westwhere | arc iii: house of ravens

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

[Winnie gazes down at the woman, brow furrowed slightly. Her own petting falters a little and she pulls it away to her side, sighing]

Is it such a terrible thing, to want to be loved? [But she doesn’t expect an answer—people are so strange with all their rules for what is or is not acceptable for these things.]

At least make it quick and painless— for me, if nothing else?

( ...and what was it that the child Eleven performed, and the two women who escorted him, in the tower? What did Lan Wangji partake of, Alina a pale, withered shadow beside him? Empty, faint-handed euthanasia.

His grip upon Bichen stays fire-forged, sturdy. When he inclines her, tip rounding in a gentle pivot, the blade sweeps aside the curling, crumbling locks of the fox, who sheds her human hair. He watches her, snake losing her skins, intemperate and distracted by her quiet, timid licks of Winnie's retreating fingers. As if she were the dogs she feared, as if she could play tame.

The blade dips down to tease long lines, then ride up the bride's chin. She seems, finally, to see him — the lazy, golden beam of her eyes, snagged on the friendless geometries of his face. )

What do you know of love? ( To the bride, perhaps. Or the girl. Or their communal, woeful ignorance. )

I don't. [Winnie answers, though she doesn't know if Wangji is specifically asking it to her. The fox doesn't seem to want to answer anyhow, so Winnie supposes she must for the both of them.

She smiles sadly] I've neither loved nor been loved. I don't know what it's supposed to feel like. I only have the stories and poems I've leaned so well to act as a guideline. Love is supposed to be all-powerful. Love and goodness and light always win in the end, do they not? So I imagine it must be something terrible and wonderful all at once. Strong enough to drive people to kill or be killed.

[She pats the fox woman's head and gives a soothing 'shhh' when she whines as Winnie untangles herself and stands] None of that now, dear. My friend here will take care of you. I'll be back in just a moment.

[Winnie smiles placatingly and then straightens, looking to Wangji a moment before turning her back on them both, not wanting to see the moment Wangji might swing his blade.]

( He waits.

Later, he will name this his mercy, that he allows Winnifred's slinking, shallow retreat, her shadow paltry like the diminishing gains of winter's last powdered snow.

That he holds himself as solid stone and lets the fox bride break herself on him, her convulsing body thrashing as it's thrown, chest forward, to meet him barrelling — as if the creatures knows nothing of how to proceed with the flesh it has possessed, but understands intrinsically that its deadened weight can serve as a battering ram.

That he lifts his sword, and the pale crescent of Bichen's passing weeps revelation on the bride's cheek, where whiskers peer like fresh spring seeds, half-sown.

That he swings, once. Cuts once. Slays once, cleanly. Tumbled, the soft-whispered scattering of her gore trips on the rounded tip of his boot. He steps back, the rolling swell of her eyes empty and lifeless.

That he wipes the blade of its red toll in the bride's veil, and purposes that same cloth to bind her head away from sight, before calling to Winnie: )

She might have loved you.

( A simple thing, to commemorate the dead in tragedy, in poetry, in reverence. To simplify them abstractly into something too distant to be known.

She might have loved Winnie, given the time. She might have loved anyone. )

[Winnie doesn't flinch, her back straight and gaze resolutely ahead until the sounds of struggle and death cease behind her. She turns, the soft swish of silks and lace and doesn't look at the body.

Instead she focuses on Wangji, her smile small] Perhaps. But I don't know if I could have loved her, and it would have been far crueler to try and pretend for her.

But perhaps she felt a little loved before her final moments, and I hope it gives her some comfort. [She turns towards the exit, smoothing her skirts out a little.] Shall we walk a little? The night is still young, and I'd like to know what I've been missing.

( There is a thought in him, sudden and sullen and roiling, that this is what flies must feel like, when their wings are pulled. That, nails clean, Winnie pinches.

Wei Ying excelled at the art of verbal vivisection. Tongue sweet, Winnifred cannot hope to light or hold that candle, but she thrives off the silences that punctuate Lan Wangji's careless exhalations.

He intends to nod, to draw his sword — to hold himself to the standard of poise, and the bride to that of acceptance of the finality of the death before her. )

Perhaps, to cleanse our thoughts —

( But then his gaze sharpens, slips down. The fox stirs. )

[The fox stirs and Winnie-- She can't muster the energy required to keep her mask in place. There's a dull throb behind her eye and she takes a steadying breath, like a mother praying for calm from unruly children.

A knife in her sleeve--for where else would knives go?--and down it comes in one swift movement through the fox's neck. The body twitches and gurgles a moment before Winnie pulls it free with a squelch and steps back to avoid any blood]

Don't be rude. [She chides lightly, scolding. There's a faint, disappointed pout on her mouth] We're trying to have a conversation here. Don't interrupt.

( A crude kill, done uncleanly. For all her efficiency, Winnifred is a murderer of circumstance, not one bred through the surgically precise toil of generations. It is written in how she handles the blade, the corpse, the moments of silent, brittle restlessness — Was it enough? Is this all death is? — after.

There is an after. They do not tell children this, when they give them bowed arrow and dulled knife to play at murder: slaughter lives like mould in you, in your footsteps. You carry its weight.

Distracted, Lan Wangji drags his fingers through red, catches clots and the thick of the bride's bleeding, and writes his apologies in faint calligraphy on the red rim of her ill-strung veil. Apologies will not relieve her here. Given another few heartbeats, she will wake once more. )

She knows no better than her hurts. ( As women so often are shaped to do, their beings defined as the negative space between men's transgressions. ) Bring flame.

( They have tarried long enough. If they intend to put the beast to her rest, then — shuddered, eyes slanting, creeping shut, the burden of his lashes dancing warm on his cheeks — then it most be done savagely. )

arc iii: house of ravens | arrival

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