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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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Nineteen summers feels like a child to him still, but he's aware of why, with his own son around the same age, and with his own reflections on what he'd done when similar. Here he simply smiles, tipping his head to the youth.

"Happy stories lend a strength to the listeners, even when they'd prefer more exciting tales. As long as none of them were about scorpions," he said, smiling, and opting not to mention anything of canines. For his own reasons, as ever.

"Other times, it's the unhappy ones that bear the telling. What's the story behind this morning's events?"

The story, then. His story. His hands, shaking once more against the cup, grip forlorn. He should stop, being a man, being above this. He's got — he has hands that can grip throats and... he's strong. Very strong.

They shouldn't have caught him so easily. When he looks up, eyes wet with fear and understanding, he means to whisper as much, but stops himself.

"I... I'll do better next time. I won't need to impose. But... I was back from the forge late. Working the night. I... I don't get the moulds wrong often, I don't. If there's pattern, I'm good with... but we've been cutting the silver, just times being — rough, and the string came too soft, so it..."

A pause. "Doesn't matter. Work needed redone, so I stayed and... when I came out, they took me. A lot of them. I think. Maybe I'm just hoping so, I wasn't so... useless. Imagine if it were only one or two? And me, like a sack of wheat. And they said... you know, don't fight. It'll be good for everyone. I have good looks and good hands, and... brother Sanwon will like me. So what's there to fight?"

But he did fight.

"There were close to ten or so," he says, confirmation and the softened edge of his attention given to the young man in full. "Ten people who decided to act, and a village who decided to turn their heads away."

A longer pause, and a soft, tired sigh.

"How often have events like this happened? People deciding brother Sanwon wants someone so good everyone can admire them, want them, and want them gone for everyone's good?" The mother in the graveyard, who had taken her own life, after her daughter...

To his merit, he thinks the matter over, lip struck between teeth, gently chewed. Then, carefully, he chances, "I think... until a few years ago, with certainty, every time the mountain bubbled. But... more often. When they thought it might."

Preventively, as if the great yawning chasm of a mouth on this mountain could be tamed by shallow precautions. "I don't remember well. I was too young. But my mother said, whenever a child looked too bright or too handsome, you'd want to hide it. If they had a skill, and it weren't too important to the village to bear parting with, he or she would want to dull it."

If the village learned, the village took.

"Who decides on who is too important for the village to part with?"

A cam question, but he's watching, calculating. Connections are what they are, and this is not a village ruled by kindness or justice, whatever the trappings of ancestral guilt and sins might be.

"I'm sorry. Art is so rarely recognised for the value it holds in bringing beauty to life." Necessity, as it is, being a nebulous, mercurial concept. What is the necessity of murder, but fear? Even if the volcano breathes with a pulse and spirit of its own, this is not requested. This is fear turning a village against itself for generations.

"They've tried once. Very likely someone is going to try again, young master." Where, it begs the question, to move him, for having his life as thoroughly uprooted as it was almost thoroughly eradicated? Because that's the sense weighing on his shoulders now. Because a village in fear does not forgive or repent or take true to heart anything but resentment that a wrong has not been allowed to be committed, on the hope that one murder bought bread for the living. Acceptable losses that had no end.

It startles him, to think of repetition. He had supposed — but then, it only makes true sense for the group to avoid capturing Dong-Yun for a second turn, not another substitute. They risk nothing, knowing Dong-Yun has every interest to stay hidden, to speak little of the night's events, to walk away.

He is paving the path for someone else's disaster, he knows so. He knows, and yet he cannot stop.

"I think... they must choose between themselves. They must agree, somehow. Back in mother's day, she said, anything could stir them. Looks or skill or if you spoke well, or they thought, maybe a raven looked at you." His voice sheds an octave, controlled, "I heard, if you're meant for Brother Sanwon, the rusted gates of the House of Ravens open for you, the night you are born."

"Which families have not had to worry about this?" Who walks freely, he asks, and then he pauses, also considering.

"What else can you tell me about the House of Ravens? Or why it seems that whatever gifts Brother Sanwon's movements might encourage, this village doesn't seem to keep them particularly close."

Watches, yes, for anyone else secreted out of the village, for anyone else being dragged up the mountain, to its foot or its peak, for their blood to be consumed by a spirit that two lords of undeath were haunting the region in wait for 'his' explosive release.

He laughs, and it's a bitter thing, older than his years — something his body learned before his might earned.

"It's everyone's worry. No one's spared." Not one man, strong or rich, not one woman, bright or fair. His water tastes bitterer when he tries it again, warmth swelling his lips. "The House... I've never been."

To start there, while he negotiates back his senses, and lines up his thoughts, collapsing back in his chair. "They don't take you, unless... you don't come back. Although, they who take you come back, so I suppose — I expect. I suppose it's not all that true that... no one's seen it. Someone's had to have seen it, if we know it exists."

It seems so sensible, and so painfully, reassuringly tangential. "That's where they give you to brother Sanwon. That's where you go, and you don't return."

"Then at this point, most of what is known comes word of mouth, not confirmed in a way you're aware of?"

With another frown, a shake of his head. If no one sees, well, then someone saw something, or knew something once, but now, what has it become? Who told them what 'happened'?

"What can you tell me about the ravens themselves?"

"The... the ravens, sir?" He asks, but he has heard, plainly. He only bides his time with another sip, and if the discomfort is born of what he knows, and what he has born witness to, or simply of fear of retaliation — perhaps he himself cannot say.

"They... you can't see any in the village. Or in the forest. I thought... used to wonder why, because folks like you come, from overseas. All the merchants. And they say, ravens go where people are." He seems to struggle with his words, shrugging impotently. "So, we didn't... understand why we have no ravens here, but then they tell us, ravens go where the dead are."

And now he's laughing, a victim of his own frenzy. "And that's why it's called the House of Ravens, isn't it? Hundreds of them. Makes... sense."

A small quirk of his lips.

"Yet they don't flock every dead one walking." Still, it's more to investigate, and he has further considerations.

"What of the Master of Beasts. What legacy has he here?"

Legacy. A hard word, and Dong-Yun seems briefly to struggle with it. But then, he prevails, "He was before, in the village. A huntsman. But no one... no one particular. Only, a huntsman. Then... mother said, the sacrifices stopped when he appeared. And now we just... trust him with people to train. Our best."

The young men and women the man of Ke-Waiar and the Hok-Shinn presented. Future soldiers and defenders, and those who'll ensure what nearly happened here, tonight, to Dong-Yun will never — will never again —

He is faint, it strikes him, when his cup lands with a hard thuds and shatters. And softly, "I'm sorry, sir. I think — I might be wanting some sleep, sir."

Only a few hours, to rest his eyes and stop the shivers of his body, before he crawls back to the forge, where a great lock shields the rooms from the outer world. There, he's safe.

He simply nods, too late to capture the falling cup, and wishes quiet solicitudes to the young man.

More to consider, and ah, fit this young man...

"If you choose not to stay," he says, as a parting, "Contact myself, Wei Wuxian, or my husband, Lan Wangji. We'll see to sponsoring your traveling to another home."

A bow of his head, and then, he's gone.

A fine gift of escape, only he cannot take it — sips his tea, slowly and measured, and nods along, because, it must be an easy thing, to be a stranger. A man who can give up his roots and ties. A man unburdened.

But Dong-Yun has family, this family wants feeding, and his master jeweller pays him a good apprenticeship wage, besides. There are worse fates in this world.

He'll bear his.

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