arc iii: house of ravens | arrival

[groundrules]

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

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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

Comments

II!

[good_taste]

[Straight from a bandit camp and into a wedding. Astarion's life was bordering on incomprehensible at this point. Still, he couldn't bring himself to care. He wasn't going to be resting on the ground again tonight, and his clothes were clean again. All he needed now was something to drink. Maybe some entertainment.

Speaking of.]

And walk in on the newlyweds? Never. [Though his tone says otherwise.] I'd rather not offend the locals so soon.

[song_of_fire]

Silence isn't what I would expect from newlyweds.

[She won't think about either of her wedding nights. They had been drastically different, but she knew very well what was expected after the wedding ceremony. Even for those a bit disinterested, there would still be some sound.]

Then perhaps we should ask them if they are enjoying the wine?

[Though she never realized how unnerving that phrase really was until now.]

Something doesn't feel right.

[good_taste]

Mm, true. They do seem rather lifeless. [He looks toward the conjugal room, fingers drumming idly on the furniture. The whole thing was odd. The locals had tried to convince him to marry almost as soon as he arrived. He'd refused, obviously--he'd been hoping to stay on the streets and watch for drunkards he could lead away from the crowd, finally sink his fangs into someone.

But no, they'd insisted he attend to one of the couples. His standards might've sunk low enough to count 'indoors and clean' as a victory, but that didn't change the little sting of resentment he was harboring from that.

And so he doesn't take much convincing to interrupt whatever's going on in there.]

Oh, why not. [He stands, smoothing down his poor beleaguered doublet with its gently fraying embroidery, before going to the door. His boots stop just before the little line of salt the locals left there.] Does the wine please the couple?

[There's footsteps on the other side of the door, each accompanied by an odd ticking noise. A voice calls, one that doesn't sound like either of the newlyweds,] Oh, it pleases me, but him? He won't touch it! He's gone completely cold!

[The door slides open, and he freezes for a moment of honest shock--her wide, angry eyes have turned orange and the pupils slit, her face covered in a fine layer of fur. And the blood. The scent is immediate and powerful, her robes are covered in it, and a trail of misshapen footprints leads back to the bed--] He won't even talk to me anymore!

Well, [He laughs, trying to recover. The bride was a lycanthrope, and he was now torn between jealousy over the bloody corpse, irritation at all the waste, and very legitimate worry that he might be next.] I'm sure we can find something to liven him up.

[song_of_fire]

[Everything happens so quickly. One moment he was calling into the room, the next there was an answer that didn't leave her in doubt to what had happened. Still, it startled her to see the body of the groom. There was blood all around the room and torn fabric. Simply witnessing a scene of carnage was rattling, no matter how many wars she faced and how often she witnessed destruction and death.

What truly shocked her was the bride. The fur on her feet, the swipe of her tail, the hungry eyes and red soaked fangs. She was a monster and one that Daenerys had never seen before. Foxes didn't exist in Essos, at least nowhere she had been. Lions, certainly. Wolves, she knew them well. But this?

She could only struggle to try to determine what exactly this bride was?]

Are you making japes at a time like this?!

[Horror and anger were the easiest emotions to fall into at this sight.]

[good_taste]

[Hells' teeth, it's like a play where his scene partner hasn't read the script. He's the one stuck standing next to the horrid thing, he can't show fear.] Gods, no, this is deadly serious--[He turns to the young human, shooting her a Look as he goes to retrieve a bottle of wine. Play along.] It's her wedding, after all.

[That ridiculous little pamphlet about the ceremony had more to say about drink. It was that or wooing the creature. Confident as he was in seducing marks, he was not doing that unless absolutely necessary. Choosing to walk back over to the thing was bad enough.] Here, darling, I'm sure this will do the trick. [He held out the bottle, tensing just slightly as her blood-covered paw brushed against his hand. No sudden movements.

The bride studied the bottle, still visibly fuming.] It's no use. He's ruined the mood. [She sighs angrily, looking back up at him and the human. That called for another smile.]

Well, then we'll just have to make our own fun, shan't we? [Please, please play along.]

[song_of_fire]

[She takes the hint and scrambles for the goblet of wine, careful not to get too close to the bride. Her mind does its best to catch up to the situation, taking in the carnage and the likely reason that this creature was married in the first place.

She had read folk tales, she knew something similar, though there was always a knight to rescue the woman in distress. Horror turning into a love story.]

I suppose so. [She'd play along, carefully watching both the young man, as well as the creature before them.] What...what do you suggest we do for our fun?

[good_taste]

[There's a smear of blood on his fingers now. Because of course there was. And both of them were looking at him, so he had to resist temptation.

He hated resisting temptation.] We can't let the bride drink alone. That simply won't do. [There were those packets of opium powder stacked on one of the low tables nearby. The fact that they'd been provided them in the first place had raised an eyebrow, but now he understood why.]

Weddings can be so dreadfully stressful. You deserve to relax. Enjoy the night. [Could he manage the sleight of hand to get it into the bride's cup? Maybe. But he wasn't a con man or street magician, he was a beautiful rake who knew actual magic, which wasn't very helpful at the moment. He'd need her more distracted before he could pull it off.

There was a long moment of silence from the bride. Maybe the opium wouldn't be enough. Maybe a knife in the ribs was more to her taste. He had one up his sleeve, but would he have enough time--?] Well go on, then, get a cup.

Oh! Yes, of course. [He snatched one up, and the bride filled it to the brim.] Do you people do toasts here? [He hadn't been paying attention during the public ceremony.] In any case, we should salute the bride. [Any ideas from his scene partner?]

[song_of_fire]

[She noticed that he was searching for a plan, particularly during the pauses of the conversation. She managed to pull herself together, swallowing back the wave of sickness that surged in her stomach. There was no Drogon on fly in and rescue them. She had no sword, but there were torches around. If she could grab it quick enough, she could scare the bride away...or kill her.

It didn't take long though for her to catch why he was suggesting wine. She was still close enough to the goblets to slip her fingers over a packet and curl it in her palm. She was small, unassuming and pretty enough to distract. She might not be a street performer, but she could move quickly.]

A toast, of course. To the celebrations of this night.

[She held the goblet with both hands to keep the packet hidden. After draining her cup, she lifted the pitcher, planning to offer refills. Now how to slip in the opium?]

You must be thirsty. Come, have some more.

[good_taste]

[There was one fewer packets on the table than there had been a moment ago. Oh good, he wasn't on his own here. Now he just needed to keep the bride distracted.] Yes, let's get those properly underway, shall we?

[He raised his glass with the best sultry smile he could muster, then downed it all.

Ugh. It was like drinking vinegar. Had his palette changed since becoming a vampire? Almost certainly. But he was going to blame this town for the taste, simply on principle. He almost managed to hide the grimace.

And now the bride was laughing at him.] Too strong for you?

No, [And he sounded more defensive than he wanted to let on,] I'm just not used to the local stuff yet. I think I need to get better acquainted with it. As should you, darling. [The fox snickered into her cup, drinking deeply. Fine. If he had to play up being a lightweight to keep her distracted, he'd do it, but not happily. What a rotten little furball.

Gods, the smell of blood was making it hard to think straight. He deserved praise for all this restraint.]

[song_of_fire]

[That amusement at his response offered a small window of time for Dany. She did her best to open the packet without fumbling too obviously. Her fingers were small and slender, letting her slip one under the flap and pull it open. Obscuring her actions, she curled her fingers around the rim of the pitcher, the packet spilling into the wine, hidden by her hand.

She quickly swirled the wine, bringing up a finger, as though she were tasting it (but careful not to actually dip her finger in it).] It seems sweet to me.

[She filled the bride's cup to the rim. That might be enough to do some damage?]

Another toast?