Welcome to Canis Major

a wolf and animal rpg (role-playing game)

Canis is a writing community for play-by-post (forum-based), freeform roleplay set in a fictional dream world in the intrusion fantasy genre. Most characters on Canis are wolves; many play elements are focused around wolves and canids, but the world makes room for a large variety of other animal characters such as dogs, horses, cats, bears, deer, and many, many more.

Our community is focused on flexibility, creativity, and collaboration. That boils down to a few important features:

  • There is no set activity requirement to write
  • The setting and plot are member-created and staff-supported
  • The game is continuously improved to increase fun and decrease stress

Learn more in our Rulebook!

AW
There's steam on the window screen


Afternoon Partly Cloudy 55° F
#1
AW
09-08-2021, 07:18 AM (This post was last modified: 09-08-2021, 07:24 AM by Valmúa. Edited 4 times in total.)
Halfway between The Everfrost and Tsukiishi; for anyone;
Date is accurate


 Time had stood strange and still. Her world, which in retrospect had felt boring and untrue, came crumbling to sand with the touch of her suncat. She did not know what to do with such unknowns. Perhaps it was @Kuhn architecting her landscape, invading her mind and making her forget her true purpose. Yet she doubted this; the frustrations of Shiroshika and even the stranger she had met on the way had spoken against such conspiracy.
 Her desires had become distorted and unlike herself. Perhaps being too close to power had altered her mind; she did not know. A selfish and hedonistic part of her wanted only to crawl back to the warm embrace of her Lord once more and stay quite firmly there as his prinsessa. To be the property of another seemed quite unlike herself, so she dismissed such fantasy as a girlish nightmare while the touch of the cat tormented her more than she could admit.
 She both revelled in and hated his hold on her, and it was as stubborn as she was at retracting.
 Anxiously she wandered the lands between Lord Kuhn's domain and her own. Tsukiishi was already angry with her. She knew she must return. Yet, she did not want to.

the staff team luvs u
Icelandic · Inupiaq · Old Norse · Common
#2
09-10-2021, 01:20 AM (This post was last modified: 09-10-2021, 12:53 PM by Ynness. Edited 1 time in total.)
A hare drooped from her mouth, leaving blossoms of red I the ground as she trudged back home. She could never return home without a prize, both to contribute something to her family and to prove to them (and herself) that she could, and would, hunt.

She was getting better, and that thought swelled her with pride. She held the lapine creature high as she hobbled home, only for her demeanor to change at the strange wolf in her path.

It was the smell. The woman smelled of cat as well as her own canid smell. And something else that Ynness could not place. Sensing her anxiety, Ynness kept her distance from the woman, but decided to announce her presence regardless. Heil,” she said, her mouth muffled and her tone wary.

the staff team luvs u
[Image: ynness_knotwork_companions_flipped.png]
ᚠᚱᛁᚦᚱ × ᛅᚱ × ᛋᚴÍᛏᚱ × ᚬᚱᚦᛁᛏ
[Image: ynness_knotwork_companions.png]
#3
Content Warning
09-10-2021, 05:43 AM (This post was last modified: 09-10-2021, 05:43 AM by Valmúa. Edited 1 time in total.)
Content Warning
This post contains content that may be unsettling to some readers, including:
  • Bias of disabilities
I wasn't sure if she would be able to smell Ragnar on her so I went with not


 Someone, a girl, announced themselves. The young woman who caught her there in her mental predicament was still a way off. Valmúa could smell food, and saw a small prize in her mouth. She sniffed at the air, discovering, but couldn't detect much beyond the rabbit.
 Halló,” she answered, inspecting. The young woman was the colour of stone. She looked to be a yearling, still offering an awkward but focused build, and...
 missing a leg.
 Valmúa stared, quite openly toward where it, the leg, should be. The distance was not so great that she would not notice. It surprised her that such a creature, a reject, could hunt. She moved past it, wondering how such a hunt would work, wondering how it was possible. “This rabbit you catch,” she said, drifting into an accent-laden speech, which for those who knew her was a sign of discomfort. “Did you do it yourself?”

the staff team luvs u
Icelandic · Inupiaq · Old Norse · Common
#4
09-10-2021, 12:41 PM (This post was last modified: 09-11-2021, 11:23 PM by Ynness. Edited 1 time in total.)
There was something in the lilt of her voice that clued her in to the woman's heritage. Há, she breathed through the rabbit's bulk. þú mælti Norrœnt Mál? she managed to get out before her excitement faltered, then vanished as she traced the woman's gaze.

And then she spoke.

Ynness had thought of this encounter before. Not with this woman, not in these circumstances, but it had come to her mind unbidden everytime she saw another wolf. “Yes,” she said, terseness lining the edge of her words. “Does that surprise you, bacraut? That I'm not an invalid?” The words wanted to spill from her mouth and she was glad for the rabbit in her mouth to stop them.

the staff team luvs u
[Image: ynness_knotwork_companions_flipped.png]
ᚠᚱᛁᚦᚱ × ᛅᚱ × ᛋᚴÍᛏᚱ × ᚬᚱᚦᛁᛏ
[Image: ynness_knotwork_companions.png]
#5
Content Warning
09-12-2021, 05:11 AM (This post was last modified: 09-12-2021, 05:12 AM by Valmúa. Edited 2 times in total.)
Content Warning
This post contains content that may be unsettling to some readers, including:
  • Bias of disabilities
 Lítill — eh, pínulítið, she answered, switching dialect as they were heavily related. Both were languages of the North and proud to their knowers. Valmúa had always wandered farther to those words that were spoken by more people, hence why the common tongue had been her forte after her native language, in contrast to her brothers who had never mastered it.
 The woman without a leg asked as if she was surprised that one would be appalled by her ability. Valmúa raised her brows, snorting in an annoyed and anxious gesture. “Yes.” She said, bluntly. Ég er hissa. Ættir þú ekki að vera dauður? Curiosity was what made her ask, not cruelty. She had never seen anyone lesser be capable of much other than taking. She would not have allowed one with such an ailment into her pack.

the staff team luvs u
Icelandic · Inupiaq · Old Norse · Common
#6
09-12-2021, 06:38 PM
Shouldn't you be dead?

She had heard that question in her head many times since she fell unconscious from the agony of her limb being torn off. Heard it more when her fever broke and she was presented with the nightmare that had quickly become her reality.

The lapine's blood had stained her mouth, dripped and rolled onto her chest and the ground underfoot, as her mouth had clenched with fury as the woman spoke until she could hear the bones snapping. Anger blinded her, a red mist of rage that, unable to be vented, shifted towards the rest of her.

She'd hear those words before, in her head, but never spoken. It did more than hurt; it stoked the fire within, the bloodrage that bubbled and simmered under the surface each day. The rage wanted to be released into the throat of the woman who spoke in the form of her teeth, but she paused. She was too far. Nornir þóttu elligar. She said, her words being forced through the tight grate that her teeth had become. Lifa við. She turned to move away. She needed to go home before someone got hurt. Átti fleiri heimski spurning?

the staff team luvs u
[Image: ynness_knotwork_companions_flipped.png]
ᚠᚱᛁᚦᚱ × ᛅᚱ × ᛋᚴÍᛏᚱ × ᚬᚱᚦᛁᛏ
[Image: ynness_knotwork_companions.png]
#7
Content Warning
09-14-2021, 06:34 AM (This post was last modified: 09-14-2021, 06:37 AM by Valmúa. Edited 2 times in total.)
Content Warning
This post contains content that may be unsettling to some readers, including:
  • Nastiness toward people with disabilities
 Valmúa was not stupid. She could tell that the girl was bothered. She could tell she wished some form of violence on the older, able-bodied woman. She wondered how such a cretinous broad would handle a fight with a woman of the true north, bred and chosen for survival by fighting her way through childhood.
 The fire woman missed pieces of the Nordic words that the woman spoke. They sounded as her most native tongue, but throughout, essences of Solpallur's talk rose in, and Valmúa vaguely knew what was being said without its full context. The last bit, she caught perfectly.
 Bara einn.” She answered quickly and surely. Something about this girl intrigued her. She did not feel that she was getting the full picture, even with her ailment.
 Several cruel questions ran through her mind, but she said none of them. Why didn't your mother kill you? Where is your mother? Who took your leg? What pack accepted you in such a condition? She said none. Instead, she followed with:
 Manstu eitthvað? Frá því áður... The question was loaded. She meant before this strange land, but it easily could also have meant before the injury. The fire woman stayed, relaxed, sitting.

the staff team luvs u
Icelandic · Inupiaq · Old Norse · Common
#8
09-18-2021, 02:33 AM (This post was last modified: 09-18-2021, 02:34 AM by Ynness. Edited 1 time in total.)
The warmth from the rabbit's blood finally registered to her. The woman held her for a little longer, deigning to ask something else. Ynness huffed in response, though it was too warm to see the mist plume from her nose.

She finally realized that the woman's words were...familiar, but not exactly her own tongue. The meaning was legible enough, but the word endings and some of the pronunciations were odd. It peaked her own curiosity, wondering if it was some dialect that was spoken far from the Wall. A childlike intrigue blossomed in her for a moment, only to be quashed by the lingering tingle of anger and anxiety rolling in her body.

Before? It was a vague question. She didn't know what to answer, her emotions momentarily paused to parse through the woman's question. Part of her knew that she should ask to clarify, but her pride stopped her. She made her choice and answer. Ek vas barnit þegar þat gerðumk. she said as if she was little more than a child now. Hann var bjǫrninn. Ek muna ekki atganga, en ek muna vakta af sótthiti. She purposefully left out the visions she had seen during that period, the hazy mists of Helheim creeping towards her as she lingered at the edge of death. She hadn't told anyone.

Ek ganga af, She declared without ceremony, in lieu of a proper farewell. She was done with this. She needed to go home. Without looking back, she turned in the way of her home and walked.

the staff team luvs u
[Image: ynness_knotwork_companions_flipped.png]
ᚠᚱᛁᚦᚱ × ᛅᚱ × ᛋᚴÍᛏᚱ × ᚬᚱᚦᛁᛏ
[Image: ynness_knotwork_companions.png]
#9
10-11-2021, 06:32 AM
 The rabbit was the prime example of what this frail woman wanted to do to her, but the fire woman did not care. She was in no danger, that much seemed clear. Valmúa could not let the woman go without discussion; it was rare to meet anyone who shared the language she spoke natively. This was not a perfect match, but it was enough that each could understand the other without an interpreter, and that seemed to mean something.
 The princessa recognized her mistake in verbage as the survivor told her story in two brief sentences. That a bear had taken only a limb and not her entirety seemed, in short, a gift and curse rather than a mistake.
 The woman, having enough of Valmúa and her painful questions, took leave. Yet, the red woman said nothing. It was in this silence that she offered a weird bit of respect to the other. She sniffed briefly from a distance, but did not get anything of note. Each moved on, with Valmúa as cruel as she'd been before to those who did not look like her.

the staff team luvs u
Icelandic · Inupiaq · Old Norse · Common
scroll to top