let's set d o w n some (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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westwhere2022-02-20 06:30 pm
groundrules) wrote in westwhere2022-02-20 06:30 pm
Entry tags:
- 2ha: chu wanning,
- arc iii,
- asoiaf: daenerys targaryen,
- final fantasy vii: rufus shinra,
- game of thrones: jon snow,
- harry potter: hermione granger,
- house of ravens,
- kingdom of the wicked: wrath,
- mo dao zu shi: xiao xingchen,
- oh! my emperor: beitang moran,
- oh! my emperor: su xunxian,
- original: winnifred prismall,
- persona 5: akira,
- star wars: slick,
- sword of frost: yun yifeng,
- test drive,
- the gifted: lorna dane,
- the gifted: marcos diaz,
- tian guan ci fu: xie lian,
- tokyo ghoul: kaneki ken,
- umbrella academy: allison,
- umbrella academy: diego,
- umbrella academy: five,
- untamed: lan wangji,
- untamed: wei wuxian,
- untamed: wen qing,
- warcraft: anduin wrynn,
- warcraft: wrathion,
- watch_dogs: wrench,
- wheel of time: moiraine,
- witcher: yennefer
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!
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.
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.
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.
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 foddergroom 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.
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.
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.
no subject
( Truth, whole and unwavering. He bear witness, and complicity will yet drown and condemn him, in the reds of her red and the blood of her blood, and he will be no saint, condoning. But she shrieks, and Lan Wangji's grip breezes over Bichen without ever settling to land, he does not extort her from her sheath. )
But you claim it, by your hand. ( Dagger-weighed, steel-laden. Stained. ) Proceed.
( If you dare, if you yet can, without another's hand to do your bidding. Enough of this, the cautious delegation of other men to do a wretched thing. )
no subject
[Moran turns to face the creature, now almost too entirely foxlike.
The truth is, he knows what Lan Wangji is doing. But there is another truth there, that he also trusts Lan Wangji on a certain fundamental level. As petty as the man is - and he is petty, about as much as Moran is capable of being - he does not believe he would let someone like him, bearing Wei Wuxian's face, come to too much harm, even to teach a lesson.
And the creature must be stopped, one way or another.
She lashes out entirely too fast, rushing at him, and in all conscience he should not have been able to avoid her... except in that moment, the sigil on his forehead glows, bright and silver and white and purple, and for two or three seconds it's as if he can read her movements before she even thinks of making them, avoiding claw and tooth and sinking the silver tip of the hairpin into her jugular with almost surgical precision.]
no subject
In Cloud Recesses, this would be grounds for disqualification from contest, performance, exercise. It would reduce a man to his lackings, to the need to improve in the here and the now. Skill is not that which is buttressed by communion with strength unseen. Mastery stands alone.
And yet, the fox bride falls, limp as a wet knot of laundered rags, and it's all Lan Wangji can do — blurr of sky blues, the catch perfunctory — to break her fall in his arms, and rest her abed the dance of lights trapped on wood lacquer. She convulses once, again. Death is a sickly thing, fever growing. When she gasps her last, reedy, Lan Wangji whispers her to sweet sleep.
Heartbeats spill between them. He raises his gaze, to see this man who has held himself back once before already —
And stills, burdened by warmth in his arms. Says: )
...she stirs.
no subject
he is looking for something to wipe the blood off the hairpin when he hears Lan Wangji's words and turns around, frowning.]
I know I didn't miss.
[Maybe you think his performance was unsatisfactory, Master Lan, but you saw where he stabbed, and this was not something that could be survived.]
... Is that what supernatural creatures do? Just cheat death?
no subject
Did you think the task facile?
( That exorcists and cultivators and the wayward sons of petty sects thrived off an absence of talent and a benediction of routine? That any part of their work lacked guile?
No matter. She shivers, body recalling the small rituals of wakefulness — the gasps, the moans, the crawl of angered claws on ground — before its pains. When she bolts up, fierce, the silvered length of Bichen already walks hairs' breadths before her neck, urging her still, so very still. )
This is why. Better not to murder first.
no subject
[If you want to show off, Master Lan, be his guest.
Moran does raise the hairpin as a weapon again, although mostly defensively since now The sword has come out to play.]
Would she speak any comprehensible language to even interrogate?
no subject
( ...once thoroughly decapitated. Click of Lan Wangji's tongue, and the bride hisses, turns and captures his gaze with the harsh edge of her own, with the sickly hate that burdens it. She will not thank him a second death, less so a liberation. Nothing within her is compelled by ease or mercy.
When he cuts, thin and quick and the rivulet of red licking her throat like honeydew's spill, she — freezes, ample and unyielding subject to torture, remembering the root of fear. Perhaps, if she were asked in the ways appropriate.
But then, Lan Wangji's hands are bound, and his gaze teases the rims of Beitang Moran's robes, eases up. )
Raise Bichen in my stead.
( If Lan Wangji is to play the guqin, he requires two hands at the ready. )
no subject
It feels light, and it's clearly of much better quality than any Moran has ever held before, which is saying something given his background, but is hand is steady, and he is watchful and on his guard.]
What are you going to try?
no subject
The shape of his guqin materialises, tender and coiling, pale but swift to coalesce. A learned, grateful, cunning instrument, for all it will not play today to beauty.
He waits until the guqin is balanced, until he sweeps a hand over her spine and ribs and feels her readied, brimming to sing with the notes tickled by his hand. )
We speak. ( The first notes, traditional: Who are you? The bride convulses, trashes, squirms — trembles her answer. Lan Wangji's back a straight rod and his mouth pursed, the fall of his fingers on the play, even. ) ...she wishes you to know her dissatisfaction at your treatment.
( In case... Beitang Moran were wondering. )
no subject
I do not think this needed translation, but thank you all the same for the confirmation, Master Lan.
The displeasure is duly noted, my lady, but I do tend to get prissy when someone charges at me with teeth and claw. Nothing personal.
no subject
He plays, thereafter, notes in negotiated synchrony, some reedy, some shrewd. A handful more for the sake of routine and moderation than the success of even play. The ghost answers him with difficulty — less for disgust of him, though contempt lines her growling mouth at every heartbeat, than for ill recollection.
She remembers living, in a youth long gone. The day has fled her. The decade. She did not die well. ( They all died so very poorly. )
When it is done, Wangji feels it like burden on his lungs, the next breath impossibly, improbably deepened. Shrill. )
She wishes to hurt as she has been hurt. ( And before master Moran may misunderstand him: ) Not she. The one who first preceded them all.
no subject
It sounds highly ineffective and only likely to prolong grudges on both sides. Who even came up with this idea?
[People can be exceedingly strange when giving in to superstition.]
Is that meant to appease the spirits? By... making the villagers more angry at them? Where is the logic?