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This log covers 7-25 April, drawing from previous discoveries. Feel free to tag in here or make your own posts/logs!

Sign-ups for NPC threads remain open until 23:59 GMT on 9 April.

THE LION’S DEN

WEN QING’S RESCUE | THE HUNTRESS’ CURES | THE HUNT | THE OLD MOUNTAIN

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SWEET HISSED NOTHINGS

CONTENT WARNING: MENTIONS OF SNAKES, SERPENT CREATURES

Prior to the Huntress’ arrival, the group’s healer Wen Qing is captured by a feral half human, half serpent creature. Characters might overhear visiting woodsmen who say a woman was heaved into the woods at night by a large serpent.

After journeying through the illusion-casting forests of Ke-Waihu, prospective rescuers discover that traces of struggle lead them to a 20m-deep, wide pit on brittle pale soil, close to the Fortune fetters ruins:

■ If you cross the Fetters, local prophetesses cryptically advise you to shed torches or clothes and to run to cold streams, if you encounter danger. A distressed Hyang-Tai pleads kindness for ‘ancients’ and ‘children.’

■ The surroundings of the pit are eerily silent.

■ Rescuers can spot a sleeping Wen Qing at the bottom of the pit, patches of her bared skin covered in a slick shine and showing the start of growing scales. She is surrounded by dozens of dormant snakes and nagas, tightly and peacefully coiled around her.

■ Wooden stakes have been thrust into the pit walls — serving as challenging, but workable steps.

■ Some snakes are poisonous — with many cures available in the forest or back in Ke-Waihu — but most bite viciously without venom. Some nagas emit phlegm that briefly impairs the vision or blinds.

■ Watch your step! The creatures are drawn to warmth, fire magic and sound. They stir and climb the pit to attack if they feel threatened.
■ Rusted weapons and broken shields litter the bottom of the pit, dropped in by previous… visitors.

OBJECTIVES

■ Remove Wen Qing from her dire straits.

■ Wen Qing is left with serpentine sensitivities, instincts and scales. To cure her, healers advise a seven-day brew treatment of widow’s lace — an opiate plant found in large forest bushes.

■ Grab a few flowers at a time and store them well — collectors exposed extensively to widow’s lace experience four-six hours of light euphoria, paranoia or bizarre visions — swindling foxes and philosophical parrots are apparently commonly imagined.

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THE MAIDEN’S WATCH

The Huntress joins the group, deprived of her powers and absent her steed. She pointedly stares at the ground, but those who meet her gaze may revisit harrowing moments in their lives.

Following group conversations, her shelter is rotated between two locations: a shallow forest cave and the now deserted snake pit that previously hosted Wen Qing.

Take turns shielding her from the animals that seem drawn to besiege her. The Huntress spends her time in tears or penitence and speaks in a maddened tongue. Voice coarse and wet, she summons the composure to share her knowledge:

■ The Beastmaster and she both seek to witness the imminent eruption of the Ke-Sanwon volcano, expected within a month. The Beastmaster will become more human as that time draws.

■ Ravens excepted, local animals obey the Beastmaster and spy for him.

■ To avoid the pull of the Beastmaster and his Hunt, seek out:

THE SHRINE

Trek through Ke-Waihu’s haunted forests and find the village’s only shrine devoted to ravens, outside of the elusive House of Ravens.

■ Wear pebbles or wood splinters from the shrine to disrupt the Beastmaster’s thrall on you. These items must be replaced after three days.

■ Fox spirits have raised dozens of illusionary copies of the shrine. The stone of the original altar is marked for ravens in a small wooden carving, while copy shrines worship foxes.

■ Young fox spirits imitate ravens or play distant bells to distract travellers from finding the raven shrine.

■ Sometimes, fox spirits swarm, offering to show the way if visitors perform a small dare or tell them a meaningful secret.

■ If asked, Ke-Waihu locals share the shrine was raised by a wanderer, who spent a month in the village many years ago. He was disgusted with the arrogance of Ke-Waicai’s zealots, who insist ravens are sacred and can only be worshipped in the House of Ravens.

THE BRIDGE

Ke-Waihu has briefly reopened its gates to the nearby village of Ke-Waiar — to which it is connected by a fragile and narrow bridge high above a misted abyss.

■ Wind gusts shake the ropes of the rickety bridge, and several wooden steps are putrid, dangling or loose.

■ Ad you near the bridge’s end to Ke-Waiar, you may find a couple of fox spirits are purposefully rattling the ropes to unsaddle travellers. Plead or barter: you can offer anything from riddles to treats, a good performance, a poem, a favour, a shouted confession of true love…

■ The village gates open between sunrise and sunset. Characters who arrive early find many villagers sleep until late in the day. By sundown, some locals become frantic, alert, increasingly irritable.

■ Water can be freely taken from any of the wells within Ke-Waiar to satisfy the quest. Villagers offer it gladly — they too suffer from resurging drought and dark waters.

■ If you arrive at sunset or night, you can see villagers turning to werewolves in various stages of transformation, between humanoid and large wolf beast. They are lured out of Ke-Waiar, gates closing behind them, and released into the thick, vibrant woods — with you.

■ Take cover in the forest, to escape the pack of werewolves and wolves. Some might prove lenient if they catch you, while others feel compelled to draw blood.

■ To wait out the night: climb the forest’s sturdiest trees with help of the ropes purposefully bound from tall branches. Some trees even host rudimentary treehouses.

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THE HUNT

The Beastmaster, his xenomorphic creatures and mutated animals arrive in Ke-Waihu to behold the ‘imminent’ volcanic eruption.

The Beastmaster’s creatures possess sharpened senses and hearing, intense speed and hard carcasses that provide additional but imperfect protection from blows and missiles. They often hunt in packs, but behave themselves in Ke-Waihu during daytime.

The Beastmaster excuses himself from the underground Hok-Shinn clan’s attempts at a welcome celebration, taking residence with his beasts in his village hut. He may be encountered walking the village beside five or six of his creatures, inspecting the markets and even advising new huntsmen — his manner slow, speech rough in a way that suggests oral injury beneath his facial bandages.

THE TRIBUTES

The Hok-Shinn and an envoy of Ke-Waiar each present 10 distinguished but eerily listless youths of their village to the Beastmaster.

■ These tributes are then held in groups of five across four abandoned homes, each closely watched by six-seven men of the Hok-Shinn.

■ Team up, rescue some tributes — and get out alive.

■ For easier infiltration, try the forest-facing back of the houses, or the generously large, defective chimneys. Beware slippery or broken roof tiles

■ Hok-Shinn guards possess great brute force… and gratefully accept liquor.

■ Some tributes might fight their rescuers and attempt to alert the guards. Some claim it is their privilege to join the Beastmaster, while others say they should be sacrificed to the volcano Ke-Sanwon for their families.

■ You can hide the rescued tributes in the witches’ huts or the Fetters — gather them coin so they can book seats on the next ship out of Ke-Waihu.

THE HUNTING SEASON

The Beastmaster’s creatures are mannered during the day, but join the Hunting season that kicks off after the full moon:

■ Participation is (OOCly) optional.

■ For five nights, come moonrise, some characters feel compelled to flee into the forests and run, hide or avoid detection — alternatively, they join the Beastmaster’s creatures as hunters, chasing this quarry and forest animals.

■ You can chase each other or ‘pack’ up against a common target or enemy.

■ Anyone can ‘hunt’ or ‘be hunted.' Roles can swap across the five nights.

■ Characters can develop overnight instincts akin to an animal of hunt or prey of your choice, and they will be helped by these animals for the night. Snakes and ravens do not participate.

■ Hunting can be vicious (seeking to injure, kill or consume prey) or symbolic (just violently giving chase).

■ Certain characters feel especially compelled to join the hunt and to protect the Beastmaster outside of it. These include characters who are given to war, hunting, violence, wrath, gluttony or feral/animal characteristics. It also applies to those who previously turned xenomorphic during the Beastmaster's trip in Taravast, or whom he marked.

■ To avoid the hunt, stay out of the forest, apply the Huntress’ cures or lock yourself firmly indoors.

A couple of fun locations for hunt participants:

■ A tree enclosure where characters can hide for up to an hour, invisible to their pursuers. They can still be heard or scented.

■ A small lake, silvered at night, in whose waters you can breathe freely.

■ A fox spirit shrine, where a group of four-five vulpine friends defend you alongside their territory.

■ Abandoned wells and the forest streams previously touched by dark waters. The Beastmaster’s creatures seem very curious about the liquid, but ultimately pull back, as if obeying instructions.

■ Areas with strong fire or utter dark deter the Beastmaster's creatures.

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OLD MAN MOUNTAIN

Dormant volcano Ke-Sanwon shows signs of upcoming eruption: soil swells, increases in local temperature and small, low-grade earthquakes.

■ Characters with magical powers may find their strength sometimes fluctuates, suddenly swelling or briefly waning completely.

■ Dark waters fill out some of the ground cracks that follow earthquakes. The liquid is cold, settling as if it were iced. This dark water heals shallow wounds on any skin it touches, or gently revives vegetation over one-three days on any ground it is set on.

■ The strength of the dark water fades over a week’s time.

■ Digging through the ground cracks reveals thin rivulets of the dark water are present all around Ke-Sanwon.They are more numerous the closer you get to the volcano. Dark water also smears the mouths of hell.

THE JEWELLER

A few days after the earthquakes state (after 20 April, for network posts), characters wake to distant screams, as a group of 10 of Ke-Waihu's masked concerned citizens drag handsome young jeweller Dong-Yun out of Ke-Waihu.

■ The group is taking Dong-Yun through the predatory forests.

■ You can play out finding the captors’ convoy separately, or tag into the jeweller’s rescue here.

■ Bring the jeweller back to Ke-Waihu. Dong-Yun can share that his abductors intended to sacrifice him to the Ke-Sanwon volcano. One of the participants in the rescue: please share with the rest of the class!

”I’ve heard, but I’ve never — they used to, when my mother was young… she told, me even when she had me, all the mothers hid their young. She told me, they used to give them to Sanwon. The prettiest, the smartest, the most skilled. Give it all to Brother Sanwon, give it to… so it won’t take everything else. Give it our best, and it will leave us the rest. But this doesn’t happen anymore. The mountain doesn’t want it.”

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QUESTIONS

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[He's never before felt the earth shake like it's become the sea. Eleven clings to it and prays until at last, it's settled. But even as he rises, his limbs still quake as though the tremors had infected him and linger.

By the time he regains himself, he's lost.

Eleven wanders with a quiet panic until the trees begin to thin and the foot of the volcano comes into view. More than that- a familiar form. He rushes to him immediately, moved by both relief and concern to find him digging at the ground in such a hurried fashion.

He gives a startled cry to see what clings to the man's hands and the source of dark liquid he'd been digging from]

You aren't supposed to touch it!

[Eleven kneels swiftly at Wangji's side, anxious eyes looking him over only to stop at his hands. He'd heard, but-]

..Hey. Are you all right?

[ Days of startled wonder, mind clouded, thoughts lent. This, flickering before him, is Eleven — Lan Wangji knows him, by the liminal lines of his aural light, a stain of strength that Wangji's qi perceives, before he remembers to recognise Eleven's face.

And the boy asks, Is Wangji all right? Well? Functional? Passingly?

Grit of his teeth, and there's gravel at the back of them, where droplets of dust gathered and stormed his mouth throughout the unburial of road cracks. His hands feel like rags squeezed of mildew, at once soiled and recovered to supernaturally perfect form. Light bleeds on his fingertips, terminally pale, emptied of vigor. He curls a fist around the teardrops of dissipating dark water, its opacity feebler than the pigment of Wei Ying's lent robes on Wangji — no more than charcoal and fume, when compared to the vibrancy of the black sleeve. Still, even so little of the waters achieved a petty miracle.

Unbidden, Lan Wangji lifts both palms to show Eleven their dwindling gains of the elusive water, before it escapes him completely. ]

...should not be. [ Crumbled dirt spills and rolls under his knees, when Lan Wangji shifts forward, closer, so Eleven might see, so he might understand and witness. This is no healing as nature intends it. ] Touch did not ruin me.

[ ...for now, he supposes. ]

[Eleven stares at the healed skin and raises his fingers to touch, then doesn't. He looks again to Wangji with that same consternation, eyes tracking his face for signs of corruption]

Might it only be dangerous to drink..? [Still, he's puzzled by it and hesitates to touch it himself. They can't both afford to be corrupted and there's something vulnerable about Wangji that urges protection]

What happened? The earth shook..

[ For half a heartbeat, he thinks to cross the distance — to press their hands, pad to pad, bone to bone, and the minimal, tender wet of morning dew that clutches skin like succour. He does not, fingers curling in like claws to capture the last print of the dark water like an unctuous film.

What happened? To gaze around him at the spiderweb of tracks, he thinks they can reconstruct the name of each event, if not its local implication. ]

Swelled and breathed after.

[ And now it stands stained, like the cheek of a maiden, blemished by pox. Lan Wangji's hand sweeps it, timid but the touch deepens to weigh down a print. ]

It is so, in parts of the world. [ Rocks brittle, land unsteady. ] Often, men do not build there.

[ But what choice on an island, seemingly so bereft of its places of shelter? ]

Edited 2022-04-11 19:35 (UTC)

[For all he's slept at the bottom of the sea and summoned an ancient forge from a volcano, the only rumblings of the earth he'd felt had to do with the heavy, shuddering steps of tower-sized behemoths. Eleven manages a brief smile]

Here I'd thought there might have been a gigantes or troll. [He breathes, glancing about with eyes that linger on the dark water once more]

We should get back..

[ Get back, yes, though the dark of Wei Ying's lent robes and the rough quality of their cottons and the suffocating bruise that rounds his neck, where the lock of his qi was cast invigorate him with an indelicate reminder: better Lan Wangji falters in return.

And what better use for his time than the careful examination of the venue before them? On a mound of crackled earth, the density and strange chills of the foreign, gushing waters are still the deepest novelty of the land. ]

There is... insufficient warmth to the waters.

[ He does not explain well. Words forever, ruthlessly fail him, mouth a soft crumbled line, as he teases the transparent film between hungering fingertips — after, when he holds his palm out, oiled with dark slick, he knows Eleven will hesitate to claim it.

His fingers curl in call. ]

For a stream that sleeps beside a volcano.

Wangji..!

[Though the man has proven the water's innocence, Eleven still jerks back, distressed to watch him put his hands in it then hold it out with only a mild observation to offer. He stares again at the liquid with an anxious distrust and shudders]

I guess so. [The comment is off-hand until he takes a moment to think about it. Hotto had built in the shadow of a volcano, laying claim to not only steaming waters as a refreshing bath, but fuel for their steel. And within Huji itself slept an ancient forge beneath a bed of molten lava. Nothing about that region had been anything other than terribly hot.

Eleven settles once more, thoughtful]

It must not come from the volcano itself then..?

[ He thinks, once upon a time, he must have been a boy just as easily startled, so shaken by the mundanity of nature's menacing presumptions. Once upon a time, before he gazed into the dark of a mountainous abyss and understood that true horror isn't what waits at the bottom, but the fall. The men who guard the rim.

But this is not that moment, and they waste time the waters are short supplied of. They thin and dry, or evaporate within heartbeats, too scantly resourced to linger extensively. He thinks to wash it on the back of his hands, to spread it like crumbled, diluted chasm. There is a part of it that calls to him, its healing imperfect.

...qi, he suspects. Qi behaves so, entering the system without reshaping it, only a fluid of strength in the bloodstream. ]

Not of that make.

[ When he wipes his hands on the ground once more, he's for the slow rise, for peeling himself off, for starting to move with purpose. As if, gaze no longer transfixed, he can be counted on to explore. ]

It breathes in wells. In fields. In the land. To what purpose? [ Then, eyes shuttering, voice glass: ] We may ask the dead.

[ Loathe though he has been to exercise his abilities in this environment, desperate times, and this, the desperate measures. ]

[Eleven rises with him with one last glance to the waters- but no, if his time in this world has taught him nothing else, it's that the danger of corruption is a very present one. He'll have to keep an eye on Wangji]

The dead? [Eleven shivers, glancing around as though they might suddenly appear. He makes an effort to avoid most all undead where possible] Like who?

[ There is a moment when the silence between them is a wet knot strained by contortion, when he remembers Eleven's prohibitive reaction to the enslavement of the dead, no more enthusiastic than Lan Wangji's own. And how different are the Gusu Lan in their recourse?

Intent matters. The permanence of the captive interest of the dead marks the difference. Inquiry is brief compulsion, more pressing invitation. He suspects the nuances will surely persuade Eleven that —

They walk a village of ruptured resources, haunted by drought. Animals seize them, men are transacted as tribute. The time for nuance has long passed. Each swallow of air feels as if it comes around chalk. ]

When my people speak, the dead answer.

[ Yet he does not summon his spells, his instrument, or more than conviction in his step. Let them see this mountain. ]

Past sundown. My skill presently absents. [ See him tattered and bruised and dressed in blacks and it will be a small wonder. ]

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