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westwhere2021-08-20 07:55 pm
groundrules) wrote in westwhere2021-08-20 07:55 pm
feast and make merry
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
■ 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 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
■ 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.
■ 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.
no subject
The chaos he has given birth to and reared so cunningly cannot be extinguished with Bichen. No, they have to cut deeper than that if they want to free themselves of this man's hold.
Don't give into anger or hate, Lan Wangji. Guangyao is far too accustomed to that and he knows his revenge will carry on if the youngest of the Twin Jades acts like Nie Mingjue.]
You have your own talents. I admire you greatly.
no subject
The intimacy of focus dilutes itself with Jin Guangyao. Bichen stays within grasp. The light of the banquet hall narrows. Clinked, glasses collide in merrymaking, past Lan Wangji's horizon. He will be heard, lupine ears of gossipmongers attentive. So be it. So be it. ]
I would not give water to your grave.
[ Not to spit it, not to defile it. Not to leave it, barren in wait of the elements. He knows what became of flesh and splintered bones, of Jin Guangyao's silhouette, shrouded in the courtesies yet afforded to Lanling: were a war not at risk, incineration would have sufficed to meet brother's humble, nostalgic requirements.
Lan Wangji would have set his body before vultures and called the deed done — would have fettered him in mountain, where travellers need not pass, and taken upon himself the blasphemy of removing his flesh-binds, so the spirit might stir and wake and wonder, endlessly, plangently entrapped. ]
I do not kill you where you stand, for the land's mercy.
[ The merchant, a gravelly, nasal, cavernous voice: the warning that all who perish in this world feed the undead that have oppressed it. Lan Wangji will not add Jin Guangyao to these burdens. ]
no subject
What do you know?
[The inquiry is dangerous - giving any information to Guangyao will arm him for battles yet to come. His pleasant, humble persona is just that - a persona and it can be stripped away to reveal the spite and fangs beneath.]
Tell me how I have transgressed, Hanguang-Jun. You spoke of your brother, I recall, but I have no quarrel with him.
no subject
[ No sect leader, this. No glory of the golden people. No Lianfang-Zun. No slayer of the Wen.
At least courtesy preserves itself in motes and tatters. At least, he earned garments and trinkets of manners past the slave wear of 'Meng Yao.' At least Lan Wangji holds himself, the weight of Zewu-Jun's grief hung taut around his neck, and breathes, but he breathes, he breathes.
And he —
— is.
A lone and quiescent fixture, white anger cresting on the bowed angle of his bending back. Infant disciples neglect their postures so, like willow trees, submitting. He aches in the way of tries dried, their skins crackled. Knows, decades from now, he will sprout branches of his back, a ribboned extension connecting him to the waiting sky.
If there is a moment when he transgresses, from brother's diplomacy to the cruelties of his heart, if there is a blinked-eye's decision, he cannot name its scope. Only feels the tenuous partitions between that which is, independent and whole, and that which Lan Wangji stitches seamlessly from ether: the silence spell, ground and growing garden on the smoothened land of Jin Guangyao's lips. ]
Hear me. When I enter a room, flee it. When I speak, silence your snake hiss. Where my family live, you withdraw bite, scent and venom. Do you grasp? [ A pause, then, to acknowledge the fruit of the silence spell: ] Nod the once in affirmation.
[ There can be only that between them. ]
no subject
But later. He doesn't have the might to accomplish that task. So he must make himself humble. The struggling ceases and he peers up at the other man, waiting to be given the instructions that will surely brand him as nothing more than a pathetic nuisance. All nobles are the same.
Except for Xichen. His fists tighten at his sides and he nods, once.
Lan Wangji cannot stop Xichen from seeking him out, however, and Guangyao will make it worth the man's time.]
no subject
There is cruelty in Lan Wangji, a fire that can burn the world. It was known before, when it surrendered the house of Wen to arson. When he caught and held Jiang Cheng's eye, and whisked away his one brother, and now he keeps him — strains not to let him slip between fingers, no easier than the scorn he bears the shrivelled, once-golden cup of malice before him.
He does not release the silence spell. An incense stick may yet burn for the pleasure. Before dismissing himself returned to the mirage of sweeping, gregarious figures around them, he only ropes his arms as is custom, bends his back in a long bow, and — ]
Health and blessings to Lianfang-Zun.
[ He will need them, even as Wangji retires. ]