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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.
iii.
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.
no subject
For a moment, Wangji's gaze slants, reductive: he sees Jiang Wanyin, sees Jiang Cheng, sees the tumult of his borrowed whites as a disciple arrived for the conferences of Cloud Recesses, sees the lines of his broad back like a husked yoke, sees the blasphemy of his receding pulse. Each beat is a death uttered against a gentleman's fine skin, and, arm drawn to Jiang Cheng's cheek, the sleeve mourns gravity, drifted down.
Slack-mouthed, lips dry, Lan Wangji itches to correct its course. Cannot, for eyes that watch, tentative, from a distance — what men of medicine the lord Macaluso has drawn have no appetite for the eccentricities of two errant patients. Too often, the condemned lend themselves to violence. They mean to have peace among them, with incense of sandalwood mellowing the cloying air, the warmth of the room dispersing the bleached notes of strain from slowly, ambitiously fatigued bodies.
Peace, and they? The dogs of war. If there is duel called after, Lan Wangji will not deny this: knelt like a courtesan, he reaches first — draws Jiang Cheng's hand from its perch between the bookends of his loose, lulled fingers, with the same reverence once reserved to presenting the discipline instrument to the grandmaster.
Look, and learn, as a sect whole learned, the way of humility: when the second son of the main house strips of himself rank and decorum. When he sequesters, here, now, the stretch of Jiang Cheng's hand and lowers his head to the electric hum of Zidian, the pallor of the jewellery against the white of Wangji's headband, knuckles too near his lips for comfort. A supplicant of the lowest order.
Sunder him, then, if he is possessed. Make ruin of him. ]
I have a son.
[ Forgive him, brother, for he cannot argue but intends to sin, and you must prove complicit. Forgive him, for he has cause in the dark eyes of a boy war-tried, who need not taste the second, extended death of a father. ]