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

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

A. BANDIT BANE

( Discretion is the better part of value — and so his hand sweeps, greedy and silent and swift. Lan Wangji chooses wisely: the most peripheral captive, drifting at the tail end of the convoy. Tired, perhaps, injured or worn. Forfeit, forgotten or a casualty. Prized prey would be fiercely watched, gripped close by his keepers. Instead, Wangji claims the prisoner now, arm fettering over their chest, and draws them both back in a rustling of bush leaves.

The silencing spell — static, invasive, undiplomatic, crude — suffices to stich the captive’s mouth shut, for a time. Above them, there is no high calling of birds, no flutter of wings, no distortion of ambient sound — only the rush of the nearby thugs when it finally dawns upon them, with bovine incredulity, that they are being relieved of their own belongings.

A wall of vines and leaves separates them from steps, stoking, and the rapid escalation of men’s wit blurring from panic. Lan Wangji’s heart beats. Stutters.

Lazy light pierces the rooftop of sunken foliage in dappled gold. The Merchant’s men infiltrated as thieves do, partly invited by the negligence of those they set under assault. He thinks — always thinks, wait is for fear of meditation, he must choose one — green stands for decay, for deep drowning. A colour that martyrs forest leaf into mould. He thinks, too, that there should be poetry in this, in stealing what ruffians have stolen already — as if they carry out a heavenly vindication.

He feels prosaic, practical, mercurial in his efficiency. Murmurs, with absent-minded delay, in the captive’s ear: )

Apologies. ( Etiquette, in all things — even in death and in dying. ) Still yourself. Do not draw them close. Nod once, if we have agreement.

( Best if they work together, but he cannot release a prisoner corrupted by panic or by sudden, inexplicable affection for their captors. )

B. THE BLUSHING BRIDE

( In a house of madmen, he who clings to reason is the greater fool. He accepts this, tense as a wet knot and watching and waiting, more animal than the creature they know with increasing, gutting certainty has joined a hapless groom in the — …marital quarter.

What wedding was this? Subsumed and swallowed by tragedy like poison recaptured by a snake. Soon, both will shed their skins, and there’s the iron of things, saturating walls and tapestry and silk screens already, before blood’s even spilled. There is a moment, before the drums of war beat or a throat is slashed, when horror becomes exhilaration. Lan Wangji feels it now, a giddy itch, vermin-like beneath his skin, fingers temperamental and convulsing and tap, tap, tap, holding a dead beat against the rim of his half-filled water cup.

Knelt, he has pretended interest in the same play of candle light on a coral-stained tapestry for the better part of a shi. His duty, as a member of the wedding retinue is only to keep his dignity, his head and his silence. On his right wrist, the red knot of Wei Ying’s ribbon cheapens the artifice of this procession with its sincerity. Within these four walls, they will soon beat gongs and fragment more gold foil to serve with fresh pastries.

He bears the shame of the lustful laughter bursting behind the closed doors of the conjugal chamber like winter’s first snow — with indifference. Bears the childish bashfulness of his fellow members of the retinue. Bears even the strident scream of the couple’s doors, when they erupt open, and a pale-faced groom slithers close to whisper in Lan Wangji’s ear, stare feverish —

To say —

To beg —

To its credit, Lan Wangji’s cup does not break when he forsakes it, dropped. Fine porcelain. Great fortune to the married couple, honoured bliss.

He licks his lips and drinks beads of blood, in wake of his own teeth, teasing.

Then, carefully, he transmits to the retinue member beside him: )

He… wishes us to bark on hands and knees.

( This is Lan Wangji’s life, now. This is who he has become. )

D. WELL, WELL, WELL

( No time, only the slip and snag of his heel on gravel, a half-tumbled swerve, all elegance surrendered. He hastens through the tight interstices between arrogant, but crumbling homes, brick grazing the edge of his half-yawning sleeves. Still, the slithered grace of the thing eludes him like a smear of charcoal.

Silence dwells damp and bone-deep in territories that should fall naturally to bustle. He knows, intrinsically, that this is discipline won of violence — that he blitzes past wives and nearly scatters their laundered cottons under a bleak, white sun, and trips a fisherman carrying his weight in the day’s catch — that he is permitted, despite his turbulence, because he waves the long silvered line of Bichen’s sword, and these are a people accustomed to fear. Tamed by terror.

They see the tip of a blade and the waters of their swarming, friendly faces part, and Lan Wangji cannot name who in their group he encounters first — barely stills his step long enough to hiss at them, scratchy and torn: )

The creature they speak of — the — it… it retreated through the garden patches. She is here.

( A woman as a snake, or perhaps only a head on a taut string. He saw little of her, past her bright, wide eyes, and the gaping cruelty of her mouth, where she’d propped in the garden of their home, waiting out rodents who climbed her tongue curiously. Jaws snapped, and she withdrew, squirming between timber lines and ledges, for Lan Wangji to chase as fools do, uncomprehending.

Running after her, from one garden to the next, seems — an ambitious task. If not, some might say, entirely wasteful. Join him all the same. )

[One imperial eyebrow is going to raise quite high, before Moran takes another sip of the wine he has been nursing for a while.]

.... No. Absolutely not.

Just drag him out and kill the creature. Or call for a real dog, there are quite a few of them in the village.

( Honour takes precedence to dignity. Life supersedes both.

He watches callousness roll off master Beitang Moran as if he expects it to afford him a silent, gilded sheen. Clicks his tongue mutely, perfectly resilient in the face of candid cruelty. Then, carefully: )

The dogs sleep at distance.

( Delicately restrained to preserve, they had foolishly thought, the nerves of brides already tried by the day's crude processions. Now, Lan Wangji wonders what ingenuity had coaxed the villagers to fetter the single natural recourse against the progressive exacerbations of the evening.

In the mad, candle-lit dusk of the room, he feels the haze of the hour consume and corrupt him. What would it mean, to pretend the part of hounds? Would it be so difficult a burden?

Some part of him is repulsed. Another, mildly tempted to simply see the trial to bitter end. )

The groom wishes to avoid execution.

Yes, I understand that, Master Lan.

[He's not completely heartless, thank you very much. But there are things that really, really hurt one's dignity.]

Do you have any moral objections to killing the quite obviously not human creature inside that would stop you from doing it? I would do it myself, but given that they appear supernatural, I am a little ill-equipped. I will gladly make an attempt if you feel you cannot, though.

[Seriously, he's not sure he believes in spirits any more than in ghosts, but the matter is indeed pressing.]

( You would do it yourself, but for how your hands remain ever unstained.

There is a word for this contingent of men, who faced with circumstances of death and duress, with moments of hardship, of resistance, of strain, decide unilaterally to pursue rhetoric and eschew ruin.

In some parts of the world, these men are named Jin. More loosely, merely politicians.

Perhaps the shade of disgust that washes Lan Wangji's face freely is styled, too, something of specificity. 'Jade-nausea.' 'Jingshi-fatigue.' He amuses himself, count of one, and two, and three, and each breath laboured, with the discipline of rolling his eyes without gently escorting them out of their sockets. With urging his hands into tight-knuckled fists and not consorting them with Beitang Moran's collar.

Then, with the patience of the heavens: )

We attempt exorcism in the way of the land's rites first. Bark.

[He is a politician through and through, Lan Wangji, the highest in the land he hails from at one point. Some of the courtiers he's had to deal with in his life would eat Jins for breakfast.

And in many cases, he would not necessarily be adverse to adapting to a land's mores, but he and Lan Wangji, it seems, are forever destined to bristle at each other.

He cares little for the other man's opinion of him, but that tone of voice will earn a pointed, raised eyebrow.]

Is that an order, Master Lan?

( What is it with the sculpt of this face, he must wonder. What sleeps within and shapes its bones, so that he might forever gaze in eyes alike to Wei Ying's and know they sit across him at cavernous distance and irreconcilable odds?

You would know an order for the iron in your mouth. For how Beitang Moran's mouth would wet with the blood of his gums and the bile of his stomach, how Lan Wangji could — would — persuade his body of every precious, petty agony that disrespect can earn it.

But this is not war, they are not creatures of savage habit. They did not meet under a rusting sky, massacres snagging their feet. He returns to himself in cautious, studied increments, and nods only once to signal his approval — they play this game. He stalls, wasting time the groom does not have. For master Beitang's pleasure. )

A necessity. Asked not without difficulty.

[And yet, Master Lan...]

I don't see you barking either.

[But fine, if you refuse to take matters into your own hands, he supposes he must, and he strides towards the door, holding up his hand to remove the silver hairpin that can and has, on occasion, doubled as a stiletto dagger from his hair, and presses a firm hand against the door to push it open.]

( You would not see —

But this twig, this nuisance, this excuse of a warrior — Beitang Moran, who has never taken a sword finally remembers the shape of a blade and progresses to attaining it. Transfixed, Lan Wangji nearly expects the slim, narrow needle to tease free of master Beitang's hand, but no, this is no time for play, for games of gore, for the taking of chances.

He decides, all at once, to be the better person. The man of sacrifice. The —

...false dog who tips his head back and, gazing with impatient agony at a ceiling-barred sky — howls pitifully, reedy and breaking.

Well.

Well, he tried. Now, your turn, Beitang Moran, as the fox bride already quiets in her chambers. )

[The sound does make Moran look back with slightly widened eyes, because he certainly did not expect that.

But he's still not gonna howl. Instead, he's going to push the door open and stride in.

The 'bride' is crouching on one side of the room, all but hissing. The 'groom', trembling and white as a sheet, is pressed against the opposite wall. Still alive, for now.]

... I would suggest getting out of here before the situation gets more out of hand, young Master.

[His hand is still firmly around his hairpin, and he keeps an eye on the decidedly less human-looking 'bride' for now.]

( He... is denied. Of course. The lesser, unexperienced exorcist thinks himself the superior strategist. Heavens spare Lan Wangji diplomats possessed of a sword.

He follows — hesitating, step slowed. The groom has withered, the fox bride reduced to her animal bearings. Beneath the eye of candles and their golden, dimmed pallor, Lan Wangji barely seems them as human. They occupy for him the same space as obstacles, as inanimate objects.

He casts the ward before the knows the deed done, air crackling and electric, and the bride restrained in a tight, vicious enclosure. Apologies, madam. It will not keep long. )

We kill her without study, we learn nothing if there are more.

( If they can unite to pose a threat as a reunion of creatures, where the one hereby fails. )

[Give him a little credit, Lan Wangji, you have seen him behead zombies with a sword before. He just doesn't have one now.

That being said, he's not exactly bloodthirsty for the hell of it either.

The ward - clearly magical in nature, although not the same kind he knows, brings a peek of interest, but only as a reminder to ask about it later.]

If she stays confined, there is no need to kill her at all. Those creatures were called here for a purpose.

open to all... | all together now

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