READY TO ROLL OUT
That awkward moment when even a brothel won’t have you.Characters will end their sojourn at the House of Dew early morning, helmed by Haltham (and his murderous goat, chomping on his prosthetic wooden hand for splinter nutrients). Courtesans and attendants will send the group away with parting gifts: a few sacs of grains, handfuls of spice, a small barrel of brew, several of water, thin blankets and four fat chickens.
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The decrepit farm stands an hour’s walk east of Sa-Hareth, bordering the forest at the foot of the mountain.
...and it has not wanted for company. Monstrously overgrown wolves prowl the region, with some of the pack settled inside the farm. The wolves are halfway between dead and living, instantly aggressive, sharper, faster, smarter and blue-eyed beyond natural expectation.
The wolves are drawn to heat and fire-bearers. They can be slain, or pushed back into the forest. If the brawl drags on, the wolves may receive reinforcements.
Distantly, characters can observe silhouettes of pale-eyed, humanoid creatures in the forest, covered in animal skins. They seem to speak to the wolves, though it is unclear if they soothe or set them to attack. |
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Once an elaborate woodsmen’s station, the 'farm' is a generous, sprawling outpost built, home to now-barren inner garden.
The farm spreads across kitchens, bathing rooms, hefty storage barns, a handful of isolated rest halls and broader communal areas. A study room has been crammed with accountancy tomes, papers and other books, many torn alongside glass shards on the floor. A shakily furnished barn was coarsely repurposed for banquets.
Set up, inspect, repurpose. There’s enough dust and mildew to go around, and several walls and roof stretches will need reinforcements.
“Ah,” characters say innocently, “Surely the cold will keep away vermin —” You have rats. Large, uncuddly, distinctly violent, prone to swarming once the sun’s downed. Enjoy that first night.
Haltham will provide some base construction supplies over a few deliveries, along with a personal gift: a herding dog, to watch over two fluffy sheep.
Flex those green thumbs: many moons ago, enchantments were set in place to warm the garden to a tolerable level that will allow the expedited harvest of an arctic patch. These spells will need to be activated and periodically recharged every few days by characters donating recoverable amounts of magic or physical stamina, by touching a nearby rune. But, hey: potatoes, turnips, kale, mmmmmmmmm, a balanced diet. |
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“Never open your doors at night,” Haltham says on parting. Lend him an ear — and, once the moon rises, hear the forest whispers. Some voices will beg rescue from the cold, others will tease and taunt, a few will imitate enemies or kin. Some will even disrupt dreams.
The voices will seek to lure characters out of their shelter. Those who heed will find themselves compelled to walk into the forest, entranced and ignorant of the cold that slowly envelops them. They will be vulnerable to the elements, tundra predators and the woodland creatures, growing increasingly feral.
Those who survive the night in the forest will wake to find themselves floating in a chilled, but strangely not-yet frozen lake in the morning. They can have faint recollections, as if they themselves lived any of the following events: a friend taking a dark path, the loss of a dear skill, years in a coffin, a close friend parted, a beloved reunion, a lost brother, a tender romance and rare bliss in poverty.
At the bottom of the lake, they may spot the still corpse of an undead that feels too heavy for anyone to lift. His arm has a tattooed red sleeve.
During the day, characters who visit the forest will find it eerily silent, with some trees showing signs of scratches and lingering rope. The lake can still be found, but entering it during daytime will not allow characters to experience foreign memories. |
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Karsa will reconfigure everyone’s quartz pieces to translate outside of the House of Dew and communicate in a private channel. Still nothing like individual inboxes at this time!
Up to player discretion if Karsa had the time and humour to change their usernames, or stranded them to their House of Dew identities a little longer.
Characters will also be able to access a secondary local fishermen’s network and listen in on their schedules, local gossip and daily weather updates.
Woodsmen, tradesmen and miners will be surprised to see anyone inhabiting the farm, with some men pulling away, calling the place cursed. |
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westwhere2021-05-10 08:56 pm
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You are very generous, Young Master. I will gratefully accept.
[There are only a few, so Xie Lian will do his best to save them as much as possible, until he can somehow procure more, but even that little is soothing. It just feels... right, to have an altar and some incense, somehow. And it's not like he hasn't burnt his own incense on his own altar in his own shrine before.
He doesn't even have anything to stand the incense in for now. he'll need to find a pit and maybe fill it with ashes from their previous fires - the ground is hard, and there is no sand here. So he'll just put the incense down on the altar for now, carefully lined up. He still needs to think of whether or not to put an image up there, and what.
But then, he hears the request for help and perks up.]
Oh, did I miss one? Please show me, I'll fix it up!
no subject
It will not honour the altar, but, dead of winter shrouds them, and the wolves howl in distance, and the worries of each day rise hard, dark-eyed and shrewd. Other priorities prevail before protocol. He grits his teeth against wounded etiquette, brittle like fractured bottle glass. ]
It was not your duty.
[ Nothing missed, less so neglected. Only, never falling in the man's purview. The sweep of Lan Wangji's sleeve, unrestrained, nearly topples over an empire of dust and cold decay; he steels himself again, controlling his gestures, indicating the corridor with a slow nod ahead to the open door, and the dark, poor-lit paths into the belly of the farmhouse. ]
Farther out. The last quarter. Away from creatures.
no subject
We'll fix it up!
[Once in the room, he starts taking stocks of the holes and drafts. The roof...]
We can put a few wood slates over the holes up there, it should be fine. But for the walls... if there are any rags to plug the most drafty holes, it would help before we cover them up. Let me get up here and have a look.
[Easy enough to jump up there, and see the damage. Not worse than in other parts, thankfully, but this room is really far away from the center of the house whee it's warmer.]
Who is this room for? Won't they be cold out there?
no subject
[ Better a victim of every howling wind and chill's flourish, than a protagonist of the violence Wei Ying fantasises of the canines in his path, conflict interminable and insoluble. The man — anonymous, for all manners prickle and bleed at Lan Wangji's awareness with needle point — sets about his work, scrutinising tile and plaster, corners and mildew. He drifts, from one edge of the room, to the next, and Wangji falls in step wakeful behind him, anticipating the call to help or heed.
It does not come. We'll fix it up, like wisps of deep and deathly scent.
Rags, wood slates, practical necessities. The man asks, and Wangji sets himself to task, hunting down provisions. There are enough textiles, largely remains of rope and burlap. He aggregates them in a bundle, weighted and thick, like dead snake skins, coiling in other rooms he walks freely to feast on their detritus. Then, spare wood, often broken of dismantled furniture and other refurbishments.
Returning, he sets them at the man's feet, no better than the sandalwood before them — scraps, but performing their task. ]
You worked a carpenter?
[ Gracious, he supposes, to inquire after the nature of a man's skill. Evidence of interest, however misplaced. ]
no subject
At least the man is efficient at gathering materials.]
Is there something here that would disturb them?
[The question makes Xie Lian scratch his head.]
Haha, no, not really. I've just slept in a lot of very rundown places, so I've had to learn how to fix them up.
no subject
[ Best, always, to articulate discomfort over weakness — to protect the fallacies of Wei Ying's power, relative to his paranoia. The trouble, then, is the creature: not Wei Ying, screams dissonant against the restful chills of their new sanctuary. Not Lan Wangji's own hand, rushed to perfect a spoiled shelter. Not Sizhui, prone to accommodate him.
The dog, harmless and chivalrous, quick to round himself at Wangji's legs each morning when he wakes first of their company and starts the farm fires, sets tea to steep and the morning rice to drench. He has known vicious dogs, creatures bred of mean blood, for the red hunt spilling. This is no such animal, yet Wei Ying shudders to his core, to greet him.
Mouth slow and dry, chewing around hesitation like moss. He holds himself still, barely breathing, hand bound to his back. Prepared to deflect. ]
You are a wandering hermit.
[ A cultivator would have been the guess of Cloud Recesses, only so few men here seem to know of those ways of the world. He cannot presume to assign this new brother in invisible arms a core. ]
Wangji of Lan clan greets you.
no subject
[And thankfully, Xie Lian inquires no further about the dog. It's a little intrusive to just demand explanations of people you've just met, and if they'd rather sleep away from the dog, well, that's their choice.]
There isn't really a good place to light a fire in this room, and it's far from the main hearth that it could get more heat from. We should make sure to find extra blankets for your friend, if there are any left.
[For now, he'll go onto the roof and start... breaking the planks of wood with his bare hands to cut them down to sizes that will allow to plug the holes. Just bending the things and breaking bits off cleanly as if those were made of hardened sugar and not wood.]
no subject
A shudder's hesitation. No matter. Men here are as shadows, threadbare, wasting themselves. Fragments of withering imagination, the waning footprint of their own morals. He knows no man here, only Wei Ying, only the stretch of flesh and bone his son will come to inhabit.
Better, not to investigate. ]
Talismans, fire. Blankets. [ Solutions, makeshift. Wei Ying has toiled and traded and made his nest among rags, sought his fortunes in less. ] He will prevail.
[ But there are wisps and tendrils of kindness, seeding, that Lan Wangji cannot deny another man, only for bristling arrogance. Xie Lian, keeper of kind intentions.
And if Wangji did not know him before, then he will learn him now, orbiting the man at his work, offering him changes of tools, of provisions. ]
Wei Wuxian. The man you patron. He will show gratitude.
no subject
[In this at least, Xie Lian works quickly and efficiently. It's easier when you have the material and help, and it is strangely nostalgic of another time, him and San Lang fixing up Puqi Shrine, and San Lang going to get the materials to build him a door when he didn't have them, and ...
Xie Lian smiles to himself and shakes his head. He hopes Hua Cheng isn't too worried right now.]
Honestly, this house is better than many I've slept in. The foundations are pretty sturdy. I feel like the stone makes it colder, though, but it's probably better against the wind...
You're a cultivator, right?
no subject
And still, finally, curiosity nipping like an idle cat at his heels: ]
What betrays me?
[ The whites of his mourning, the steel of his stance, the careful, Lan calculation of each word spared like knife's cut in massacre — perhaps, but they are not such affixed particulars here, do not isolate to identify. He could be of the Jin or the Wen, he could be of the world.
...no. More. Bichen, weight of a soulmate concealed in studied, forged shape. His crown, once, though this man never glimpsed the cold glistening of its silver. Talk of talismans, perhaps, though native sorcery is not so indifferent to parchment and deployment. ]
no subject
[And the clothing, and the sword, and the demeanor in particular.]
I studied cultivation when I was younger. It was a part of my education. My parents hired someone as guoshi for that and I went to the mountain almost every day.
People sometimes mistake me for one when I walk around.
no subject
To be a cultivator now, in the wake of the Lanling Jin downfall, is to keep one's back bowed and the gaze short, to breathe humbly. To know there are shortcomings in your learning, and they have poisoned the well of collective tolerance. To accept you stand not above disrepute, but knees-deep and ankles drenched and the rise of that mud swell on your thighs and your hips and your hands.
To be a cultivator is to bathe among stains and absorb disaster. But the man Xie Lian was so educated, and he trades the coin of his past like kind, common ground to care for. For moments on a bead string, Lan Wangji has no answer. Sharpens, quick and certain, and stills thereafter, hand cold over braids of straw. It strikes him, stupidly, he cannot remember if he meant to raise it forth or set it down, or exile it, to the no man's land of the floor they neglect, as if invisible attendants will rise to correct their errors. ]
I thank my parents the wealth of their qi.
[ What else may he do, before flattery? ]
no subject
They must be proud of you.
[And it is nice to see people who are filial, especially for him who failed so much in that regard. Would his parents be proud of him now? Probably, because they are too biased towards their only son, but he doesn't deserve that, not after what happened to them by his fault.]
There. The roof shouldn't leak like this, and if it does, we can plug the smaller holes when we find them. Let's take care of the outer walls.