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

Image source.

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

Image source.

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?

Image source.

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.

Image source.

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.

Image source.

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.

Image source.

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.

Image source.

QUESTIONS

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

You are a child.

( A boy, a stalk, mere roots. Was Lan Wangji taller than he, beneath the long-cast shadows of his first war banner? Had he counted more summers, fresher grass blade crunched beneath his feet?

Children are wishes parents whisper in the dark. There is a muted, hollow, bone-breaking expectation that they should fill out the negative space between the dreams, ideals and ambitions of their elders: slim and strong and distorted. Suffocated.

Better to leave them between dappled sunlight, the dough of their pale flesh to stretch and grow, their bright eyes to dull, their lips to crack, their mouths to cleave around words — and they will suffer, Sizhui has suffered. And they will be free.

Before, I do not relish touch.

Now, the sickly sweet drip of his hand, wavered, dropped on the tips of Anduin's sleeve, where folds crease. A tap, more than a touch. Butterfly's wings landing. )

You never learned to be.

[Part of Anduin would like to protest that he is eighteen and therefore does that not make him grown by at least someone's standards? To be called a child. A boy. It irks him.

Because the truth of the matter is that Anduin had never really had a childhood. Not after losing his mother as an infant. Not with his father all but losing himself to grief and anger for the next ten years of Anduin's life. He had been forced from the start to learn to stand on his own two feet, but it wasn't until Varian's death that the weight of the kingdom had been settled upon his shoulders alone.

Alone. For all that he had clashed with his father, he would be lying if he did not say there is not a part of him that wishes that his father was still there to guide him, with his deep voice and strong, capable hands. Letting him choose his own path but being there to catch him, should he fall.

Anduin can feel the touch of Wangji's fingers on his sleeve, and recognizes it as the gesture of support that it is. He offers the other man a soft, sad smile in return, before shaking his head.]

I suppose I didn't, no. Everyone has always had their expectations of who I was to become. Of... what I was to do, when I did so.

( Cat scorned, his touch removes itself. Unbidden, perhaps wanted, better ash vestige and a desolate shadow than a lingered burden.

He does not ask, Did you rise from your knees to the height they wished of you? Are you the better, lifted man? Did they set him stone, a statue of virtues? Gild him in their sainted gold? Was he righteous, pure, sufficient?

But Lan Wangji sees a boy like the eye of a storm of anxieties, blinking. Sees him trembled, his back too slimmed to bear the world. )

Family casts a tight noose. ( A father absent, a mother withered, an uncle punitive. Alone, his brother's winter radiance. Lan Wangji's eyes shutter — open wide. ) Breathe.

[Breathe.

Anduin's smile curls up further at the edges. He cannot help himself. He is... surprised to have Lan Wangji's support and encouragement. Truth be told he had not been certain the man liked him very much. But standing here with him in the doorway of the wise man's house, Anduin feels... Understood.

It is a comfort he had not known he had needed until the words are offered up. It is funny how such things come from the most unlikely of places, he muses to himself.]

Yes, it does. And the crown can be a heavy burden to bear, even when you have been raised exactly for that purpose.

[He twitches the other man another crooked, half-smile, before taking in a deep breath.

Breathe.]

It sounds as though you are familiar with the concept yourself.

( And what does he know, what has he learned? The burden of snow crushed beneath his knees, the ever-kneeling, the bend of his bowed back, the stupor of hard, steeled weight — of wonder. Of knowing his mother's doors will not creak open, of breathing the air of those who, were they a different sect given to perversions, might have danced on her grave. )

Against my elders, I do not presume reproaches.

( Once upon a time, his betters — now, seniority has substituted eroded virtue, and he does not ask if the well of his patience with his sect's veterans will one day dry and leave him stranded, adrift and unmoored, seeking sympathies. Prepared for abandon.

Now, filial, he turns a baleful, lead-heavy gaze and lands it on Anduin's strained face. )

You have the gift of men. ( Better, at least, than Lan Wangji. ) You may attend our visitors hereafter.

( Sir, you are welcome. )

[Anduin supposes it to be a compliment. The gift of men. It must be, for Wangji to continue to suggest such a thing. He must have done something right, maybe even impressed the other man with the way he has handled this?

He wonders what it says that he seeks the other man's approval in such things. Whether it speaks to the way Lan Wangji had initially seemed to disfavor his softness. Or Anduin's still almost childish yearning for someone, anyone to notice and appreciate him. See him.

Anduin offers his companion a half-crooked smile in response to the offer, if offer is exactly what it can be called.]

I will do my best to see that their needs are met.

[Naturally.]

As best I can, at any rate. Some of them, I fear, are beyond my assistance.

[This man in particular.........]

( It is not for want of resolving their troubles, only for the gift of misplaced sympathies, the graceless, generous fount of Anduin's kindness. They have not earned succour, nor offered payment. They crawl at their gates like vermin, come sweltered summers, uncaring for who opens the doors.

Mere days ago, they looked upon Lan Wangji as the new occupant of this all-hailed house and thought nothing of his youth, his foreign dress, his silence — only weighed him, first with greetings, then with secrets like a feverish spill, before stays could be spoken. He might have been anyone. No one. He might barely have been a sketch of himself. A monster.

Perhaps he is, for how he plays Anduin like a stone of weiqi. )

Some merely wish to be heard.

( If the gods smile, perhaps even listened to. And of the two, for they are paired, and the dregs of Lan Wangji's migraine still storm his temples, he knows who is better fitted for tasks of conversation. Besides, and this is where the duty is better acquitted with a honeyed smile and laughter — )

You may yet glean better knowledge of them. ( It is easier to like and befriend a golden prince than a statue of jade who does honour to his name. This is known. Lan Wangji will not refute it. )

[Both of these observations are true, and Anduin takes a moment to consider them.

Some do only wish to vent their frustrations. For all that he had chided that man who had just come to their door, he does not suppose that he will actually drown his mother-in-law. (He hopes not, anyway.) Some will no doubt come to simply pour their heart out in other ways as well. Anduin has heard some of this already. And he will do the best he can, in all their circumstances.

He always has.

It is true also that he will get to know these people when they do. He will learn of their comings and goings, and of the comings and goings in the village itself. If he serves them well, they will come to trust him, and... There is a responsibility in that. And a benefit as well.]

I hope to be worthy of their charge.

[Speaking of caring for others--

He glances aside at Lan Wangji and considers him for a moment. He has spent enough time around Wrathion to understand that perhaps a direct approach is not the best way to go, and if he wants to ask about his health (for he still seems to Anduin's healer's eye less than 100%) he must take different tactics.]

I had been considering making some tea, perhaps? If you would like some as well.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

arc iii: house of ravens | arrival

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject