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Current GP: 113

available as a creator | all art & writing welcome | may be freely used in others’ stories

penetrative | intense | cryptic | absorbed

Colla is a solitary esk who spends much of her time in meditation and deep thought, reciting poems and metrics from memories that come from her original form, or creating new ones to add to her collection. Some of these she remembers as clear as day, while others return slowly to her over time like prodigal children. She walks quietly across the landscape allowing the metrics to come and go as she moves. Nearby her thicket lie the ruins of a monastery founded in the 5th century which she visits daily, feeling a connection and call to the site. She is prone to long walks and journeys, lost in meditation, at least once or twice a year. Lost in the suaimhneas of her mind, these journeys may cause her to turn up in surprising and distant places before she wakes from them. Most other times, you can find her resting aside the sping hidden in her thicket, in a clearing of her own making, gazing thoughtfully into its water and watching the occasional small animal come and go.

Colla is friendly and welcoming, but neither enthusiastic nor overly sociable, and can sometimes be a challenge to interact with. Every now and then she appears to be observing a different frequency of the world; her gaze out of focus, her thoughts and observations shifting abruptly like a radio whose dial turns by an invisible hand. She tends to speak cryptically and metaphorically, and can be reluctant to elaborate when asked to as she feels her words and their meanings are usually plenty clear, and that if difficult to understand the onus of working them out should be on their recipient. However, there are also moments of intense focus, when her gaze and presence become bright and cutting like the edge of a blade, and you become acutely aware that the unfocused eyes you can’t see do very well see you, or perhaps directly through you.

Despite all of that, Colla is highly discerning, a very good judge of character and intention, deeply connected to her locality’s environment, history, and contains a well of lost knowledge, though she struggles to find meaningful ways to employ these gifts. Her original form was meant to be read, to add to the cultural continuity and collective knowledge of the people around her, but it was never able to fulfill this purpose and part of her aches for something that is perpetually out of reach, or to let out a breath that is forever trapped in her chest.

Crowded Copse & Manuscript

Colla’s thicket is outlined by a dense wall of bramble, briar, gorse, hazel, holly, fern, and oak. Within it lies a neat clearing she has created, at the center of which is a small cluster of tumbled granite stones outlining a long-forgotten tobar. Only birds and small mammals visit it these days, wiggling their way through thorns and shrubs to drink from the fresh water. The unyielding and imposing briar has long kept much else out.

Her book original form was started in the 7th century and completed in the 8th. It was penned by 3 unique hands and houses a variety of contents, including vision literature, mythological narratives, annals for the nearby monastery, descriptions of local practices, poems of various types, and a fair bit of marginalia in the forms of short poems, probatio pennae, illuminations, and glosses. It was placed in the alcove of the tobar during a raid in order to keep it hidden and protected. Over time, a dense thicket grew around the well, and the book was i gcailltaisce.

Impressions

• Colla’s low and meditative vibration seems far away or muffled, even when she is very near. It feels like an echo, or perhaps the ghost or simulacra of a vibration.

• She is about the size of a moose, with large and heavy antlers. The flowers beneath her trailing leaves have bioluminescence which can be on or off. She is able to lift these plants slightly to reveal their hidden light.

• The bright, symbolic markings on her soft mane shift and change, though there are always circular markings framing her face and creating the impression of strange eyes.

• Ragged, aged velum pages from her original form surround her, shifting and rotating slowly. Colla has some control over how they are displayed and can arrange them in different ways, but at default rest they hover around her neck. Note that these are original form fragments rather than accessories; they are always present, but writing about or drawing them will not earn any extra bonuses.

• Her sun is warm, dim, and surrounded by a haze. The area around her glows in a thin, misty veil of salmon which appears both invitingly warm and suspiciously surreal.

• She was transformed sometime in the late 13th century.

Coiche nod gleith clochur slébe
Cia on cotagair aesa éscai
Cia dú i llaig funiud grene
Cia beir búar ó thig Temrach
Cia buar Tethrach tibi
Cia dain
Cia dé delbas feabru a ndind ailsiu
Cáinté im gaí
Cáinté gaithe.
.
Who explains the stones of the mountains?
Who invokes the ages of the moon?
Where lies the setting of the sun?
Who bears cattle from the house of Tethra?
On whom do the cattle of Tethra smile?
Who is the troop, who the god who fashions edges
In a fortress of gangrene?
Enchantments without a spear.
Enchantments of wind.

.

— Song of Amergin, anonymous. From Lebor na Nuachongbála, ~12c

Relationships & Stories

Colla can be a little challenging to interact with; she sometimes slips in and out of focus, speaks cryptically, and changes subjects without warning. She is accommodating and friendly, and genuinely caring about others, but does not go out of her way for them unless they are within the vicinity of her boundary, the area of which she only leaves when walking lost in meditative thought. She is prone to sudden bursts of insight, and those who visit her may be subject to these whether they seek them or not.

000-III Ikkit - Colla’s creator
1551 | Gealach - a nearby shadow

-none yet-

Colla’s transformations are not particularly limited, but it is required that her imbas forosnai provides a sort of approval for it.

Gallery

Click images to view fully. Much of this artwork is not mine but has been gifted or commissioned. Credits and links to these wonderful artists’ profiles are listed - on desktop, hover over the image; on mobile, you will have to hit the white circle in the bottom right corner (I am working on trying to find a different solution to the latter.)