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westwhere2022-04-07 09:32 pm
groundrules) wrote in westwhere2022-04-07 09:32 pm
Entry tags:
- arc iii,
- harry potter: hermione granger,
- legend of fei: xie yun,
- mo dao zu shi: xiao xingchen,
- oh! my emperor: beitang moran,
- owl house: eda clawthorne,
- sword of frost: yun yifeng,
- tian guan ci fu: xie lian,
- triangle strategy: jens macher,
- umbrella academy: diego,
- umbrella academy: five,
- warcraft: anduin wrynn,
- word of honor: zhou zishu
(no subject)
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.
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.
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.
- ■ Wear pebbles or wood splinters from the shrine to disrupt the Beastmaster’s thrall on you. These items must be replaced after three days.
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.
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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But the waters, weeping down his hands, swiftly dissolved after seeming to deplete their strength by erasing petty cuts, fleeting bruises. He watches them, watches Xie Lian after, watches and shutters his eyes, and thinks —
In medicine, so often, the same element can produce sickness when consumed in excess, or cure when absorbed scantly. Perhaps, here also. ]
In what ways did it liven the plants?
[ To hear Xie Lian, it does not seem to him a fortunate encounter. ]
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[And the fact that the dark water seemed to come from the tree was weird, too.]
I don't remember if anyone was able to tell us if the tree had been there before... and if not, it means it sprang and grew in a matter of days, and it was big. And when we destroyed it, the black sludge slowly disappeared from the corn fields.
I think I saw someone saying that it affected animals who drank it, too? So... maybe... you shouldn't touch it with your bare hands?
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If there were trial and tribulation to overcome for his exposure, the hour of that reckoning has long passed. The shrug that wrecks his shoulders undulates them, maritime. The grandmaster would despise the frailty of his composure. ]
It is done. [ What use, then, to speak over literally spilled waters? ] The rivers breathe beneath trembled earth.
[ A nod down to where he has unsettled the ruptured ground, peeling back its skins to reveal more and more and more of the stream webbing. ]
Perhaps we should seek fount.
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[Punched into oblivion and burned, that tree is not coming back.]
But it's appearing in wells, and in ponds, so it has to come from somewhere. Underground might make sense but... with the volcano right here, it feels strange that here could also be an underground water source like that...
Oh! I just remembered, there was something engraved on the tree. A symbol. I feel like I've seen it somewhere before but I can't remember where...
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Haste is a mortal concept, defined by the constraints of a finite lifespan. Xie Lian has no business pretending the acrid urgency of they who live each day as Lan Wangji has the better of five now, closing. As Wei Ying will live, for the rest of his fraction of eternity.
His hands tighten over ground, pulverising globes of condensed dirt. He comes alive, awake. ]
The symbol. Speak its shape.
[ Between two, they might yet scavenge the scraps and tatters of memory required to weave together meaning. ]
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[He can use a bit of talisman paper and charcoal from the chimney that he carries around just in case - in case f what, don't ask, it's fine - and he'll make a rather good rendition of the thing, with the eye.]
I feel like maybe it was at the lighthouse that I saw it... or somewhere around there.
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Instead, his hand shifts to cover the symbol from a great distance, not yet erasing it from paper for all he knows the charcoal would yield easily to the hand. ]
Ellethia. The downed province.
[ They saw it in passing, sleight of a scrying hand, the eye gazing, finding — ...what? He still cannot say. Truth in mirrors. Wishes. Some manner of trial and crushing error. ]
...its people walked these lands?
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[He thinks back to their journey to come here. It wasn't easy, but if he has to guess, without the whole undead business...]
It's not actually that far. The ship didn't take that long to come, and that was on choppy waters and with undead sirens in them. I would imagine that in peaceful times and with a functional city, they probably had regular liaisons between Ellethia and this area. Probably trade of some kind.
And then the city was destroyed and it stopped... It might be worth asking if anyone remembers foreigners coming in. They seemed... well, not surprised to see us, but like they hadn't seen anyone from the outside in a while.
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[ A purposeful, measured journey east, each step forensic. He thinks, if not for the strain of their various road diversions, if not for their numerous halts and hunts and chases, the travel would not have gone so long.
These dead have not had a troubled time of their conquest. The spread of their armies, however short of small, cannot have taken a crippling toll to transport. He aches to think of the impossibility to defend against a vanguard so closely posted near its reinforcements.
Small wonder, then, that so much of this world has perished like a breath of snow, come spring's dawn. ]
The masters of Ellethia proselytised here. [ No. That mark means more. ] Or paid homage.
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[Xie Lian looks back at the mountain, looming.]
A volcano being a sacred mountain is not really that out there in terms of belief either. But like every other place we've been too, things are... out of alignment, slightly. Volcanic soil should be very rich and give plenty of food.
And that black substance... it kinds of looks like those weird creatures we saw back on the stairs, when we were traveling with Lord Ahra and the ghost army, doesn't it? And it healed your wounds, but it seems to be ... sucking out life from some things to give it back others? Maybe?
[The black sludge in the field made the pants more alive, but they sure seemed determined to kill whoever got close.]
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[ Rota philosophy, cheap learning. Cultivators who wish to know nothing of specifics rely on abstracts. He has come to understand that books are so often written for men who wish to ignore true knowledge. That he may rely on precepts only when he has not honed the blade of his own thoughts.
And they swirl now, even as he brings himself up, one leg, then the next, and seems to start the walk onwards — a soft wave behind him, calling Xie Lian as if he were the dog Wei Ying will never allow him to summon and keep.
Pets are interdicted in Cloud Recesses. But he walks the sundered mantle of a volcano, beaten and cracked like ancient ceramic. He can afford a... kept creature, trailing in his footsteps. ]
No gods of drought rule here. Parched dead do not linger. [ Whatever came to be here, is nature is — not of a haunting. ] Perhaps a matter widowed of spirits.
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The drought could be natural, that's for sure. But this black substance is not. It changes what it touches.
[His mouth... twitches into a slightly bitter smile as he speaks of 'drought'.]
... I tried to stop a drought, once. For my country. It didn't go well. I was their god, and I couldn't even do that.
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[ Of the land, of green and grass and weeds that will no longer flourish. Barren is the world where mother sky will not cry her waters. And if Xie Lian, who appears so often to fail expectations and reason, has also fallen short of the needs of his people...?
Then it is not one man's burden to bear, and Lan Wangji casts a glance behind, well-steeled — his back comes compact, thin, frailed. Men can achieve no more than their bones allow them. He hesitates: ]
Few gods heal.
[ Perhaps you were not cut of that cloth, for all Lan Wangji cannot name what measure would better suit Xie Lian. To look at him, he is a child, a maudlin thing, a knight too meandered to be errant. Distract, and perhaps lacking conviction. Weak. Mutable.
...and what of it? When the hardest wars wait before them, who among men is truly strong? Chance and choice create courage. ]
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... I just could not stand there and do nothing, but in the end I felt like I made everything worse.
[He looks around at the dried ground a bit dejectedly. It hasn't been a good time, being here and watching some people suffer from what he saw Xian Le go through.]
They called me a god of misfortune after that, and I can't blame them. If blaming me made them feel better, it was deserved. But it's such a wretched feeling, when you're doing your hardest, you're trying your best, and your best is not even close to being good enough.
I don't really understand how the people here seem to revel in those curses they have all around, but there comes a moment where it's better the evil you know than the illusion of something better than might never come.
That business with the foxes is still not right, though. They need to stop that.
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There is a softness in Xie Lian that must hail from cultivation, a high and well-praised birth. Men without means are not so often predisposed to the certainty that their thoughts suit sharing.
And yet there is a comfort in traipsing gently beside him, without haste or purpose. Let him chatter, emptily like the passage of water, like Wei Ying when the taste for sound overfills him. When he cannot bear to coexist with himself, and Lan Wangji — for the first heartbeat since they've crossed paths — finally understands him. Nods, and carries on. ]
One man may stand with justice to set example. [ On a rooftop, howling. ] He cannot save a world that relinquishes itself.
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It's true sometimes, that silence becomes unbearable when all you can hear are your own thoughts. It's exceedingly true in a place that reminds you of your first failure, the one that precipitated all of the others and led you down the darkest path you vowed to never walk again.]
It's a lesson I had to learn the hard way. You can't save people who don't want to be saved.
But I still think that if you see someone suffering, you should be kind and try to help. I don't think it was wrong of me to try. I was just too young and too certain of my own importance to know any better.
... I'm sorry, I must be boring you with all of this. You didn't even ask. It's just that this place brought back some very old memories that I apparently haven't made my peace with as much as I thought.
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Some men are given to melancholy, to words whispered to great and unforgivable excess. Lan Wangji does not question how his fate is ever bound to them, by red string or happenstance. The pale gravity of a waking sun looms long and monstrous above them. He blinks away the blinding hurt of its strength and only leads on, until the foot of the volcano distorts from a distant ambition to a nearby, stark threat. ]
The man you are recalled the ghost you were.
[ A simple observation, inverted from the learnings of the dead. So often, they are entrapped in memory, in recreating themselves from the slivers and shrapnel of the men they thought themselves to be. The living, too, place too much weight on the deception of whom their previous, fabricated existences.
To be anything but what one has convinced oneself one was is to admit the possibility of error. He knows too well, too pained. ]
We seek drought and haunted waters. Will you withstand it?
[ Better to know now and relieve Xie Lian of his duties, than to expose him to undue cruelty. ]
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[Buuuuut let's not talk about that, haha.]
I'll make do. It's not like it's the first time I've had to pick myself up and keep going.
[And while it does bring bad memories, they are also only that, memories, from several centuries ago. Almost all the people involved have been dead many times over and the country itself doesn't even exist anymore.]
I think the curse also made it more difficult. It's gone now, thankfully, but before I managed to lift, I kept being irritable and snapping at people and just being angry a lot. I didn't like that.
But I'll be fine.
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[ A curse, its memories, the worsening of his irritation. Xie Lian's temper runs too mellow-sweet for its turbulences to catch the eye as more than exceptions, as oddities, as rare and timid disturbance.
...and yet, Lan Wangji might have known, should have known. Is he not still Hanguang-jun, bearer of light, he who takes chaos in mountains, dispels it citadels, exorcises villages? If he has failed in this one calling —
Walk on, young master Lan. There is a tremble to his step, an uncertainty that cripples natural elegance, leaves him to stutter. Lost, he cannot make scout of his qi and extend it to ripple the vast sea of the woods and their natural strength. His core churns, futile, silent. When his hand clutches his belly, on instinct, it is to find it warm, power stranded in a short circuit that never reaches his awareness. ]
These waters. [ Strings and rivulets, laces of dark. ] We fault them as cause. And if they are effect?
[ Residue, direct or sheer happenstance. They have too often cast blame at the feet of this symptom they misunderstand. ]
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The rest of the words are then ignored for the more pressing, immediate matter.]
... Are you alright?
[Xie Lian is ... very used to being cut off from most of his power, by now, but it was hard at the beginning. And he did say someone else did it to him, although not out of malice...]
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He concludes, with a testing nod that tries himself for truth and the arrogance of certainty: ]
I persevere.
[ If he were a weapon, he would yet meet aim and cut target. If he were a poison, his potency might be diluted, but he would still choke breath. If he were a firm, he would spread and sink into suffering.
How else to qualify him, if not as disaster? ]
The waters. Concentrate.
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Don't overdo it. You're not used to functioning at this level.
[As for the rest...]
It is possible it is the effect of something else... but it would have to be something very big to affect so many different places... It's like their entire world is infected with it. Why else would they have undead people crawling all over the place?
Back then, in Ellethia, even the land and water and air were cursed with something.
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If jailed qi were such an impediment, would Wei Ying have allowed him to subsist days on end, unattended? He is reduced, but still the second master of Gusu Lan, its vanguard. He will not be lessened, nor relinquished like a dull blade unworthy of the kiss of the forge.
Still, that heartbeat passes. He feels it, a staggered pulse in his chest, a rocking of his ribs. He concentrates also. ]
We have encountered few dead here. [ In itself, a strange, surprising complication. ] But... infestation. A land sickened.
[ With drought, with sacrifice, with constant curses. With tributes. ]
Why champion atonement, then sin through sacrifice?
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[Mortal logic can be... surprising at times, but he's gotten used to it over the years.]
I am not sure what's wrong here, but I feel like probably, the same thing is wrong at the root in every place we have been to, it just manifests differently. And it has something to do with death and rebirth.
In Sa-Hareth, it was cold and hunger. In Ellethia, something was wrong with time. Here, somehow, it's linked to the volcano and the animals, nature.
[He's not quite sure which dots he's connecting, or if it even makes sense to connect them in this way.]
And there's also the mirrors. Everywhere we've been the mirrors have been trouble. I arrived here on the ship with the mirror and that thing was ...
[He doesn't like to think back on it...]
I don't know what they captured in those mirrors, what portals they opened with them, but it looks like probably, they touched some forces they should have.
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[ To attempt the same thing, again and once more and expect a different outcome, is madness. To do so, knowing the implications, and that you will have no result but might still persevere — is a pain of the heart, haunting.
He does not ask whether what gathers beneath his nails is mud or debris or the elixir of magical life, ground and churned. He breathes. Human need. Thirst. The starvation that makes wheat richer than gold.
Each day, Lan Wangji wakes to rice enough to fill his bowl, to cleansed waters for his bathing, to oils for his hair, the glistened filigree of a crown. In Sa-Hareth, men woke wedded to the cold, and in Taravast to deception, and in Ellethia to deathlessness.
And here, what do they have? Their remorse. Their guilt. Their — ]
Perhaps magic feeds on this.
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