out you go, shoo

[groundrules]

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.

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.

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.

“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.

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.

Comments

[downswing]

"It welcomed you." Truth for truth, let no man shortchange the Patriarch. Let no voice presume. When no other rose to accept the Patriarch, the Burial Mounds opened like a peony, war petals blood-stained, but forgiving. The sects failed, where a wasteland triumphed.

It strikes him, hand paused over the strings, watchful of Wei Ying's half-resting face at close distance, he should speak the apology, due. Does not. What indulgence, to give it only to assuage his own guilt? Instead, he shift:

"Shhhhhhhhhh." Silence. Be soft and stilled and a shadow, dissipating into darkness. Sleep.

Lan Wangji pivots, from the serenity of his play to a fresh, mundane, unsophisticated score — a set reserved for the flute, better suited in gladness to brother's xiao. There is a warm, ephemeral, butterfly-like quality that the guqin mistranslates into the rigors of mourning, coaxing out grief. A petulant, sullen, sophomoric instrument, compared with Zewu-Jun's mastery. Inflexible.

Now, he forces it into mountain song, a chirped, negligent melody, the rise and fall of easy notes known. He remembers the words — every man of Caiyi might — and though it would scratch at all of Uncle's sensibilities to sully the guqin with a crude performance, there are matters likely to earn Wei Ying's comfort, his laughter. "Share your burden."

A pause. Then, to sweeten the endeavour, "I cannot burn your paraphernalia tomorrow, if I am holding the wards."

The feral nest, ransomed.

[weifinder]

He huffs laughter, lips curling up in a smile that's less haunted than it once would have been. Emerging from the Burial Mounds had not left him feeling good, it had been anger fueling him; rage that directed, that made him sharp and jagged, that had left a trail they'd followed until he was once more among those who gave a damn about him, and he felt how poorly he fit, the secret filling the hollow of his dantian making him less than what they expected, making him other than he was before. Or was he?

Was he?

The Burial Mounds welcomed everyone, really, too ravenous to not, but in the end he had done the impossible. Yunmeng Jiang, to the core. Hah.

The smile lingers, with the hush and the music that Lan Zhan coaxes, fitting and otherwise, from his instrument; in another space and time, Wei Wuxian might tease for it, but this is Lan Zhan trying, and he does more than enough, doesn't he?

Laughter, its own reward. A chuckle that rumbles in his chest and finds its way out his throat, over his tongue and between his lips, his eyes fluttering open as he offers, "Want me to sing along?"

To face sharing a burden, to feel himself bartered and bribed, and to find it warm, amusing, and... welcome. "You have too much fun burning what you do," he says, summoning up a pout better suited to his younger years, and equally unconcerned. "Hold the wards, and have your fun with fire. I'm not taking that away from you."

The playful amusement behind it, when yes, he's frustrated with it at times, but Wei Wuxian has his own gravitational chaos, and it does take others reminding him to have it organise into anything less than the sprawl his temporary lodgings quickly become.

[downswing]

"You could not take from me," he says with the smug satisfaction of a man who knows himself seen, understood for the wickedness of his needs. He may burn Wei Ying's nest, yes, with petty gladness, until the scraps and chords and chipped trinkets and drying paints and the drafts of Wei Ying's latest aborted talisman combine as a gasp in tireless flame. If Wei Wuxian, the Yiling Patriarch, wanted a man dead, who could stop him? And if Lan Wangji, styled Hanguang-Jun, wants the universe at balance, who might stay his hand?

...Wei Ying. Wei Ying, mouth soft and shaping the swelling, overly joyous cadence of the countryside song. Wei Ying, who never breathes a note, but teases, Want me to —

Yes. Sixteen's years worth of ridicule and teasing, and isn't Lan Wangji owed? A lifetime of an equal's judgement. Wei Ying's. Ledger red, You never honoured your obligations to your soulmate.

He rushes, foolishly, and slaps his hand from the hills and valleys of the guqin strings beneath him to Wei Ying's forehead, sliding down to shield the dark of his eyes. Sealing there, as if Wei Ying were young Sizhui, cantankerous before his bed time, yearning for the good, undisciplined life of the Burial Mounds.

Lan Sizhui has learned obedience, since. He unlearns it now. A good boy. A lesser one stands before Lan Wangji now. ( He will learn too, Wei Ying was ever the superior scholar. ) "Want you rested."

[weifinder]

He laughs, twice over: for the smugness of you could not take, and for the hand that finds his forehead, that covers his eyes. He can't remember if Yanli ever did this, and that's the extent of childhood that can emerge from the murky depths of a past he more often forgets than lets himself linger on, but he can imagine she did, in their injuries, in their fevers.

It's surrender, one he doesn't fight and push and instead settles back, humming a two-tone note that follows from the end of Lan Zhan's playing, lips still curled, but eyes closing under Lan Zhan's touch. The curl of his eyelashes plays against the other man's palm, capitulation.

"Okay, okay. I'll rest," he says, but not promise. Promises feel weighted and worthless, and he's tired enough he can sink down into the sea of it, a blackness barren of ill will beyond whatever dreams might strike, lying in wait. "For a while."

Before called back to wakefulness, be it due to cold or his own sleep rising to the realm of nightmares and waking him hence; be it habit now to move around in the hours of light they have, to trek down to the citadel and trek back, as if the hour each direction is a joy and not tiring on its own.

For now, however, sleep, and the fall of breathing to more even cadences, the wash of wakefulness from langly limbs, and stilled, Wei Wuxian slumbers for just this bit longer, by his soulmate's wish.