself. I may not connect with them or use them in a way that contradicts how they may have acted previously, so usually when I join these, I typically come in as a new/wanderer. No rush, I couldn't even say I could commit to it - was just glancing the rules and noticed that.

You're in luck! I just haven't gotten the rules updated yet XD There are a few wanderers in line to join the holt soon, so we're opening up to them very soon - you'll just need to wait for the current game threads to wrap up and we're open to pretty much any kind of elf (there will be a plot reason they all appear in the same place, far from their old homes).

The only reason we limit wanderers now and then is to make the plot believable. The holt survivors' tribe hadn't met other elves for more than 5000 years, so it would be kinda weird if they started running into twenty different tribes the second they go a weeks' travel from their old holt

If you don't want to invent a whole new tribe for your elf/elves' backstory, you can always make up a character from the tribe "Children of the Oaks" (more info here). They're a group of plainsrunners, no animal-blood, and there are plenty of open slots for making up one from scratch Plus, they can enter the game at any time, since the survivors have met them in person.

No stress in deciding if you want to join or not! We've an easy-going group with no participation demands (there by the long times of in-activity in the group) so come try things out if and whenever you want. If you make a wanderer, they can of course always leave the group in-game should you end up not feeling it

Sofia wrote:

You're in luck! I just haven't gotten the rules updated yet XD There are a few wanderers in line to join the holt soon, so we're opening up to them very soon - you'll just need to wait for the current game threads to wrap up and we're open to pretty much any kind of elf (there will be a plot reason they all appear in the same place, far from their old homes).

The only reason we limit wanderers now and then is to make the plot believable. The holt survivors' tribe hadn't met other elves for more than 5000 years, so it would be kinda weird if they started running into twenty different tribes the second they go a weeks' travel from their old holt

If you don't want to invent a whole new tribe for your elf/elves' backstory, you can always make up a character from the tribe "Children of the Oaks" (more info here). They're a group of plainsrunners, no animal-blood, and there are plenty of open slots for making up one from scratch Plus, they can enter the game at any time, since the survivors have met them in person.

No stress in deciding if you want to join or not! We've an easy-going group with no participation demands (there by the long times of in-activity in the group) so come try things out if and whenever you want. If you make a wanderer, they can of course always leave the group in-game should you end up not feeling it

If we do a Wandering character - where do we post the CIS on your forum?

So glad to have you! Go right ahead and make a new thread in the "For new people" part of the forum (here). Feel free to then post in this thread if you want to keep the CIS discussion separate from the CIS thread.

Either way I'll help you move the elf to a the best fitting sub-folder once their CIS is done