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

I. CURSES FOR ONE AND ALL_

[Wrench is suprisingly quiet when they arrive, taking in the sights of the village mutely as his mask cycles idly through a series of expressions as he experiences them. he's curious about some of the architecture. (?_?) he's a little worried about the volcano, because nothing good can come from that. (O_o) he's -- freaking out as they try and take the mask from him, when they strip him. (!_!) (>_<)]

[all at once, he's not so quiet anymore, actively fighting back against being divested of it. five minutes here, and he's already making a scene, one hand on the spiked lower half, while he shoos villagers away with the other]

Hey, wait -- don't touch --

[a beat, then louder]

Help! Fire! Rape!

[eventually, he'll settle down enough to come to some sort of agreement with the villagers that lets them get their potions in him and lets him keep the mask, but for now? well, like he said. help. and excuse him if he crashes into you, while literally running away]

II. HOME IS WHERE THE HELL TURKEY IS_

[and speaking of running away, apparently that's going to be a running theme for Wrench, while they're here, because when he tries to find his new home, he's immediately chased off by one of the five enormous turkeys that apparently live on the property. maybe, then, you manage to catch him running for his life -- at least running seems to be something he's good at. or maybe he approaches you later, as you reach the edge of the property, too]

I wouldn't go in there, man. [a beat] Not unless you brought, like, bird seed or box of grenades or something.

[please have brought a box of grenades]

III. MIST-DROWNED FOREST_

[when word comes back that there are bandits and that they've kidnapped their dude and taken their stuff, Wrench goes into the forest along with everyone else. the first time things get a little weird, it's because he thinks he sees a familiar silhouette disappearing into the trees. it's enough to give him pause, and he glances between whoever he's with, who he thought he saw, and back again]

Okay, weird question? But you didn't happen to see a guy in a blue windbreaker walk by, did you?

[(?_?) he does't dare get his hopes up, but he's maybe definitely getting his hopes up]

[he's not sure it's better or worse when it happens again, when this time, he starts seeing places rather than people. first it's the hackerspace, his team's home base, in its full glory, from Sitara and his workspaces to Josh and Horatio's. or maybe, it's the San Francisco Bay from the top of the Golden Gate Bridge that flickers into view. or maybe it's a giant metal serpent, as the forest gives way to desert. either way, Wrench hesitates for only a second before heading in that direction]

Hey, come on.

[he absolute needs to find out what's going on here]

IV. THE BLUSHING BRIDE_

[while Wrench thankfully doesn't end up roped into marriage, he does end up getting roped into a drinking game, when he tries to same some other poor schmuck with the line about wine and, as it turns out, the guy's already dead. on the plus side, he has enough in the way of tolerance that he's managing to hold his own. on the minus, he's not sure he can keep up drinking indefinitely, and he's starting to worry that he might end up like the groom, if and when he loses]

[on the other plus side, Wrench manages to bullshit the fox about needing more wine, and staggers to the door to poke his head out into the hallway, mask pulled up just enough to expose his mouth. he's slurring a little when he calls:] Hey, we could use some more -- some more to drink, in here.

[he could some help]

V. A-HUNTING WE WILL GO_

[the next morning and still hungover, but also still in one piece, Wrench ends up as a part of the hunt to deal with the foxes. he's generally miserable, while they wait in the staging area, the LEDs on the mask turned down low as if even its light is bothering him. maybe, at some point, he ends up leaning on you, because that's easier than trying to stand up, with the way his head is pounding]

I think I might have gotten one of the cups with the opium in it.

[surely wine wouldn't have had such an effect on him]

[or maybe you run into him later, after a rifle has been pressed into his hands. maybe he all but assaults you (but not with the gun, that would be irresponsible, gun safety people!), all at once cured and excited, because this is the first time he's seen something this familiar since he got here, and he needs to share his excitement with someone]

Ohhhhhh my God! [oh my god (^_^)] I think I'm gonna have an orgasm! I am definitely touching cloth, right now.

[and he's just going to mime kissing the stock with an over-exaggerated mwah!]

VI. WILDCARD_

[something else in mind? leave me a starter or hit me up at knightinqs or knightinqs#1243 on Discord.]

[This. This is why he never takes his armor off. But the rest of his stuff's still gone. Fuck this planet. And fuck these creepy woods, he didn't like how quiet they were, or--

Alright, what.

He cautiously makes his way closer to the place that wasn't there a second ago.] Is that real? [It might not be, but--who the fuck knows with this planet? Magical crap got them here in the first place, so why couldn't it get them back? Especially when they already knew people were showing up in the woods.

And it looks a more technologically advanced world, wherever it is. At this point, he'd take it.]

I sure as fuck hope so.

[a beat]

Like, no offense, man, but ... [but he's been homesick for awhile, now -- since, maybe, news of the beacon in Taravast closing came back. he hadn't been in line for that, to go home, but -- well, it's complicated. he's really hoping this is real, though]

Mate, the only good things on this planet are learning magic and the hair dye, the rest of it sucks Hutt slime. I am not offended.

[He walks closer, peering curiously at the room beyond.] That's Earth, then?

[Wrench shrugs. just checking]

[he drifts closer, too, rapt, hopeful. he wants so badly for this to be real] But yeah, that's Earth. That's our hackerspace. [he sounds just as reverent, all his usual mania gone] We all kind of hang out here, even if we're not working.

So... there should be people there? [He wants it to be real, but this place has messed with him before. Hearing the voices of his brothers in the night, B2s stomping around, all kinds of shit.

He's gotten lured in before. And this is really tempting now. But he's wary.]

Normally, yeah, but like -- [on reflex, he pulls his phone out of his pocket, as if to check the time. never mind the fact that it hasn't worked in months, now] -- there's a park, outside, where a bunch of food trucks usually hang out. If it's lunchtime ...

[then that could explain why no one's home]

Wrench | WATCH_DOGS | Old Timer

Forest shenans!

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III. MIST-DROWNED FOREST_

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