𝕱𝖔𝖗 𝖂𝖍𝖔𝖒 𝖙𝖍𝖊 𝕭𝖊𝖑𝖑 𝕿𝖔𝖑𝖑𝖘

[TheScarletWillow]

"​🇦​​🇳​​🇩​ ​🇼​​🇭​​🇪​​🇳​ ​🇦​​🇸​​🇰​​🇪​​🇩​ ​🇼​​🇭​​🇴​ ​🇭​​🇪​ ​🇼​​🇦​​🇸, ​🇭​​🇪​ ​🇷​​🇪​​🇸​​🇵​​🇴​​🇳​​🇩​​🇪​​🇩 "ɴᴏ ᴏɴᴇ." "

Moniker: No One

Sex: Stallion
Height: 14.99hh

Eye Color: Red, Abnormal Black Sclera
Coat: Black Coat, Overo Paint
Quipping Type and Enhancements: Regular, Gradient Modifier

Type Classification: Regular

Application for WME No. 1491: Teeth

[TheScarletWillow]

"God bless these hallowed grounds."
The last words that echoed through the young stallion's mind before everything went dark. He had been lead there by the man who raised him, across an odd field with grass too green and soft to be meant to eating. Eyes, not too many but still too much, had watched him as he was walked to a small white barn. It's windows were black and reflected no sun, and it's doors shut tight. From it's roof stretched a taller, thinner structure and nestled at it's crown was a bell. He briefly remembered thinking how big it was compared to the one used to call him for dinner. None of that mattered now.
His world was gone...

- - -

A loud boom crashed through the sky just as lightning clawed its way through the sky. A thunderstorm had set in, and it was going to be fierce. Darkened maroon eyes slowly blinked open from where a massive black mass slept under a broken pew. The ceiling had been caved in for years and the inside of the church was in ruins. Nothing stood as it once was. The stained glass was all busted out, not even it's metal framework still in one piece. The pedestal from which the preacher addressed his congregation was splinters. To one side pews had been stacked and broken, the opposite side was no better.
The black stallion had watched for nearly a century as the building slowly deteriorated. It had been nearly two decades back that humans had finally stopped showing up, and nature was simply erasing what she could. In time all that would be left would be the stone and marble markers of where the deceased rested under the ground. Maw gaping wide as a yawn washed over him, he pulled himself to his hooves and gave himself a shake. It was time to get to work.

[TheScarletWillow]

Detached • Naïve • Dauntless • Stunted

The stallion never learned how to be.. alive. He never learned how to be a Wild Mountian Equid. Social cues and behaviors are a mystery to him, a foreign concept he cannot grasp. When presented with such opportunities, he is slow to react and take in the information of casual interaction. No One doesn't know what to do when the living attempt to reach him. He is clueless as to how to respond or behave around them, instead wondering what it is they want of a bound spirit.

It is this lack of understanding, however, that aids him in the role thrust upon him. He knows he must protect, and protect he shall. Aggression and threat are the two things he knows without question. How he must react, and that he must not fall. It is with near-reckless abandon he will throw himself at what displays a hazard to the grounds he keeps. After all, it is his one purpose. Those who have passed on that he must protect. It is a task solely for No One.

• most active between the hours of dusk and dawn
• has no need to eat
• mute, never learned to speak
• a surprisingly strong sense of duty

• an ageless spirit, appears no older than 4 years
• has no sense of smell, but impeccable hearing
• eyes reflect no light nor shine
• can go out in the sun, just doesn't like it

- - -


Thunderstorms brought all manner of things. Creatures rushing back to their nests and dens, or scurrying to find cover before it broke loose from the sky. Winds that ripped and tore through the forest's branches and howled through the hollowed church's bones. Rain that found its way into every nook and cranny and pooled where it could not find escape. These were things normal creatures found during the storm, but there was more.
From the recesses and dark corners, a blackness would begin to seep into the graveyard. From around the trunks of dead trees and under bushes it would crawl its way onto the overgrown clearing. This is why he was here. The equid would flare his nostrils and bristle his mane, stomping his hooves against the ground. With never a sound leaving his throat, this was his battle cry.

With the first drops of rain, he flung himself at the coagulating mass of shadow, and in response it hissed and dissipated. While it melted back into the dark, he whipped his head around. It always came back quicker in the rain. He tore across the field with a mounting fury. The same thing. This malice was his cause. His purpose. The reason he was here and bound only to the edge of the treeline. He was a church grim, and though no humans ever laid their dead to rest here anymore, he was still tasked with the protection of those long gone, and until the sky cleared of it's anger he fight this unseen battle tirelessly.

[TheScarletWillow]

When their time is near, the dying belonging to the herds that settled around the church grim's boundary tend to be drawn toward it. He seems to be able to sense their arrival and goes to greet them, staying with them as they draw their last.

Stories circulate through herds and communities of a strange, lurking shadow around the old church. Humans whisper of an evil spirit haunting abandoned building, that some evil came to pass that cursed the place. Among herd of Wild Mountain Equids, a different story is told.
They tell of a ghost who doesn't speak, who doesn't approach, and who does not harm. It stalks the meadow and weaves soundlessly through broken stones. It simply watches through tree trunks from it's lonely sanctum.

- - -

In the early days, after the humans, he was a warning. The young herds were wary and afraid of this eerie figure. Able to sense the dying, he would pace at the treeline in the direction facing the herd. His knowing red gaze always fixed on them. Three nights after his walk began, the herd would wake to have lost a member. It quickly became the belief that he was placing a curse upon them for settling on his lands.
As years passed, the herds learned he could not leave the open ground. They pieced together that his activity peaked when the symptoms of death set in to the sick. He became a herald of the end, and the living would celebrate one last time with their loved one.

One story that is told is of a young mare born on borrowed time.

The night she was born, his intense stare could be seen by the entire herd, and was the first thing the new filly saw. She grew, happy, seemingly healthy, no different from the other foals born near the same time. She enjoyed flower-picking and frolicking in the sun and time with her mother. It was odd, though, that she always seemed to look off in the direction of the black horse. At first her mother worried and ushered her away. No child should concern themselves with the odd equid in the field, let alone one so young.

The moon hung bright the night of her first birthday, and illuminated the illness that had corrupted her body. A violent cough wracked her body, and soon scarlet droplets clung to blades of grass. A wail from her mother was the only sound that hung in the air, and a sharp red gaze fixed on the scene from beyond the trees.
At day break, panic stirred the sleeping herd to wakefulness. The filly was missing, wandered from her mother's side in the night. They spread out and searched the woods for two days. At her wit's end, the mother steeled herself, beginning the dreaded walk to the meadow her daughter always stared at.
The trees ended suddenly, sun washing over her in full. It was the sight she had been dreading. There, stretched out in the grass, lay her foal. Beside her lay a massive, black stallion, his red eyes solemn and sad. Slowly he stood, looking down at the grief-stricken mare before bowing his head in reverence. It was something he had watched the humans do countless times for their deceased.

With the mother collapsed over her fallen child, he strode to the fallen bell tower. There, grown over with life, a tarnished bell peaked from it's resting place. He peered down at it before striking it hard only once. The brassy sound was unable to echo, but still caused the mother to look up none the less. She watched as he became one with the shadows of the dilapidated building, but no anger toward him could she find. He had been with her when she passed, and comforted her. She knew this in her heart, and took back with her a wish for her own end: to be brought to the ghost, so that he may comfort her as well, and so that she may be reunited with her daughter under his ever-watchful gaze.

Amongst the herds, this is the most widely-accepted story of where the belief of bringing the dying to Stone Meadow began. No One knows for certain that this is only one of many true stories, and one amongst countless he will continue to gather.






"ᴛʜᴇʏ ᴡɪʟʟ ɴᴇᴠᴇʀ ʙᴇ ʟᴏɴᴇʟʏ ᴀɴᴅ ᴀʟᴡᴀʏꜱ ꜱᴀꜰᴇ, ᴡɪᴛʜ ᴛʜᴇ ᴄʜᴜʀᴄʜ ɢʀɪᴍ."