let's set d o w n some (
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westwhere2022-04-07 09:32 pm
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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.”
no subject
Her hand trembles slightly as she picks up and then lowers her cup without drinking, and she watches Lan Wangji for a minute that stretches like an eternity. He will not use it against her, and asking him does not carry the same awkwardness as asking Jiang Cheng or her nephew. ] Burned or torn away. Just off my back. [ The ones on her arms she's torn away. They grow back, seemingly overnight, but she wants them gone.
A small shuffle away from the table and she turns her back, pulling her hair over her shoulder. It should not be awkward; all she is doing is lowering her robes, with the same clinical precision she has looked at nude patients before. But reversed, like this, she feels exposed, open to the core. Her back is more scales than pale flesh, shimmering in the light from the lanterns, and each breath she draws or shift she makes causes them to catch the light.
Hanguang-jun will not look at her like anything but a duty asked, she knows, and for that she is thankful. ] Be quick.
no subject
[ He counters, and there's an edge to it, the silent, acrid satisfaction of a double-edged blade's thirst, sated each way. To him, the fabric of the moment seems gossamer, faded: it ruptures, hangs by lone stitches, lingers frayed. Under the dour, dimmed light of candles burned past simmer, he watches Wen Qing present herself and experiences all at once the possessive arrogance of every man who has instructed a concubine, or beheld a war horse. Of Wen Ruohan, king over corpses. Power, among those who should not wield it, is the simple act of commanding to see the deed helplessly done.
She is pale, too pale, in the way of full-bellied fish who course the rivers and do not flatten at the ocean's seat. Moisture beads on her back, condensation. No, he understands with late difficulty: light, catching and blinding in reflection, on the plague spread of her — scales. Pretty pearls of monstrous nothing. He presses a finger on one, to understand its weight. Flinches, when it threatens to snap back in a sharp arc, and the skins beneath flush for his violence.
The sibilance of snakes, of wood crackling, serpentine. How the floors quake, tired, for the tentative increments of their shifting weight. How he converges, behind her, like a ghost haunting the shrapnel of opportunity: life in her blood, seize it. Will she scream? There is enough instinctive empathy dwelling damp within him to spare pity for women and children, screaming. She must not, then. If they are to do this — if he is to do this, and Bichen is a mournful castaway, he needs the smarter, smaller tool, accepts one of her surgical blades — she cannot betray herself with the white heat of vocal hurt.
Slapped, the fall of his palm might have reassured a stallion on his flank. He breaks the fall, thumb scattered on the stairwell of her spine. Agile, his fingers lick slow prints down. Urgency is heat shared violently between them: burning dust, liquid metal coagulating. What is it to be a woman, but sickness and stillness? To know life is a trickle-down of sand granules of time that only set out to stab? Each day wounds the currency of a maiden's fleeting beauty. Each season cripples it. By her twentieth summer, a flower of Jinlintai begins to wilt. In Nightless City, her thorns might grant her two years more. In Yunmeng, she trades her smile for thickened doll paints. In Qinghe, for each of her years, she must beget more children, and more, and more, for who is she without service? In Cloud Recesses — ...but he is his mother's son. A woman is allowed no haste, never that impropriety: despair is the death of form.
To be a woman in the cultivation world is to await your choices. Breath stutters out of him in tentative imprecations that fail the test of shape. He does not know from where he dismantles the thick strips of linen, when he bundles them in hand — later, he will remember: this is the cloth he had intended to catch the drip of his own wound — then simple coaxes them near her, to her mouth. A bit, for her pleasure. ]
Bite when hurt seizes. [ Care for your tongue. But he does not impose it. He has light and fireflies and a knife he passes at length by the kiss of a candle's flame, until the edge bloodies at tip, and the purity of metal is known. And it is a simple thing, a butcher's work, the Nie of Qinghe thrived off cleaving —
When his blade cuts in to carve scales out of meat, one after the other, in symphony. ]
no subject
With her back bared like this, the scales gleaming, Wen Qing feels more exposed than ever before Lan Wangji. It is fate, perhaps, to be brought so low before him. Wei Wuxian and Jiang Cheng have both seen her at low points: why not add a third? And he is, she knows, family now, the same way Wei Wuxian is family.
But to expose herself so in front of a man who is not family or a doctor, and to ask this of him.... Wen Qing will never say it but there is no one else she would trust with this, in this small corner of Ke-Waihu, a world unknown to theirs. Even Wei Wuxian, as skilled as he is, would not suit this moment.
The cloth she settles between her teeth without comment. It will hurt, and she will make sounds; she does every morning as she pulls the scales from her arms and legs, only a few with each round, unable to torment her body with that physical pain. And this, then, is why she could only ask Hanguang-jun, who fulfills tasks given to him.
When she whimpers against the bit, her eyes squeezed closed against the tears forming in them, she knows he will continue, and that's what she wants. Even though she jerks, despite trying not to, and thinks about begging him to stop, her voice garbled by the bit in her mouth, he cuts them out until her back is a bloody mess but free of the scales piled next to them.
(The tears still leaked out from her eyes and she's hoarse when she removes the bit, breathing heavily.) Her hair swings in front of her face, and she lets it stay there, hiding her expression.) ]
no subject
He discards it, from tip of blade to growth of splintered wood on the dust-ravished floor. There is a weight to it, a distant, shrill quality to the fall of each scale, like beads collapsing to gravity. Solid. Brokering no deception that the monstrosity of Wen Qing's curse lived, gasped long on her back. He takes even the last of them, the bone glimpses that want deep surgical carving, attention to the glistened jut of their edges turned wild, forensic.
After, he looks on his work like a master on his art, when the gleam of his paint stayed wet long on the brush and the pigments have comingled to the same filth of colour. Reds, rust, coppers spatters of white like spume. He shivers, long before she makes sound. Later, he will remember this.
His hand leaves her with a final yoke of her nape, clasping. Here. Pressure. Pay attention. Wake. ]
Breathe. Breathe. Nothing will hurt like this again. Pain, and you are past it. Distant. It sits. the other edge of the blade. It is done.
[ A fever of words, blinding. Three years of resonance on his back. Nothing will hurt like this again.
They slaughter her in Jinlintai. ]
Where are your salves? Your linens. [ He rises already for bowls of water, knife left a pale heartbreak on the ground. ]