feast and make merry

[groundrules]

MASQUERADE

---

The following events should cover the span to 31 AUGUST. Feel free to make your own posts/logs, or use this one! Routes have been built based on previous plotting, but any last-minute questions can be asked here. Try to limit it to asking concrete outcomes for things you are definitely exploring in your tag-ins!



■ Don Macaluso has welcomed his suitors, including the party's very own Diego Hargreeves. And his wolves. He stretches Taravast's hospitality to a lavish masked fete, observed at the Palace of the Doxe. No expense spared, no opportunity to flaunt lost.

■ In attendance — sorcerers' schools, foreign dignitaries and suitors, prominent healers and academicians, artists and politicians, members of the Conclave and, somehow, the Merchant's hooligans. Good gossips, one and all. Show up or throw the gauntlet: those who do not come willing will be escorted in by guards.

■ Even Lady Vannozza and her supporters come to wish Macaluso well in his conjugal pursuit. She publicly gifts him a cryogenic rose, urging her cousin to award it to his intended. Macaluso calmly accepts the flower, then discards it on his table.

■ Out of respect for the nascent political contest, the supporters of Vannozza and Macaluso — yes, you — are seated at two different tables on each side of the fleetingly present Doxe Bonaccorso. The old man will appear in feeble health but firm dignity, excusing himself after a tremulous speech that ends, tenderly, "Citadels are for the living. They are for the gathering of means, of magic, for the making of families and legacies. They are not coin for commerce. I welcome you to my home."

■ For the grand finale, Macaluso's servants introduce a traditional fragile, sweet confection offered to his private guests. It can be refused. Those who consume the confection will find their strength and senses progressively deteriorate, threatening to kill them within five days.

■ A good showing by Fox, Mingyu, Wen Kexing, Zhou Zishu, Xie Lian and Alina earned the Lady Odile more of Macaluso's favour. In gratitude, her servants send word to these characters only that there is poison afoot, without mentioning which dish.

■ Within the hour, Macaluso calls the celebration to its end, pained to announce it has been stained by sabotage and poison. Macaluso's guests, including the characters in his employ are drawn into private quarters and examined by physicians, who name the cause of the sickness — winter lily mist — but offer no clear antidote.

■ Frustrated, two healers will list two superstitious cures: the elusive, shady 'fire water' of the necromantic district's underground poisoners 'potions brewers' or the ground feather of an elusive owl last seen in the private, locked away Spina hunting grounds.

■ Characters assigned to Macaluso will spend the night huddled together, with healers. Fearing her people will be unfairly faulted for the poisoning, Vannozza will lock her attendants in her palace wing. The atmosphere is tense, with Vannozza's people accusing characters and each other. Overnight, some of Macaluso's drunk supporters will try to enter Vannozza's palace wing and cause a brawl. Defend the lady?

■ Come morning, the poisoning is blamed on the ringleader of one of the recent protests objecting to Macaluso's marriage to a foreigner. Characters may circulate freely.




THE SHADY MAN TO THE LEFT

■ The necromantic district is a... literally and metaphorically shady congregation of small, run-down houses and the city's 'finest': criminals, thieves, the mates of your horsecar friend Caspar, actual necromancers and sellers of flesh parts.

■ Those who ask for 'fire water' will face a few days of exploration until an old beggar finally takes pity on their cause and, in exchange for wine, offers them an introduction to a secretive gang gathering of necromancers — the Unseeing Watch.

■ The Watch are an eerie group of grotesquely deformed necromancers, some of whom have clearly been stirred back from death a number of times themselves. They explain that the 'fire water' is a brew that can be obtained from two sources: the blood of either a man who has killed many innocents ruthlessly (such as the many murderers and slavers who travel the darker corners of the district) or of a...

■ ...harpy, not unlike those encountered in the Stairs of Sighs corridor: winged creatures dripping tar and harrowing sorcery, that crowd in flocks at the periphery of Taravast. The harpies of Taravast are ancient defenders of the city, who have forgotten their purpose and turned feral. Their claws run sharp, causing cuts that bleed without healing properly for hours.

■ The harpies are best faced in pairs, but beware: if you speak too long, they will learn your voice and imitate it to lure in your companions. They will also attune to emotions and mimic the voices of people characters remember.

■ Retrieve two blood vials from either man or creature to the necromancers, along with two vials of your own blood, and the Watch will prepare two batches of antidote. One cup for you, the other for their own purposes.



THE (HUNTING) GAME IS ON

■ Wen Qing has brokered access to the hunting grounds, for an easy entrance point. Those who wish to find an alternative route can try to have their characters infiltrate Vannozza's quar ters and steal her keys — but only theft such offensive can be carried out, so unite forces.

■ The Spina hunting grounds are a few hours' ride away, and carriage drivers seem unwilling to make the journey. Help the local economy: steal a horse.

■ The forests are a magnificent spread of everything dark and haunted, drenched in mist and sporting minimal visibility. There is a pronounced air of death and the stench of decay, with perfect, eerie stillness during the scant sunlight and a torture of creaking sounds, whispers and ghostly chills at night.

■ In addition to the typical violent forest fare — wolves, foxes, bears — the grounds also host the first sign of true undead: less well composed than some characters might remember the men of Anurr, lacking true awareness. Their garb and occasional garbled talk will reveal them as former sorcerers and witches of Attaryl and Bessis, killed during the confrontation between the two schools. Their spirits have been bound to protect the grounds — and they give vicious chase, calling on fire magic and wooing animals to help their hunt of invaders.

■ Run. Run fast.

■ Only two antidote owls emerge at night, drawn to drink from the forest's (shallow, broad) lake water. They are a mated pair, highly sensitive to sound, likely to escape on the first few attempts of capture and indifferent to magic. Farmhouse lesson: careful with the lake waters. The hands of bound spirits might seek to pull innocents in.

■ Owl feathers, ground and thinned with water, can create a highly potent cure that will take days to return a patient to full health — their hearts, eaten whole, can give one person instant recovery. Up to you, if you want to be that asshole.

QUESTIONS

Comments

QUESTIONS

[groundrules]

Since much of the initial planning has already been covered, let's please keep it to just questions where you need an outcome for actions your characters are 100% taking. Thank you!

[topoiran]

Will the undead-controlled animals refuse to negotiate with Su Xunxian? (His ability is curbed by the poison but I'm still curious...) He will 100% try to talk them into help them rather than chasing them.

Meanwhile Sizhui will go hunting for harpies ig. Question here is up to how many sets of vials can he give for cures because ... just in case. (Yes, if the owl thing falls through, he wants to have a cure for dad. And mom's brother, he guesses...)

[rumorate]

A quick clarification question!

When going to the Necromancers, when it says "of your own blood" does it have to be the person who was poisoned or can it be just the person getting the cure?

Also, if someone were to be ... specifically persuasive, could they find out what the Necromancers what the second batch of the antidote for?

[somebadnews]

Okay, so-! If Five were to zoom around the kitchens would he be able to find anything related to the poison/would he be able to get anywhere with the kitchen staff if he threatened them to find any information about who left the poison?

He is absolutely not pulling a Diego why would you even say that.

[valeas]

So. If Emilia were to look deeper into this Matteo Ballatini/his people at some point, is there anything of interest she may find? In general, she'd also be using her position as catch of the season~ to gather information from the suitors she's kept around, too.

[downswing]

i. when in rome venice taravast (masquerade)

[ He forgets himself, his face. Shields behind the broad spread of a veined, gasped mask and assumes the tatters of borrowed disposition — brother's polish, the abyssal, oceanic depth of a courtier's bow, the breezy elegance of a coquette seeking her first matrimony.

Flickered light forgives him; trailed like a firefly's train, he flits — a creature of white still, pale under his silks, like spume of anger — from the periphery of the reception halls to their bright-blinding maws. Candles at each step, sundering the room between territories of dark shadow. Traversing them, come the whispering emissaries of milling crowds. Cloying, sticky sweetness of incense and the organic pungency of excess alcohol, so thickened still that its scent spreads aftertaste.

For Lan Wangji's part, he looks each way: when lovers nearly crash into him, too immersed in their affections. When the attendants bring in mounds of delicate, shifting, trembled confections. When diplomats mistake him for a skittish negotiator, and sorcerers for a spy, turned indiscreet. When servants, finally, tire of the seamless, stiff stolidity of his presence and entrust him with a tray of wine cups he seeks to returns to them, only to be seized, at each step, by thirsting merrymakers.

Lan Wangji was not forged for popularity. And finds himself ill at ease enough to offer the tray of half-filled wine cups that's periodically refilled and assaulted by vultures to the nearest, dearest, standing-still person. ]

...perhaps, for your balance.

[ Take it. It's your turn. ]



ii. after: the sickness halls (#teamMacaluso)

[ He takes to sickness easily, with the greed of the death-marked. Poise is the first casualty of honeyed erosion, the line of his shoulders ruined — a house, lessened at its foundation. Poison, but he knows the word before the healer speaks it, feels it in the empty, ceaseless turmoiled groan of his core, grinding.

Hurt starts so: when his body, depleted of recourse, bides the time to recuperation with false surrender. He feels it warm, a feverish spread, molten, where his fingers scatter, spider, catch cold and futile on the ledge of the fainting sofa they've delegated him. Rest, they said, and to what purpose? In his mouth, tongue slack, and behind his lids, white brilliance.

He ate of the thing, the one paltry concession to their benefactor. And him, a politician of the courts, an envoy of Gusu Lan, chief cultivator. Survivor of two war campaigns, and of Jin Guangyao. And he closed his mouth and walked his teeth and in the space of these roiling, cluttered, suffocated quarters, he hears only the hollow collision of regrets unspoken. You fool. Fool thrice over. You leave behind a son, you leave a man who knows you, a woman without defences. You leave a life. You walk freely.

Between them, the healers come and go, to trade the lilting platitudes of coreless reassurance. Distantly, he feels the shift of weight, redistributed — the soft, intrusive presence of another person sat beside him. The healers again, with their borrowed poetry. The verdict of sickness. The plaintive apology. The bows, the pledges to attempt against odds of impossibility, to seek a cure or a palliative brew. Like a brush of birds' wings, come.

And gone.

He is not a man of medicine, not a priest, not a hermit possessed of kind patience. Knows not whom he speaks for (another; himself) but offers indistinctly, once the healer has retreated, and it is only them, two fools condemned: ]

Fear nothing.


iii. the second poison: jiang wanyin

[ He knows, Jiang Cheng knows.

Round, empty-minded gasp: Lan Wangji tastes fear vinegary and thick-laced down his throat like poorly-ground ginseng, a hard swallow. Watches the small hands of a healing woman extricate the sweat from Jiang Cheng's face, take the soft, ghostly print of his pulse, doubtlessly as defiant as Lan Wangji's.

He remembers: Jiang Cheng's eyes dark across the feasting table, Wangji's first to turn away. Unpleasantness begs no persistence of company. There are rules for this, for them, etiquettes that paint their hostility as indifference through the lens of vagaries. They crumble like scratch-marred walls now.

No sooner the healer leaves Jiang Cheng, Wangji meets him. Silence spell. Bichen. Talismans. His bare hands, turned feral. Of all the weapons at his disposal, he chooses the bend of his knees: one, then its brother. The trickled, calculated collapse of his arms beside him, for a bow would be too insincere of a transaction.

He knows, Jiang Cheng knows. They ate of the same poison. Were seen by the same healer. Abandoned in the same corner of the emptying quarter. ]

Say nothing of me to them.

[ But Jiang Cheng will. Spite rots his blood, compels him. Spills across the parchment of his body, his soul, like downturned ink. Wangji cannot fight tide, being himself half-water. ]

Brother. [ And watch her, Bichen's tip would not carve out his ribs and gut him so cleanly, would not skewer so completely as this one word, ill purposed. Blessing, turned curse. May Zewu-Jun spit a thousand turns upon Wangji's face, and honour will not be satisfied. ] Hate me enough to deny me this. Remember what I stole. That I watch his sleep and stand his sword, and he will not be returned to you.

[ Sizhui. Wei Ying. What difference will a final cruelty make, now? With all lost, already? ]


iv. a man and his game

[ Forests, again. Haunting, once more. Phantasms, greedy hands, bleeding him, scratching them, chasing. Scenting despair, roots of the nearby trees riotous, trembling to hunt them down. Under a gravid moon, he feels himself the part of the rebel hero of legend, in motion.

He has yielded, by now, the better part of lesser senses: touch fooling him to question if the bark under hand is thick or thinned. If his grip on Bichen, the sword unmoving in her hilt, comes errant and wavered. His hearing starts to give, and he thinks, more fool him, he needs only blood in his strangled veins to sense his heart adrift, then beating, as a war drum.

Fortune favoured him: Wen Qing bargained their entry, but he fled discreetly, purchased the privilege of perching alone in this mad, tight-bound tree with the coin of his own untempered yearning. He cannot ask where Wen Qing and Wei Ying have gone, how they keep. Cannot invite the imprint of care, like hands strangling his throat.

So, he waits for the owl. Waits the hour. Waits and waits and waits, and remembers that he was never a hunter of animals, only of men — and that, peering in the distance, he suspects he sees an owl — a large voluminous beard, bright-eyed and majestically indifferent in the way of creatures that owned a land before it was peopled. It need not fear Lan Wangji: it was old, before he left his swaddling. It will outlive him.

And he does its prophecy little injury when it lands at the tail end of the branches whose root he'd perched on, and Lan Wangji deploys against her the full strength of a tutelage in talisman magic, a shower of parchment, an excess of cord sorcery and, finally, the man himself, dashing, sword drawn, to strike down the beast —

Only to land at the feet of the tree, proudly holding out his catch before the newcomer who's joined him: a well-fed, murmuring, terrified... ]

...nightingale.

[ Better luck next time, Lan Wangji. ]


v. same verse, same as the forest's first | wei ying wuxian

[ They circle in each other's orbit so often than the tragedy of gravity collides them inexorably. He does not ask how came the familiar, tendril warmth of Wei Ying at his back, how he tastes it like blood-iron in the back of his mouth, between the sharp rustle of grass and leaf, the waters of misted moonlight.

There is a thrill of exhilaration in this: knowing the enemy close, however discarded its face, however scratched its eyes and likeness. Scenting death and decay and the bite of both on his limbs, and knowing them kept jealously safe under the watch of a companion. This man, whose shoulder rises with Wangji's, to mirror the balance of their footing. Who knows, inexplicably, the smears and catches in Wangji's breath, echoed in his own.

Who needs no greeting past the soft, silvered inclination of Bichen to Wangji's right side, a broad arc that betrays an excess of indulgent comfort: an enemy might find the span to strike. Wei Ying requires no opportunity, fits his blind spots like a weathered glove. Even in this, he proves a fluid, generous companion.

If Wangji loses every sense, every thought, every compulsion, he will retain this: the certainty that comes, quicker than velvet shrivels on ground, when his sight of true enemies is lost, but he is found.

Laughter claws out, coarse. He cannot help it. Omissions and secrets only thrive in silence. What more is there to say? ]

...that day. I craved loquat.

[ That, apparently. ]

ii.

[binghua]

[How was Xiao Xingchen to know? How was he to know he could not trust even the simplest gift of a sweet refreshment? Of course, in hindsight (ha), he should have been wary. This is a world not his own and the current affairs wear a mantle of deception.

Everyone here lies.

Even some who do not call Taravast home.

Perhaps his own preoccupation with the fact that Xue Yang is here and Xue Yang has been living with him for years can be blamed for his lack of awareness. Perhaps after swallowing one poison, his body saw no need to warn him of another.

The healers try to be gentle with him, but even if they weren't, Xingchen isn't sure he'd notice immediately. The senses, he's heard them say, are at risk. He's already down one, so won't he be swallowed up more quickly? Is his sense of touch, of spatial awareness already fading or is his mind gripping onto this knowledge with all its strength just to have something to focus on? He doesn't know. He doesn't know if he really cares right now.

Xingchen feels...muted.

The healers lower him into a seat and he can't help but halfway fall against another body also resting there. It takes him a moment to straighten himself, but he eventually sits up, holding Shuanghua between his legs. He runs his fingers over the cutouts in the sheath, shapes familiar beneath his fingertips, but almost feeling new now that his body is failing.

When the man next to him speaks, reassures, his fingers pause.]

I've been through worse.

[That's...not necessarily true. Yes, when he showed up in the salt mines of Sa-Hareth his Core wasn't working, but the rest of his health was still decent. As for physical pain, he doesn't think this compares to what he did for Song Lan. It's not pleasant, but he isn't screaming, either.

Fear, though? Ah...that could become a possibility. If the healers' predictions are correct and no cure is found, he won't have long to suffer. But he can't help but wonder now. His sight is long gone and now his other senses slowly leave him. Sooner or later, would his mind still be active in a shell of a body? Is that what it feels like for fierce corpses? To be trapped like that?

...Maybe he is scared, after all.]

ii

[wooden_one]

[He felt the weakness--knew that it was poison. And yet whenever a healer came by he'd glare at them until they shuffled away.

He refused to lay down, choosing to sit upright with all the dignity of the (his) cultivation world's most powerful grandmaster. Even if the name and title of the Beidou Immortal meant nothing here, even though he planned to tell no one of it, Chu Wanning was still Chu Wanning: eternally stubborn and thin faced.

So he held himself up, his perfect posture a result of pure stubbornness borne of an inability to show even a shred of weakness to anyone.]

I have never feared anything.

[He said it coldly as if it were an insult to imply otherwise. His hands folded neatly in his lap.]

iv.

[jeoha]

[ Lang Wangji is offered a raised eyebrow for his catch, the twice-made prince stepping quietly through the woods as he approached the wraith-like white-clad figure now returned to the ground. ]

A fair catch, if the wrong one.

[ There's the hint of a tease in his mostly-neutral tone, and a hint of worry in his brow as he quickly scans Wangji's face. ]

You should leave the hunt to us, Master Lan.

i.

[malicing]

[If ever an element existed for Guangyao, the perfumed, heady atmosphere before them is likely it. Oh he would make a few changes, of course. Less people, for one, and the attendance of those he holds dearest. But he doesn't mind the festivities and even in his plainer attire with his face secured behind a smiling mask, he seems to call the light to him. But it is a false glow; one born of many bad choices and a desperate need to be valued and wanted.

Thus when he is offered the tray, he hesitates, head cocking as he observes none other than...

Lan Wangji. The hairs on his arms stand up and he is on alert. He had not meant to encounter this man as of yet.]

You did not speak up for yourself. [The tray is taken smoothly and set to the side on a table. If the guests want to be served, they can serve themselves. He is no ones butler.] Your shift has ended.

v

[weifinder]

( He can be caught off guard, when it comes to Lan Zhan; now, he frowns, letting the laughter shake him in a way warm and cold simultaneously, his lips a thinned line of determination with each move, eyes more valuable than hearing when quarry flies on silent wings.

When poison courses in the veins of someone who is more important to him than himself, who has demanded he place himself as important, who is one of the two reasons here that Wei Wuxian tries and does not let the siren's song of brutality in power drag him back, moment by horrific moment, to the thin, shadow eyed man of Yiling. The power at his fingertips, and none of the passion of arrogance, the assumption of control, that had made him stumble toward his ending.

He won't stumble here. Won't allow it of either of them, and if that means he damns himself to true demonic cultivation, if he summons Lan Zhan's soul back to bind into a healed and healing body, if he's cursed for it; so be it. For Lan Zhan, for Sizhui, he can do no less. He can bear their resentment, but not their loss.

Yet, loquats. That laughter, and a memory, faint and warm and smelling of water and algae and the sweet burst of loquat on his tongue, the thick, heavy weight of its seeds, and Lan Zhan, standing with his brother, catching a loquat tossed at his head. )

I know, ( he says, and he sweeps to the side with Chenqing at hand, plays a hard two notes that cause the stumbling wreckage of a once-upon-a-woman yawning out from behind a tree too thin to have been proper cover for any but a twig. She, or whatever she has become, tries to right herself, and he feels the brush of air and looks skyward: there. Flash of feathers, white, against the inky dark of the reaching trees.

Fend off the walking dead, the viciousness of compelled animals, and to chase these birds, silent predators. Preserve the ones who save. ) You were just so stubborn. I couldn't leave you alone.

( I can't, now. I did, once, and thought it the better course; I know better, now.

The twice-lived stumbles forward, bearing broken, cracked teeth, a dagger tied to an arm, and strikes out in a rush of stumbling feet. )

There!

( The corpse with eyes that saw, and the bird, and it's two directions to fight toward, but in their wordless synchrony he only plays to the music he has learned for here and learned from Yiling and learned from the aches of loss and cold solemnity of coaxing control. The owl is unconcerned.

The woman-who-is-not breaks pattern, again, leaving her undead throat bared. )

iii.

[consignation]

[ This poison rends the spirit. Though the sickness is in Jiang Cheng's flesh, coursing through his burning veins, when Wangji comes to him in forced deference the corrosion is to his soul. Years of training, of careful cultivation, cracks readily for Wangji's words. Is it the tainted food turning his stomach, or the rot of his very core? Jiang Cheng tastes bile and cannot tell, the uptick of his pulse dizzying as he tries to force down his fatigue enough to answer.

He cannot make sense of Wangji's words, can barely parse them on the best of days. The man is difficult by nature, contrary and wild. A contradiction who fools the world with a pleasant face and stoic demeanor, his heart as tumultuous and unforgiving as the open sea. Lan Wangji's words are knives wrapped in silk and poetry, and on this day he fastens them in red ribbonry as he turns them upon Jiang Cheng's flesh.

Brother, he speaks in one breath. Hate me, in the next.

Is that Jiang Cheng's brotherhood in Wangji's eyes? Hatred and spite. He would not be wrong, Jiang Cheng remembering well the kind of brother he was to Wei Wuxian, unto the end. Even now, he finds himself no more able to untangle his love from his resentment, sixteen years of solitude and regret hence.

Then come the taunts, and had Jiang Cheng the strength for fury he would have surely lashed out, tongue quicker to violence than the crack of his whip. Strength fails him, leaving only the buzzing of his mind.

Why does Wangji want to keep this from them? Wei Wuxian loves to foolishness, that much is true. All who have ever known his love knows this. Wei Wuxian loves to destruction, loves himself to pieces, loves to the expense of all else but somehow the first thing to be expended is his own self.

Still, how will hiding Wangji's condition serve anyone? Lies beget lies, begets ignorance, begets decisions made blind. Have they not been here before?

Jiang Cheng raises a hand to his pounding head. When he speaks, his voice is as dry as bone-ash raked over spent coal. ]

You pick now to learn how to play older brother, Lan Wangji?

[ It is the older brother's place, after all. To suffer in silence as though he is not suffering at all, to shoulder any burden granted without complaint and ask for more. Youngest sons are spoiled creatures, shielded so well by their siblings that they are only half-aware of the protection at all. Jiang Cheng grew up crying when he was hurt, tantruming when angered, running when he was scared. He always knew Wei Wuxian did not have such luxuries, knew his brother bore the worst of his mother's moods, stood tall against the gossip and scorn of those both in their household and out.

What Jiang Cheng did not learn until much later was that Wei Wuxian bore much of it for him. His sister, too, they both— ]

Which do you want? My brotherhood or my hatred? I am not generous enough to give you both.

Masquerade

[scrapgege]

[This is... the most useless information to be given, really.

'There's poison in some of the food, but we don't know which.'. Great. What are they supposed to do with that? Alerting the whole hall is not smart, but even though Xie Lian knows he himself won't die from poison, it seems relatively urgent to at least try and warn his companions... but how?

Out of desperation, he lean towards the closest one to whisper in their ear.]

Try not to eat anything if you can. Someone sent word there was poison in some of the food.

[downswing]

[ The night, a taut string of incidents, blinding lights and tepid misfortune: gaze thunderous, he barely blinks past the long spread of the high table, the evening's revelry. Glisten of foreign cutlery, pale porcelains glazes in paints of waters and landscape.

Poison. His heart bears the beat, accelerates it. Dances between the instinct for flight (to Sizhui, Wei Ying, trapped on opposite ends of invisible lines) and that for fight. And he does not ask, You are certain? Believes truth that turns the air of his lungs stale, erodes tissue. Condemns it.

And he says, mouth slackened — ]

My family.

[ — and tips his head to where the lady Vannozza's people gather, where Sizhui, Wei Ying, Wen Qing and the children make feast, begging the silent work of an accomplice.

They must know. Must be told. Already, he hastens to search his sleeves and pouch for precious dregs of parchment. ]

Secure a knife.

[ From the meats, the cheeses, the table. If he must tear at his silks to broker his amenities, he will, oh, he will. Let vanity keep company with the dead, if the missive is sent. ]

[somebadnews]

i. it's not a fashion statement ( masquerade )

Shifting around some overly decadent estate room, everyone dressed in their costumes and ornate masks, it's hard to believe just weeks ago they were seeking shelter from blood rains and an army of hostile ghosts. Five couldn't say which he preferred, but where he currently stands isn't as unfamiliar to him as some might think. He suffered through enough of Reginald's parties a lifetime ago to know how to act at these events. It's not even the first time he's done this wearing a mask.

The half-mask over his eyes also helps to conceal any of his discomfort from the curse that he's once again decided isn't as important as everything else going on. It's inconvenient, but as long as it stays at the level it's at, he's well enough accustomed to stay functional. In the meantime he can keep an eye on his family. He speaks when spoken to, and while he has some trouble concentrating on what is said to him or remembering his backstory, he manages to rein in most of his more abrasive personality quirks behind a tight smile.

Having them all gathered in one room is foreboding, and he constantly checks to see where his siblings are and who they're talking to. It might have been overwhelming in this crowd, but it's not, and he has it under control. As soon as they're seated and served, he discretely takes a piece of cutlery from the table and tucks it into his sleeve. Just in case.

The food is immediately passed over, but the evening wears on him and he gives in when it comes to drinking. When it finally comes time for the speech, he eyes Bonaccorso, and scoffs at the word 'magic' before downing the rest of his cup. That lapse in judgment is only realized a short while later there's an announcement that they've been poisoned.

Of all the stupid things.

ii. party poison ( examination )

From staying relatively calm at the party, Five is immediately on edge when they're taken to another room to be examined. He'd rather they start with Vanya, but he's shoved forward before he can say as much, and they look at him with concern in their eyes. If it's his apparent age that draws their sympathies, he's ready to make them regret ever considering it. The actual time they spent examining him is short, and he bristles as they exchange glances and turn their backs to murmur to themselves.

He'd forgotten about the curse. They at least call it a sickness, though they don't offer anything after informing him of what he already knows. He doesn't feel differently otherwise. If he'd been poisoned, it seems like he would (probably) be aware of it already, so he waves them off. All of his focus turns to locating his sister, and he immediately rushes over once he spots her.

"Did you have anything?" He really should have known better, and warned her specifically instead of just paying attention to people getting near her. It's such an obvious tactic. If someone legitimately tried to poison his family, he's going to have something to say about it.

Not long after he's pacing around, noting those gathered around, and how sick they look. Turning to whoever is near, he asks the obvious question. "How do we fix this?"

iii. boy division ( morning after )

When they congregate the next morning, Five doesn't feel like he got more than an hour of sleep. Yet again, he's spent half the night trying to work out math that could send them back in time just far enough to avoid the incident, but he's not confident he got there. He'll revisit it if he has to, and someone he needs around dies. From what he can tell, they have a few days before that happens.

The situation they're in is clearer now, and he's eager to hear about anything he missed. If they heard who the ringleader was. They should know to contact him with any developments, but it's easier for him to tell if there's anything they're leaving out if they speak in person.

Until he finds out otherwise, he's expecting to find out that Diego was in the middle of some stupid brawl as soon as tensions boiled over. Five told him to get rid of those wolves.


ooc: will match action tag or prose as you like

ii.

[downswing]

After the inexorable heat in his belly, the scrutiny, the volatile spark of his animal instincts: fight, flight, hiss. Foreign touch tames him, riles his aches.

After the healers have served their preliminary pronouncements, his bones as needles — their cautious, curious, weary examination knotting the flesh of him back around the glass shards of condemnation. When he is reshaped by pitying wet eyes and foregone conclusions, when he knows as they know, that the carcass might persevere a handful of days longer, but the mind may wish to conceive the merits of parting cruelties, of final words.

Paralysed on the sitting sofa, he retreats in old composure, in familiar obedience. Rest, they say. He rests for want of elsewhere to go. He has hurt before, born wounds that had yet the dignity to bleed him, to claim of him in graphic detail the gift of his body's waters, red. He has hurt, but this teases — an invisible, incomprehensible foe, like the winds of scattered plague.

He will die here. He died sixteen years ago, on the wrong rim of a cliff's abyss. What difference, now? ( He returned. )

Beside Lan Wangji, he hears the boy-man. The boy-elder. The monster. Shivers, and the tremor carries, wrecks the lines of his back, bows it in increments. His mouth opens dried, tongue scintillated by the prospect of sharing — rot. Poison, in thin filigree.

Let him share what he is, let him spill. One moment's weakness, gelid. He may sharpen himself to become a brave blade, after. "We do not."

You are wise, elder, you have lived your time. You know our cause lost.

kinda wildcarding. let me know if this doesn't work >>"

[inferus]

The poison affects Wrath differently than more human victims of it. Emilia expressed her concern about it, but he cannot die from it (or so he believes). He cannot die at all at least not permanently, but still there's the worry because he has no realm to return to if it should kill him as he is used to being killed. And he refuses to leave Emilia here alone - how ever she may feel about him. His own complicated feelings wrestling up with one another like a stone in the pit of his chest.

He makes it a goal to seek the Necromancers, to demand a cure from them in exchange of whatever magic of his own he has to offer. Still stubbornly he refuses to believe it is affecting him at all except he was not able to teleport out of this area, except weakness creeps up upon his body. The exhaustion slips in. He is unaccustomed to it - not entirely. Every time one of his brothers kills him there is always a recovery period, but this is-

This is different.

He hates it. He wears it differently than others, summoning all his ancient willpower to shove it down, square his shoulders back, remain still against the wall as he focuses on gripping hold of his strength. He is unaware that Five is headed in his direction after a particularly informative conversation with Five's sister.

[elfuego]

1. in the company of healers (team macaluso)

The healers came and went, and while he could feel the poison he had unknowingly ingested gnawing away at his gut like acid while his head swam and his limbs felt heavy, Zuko refused to let it win.

He stood. He was using the wall behind him to brace some of his weight, sure, but he kept his back straight and his shoulders tense, closing his eyes and breathing. His mind fixated on the feel of energy moving through his body, fueled by his breath. He tried to picture that energy fighting back against the poison - though he had no reason to think it was so - it made him feel better.

The sound of footsteps made him open his eyes once again, and he turned his head slowly, his vision clearing some as he watched the individual approach.

“Those healers don’t have good news yet, do they?”

2. harpy pregame network, text (un: the blue spirit)

I talked to a group of necromancers who claim to be able to make a cure for the poison. They need harpy blood to do it. I’ll be at the eastern edge of the city at sundown, I’ll start my hunt from there.

3. waiting for dusk

After being the poison’s victim for the last few days he’s weak but undaunted. Zuko was used to doing things by himself and while in his own time and place he had been under the impression that he could learn to change that and make room for other people, in this strange where and when he fell back on finding stability in solitude.

Besides, if the harpies didn’t like fire (and he really hoped they didn’t) he liked to think he stood a pretty good chance of taking a few down.

He had sent out his message through the pendant, simple and to the point, and while he had not directly asked for aid (because some things he just didn’t know how to do), he wouldn’t refuse it should it come. He was still upright, but the ravages of poison had left him weak. Were this a challenge reserved for his swords alone, he might consider himself not up for the task, but he was done with not using his bending and tired of concerning himself with being met with reproach at the sight of what he could do. He was sick, he was weak, and he intended to use whatever he had at his disposal once the sun finally set and it was time to begin the hunt.

2 | xianxian of yunmeng jiang

[weifinder]

Bring backup when dealing with those necromancers. No qualms on their part for taking your blood in the bargain, and they don't come to their meetings without the walking dead in service. Unusual ones, for this city.

Jackie Ma | Sleeping Dogs | he literally just got here after the poisoning, please be nice to him

[jinzhong]

0. intensive care (cw: description of torture and disembowelment) | closed
Jackie's heard that when you die, your brain shoots off a bunch of random neurons, and he knows he's dying, because Tong had just taken that machete and gutted him like Mrs. Chu gutted fish in the kitchen of the Golden Koi. She'd recruited the gang to help sometimes, ordering Winston and Conroy and Vincent and Duke and Wei (sorry Wei sorry Wei I'm so sorry Wei don't get hurt because of me I'm sorry) to put their knife skills to use, improve them, and Winston, mama's boy that he was, would always round them up to help.

Winston. Winston and Peggy and Vincent and Mimi and Dogeyes he'll see them soon he'll hug Winston he'll punch Dogeyes he'll tell Mimi all about her brother and he hopes Wei won't join them anytime soon because Wei needs to stay alive and not join them in Hell not yet not until Tong and Big Smile Lee are there too and not for years and years because he deserves to live and if anyone can survive this fuckfest it's Wei Shen, his best friend, the strongest man he's ever known.

Jackie hazily feels his torture wounds being attended to. The drill to his knee, the broken fingers, the scalpel cuts, everything that Tong did to him to try and make him flip on Wei. Hou sei la lei, you motherfucker. You’ll never get me to roll over on Wei. Never! He’s no fucking cop!

There's no pain in his stomach. Maybe it's too deep to hurt.

He wakes again, shackled (up to the pipe before Tong sank that machete in deep, being taunted, but no now he's on the floor not dislocating his shoulders what's going on), and he can hear voices. Someone comes up to him, giving him something strange and introducing herself as Karsa, explaining things that are hard for him to follow. He does his best to absorb the information, even though it makes almost no sense. Is this what Hell is like?

It gets easier. He still hurts. His clothes are still bloodied. But his stomach is whole, and his injuries are largely healed. He's told what to do, and, still feeling bamboozled, goes along with it. Nobody's trying to hurt him. Yet.

1. initiation | open to the Macaluso brawlers
The mask is weird. The clothes are weirder. It's like something out of a movie he never paid much attention to - nothing as easy to move in as what he's used to. There are too many buttons, and he misses the loops a couple of times and needs to do it again. The clothes are heavy and hot and would never work in Hong Kong.

He's got his orders; either to try and get the gang to give up their attack on Vannozza's wing, or help rescue her if and when the doors are breached.

"Oh, man, this sucks," he mutters under his breath.

2. vendor extortion | open to team fire water
At least Jackie missed out on being poisoned. Phew. Since hunting is something he's never done before, he decides to go look for the people in the seedy parts of the city. He grew up in Old Prosperity; this is where he's comfortable. He's talking to all the criminals and thieves he can find. In his old clothes, his Triad tattoos are visible, and criminal markers are identifiable anywhere. He definitely doesn't have the look of a reputable guy.

Yeah, he'd wanted to leave that life behind, but maybe he can do that once he's helped people not die of being poisoned. It's better than being in it for your own gain.

He runs up to the nearest person he recognizes in passing. "Hey, you found anything?"

1

[elfuego]

"You're telling me," Zuko replied quietly, scowling beneath his mask as his hand rest on the pommel of his swords. "Any ideas on how to distract them?"

Alliances or not, there was a gang of drunks trying to break through into a wing of the palace where innocent people - and the rival to his apparent patron waited. Familiar enough with the ways of the court, he knew the gang wreaking havoc would reflect badly on Macaluso, so he'd gone with a few of the others to try and get them away from Vannozza's wing.

The poison he'd ingested early still ate at him, but when the healers could prescribe nothing but treasure hunt clues Zuko wasn't content to sit idly and grow weaker. He needed to do something that wasn't just waiting to die.

[lancifolium]

1) in her ladyship's service (team vannozza)

The sounds of ornery drunkards had been easy enough to tune out until the crowd seemed to migrate, the sounds of rabble-rousing growing closer and becoming angrier than just the harmless patter of rollicking drunks.

Lily didn’t like how close to Vannozza’s wing of the palace they sounded, and as she left her room to head towards the end of the corridor she kept a firm grip on her wand as the angry voices grew louder. Her heart sped as she listened to how close they sounded and drew her wand, locking the door to the lady’s wing of the palace before waiting for them to reach the knob with her breath caught in her throat.

She hoped her charm would hold, or - in a worst-case situation, that someone else staying in this part of the palace had heard the crowd’s approach and find themselves keen and able to defend.

2) in the night garden

The shape of the mansion situated on the hunting grounds was still visible beyond the line of dark woods. Between long looks upward at the trees, hoping for a sign of the owl she checked back with the shadow of the manor house on the grounds, using it as a landmark to try and keep from getting lost. Lily knew she was capable of transporting herself back to the Vannozza wing of the palace in less than a heartbeat, but she didn’t want to have to do that - she had come in with a group, and she intended to make sure she and everyone else could leave.

“Bit funny don’t you think?” She asked in a whisper to the group member beside her. “The lady believed Wen Qing to be using these grounds for sordid reasons, yet she neglected to mention how ill-fitting this place was for them.” Lily drew her wand and swished it slightly, illuminating the tip in a soft glow meant to serve in place of a torch, or a flashlight.

“Perhaps the lady is a believer in creepiness as an aphrodisiac,” Lily continued before the soft hooting sound of an owl made her fall silent, cutting the light from her wand in an instant as she squinted up at the trees, her eyes following the sound of rustling wings.

3) evasive maneuvers (for eleven)

Finding Eleven in the forest had been a surprise, but Lily was familiar enough with his abilities to know what a good ally he could be, so she stayed close to him while they looked for any sign of the owls.

While her original purpose in seeking access to the grounds had been for a different task, she was glad to be an extra set of eyes, especially for a task as important as finding a cure for those in their number who had been poisoned.

They had not been searching the forest long when the sound of hooves drumming against earth broke the eerie silence of the forest. She froze midstep and looked behind her, her stomach dropping as she caught sight of something moving fast in their direction.

“Quick,” Lily hissed in a panicked whisper before grabbing Eleven’s shoulder. Steering him back against the nearest tree as what she presumed was a mounted guard came closer she pressed herself against him, her hands coming to his cheeks as she kissed him hard, achieving that compromising position they had all agreed to assume should anyone come to investigate what was going on.

3 ofc

[bearshermark]

"Wh-" While Eleven had agreed to the conditions set, the sound of hooves brought on the promise of threat and he'd thought first to hide- thought that was where Lily was urging him. Peering past her, pulling her with him until his back hit a tree and-

Oh.

Nerves flared, self-conscious about how convincing he could make such a ruse look. At least his hand on her waist was a good start, and his mouth settled for trying to match the ardent press of hers. Well enough that his mind was divorced from the soft press of her body, his ears strained for approaching footsteps, heart beating a rapid rhythm.

Goddess, but he prayed they were all right. She was too exposed, his swords tucked away between them- and he needed to breathe soon.

sort of wildcard

[weifinder]

He holds out his hand, asking for a stop in silence, holding his other hand to his mouth to mime quiet. Head cocked to the side, listening for the forest sounds of this hunting grounds of death and life and decay and birth and horrors, in a way he finds almost novel, but also inconvenient, and terrifically saddening.

There's no rest for the dead, but he wonders: these. Similar and separate from those from Unhalad, but familiar, and why. What brought them back? Why these woods? Who does Vannozza court? If the Merchant wants her supported, it could not be the lords of death who had slaughtered his home, who had wrung from him everything that had mattered.

Not unless it was to the end of another such lord, and to that, ah, he could believe.

Still, what he listens for does not manifest, and he motions again for Lily to step forward.

"We'll settle these bones swiftly, so they may not be disturbed. You don't happen to have spellwork for digging holes, do you?" His wry smile is his long shot in asking, but it's better to speak when they have all been caught off-guard by the reality of their Lady's hunting grounds.

if you're willing to pay the price | closed to wrath, emilia and five

[rumorate]

It takes some time to sneak out of the palace and make their way to the necromancer district. In the end, the best course of action seems to be sticking to their "Teams." Emilia and Allison wander their way down together and wait at the entrance for the other half of their party to arrive.

They're dressed down somewhat, wanting to blend in and not show as much of their fancy palace attire. She's sure that they're true allegiances will be exposed eventually, but for now, she doesn't think that it's wise to ask too many questions.

Glancing around, she moves closer to the shadows while keeping an eye out for her brother and Wrath.

"They should be here soon."

[valeas]

Emilia slips into the shadows along with Allison, not quite human in her soundlessness. Nonna would always scold her ability to sneak around undetected, but in nights like these, it feels like a blessing from the goddess of nature and trickery.

She — pointless though it might be to state the obvious, she worries. About this poison and its effects, yes, but also the involvement of others. Emilia's grown a little too used to investigating a potential threat independently and on her own, and despite the darker feelings that have taken root in her heart as of late, she cares about people getting hurt. She cares about Allison.

But one stubborn lady recognizes another, and neither one was going to allow the other to get to the bottom of this on their own. So Emilia gives a small nod while she assesses their surroundings, and she waits.

She can still be patient. Sort of.