[ORP] University Library
Posted: Sat May 23, 2020 11:17 am
[OOC: Everyone is free to join me in this thread, and I mean everyone, Bravian, not Bravian, PC, NPC, anything goes. Whether you want to interact (I know and respect not everyone likes interacting with NPCs as much as I do) or just roleplay your character doing other library related things, I'll be happy to read all of it, and I hope others will, as well.]
The great library of the University of the Republic Bravia was a magnificant building, with spiral stairs and rows upon rows of books, as far as the eye could see.
What few creatures knew, was that the building also had an extensive cellar, where most of the older as well as the more secret and dangerous books and scrolls were kept.
Here, in one of the many corridors, a brown rat had found a new home for himself and his friends. On a bed of shredded book pages lay one of these friends, who had recently given birth to a litter of cute little rat pups. The male brown rat was not the father, but he did consider it his duty to make sure the new mother and her young, as well as the rest of his friends, wanted for nothing when it came to food. Because of this, he was known amongst his friends as Food-bringer.
Food-bringer was different from the others. For one, he was much older. Ancient. Almost fifteen years old. And still, he looked like any rat of one, maybe two years old. However, the biggest difference between Food-bringer and the other rats was that he was a shapeshifter, able to turn himself into a human boy. Legends said that he was born as a boy, abused by his father, locked under the floor enough times to befriend the rats scurrying there. Until one day, he managed to turn into one of them and escaped together with them.*
Food-bringer rarely spoke about that part of his past, but all the more about the many exciting adventures he had experienced since, together with the grandparents and great-greandparents and even further removed ancestors of his current friends.
Take the father of the newborn rat pups, for example. He went by the name of White-nose because of the distinct white patch of hair around his nose. Amongst his ancestors was Light-one, a rat that had apparently been completely white. Every single hair on her body. Food-bringer's friends always squealed in surprise when he would first tell them about her. She had been one of his best friends, with a past as dark as she was white. An evil sorceror had used her and her entire family to experiment with dark magic. She had managed to escape and had learned to live as a true street rat. The story made White-nose proud of the patch around his nose, and he wondered if any of his pups would have white patches as well, once their hair would start growing.
The library was a peculiar choice of home for a rat like Food-bringer. As a boy, he had lived in the camp of the Roma woman Scarlet for a while. The woman took a liking to him and tried her best to teach him how to read. But even though he could now read a little, it took him a lot of effort and he hated it. He didn't care about the many books in the library. All he had been looking for was a place dry and warm for himself and his friends. And a place big enough to allow him to shift to his human form. Their previous home after leaving the Roma camp had been the abandoned cellar in a street full of leather tanners. The cellar frequently flooded in winter and was nasty, even for rat standards. The space underneath the library was a big improvement.
*See also this thread, third post, for more details, but only if you feel like it
The great library of the University of the Republic Bravia was a magnificant building, with spiral stairs and rows upon rows of books, as far as the eye could see.
What few creatures knew, was that the building also had an extensive cellar, where most of the older as well as the more secret and dangerous books and scrolls were kept.
Here, in one of the many corridors, a brown rat had found a new home for himself and his friends. On a bed of shredded book pages lay one of these friends, who had recently given birth to a litter of cute little rat pups. The male brown rat was not the father, but he did consider it his duty to make sure the new mother and her young, as well as the rest of his friends, wanted for nothing when it came to food. Because of this, he was known amongst his friends as Food-bringer.
Food-bringer was different from the others. For one, he was much older. Ancient. Almost fifteen years old. And still, he looked like any rat of one, maybe two years old. However, the biggest difference between Food-bringer and the other rats was that he was a shapeshifter, able to turn himself into a human boy. Legends said that he was born as a boy, abused by his father, locked under the floor enough times to befriend the rats scurrying there. Until one day, he managed to turn into one of them and escaped together with them.*
Food-bringer rarely spoke about that part of his past, but all the more about the many exciting adventures he had experienced since, together with the grandparents and great-greandparents and even further removed ancestors of his current friends.
Take the father of the newborn rat pups, for example. He went by the name of White-nose because of the distinct white patch of hair around his nose. Amongst his ancestors was Light-one, a rat that had apparently been completely white. Every single hair on her body. Food-bringer's friends always squealed in surprise when he would first tell them about her. She had been one of his best friends, with a past as dark as she was white. An evil sorceror had used her and her entire family to experiment with dark magic. She had managed to escape and had learned to live as a true street rat. The story made White-nose proud of the patch around his nose, and he wondered if any of his pups would have white patches as well, once their hair would start growing.
The library was a peculiar choice of home for a rat like Food-bringer. As a boy, he had lived in the camp of the Roma woman Scarlet for a while. The woman took a liking to him and tried her best to teach him how to read. But even though he could now read a little, it took him a lot of effort and he hated it. He didn't care about the many books in the library. All he had been looking for was a place dry and warm for himself and his friends. And a place big enough to allow him to shift to his human form. Their previous home after leaving the Roma camp had been the abandoned cellar in a street full of leather tanners. The cellar frequently flooded in winter and was nasty, even for rat standards. The space underneath the library was a big improvement.
*See also this thread, third post, for more details, but only if you feel like it