westwhere | arc iii: house of ravens

arc iii: house of ravens | arrival

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

COTTAGEVORE

TDM TOURISTS | OLD TIMERS | COMMON PROMPTS | NOTES

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TDM TOURISTS: THE SCENIC ROUTE

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

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

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

A. THE MORE, THE MERRIER

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

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

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

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

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

B. JUST CRUISING

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

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

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

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

» GO CAMPING, THEY SAID

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OLD TIMERS: CURSES FOR ONE, CURSES FOR ALL

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

» DUDE, WHERE’S MY COMATOSE SLEEPER?

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ALL TOGETHER NOW

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

A. BANDIT BANE

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

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

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

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

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

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B. THE BLUSHING BRIDE

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

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

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

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

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

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

IF CHARACTERS MARRY A (FOX) 'SPOUSE':

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

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

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

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

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

AS A WEDDING RETINUE MEMBER:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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C. A-HUNTING WE WILL GO

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

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

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

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

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

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

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D. WELL, WELL, WELL

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

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

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

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

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

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QUESTIONS

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Wrathion gives a noncommittal hum. It may well be, and if it was the forest itself that would almost be a blessing.

The idea of someone pulling this memory from him, specifically, is unnerving. A random environmental quirk is still less than ideal, but less... pointed.

He takes another step and freezes, testing his weight on one foot then easing back. The illusion fades, and Wrathion toes at the pit trap he nearly stepped into.

"An interesting tactic," he allows, and steps around the edge of the pit -- eyes flicking around the forest as he moves on. "Luring us into danger with our memories."

Wrathion can't deny that it did work, after all. He just doesn't like it.

"Nice catch." Anduin takes a cautious step forward, peering down into the pit himself before easing around it after Wrathion.

Their memories...

"I take it that place was somewhere familiar to you?" Anduin asks, picking his way cautiously along the path behind Wrathion. Now that they have uncovered one trap, Anduin is infinitely more aware of the possibility of more -- equally as aware of how unprepared he is to spot one out, for that matter. Perhaps he should pay closer attention to where Wrathion has been stepping, just in case...

"Ravenholdt Manor," Wrathion says. "Which is where I learned to pick locks."

A guild of thieves and assassins is quite skilled at that sort of thing. He narrows his eyes into the shadows, picking his way more cautiously through the forest.

"I've have been more surprised if it was familiar to you."

Not exactly the sort of place Wrathion imagines the High King of the Alliance frequents. Perhaps Spymaster Shaw, but not Anduin himself.

Ravenholdt. Anduin knows of the manor. Not with much detail or clarity, of course. That is rather the point of it, a guild of thieves and assassins does not exactly advertise its location, after all.

He supposes it is not very surprising to know that Wrathion has some history with it. Nevertheless... Anduin wonders how much more there is he has yet to learn about Wrathion's past.

"I have traveled through areas like it," Anduin admits. "The forest... I cannot say how, but I knew it to be Azeroth." He glances over his shoulder, back towards the pit they had only just avoided, then back to Wrathion himself.

"I did not know you had connections there," he says, mildly.

"Fahrad did, it's where he took me. It seemed the safest place to stay while the Red Dragonflight was still searching for me."

Not that he, at the time, particularly had a good sense of where may be safer -- but a building frequented by thieves and assassins was fairly well protected. Wrathion slows and turns to Anduin, hesitant.

"Fahrad liberated me from Vermillion Redoubt where the Red Dragonflight had hidden the results of their experiments, kept me safe in Ravenholdt as long as he could. We worked together for some time."

Fahrad.

It is the first that Anduin has heard this name, which is surprising when it sounds as if this person was so important to Wrathion's upbringing. To his survival, in the beginning stages of his life.

But then again... Anduin supposes it is not so surprising after all. He is beginning to sense a theme to Wrathion's life. Anduin knows who he'd been at two years old. It makes him wonder what Wrathion was like before that, in those days when this man had whisked him away to this place of assassins and thieves. Only a hatchling, to be sure, but he had said he was conscious even before he'd come out of the egg. Was the ego an inherent trait? Had he learned confidence from the beginning as a mechanism of self-defense?

The thought of it makes something twist within his chest.

"He was your...mentor?" he asks, understanding the word probably does not do whatever relationship they might have had justice.

Wrathion comes to a full stop this time, hesitating as he tries to pick his words correctly.

"He was a black dragon, like myself -- although Fahrad hid that from me at first. I could sense it, regardless. He had lived at Ravenholdt, keeping himself away from Neltharion's plans. Like the rest of my family, however, he eventually did succumb to the whispers. I did not know of a way to help him, then. I thought there was only one solution."

Could he have helped him, if he'd begun looking into ways to stem the madness back then? Would he have been able to craft something in time? Could he have held Fahrad securely as long as he'd needed to?

He supposes there's no point dwelling on it now, it cannot be undone.

Still.

"We should keep moving," Wrathion prompts, and he begins to pick his way through the trees once more.

Only one solution.

Wrathion does not need to explain himself any further, though Anduin cannot imagine what it must have been like for him. He had been young, so young back then. And this Fahrad was... The first person who had ever been there for him, in his life.

It isn't fair. None of this was fair on Wrathion, and Anduin wishes... Well. It isn't as though he can do anything about it now.

He watches Wrathion move ahead of him again and after a moment, forces himself to step after him. He understands that this is difficult for his companion to speak about. The fact that he has said anything at all is something which Anduin is grateful for. He knows that for the sake of Wrathion's comfort he should allow the subject to move on. All the same, he feels he must acknowledge the loss, however long ago it has been.

"I am sorry," Anduin says, quietly. "No one should be put in such a difficult position as that, especially not... for such an important person as he sounds in that part of your life." We worked together for some time. Anduin can only imagine that it might have been this Fahrad who taught Wrathion to pick those locks, as he had said. He wonders what else of this person might have rubbed off on Wrathion, before he had lost him too.

"When were you last back?" he continues. It seems a safer question than the others he could ask. "To Ravenholdt?"

"Not for some time now. Not since before we first met."

Before Pandaria, several years ago now. A lifetime ago, it feels like. So much has happened since then, so much has changed. He picks his way through the trees cautiously, eyes skimming the ground ahead of them for any potential traps.

"It is in the past."

It is not a... concern, currently. There is nothing to be done. He can remember, can learn from it. That is all.

"Yes, of course."

He recognizes that the topic has been dismissed, even if he would like to ask him more. About what he learned while he was there, how much time he had spent before Pandaria and how he made his way from Point A to Point B.

He's just opening his mouth to at least question if that is why Wrathion favors the weapon style that he does when the path ahead of them shimmers and he blinks slightly as the clearing beyond dissolves into... Wide, dry, desolate farmlands, carrion birds soaring mournfully in the distance.

It is Anduin's turn to stop dead in the path.

"Oh."

Wrathion cannot honestly say he has spent time in Westfall, but he has at least travelled through it on occasion to get to other, more interesting places.

That's enough to, at a glance, recognise its unusual features.

"Be on your guard," he advises gently, "remember, this could be hiding more traps."

Anduin would no doubt be frustrated if he walked himself into a trap and had to be cut down. Neither of them are fond of anything close to the sensation of failure or embarrassment.

Anduin glances aside at Wrathion, at the warning, before nodding distractedly. He knows that this is not really Westfall. Logically. He understands that, logically, he is still in this forest and nowhere close to home. All the same.

Something twists within his gut, and while it had been a lot easier to think of other things, to distract himself before, on their journey through the forest, seeing the barren farmlands stretching out before him now...

"They have my mother's locket," he says, feeling inexplicably hollow.

He doesn't know whether he's ever explained what the trinket had meant to him, before. When you've been friends with someone for as long as the pair of them have, things blur together. Has Wrathion ever asked? He's worn the thing for years now, but he's always kept it safely tucked, underneath his shirt. Close to his heart...

Maybe he does know. Maybe it had been obvious, from the way that he had protested earlier. He should not feel this way, over the thought of the loss of one piece of jewelry. Yet his heart twists within his chest nevertheless.

"And it will be returned to you," Wrathion assures him, "once we have made it through this forest. For that to happen, you must be alert."

Wrathion is sympathetic, but now is not the time to linger too much on these memories. The illusions are dangerous. They can hide people as much as they can traps. The last thing they need is both of them getting surprised by bandits while out searching for their belongings.

Not that a black dragon could possibly be surprised by lowly bandits, but still. The principle of the thing. Focus is needed, as much as they can possibly focus.

"Are you ready?"

Anduin's expression tightens slightly, but he nods, stepping forward after his companion.

"That is what they want," he says. "To use our memories against us. Lure us into a sense of nostalgia or false hope, perhaps."

If anything, the sight of Westfall laid out before him at such a time makes him feel -- anger. Whatever is causing these illusions, digging around in his head, in his memories, trying to use them to manipulate him. Doing the same to Wrathion. It's an invasion of his privacy and Wrathion's both, and while they are only locations being projected onto the forest before them, this is still personal. Even this barren stretch of land...

"I doubt we are truly in such a wide-open piece of land," he warns, stepping carefully.

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arc iii: house of ravens | arrival

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