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

CURSES FOR ONE, CURSES FOR ALL
I. HIS MOTHER'S LOCKET
The journey over on the Salamera II had been pleasant at first. Stormwind is a port city, and Anduin enjoys ships and being around the ocean. He had enjoyed that last leg of the journey perhaps a bit less so, however, and he is feeling grateful when they finally reach the shores of their destination.

That is, until they are told that in order to embrace the village and accept it, in all of its old and new, its ugliness and its truth, they must be stripped of all fanciful clothes or jewels or otherwise ostentatious belongings. Anduin had arrived just outside of Taravast dressed in his court outfit. While he has done his best to supplement it with other pieces he has found here and there, for the most part his clothing is still made up of those main pieces -- which he finds himself quickly removed of, left in only his undershirt and a pair of shorts.

"Wait," he says, reaching for his jacket as it's taken away from him, filled with a sudden panic for the compass that had been up until now safe in his pocket there. "Wait --! Where are you taking our things? Where--"

He's so distracted by the removal of the jacket that he misses a pair of hands unclasping his mother's locket from around his neck, swiftly adding it to the pile as it is whisked away.

Anduin's hand goes to his neck, an icy chill running through him that has nothing to do with the ice bath they are about to be thrown into. He doesn't mean to make a scene, but he turns to his closest companion, a look of panic on his face.

"Please. Did they say when we would be getting our belongings back?"

II. HOME IS WHERE THE HEART IS -- open to family and visitors of family #5
Anduin is grateful that the house that his 'family' has been directed to is, while by no means a castle, certainly accommodating enough that he can be afforded the privacy of his own room. Not that he necessarily has anything against those members of his family, but being raised first a prince, and then becoming King, there are certain luxuries he -- prefers to maintain, if he can.

Especially given the fact that, after their first night here, Wrathion has taken to sneaking over to the house to visit him more often than not. It is difficult to have a private conversation without privacy itself, after all. As time goes on, he notices that there are those within his 'family' with similar visitors at that.

Between the visitors and the villagers... This house is more and more like Stormwind Keep every day.

Anduin is just in the kitchen making a pot of tea -- an act that is still novel to him, here in this land without servants insisting on doing anything and everything for him -- when movement in the door catches his eye and he turns.

"Ah -- hello," Anduin greets. "Would you like some?" He holds up a mug.

ALL TOGETHER NOW
I. BANDIT BANE
Anduin had been nervous to give up his mother's locket, his father's compass. He had been waiting anxiously for their return, and so when the news comes of the attack on Enam and his party, he is filled with a very new sense of dread. Those things... They may only be objects, but they are the last things he has left of his parents. Them and Shalamayne, which was also with Enam and the rest of their belongings.

By the time he remembers Zenobius had been carried by their party also, Anduin is desperate. He throws himself into tracking down the group of bandits, which is unfortunately easier said than done. The forest seeps to have other ideas for them, and not only are they chased by wild boars on more than one occasion, but there is... Something else.

He had thought he'd imagined it at first, but there's no imagining it the second time it happens. The third. A clearing opening to reveal a glimpse of the verdant plains of the Arathi Highlands, or those wounded hills of Westfall. Stepping into a glade that suddenly transforms into the tranquil shade of Elwynn Forest.

Uncertainly, he steps out into the illusion. That's what it is right? It has to be...

II. THE BLUSHING BRIDE
Anduin wonders, in retrospect, when he will learn to stop volunteering to help people. It only ever seems to get him in trouble.

When the villagers had asked for volunteers in their celebrations, of course he had agreed, immediately being assigned the role of a groom. He can't say that he shouldn't have seen that one coming -- back at home, his advisor Genn was very keen on finding Anduin a good match and marrying him off, and there were no shortage of interested parties for that matter as well.

Anduin plays his part for the evening like any proper gentleman would. Going through with play-acting his wedding with his villager bride, enduring the poetry and love songs, and only drinking a little of the wine to get himself through it.

It isn't until his party is directed towards the inn that he starts to wonder whether this was indeed a mistake after all. He casts a furtive glance towards the members of his retinue as the villagers proceed to lock the door, then shuffle him towards the conjugal bedroom.

"They don't... Really expect for...?" he asks, a faint blush staining his cheeks as one of the villagers thrusts a packet of papers into his hands.

------

Anduin had been given three choices on how to survive the night. He could force his party to act like dogs. He could murder his now-fox bride. Or he could convince them that he was promised to someone else.

It had not been much of a choice in the end. Of course, being pressed for time -- with a vicious fox woman bearing down upon him -- Anduin had told her he was betrothed to Wrathion. Luckily she seemed to believe this either way, but. He can't help but wonder, standing exiled with his wedding party afterwards, and then again as the knowledge of it meets the light of day, if perhaps even this was yet another mistake.

III. A-HUNTING WE WILL GO
Anduin isn't a hunter but he is happy to volunteer to go out into the forest and help repair the fox spirits' altars. It feels a safer option to killing them to exorcise their mortal bodies, and anyway... Anduin could use the distraction from his fox wedding and everything that had happened on that night. Telling the spirit he was pledged to Wrathion. Telling his whole wedding retinue in a daze afterwards. His exact words.

I told her I was promised to Wrathion.

He hadn't specified that it was a lie. At least, not to the villagers in the retinue. He can't imagine what they might think. Or what gossip they might be spreading about the village now.

Anduin is so distracted by his inner train of thought he does not notice the bridge dissolving away beneath his feet -- until he is falling. He reaches out with his magic to cast a Levitate charm but it's too late, only halfway through the spell before he crashes through the fridgid water of the churning river below...

WILDCARD
Anything else you want? Feel free to hit me up here or via your contact method of choice! Also feel free to use brackets or prose, I just default to the latter!

In the aftermath of it all, what is left of her would-be fox groom are bones. The villagers reveal the reason behind the tradition, reveal the curse (this is going to be a theme, isn't it?), and there is a moment of relative peace.

They are embraced into Ke-Waihu because they have partaken of its rites. They are allowed to return to their families and rest.

Small though the village may be, she is still new to it. Instead of getting home, she ends up bumping into a familiar face.

"Anduin - oh, it's good to see you're well."

That's when the wedding night comes back. Her lie. The bethrothed she pulled out of her ass, the itchy scar she said was proof of their engagement. Oh, boy.

Anduin is fingering the bracelet that the villagers have given him as he too makes his slow way towards his 'family' home. He's not certain that he explicitly deserves it, all things considered, but feeling as though it would be rude to refuse a gift. Deep in his thoughts, and tired after a mostly sleepless night spent on the other side of a door from a very angry fox bride, it takes a moment for him to register Hermione in front of him himself.

"Oh, Hermione!" he says, smiling at her as he does. "And you as well! Those were -- quite the festivities, last night..."

Putting it mildly...

Whatever brightness was on her face upon the reunion goes resolutely grim. "Ah yes, the festivities." And her tone, dry. "I hope you weren't dragged into them as a groom, Anduin."

Edited 2022-02-21 21:36 (UTC)

Anduin's cheeks color slightly, giving away his response despite his best intentions.

He supposes the colored bracelet now decorating his wrist also gives away his answer as well.

"I, uh. Am sorry to say that I was," he replies, delicately.

It hadn't even occurred to her to look at his wrist - such an invasion of privacy. She isn't really able to hide hers, but maybe the colour doesn't say how it is that she survived her fake groom.

Not that she won't tell Anduin.

"It was all fun and games until they started turning into actual foxes, right?" There's sarcasm there, just in case. In case the thunderous scowl doesn't make it clear. "Some welcome. Some cheery bunch of folks here."

Anduin Wrynn | Warcraft (existing player!)

pressing wildcard for absolute shenanigans

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II

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curses for one, curses for all (i)

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All Together Now (I)

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one of those earlier nights

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