westwhere | arc iii: house of ravens

arc iii: house of ravens | arrival

Hi, everyone! Our Arc III arrival event covers 20 Feb-11 March and doubles as a test drive. Participants don’t need an invite to apply by 11 March. Reserves live here. Try to label if you’re a test drive tourist or an old timer — and have fun!

COTTAGEVORE

TDM TOURISTS | OLD TIMERS | COMMON PROMPTS | NOTES

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TDM TOURISTS: THE SCENIC ROUTE

You flinch awake, hand weighed by a sharp stick, stone, or makeshift torch. Your clothes sit stiff, splattered with dried dirt and dusted leaves. Here and there, scratches and shallow wounds litter your limbs, the marks of days of dazed survival alone that you mistily remember. Your strength and supernatural powers are currently largely depleted, but should recover within two to three days.

As they journey, characters discover stretches of the eerily silent forests briefly transform into woodlands or recognisable spots of nature from their home worlds — perhaps they’re now seeing the meadows outside their home towns, their backyard orchard, or a fondly remembered lake pier. These images are short-lived illusions that other characters can also see.

Mind your steps: the mirages try to lure characters deep into the forest, where unfriendly animals and hidden pits wait.

A. THE MORE, THE MERRIER

Trailing through the labyrinthine woods, you stumble upon a group of heavily armed bandits who are already herding several captives. Depending on how agitated you are, expect shackles, leashes and tusk pendants that allow characters to speak and glean local tongues — including the thugs' barked instructions. The outlaws are on a three-day voyage to cursed village Ke-Waihu, where they intend to sell their prisoners to the Hok-Shinn criminal clan.

■ Ensure fellow captives survive the trek, avoiding leg-hold traps, snares and hunting nets.

■ Beatings continue, but morale never improves: help mouthy prisoners with their tasks or wounds.

■ Capture or forage food — and stop naïve captives from going deeper into the forest to follow glimpses of beautiful (wo)men or cries for help. There’s nobody there.

■ At night, prisoners are locked in stitched-shut tents — get friendly quickly.

B. JUST CRUISING

The bandits never saw you coming — but you’ve been watching them collect their prey. Perhaps you’ve even found others like you — also spared enslavement, but condemned to trail after the thugs towards Ke-Waihu. Characters can pick up discarded translation and communication tusk pendants, scraps of food and frail weapons.

■ Beware: superstitious thieves frequently patrol at night, while woodland predators are emboldened by the absence of fires.

■ Leave messages or instructions to the bandits’ captives (tree husk carvings, anyone?) and maybe try to rescue them.

■ ...or leave them for dead and trot on to Ke-Waihu. You savage.

» GO CAMPING, THEY SAID

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OLD TIMERS: CURSES FOR ONE, CURSES FOR ALL

After a bumpy ride aboard the Salamera II, the party arrive at idyllic village Ke-Waihu.

They are greeted by Hok-Shinn Weisi, the slippery mayor who officially helms Ke-Waihu, while his brother Sairen leads the clan’s heavy underground ventures. Weisi’s flippant and spoiled son Taksui is the Merchant’s local liaison. The botanist Enam and his apprentices set out to explore, taking the group's baggage along.

■ Weisi was told the party members are families of Taravast refugees, seeking finer fates in Ke-Waihu. Each family has been assigned a humble but serviceable dwelling — see what luck has in store for you.

■ Weisi officially welcomes the newcomers in Ke-Waihu’s main bustling marketplace. Every merchant, fishmonger and beggar stops to watch as foreigners are briefly stripped of their ostentatious jewels, clothes or weapons, soaked in iced water and told to embrace the village by accepting its old, its new, its ugliness and its truths.

■ To join the community, characters must absorb and redeem the wrongdoings of a deceased ancestor. They are served flasks of a thick, bitter brew that slides down mildly corrosive and cold.

■ The brew’s effects vary: some drinkers feel only a sudden, electric awareness of the story behind the curse they inherited. Others feel scalded from the inside, agonising for hours. The ancestral curse effects start to take hold that night.

■ Characters are sent off to their new homes in Ke-Waihu — but are contacted within hours by one of Enam’s anguished apprentices. His master and his peers were captured by bandits while inspecting the elusive forests for plant specimens. These wicked men took everything: your goods, your Ellethian high fashion, your extra weapons, even your Sleeping Zenobius. Go get’em — but beware the deadly illusions of Ke-Waihu’s forest.

» DUDE, WHERE’S MY COMATOSE SLEEPER?

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ALL TOGETHER NOW

The thugs, the old timers, the test drive prisoners and their creepy watchers collide in the mist-drowned forests of Ke-Waihu.

A. BANDIT BANE

■ Infiltrate the thug group in, kick some outlaws’ teeth on the way out.

■ Release and escort roughened-up newcomers to Ke-Waihu, picking up strays along the way.

■ One of the thugs snitches that the remaining stolen loot is hoarded in a nearby secluded cave, drowned under foliage. The entrance is watched by large, agitated boars with startlingly hard, but not impervious skin. With gold, gems, guns within reach, anyone for pork dinner?

■ After speaking with the new arrivals, party botanist and guide Enam confirms they have been summoned to serve as weapons in this world’s ongoing conflict between warring undead factions. The Merchant, Enam’s collaborator and the party’s patron, is leading otherworlders east, where forgotten beacons might return them home.

■ The villagers Ke-Waihu, Ke-Waiar and Ke-Waicai reportedly know the location of such a beacon. They will unveil it if the party breaks the curse of the House of Ravens.

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B. THE BLUSHING BRIDE

When the group returns, Ke-Waihu is celebrating the joyous procession of dozens of lavish 'weddings.' The (false) rites are carried out to commemorate the marriage of a huntsman and his fox bride...

■ The roads are awash with flower petals and rice, houses extend their hospitality freely, and the rich give away coin. Even Hok-Shinn clansmen don their finest garments and hand out gifts and favours, while lawmen grant pardons to captives held for minor offences.

■ Villagers pose as 'brides' and 'grooms' to play act public weddings. Characters are asked to participate as brides and grooms, or to join the wedding retinue of a NPC villager. Characters can unknowingly marry, but not become foxes.

■ The evening culminates in a grand market fete, with stalls offering sickly sweets and strong alcohols. Poets recite love songs, professional weepers wail to strangers that they lost their children to insidious in-laws, and petty clashes erupt among merrymakers.

■ Some of the NPC fox 'brides' seem to grow wide-eyed and alert, suspicious of the many hunting dogs that watchmen walk around the marketplace.

■ Come nightfall, 'wedded' pairs are escorted to suites in a large and extravagant inn. For each 'couple,' accommodations comprise one room for the retinue and a linked conjugal bedroom.

IF CHARACTERS MARRY A (FOX) 'SPOUSE':

■ They are handed three pieces of parchment before they are locked into the marital suite with their consort and their retinue.

■ Once alone in their 'marital quarter,' characters first enjoy polite conversation with their spouse, whose eyes start to glimmer golden, while their teeth and claws lengthen, their mouths distort to snouts and their hair reddens. The fox brides do not seem aware they are, in fact, foxes, but try to scratch, bite or maim their partners. Viciously quick, strong and prone to thralling their victims into spells of lethargy, these foxes could get the best of you — happily, the little parchment papers you received can share some survival tips.

■ Fool the fox spouse into thinking you are already married or pledged to someone in your retinue. Affronted, the fox bride will exile you out of the wedding room. Refresh the salt lines that surround the conjugal room, and gently steer the fox back if it flees overnight.

■ Your retinue and you should impersonate a hunting hound, down to howling, running on all-fours and sniffling. The fox will hurriedly isolate itself in the conjugal room, but will actively try to escape at night. Keep every inn door and window closed.

■ Become a widow(er). Call your retinue and make the best of your fists and a butter knife. You will need to kill the spouse a few times before they stay fully dead, each time reviving more and more fox-like in appearance.

AS A WEDDING RETINUE MEMBER:

■ Awkwardly hold watch outside the conjugal bedroom of the dashing NPC ~~cannon fodder~~ groom and his fox bride.

■ The NPC groom might request help as above — or might fall deathly silent. If that happens, villagers instruct, character must loudly ask if the wine pleases the couple. The flushed, visibly fox-like bride will then open the door to complain their new consort — clawed dead in the marital bed — won’t even share a wine cup with them. The fox does not seem to grasp they have killed their groom.

■ Defeat the fox at drinking — the fox bride can hold its cups, but slipping in some of the relaxing opiates on hand will help the cause. Sneak the NPC groom's corpse out with a buddy when the fox drops asleep.

■ Or prove you are a fairer marital prospect by verbally wooing the fox or doing battle with your retinue companion, to prove your worth. Your wingman may wish to throw the fight, feed lines, or generally smoulder. The fox bride will offer the NPC corpse as a betrothal gift.

Come morning, the villagers open the now-delapidated inn. Those who survive fox weddings receive braided bracelets of red, golden and tangerine rope, earning good will in the village. The murderous fox brides have disappeared — in their place, yellowed and dust-drenched bones 'sleep' in the marital beds, covered by withered and torn wedding clothes.

Villagers share the whole story: a huntsman encountered a fox goddess in the forest, when she had taken the shape of a beautiful woman. Lovestruck, he brought her back to Ke-Waihu as his wife — but the horrified villager slaughtered her and her husband on their wedding night. The fox god cursed the village to relieve yearly 'fox weddings,' during which the bones of those murdered during the previous 'conjugal' festivities rise as brides to terrorise new spouses.

Skipping the fox wedding rites, villagers say, shrivels their crops and depletes their food stocks for several seasons.

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C. A-HUNTING WE WILL GO

It’s all fun and wedding games, until one of the victims of the recent nuptials is the son of influential wine merchant Saguk Chaomin. He vengefully sponsors a a hunt to finally lift the foxes’ curse.

■ Saguk Chaomin assigns weapons — from knives, spears and sharpened sticks to bows, arrows and rifles operating on gun powder — alongside lanterns and climbing rope to the brave adventurers. The contingent splinters into smaller groups to avoid detection.

■ The forests now aggressively conspire to lead characters to their deaths: whether it’s through fostering illusions that trip them into gullies, or decrepit bridges that crumble, sending travellers into whirling river waters. Animals (excluding wolves) attack travellers fiercely. Keep a hunting hound close.

■ Characters with unusual physical features or suspicious behaviours — from supernatural powers to a fear of dogs — are accused of being shape-shifting foxes.

■ Fox spirits assume a mortal but resilient shape the day after the wedding — strong, large, feral and willy. They’re quick to bite, and their presence dulls the senses of hunters.

■ To exorcise the foxes, kill their mortal bodies or obliterate or repair their small, decaying forest altars. These are stone rings the size of one’s hand, often hidden at the root of ancient trees. Cleanse the altars of filth, vermin and predatory creatures, and replenish the stones with fresh river pieces. Beware rare fox spirits that come to protect altars or hide their young.

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D. WELL, WELL, WELL

In the wake of the weddings, characters head to their abodes, while test drivers are garrisoned in communal temporary shelters. Over the next few days, everyone may notice:

■ Villagers have a marrow-deep fear of the Hok-Shinn clan, whose members behave as if they are immune from repercussions.

■ Villagers tell eerie tales of strange encounters in their locked stables, abandoned houses or wells — they have seen a creature with the head of a beautiful woman, whose hair braids to form her snake-like body. 'She' slithers away once discovered.

■ Word spreads across the marketplace that dark waters have returned. A farmer’s well has dried, leaving only a thickened, tar-like liquid at the bottom. Another villager shamefully admits his well also dried a month ago, clogged by dark filth — the fount was old, and he assumed it had naturally depleted.

■ Horrified villagers speak no more of this, but superstitiously volunteer flower and food tributes for the Ka-Sanwon volcano. Mayor Hok-Shinn Weisi intercedes to reserve the resources for the upcoming return of the patron lord of the volcano’s three villages — the undead Beastmaster.

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QUESTIONS

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He laughs in turn, Anduin's obvious surprise so offhandedly delightful he can't help himself.

"Truly! Though the first time he married me without telling me about it. Same with the second time, as it stands. The third time I finally learned about the first two times, and he showed up half-drunk and half-apologetic about the first two. It's hard staying mad at some people, even when you're the one they've chosen to wrong."

He half-smiles, shrugs his shoulders: he's been more wronged, and Lan Zhan at least in his tangled, difficult way, has been learning to care for him, the person who came through all the events of his life and not-death, instead of just the man he'd been once before he'd chosen to die and spare the ones he had left further horrors of association, or having to take his life themselves. Age and distance would mean different choices... but not necessarily better resolutions, knowing from now what drove all those things then.

Politics are not his favourite game, as it were, and that had been heavily levered against him.

"Though truly, who knows what he said during the fox marriages. I wasn't involved in... that aspect, just some after."

"Considerably so. He still had the confidence of youth."

Without the burdens of loss, without the frustrations of broken trust and weight of expectations. He flickers a wan smile.

"I still had the arrogance of someone yet unburned."

He may still have his own confidence, but it is much quieter now than it was in his youth. Much more hesitant, more aware of consequence.

"You either learn through whatever the world throws at you, or you die. Sounds like you've both been learning."

He smiles, and there's a resigned, self-aware aspect to it, like he remembers what the confidence of youth and the arrogance of the unburned had been like for him; like it happened so far long ago that it couldn't be summarised as "a year and six months before, when I woke up from sixteen years of being in an unknown dark space, after I tried to be nowhere at all."

We all have different massively traumatic turning points.

"Who is he to you?" Curious only, not a pointed or particularly poignant question. Rude? Yes, but he did just 'sneak' into the house with Wrathion. They're both incorrigible.

Who is Anduin to him?

Labels seem unable to capture it.

He is the person Wrathion would let his whole village burn for, the person who gave him a chance when few others would, the person whose opinion he values most, the person who features in many of his nightmares. The source of many of his regrets, many of his hopes.

He doesn't know quite what to call this, and doesn't know if he's confident enough to give it a name.

"The person who knows me best," he allows, "and still seems to have time for me."

Against all the odds.

The way Wrathion says that, the parallel that runs through Wei Wuxian's life, gives him pause. So much so that he in fact stills, observing Wrathion for a moment, before he nods.

"He's your soulmate." A translation of a concept that was deeper: the person who knows you better than you know yourself, who is there, who is incalculably important, having nothing to do with trappings of love or lust or bonds of social connections. Two souls, entwinned. That he happens to have found himself married to his own soulmate is inconsequential to the understanding of what two such souls are. "Do you know him best in turn?"

Does Wrathion know him best, and have time for him? Wei Wuxian finds that latter self evident given what they're doing, and Anduin is a man of patience, but not a man who is infallible. Most men are far from that, whatever their... species, he supposes, unsure of what word encompasses the variety of peoples he's met who are and are not human, but still mirrors of each other, in so many fascinating ways.

Anduin is well-aware of the bits that happened after, if not quite how Wuxian had been involved. This village... This place and all of it's superstitions. He supposes that some are at least partially founded in truth, the fox spirits had been real after all. But they had brought that fate upon themselves, and he cannot help but wonder how much of the rest of this is also self-inflicted.

But that is a thought for another time. For now... His mind is still reeling with the information it has been given. Lan Wangji, married three times over to the man in front of him. It is hard to imagine... It's hard to imagine Lan Wangji drunk for that matter.

"How in the world did he marry you without telling you about it?" Anduin asks, fascinated.

[Anduin flicks a smile at her exasperation. Honestly, he hadn't really minded them himself, but they seem to be a nice hot-button issue to bring up whenever people need something to mutually commiserate about.]

They were certainly less than ideal. Although -- I supposed I would personally take them over a full suit of armor any day.

[Have you ever worn plate armor, Alison? It too is a Nightmare.]

Soulmate?

Wrathion blinks at that, tilts his head in thought. He's heard people use such a phrase, but has no concept of if it... holds any weight, any meaning beyond an ideal.

The question makes him pause, however. Does he know him best? Has he ever been wrong, in his judgements?

Yes, he thinks so, to his own detriment. Mostly assuming a harsher judgement of himself, however. Not because he doesn't understand who Anduin Wrynn is. Does anyone know him any better, however?

Who would be in contest? Genn Greymane? Not at all, Genn doesn't care to understand who Anduin is in his heart. He has an ideal of Anduin held in his mind, and holds him to that. Jaina? Perhaps, she's known him since he was young. They share much in common. Yet Jaina has not stayed a constant in his life. Her impression of him may be coloured by still remembering him as a small child. Velen, then? Velen understands Anduin on a spiritual level, he is sure, but a personal one? That he cannot be sure of.

"I could not be sure if I know him best, he has more people in his life than I do, but I think I know what is most important for him -- and my time is always his."

Now all of this amuses him now, where it had baffled and annoyed him before: he claimed Lan Zhan as a soulmate an age past, and it's been the sort of slow rebuilding of understanding to feel that yes, they can see, know, learn each other again, even as much changed men from their youth.

He can't hold on to grudges any better now than he did then, not the least of it being because Lan Zhan, foolish and stubborn and everything else, is one of the most important people in his life.

"Obscure clan-based rituals involving the tying of a ribbon around a wrist." Without any other context, it sounds even more silly, but he's not here to give the best accounting of something he found...

"There was an ancestor's spirit, an assassination technique of the clan, and a whole bunch of rabbits involved. Not strictly in that order."

"Mm, soulmates then. Finding someone like that is a blessing. I'm glad the both of you have each other in this place."

Then he smiles, waggling his fingers, slipping down a side hall that leads to the stairs up to Lan Zhan's chosen retreat.

"See you tomorrow night, ah? Enjoy yourselves!"

With a wink, he takes himself away. (Perhaps surprisingly, not to think licentiously about either of them. After all, he sleeps by his husband's side nightly as they mostly manage it, to nothing more salacious than shared space.)

[She nods, because Wrench isn't wrong there.]

But some of them were just spit back out again, only with more memories from home. Makes me wonder if for some of us being stuck here is just ... inevitable.

[She misses Vanya, Klaus and Luther and her daughter. Allison is starting to wonder if she and Claire are just fated to be apart.]

[Allison smiles and returns the bow in kind.]

Allison Hargreeves. Nice to meet you.

[Yes, it's a immaterial thing to complain about but it feels like her fashion choices are the only thing she has control over in this world. She would rather not put on those hideous suits again.]

Okay, I assume it is lighter than a suit of armor.

[She has not and would prefer never to.]

And it's certainly better than dying.

"Rabbits and ribbons," Anduin echoes, feeling as though his eyebrows may be permanently raised in surprise. He feels as though there is a story in this, although he also feels as though it is a story he will not entirely understand, perhaps even if it is fully explained.

He shakes his head as if to clear his thoughts before offering the other man a smile in turn.

"Living with Lan Wangji here in this house, I have gotten to know him... Perhaps not well," he says, with a twist of his lips. "He does not make it easy. But certaily better than I did. He was... More than grateful to leave me in charge of answering to the villagers who have come to seek advice from these doors. His patience, it would seem, does have a limit."

Wei Wuxian laughs at that, leans back in his chair and cradles his cup, empty by now, in his hands. It feels nice, having things to hold onto with no expectations. It's amusing, hearing about Lan Zhan doing what he can to avoid the incessant annoyance of village requests for petty pleasings.

"Oh, don't be fooled, he's never had endless patience. Lan Zhan has a temper," he says, shaking his head, "But he's also well tempered."

By time, by loss, by war, by peace, by responsibility. They don't hammer an unblemished whole, one instead rough and sharp in ways that Wei Wuxian found compelling, frustrating, and attractive.

"And he's gracious, and grateful, more than most realise. Kinder too."

[Anduin flashes her another smile at that.]

I certainly agree with you there.

[He glances aside at the villagers.]

I suppose it is too soon to say whether this place will be any better than the last, but. Seeing as we could not breathe the air outside of the lighthouse, and -- well. I only just arrived in Taravast during the rioting.

[He shrugs.] One can only hope?

Anduin's smile softens as Wuxian continues his description of Lan Wangji and he nods in agreement.

"Yes," he replies. "He is."

He turns to lean against the counter, cradling his mug in both of his hands as he considers how best to explain himself before he continues.

"Truth be told, I had not thought he cared for me much, at first. He does not make it easy to read his thoughts. But -- I have come to understand that what I had initially taken for his displeasure in my choices and actions is in fact... What I suspect is a desire to see me succeed?" He shrugs, somewhat self-conscious of having said such a thing aloud.

No. [ It's not complicated to finish the tea and gather a few small staples, like some bread, from the pantry, and put them on the tray to carry out, rejoining Dany. ]

You shouldn't skip eating just because of some brats.

He opts not to say it can be both, displeasure and the desire for a person to overcome, to make more of themselves, to do better. Yet better according to what becomes the question, and there are other truths, which this fits in with neatly.

"You're not wrong. He seeks to promote people's capabilities in succeeding."

He tolerates failure, when it doesn't mean ceasing. When it's not buckling down. When it's not success become anathema to his own internalised considerations.

"Rest assured, he especially cares to see young men succeed."

Said as if both he and his husband don't look like men merely in their twenties.

[Allison would argue that things are not starting off on the right foot, given their experiences in thus far, but she can also understand the need for optimism, even in these complicated times.]

I'm sure it certainly can't be worse.

[She says, fully jinxing it.]

[With a bit of sparks flying, the lock finally breaks apart. Dany is quick to remove the muzzle and chains from her dragon, already impatiently trying to fly over her shoulder and into the sky.

With Wrathion distracted to the right, another bandit started to charge at Dany from the left. The moment Drogon's mouth was freed, he shot a stream of black and red flame at the man, setting him on fire. Dany could feel the sear of the heat against her skin, the smell of singing hair returning to her like an old friend. She instinctively touched her scalp. No, the fuzz was still there. It wasn't hers this time.

Drogon charged from the cage and swooped low, attacking several of the bandits, but doing so indiscriminately. Thank the gods it was only Wrathion and Dany, for in his rage, he might not be able to tell friend from foe.

Dany gripped the whip tied to her waist.]

He's in a frenzy. I need to calm him!

Anduin flashes Wei Wuxian a smile at this. It's true, he does look quite young, but he gets the feeling that the pair of them are at least older than Anduin himself. Wangji certainly treats him like his junior, and Anduin will not deny that he still has quite a lot of growing to do. He is still technically a teenager, after all.

"I am grateful for the support," Anduin says. "It -- has been strange, truth be told. To come to this place and be so independent. That is to say..."

He glances aside at Wuxian, trying to figure out how best to phrase this. "Back at home, there are... A great many people who care about my well-being. I am grateful for it, but it can be -- smothering. Being here, it is quite the opposite. I have Wrathion, of course. But sometimes I wonder if perhaps... There isn't something to be said of a balance between the two."

[ In truth, Wrathion cannot blame Drogon in the slightest.

If someone put him in a cage, he's quite sure he'd be in a frenzy too. ]

Speak to him, then. He trusts you. Let him know these bandits will pay.

[ Several of them already have, quite assuredly. The only trouble is, even with Drogon free Wrathion isn't sure they should wait to take on all the bandits themselves. ]

[It was a bit beyond speaking to Drogon. He recoiled, even as she approached him. As much as it pained her, she unwound the whip, snapping it against the air in warning. Drogon beat his wings against the air, screeching at her in warning.

She cracked the whip again, her last warning.

He flew higher above her, ducking away from any attack. Another burst of fire, this closer to her. Before she could respond, he was flying off, swooping through the air as he attacked any stragglers he saw.]

Drogon!

[ A whip?

Wrathion whirls around to look at her in surprise, then at Drogon.

Drogon screeches in answer, and he cannot blame him. If someone swung a whip at him, he'd not take kindly to it either.

Does this normally work? She has no way to talk the young dragon down? ]

I don't get the impression he's listening.

[ Are they not bonded? Does she have no method to calm him beyond whips?! ]

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arc iii: house of ravens | arrival

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