westwhere | the tithe

the tithe

The Arc III finale stretches until 2 June — and it’s erupt to no good.

THE TITHE

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THIS HOUSE IS YOUR HOUSE

The Ke-Waicai believers prepare for human sacrifice rites to prevent the eruption of the Ke-Sanwon volcano. They will lead tributes to the volcanic crater, which is lidded by the grounds of a decrepit haunted temple — known as the House of Ravens.

At the heart of the temple is a trodden dais that comprises four slowly receding plates. Numerous temple columns and deteriorating walls offer overnight hiding places, but beware the flinching statues and irritable large ravens. Meat, blood or shiny offerings can distract the birds.

■ Use the three previously gained keys to infiltrate the House of Ravens at night through forest pathways revealed by the Huntress.

■ Entrants to the House of Ravens are fully or partially depowered. Their ancestral curse is immediately lifted. Their strength is pulled into the Ke-Sanwon crater, which brims with raw magical power.

■ Hide on temple grounds until dawns, when the dais plates fully open to reveal a 10-metre entryway into the volcanic crater.

■ Overnight, characters are relentlessly tempted by mirages that only they witness: the eerie voice of a loved one might coax them to commit their greatest sin, or they could repeatedly relive memories that led them to such follies.

■ Characters guilty of drunkenness and gluttony feel deathly parched, starved and drawn to a lavish spread that is constantly far out — and ends up comprising raw corn and stale water, when they finally reach it. The lustful find their companions irresistible, or trail after a delectable beauty, who dissolves when touched. The wrathful mull violence, while the envious suspect their companions possess what they most desire. The proud are contemptuously incited to prove their superiority or independence, while the slothful give in to callous indifference towards their peers.

■ The stone statues that decorate the House of Ravens retaliate once visitors succumb to their sins: smaller sculptures throw stones or throttle nearby sinners, but only move when you do not look into their eyes. Larger 4m-tall statues exit the walls and give (slow) chase, retreating after 10-15 minutes. The statues stop attacking at dawns.

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LET THERE BE BLOOD

CONTENT WARNING: BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF NPC PAIN, TRANSFORMATION

By dawns, the believers of Ke-Waicai have rallied their tributes — each crowned with wreaths of branches and crops — before the open dais. Roughly two hundred villagers attend the rites, along with eight powerful priests who use elemental magic.

■ A first sacrifice walks a long narrow plank that starts from the dais and goes a few metres into the mouth of the volcano. The plank shivers under from heat, but withstands weight.

■ During 15 minutes of exposure, the volcanic magic enshrouds the sacrifice, who painfully transforms into one of the animalistic tar creatures housed in the labyrinths of Ke-Sanwon.

■ Magically sensitive characters can feel this tribute now hosts volcanic magic, and that Ke-Sanwon’s power has slightly diminished.

■ The rites are interrupted by the significantly weaker, but wrathful Beastmaster, whose xenomorphic creatures attack the temple and seek his missing son

■ Characters should free the remaining tributes during the skirmish. They can be as nerfed as you need (if at all) during the rest of their stay in the House of Ravens.

■ The dais must stay open to access the volcano. You can take control of it and of the House by defeating the magically endowed priests, (literally) shouldering the head priest’s ancient white raven and holding its leash.

■ Pass the raven around and defend the bird’s current holder! Whoever carries the raven is often targeted by the village mob and the Beastmaster’s creatures.

■ The clashes last a few hours, until the Beastmaster and villagers exhaust their forces.

■ Diego Hargreeves, Xie Lian, Wrathion, Daenerys and Jon Snow apprehend the Beastmaster, slaying him, when he refuses to relinquish the Brotherhood. Decide who lands the killing blow. His last words: ”You’ve… seen this place. My animals… our dead… have more compassion than these living.”

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FIRE AND BRIMSTONE?

The volume of magical energy and tormented spirits inside the volcano weighs heavily on the fracturing dark water mirror that has prevented Ke-Sanwon’s eruption so far. It’s going to blow, unless you:

■ Throw more dark water in to fix the mirror fissure. You can get dark water from volcanic cracks, dried wells and creepy crop fields.

■ Use ice / cold magic and ol’ science to cool down the volcano and help the mirror heal. Or lend Moiraine and Magnus a hand as they work with cold magic, and protect them while they cast.

■ Help Wrath and Wei Wuxian exorcise the volcano’s ancient spirits. Many have lost consciousness, reduced to memory fragments and feelings of wrath, pain and resent.

■ Guide villagers to bring sea water. Anduin (on top of the dragon Wrathion) and the harpy Eda are flying in supplies. Viktor is coaxing shipments from his werewolf friends of Ke-Waiar. Large phoenixes are also up for grabs for deliveries. Ensure couriers can safely arrive and quickly discharge their water.

■ Several characters are set to each absorb some of the magical power contained within the volcano, developing aftereffects. They must walk the wobbly plank and stay exposed to the volcano magic for under 15 minutes to avoid transformation: the longer they linger, the more power they take in, feeling as if they are burning from within. Exit quickly and rest copiously after. Those who spend over 10 minutes exposed suffer intense fevers and require immediate medical assistance to cool down.

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WILL SOMEONE THINK OF THE CIVILIANS?

Beyond the House of Ravens, assist villagers who want to safeguard their possessions or evacuate by sea.

■ The gradual spread of Ke-Sanwon’s magic infects some villagers with temporary animal traits. These effects dissipate within three-four hours.

■ Characters who remain in the villages may feel more irritable and resentful, overcome by the feelings of the volcanic spirits.

■ Coordinate water and supply deliveries with those at the House of Ravens.

■ The Hok-Shinn are divided in their response: some resort to daylight robbery to secure the funds for their own safe departure; citing security, the men of Sairen unsympathetically rally commoners into designated parts of the village, often splitting apart families that then need help finding relatives; alone, Weisi’s followers keep the peace, but are frequently overwhelmed by waves of panicked villagers, thugs and animal hybrids.

■ The magical spillage overwhelms the forest fox spirits, leaving some enraged and prone to attack. Others assume the shape of beautiful wo/men and ask escort into Ke-Waihu for shelter, without disclosing their fox natures. These ethereal strangers betray their origins with cold smiles, glimpses of fleetingly sharp teeth, a fondness for chicken, and… is that an extra set of ears? No harm befalls those who bring a fox into the village, though s/he may insist on now being your lawful spouse.

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THE AFTERMATH

With the clashes and Ke-Sanwon subdued, the villagers of Ke-Waicai request back their temple keys and white raven. They lead the party to the beacon of the House of Ravens — the beautifully carved and now-closed dais above the volcano.

■ Party companion Hatisse confirms the beacon can be revived within days.

■ She warns that an eruption was prevented by depleting the volcanic magic now, but that the threat could recur within five to 10 years.

■ All character curses (ancestral or individual) are lifted, and powers return completely.

■ Spend some downtime in the villages. Ke-Waicai offers the most luxurious, but frosty accommodations, while the werewolves of Ke-Waiar are tired, but thrilled hosts. Those who suffer from lycanthropy are now experiencing fewer and fewer ‘nocturnal episodes.’

■ In Ke-Waihu, villagers have now calmed and are grateful for help with reaping the fresh harvest and watering their crops, as well flows revive. Every other night, Hok-Shinn Weisi organises a bonfire with village musicians, hearty dances, fresh bread and ale. Villagers seek to marry off their… alluring spawn to their saviours.

■ Within days, Hatisse summons the party to the activated beacon: a pool of white energy, in which one must slowly descend. Characters who were dropped or AC swept in May enter the beacon first and are presumed returned to their home worlds. Characters set for a canon update follow in — but are spat back by the portal and return within minutes.

■ Inevitably, the remaining volatile magic of the volcano disrupts the beacon and ruins the dais. Happily for you, the Merchant will soon get in touch with your next ticket east.

QUESTIONS

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That's a slightly different question than he normally gets. It's not a topic he really enjoys talking about, but he's not actually trying to masquerade as a child. It's unfortunate that pointing it out only serves to illustrate that he's a walking cautionary tale for messing with time.

"Reset," he answers, cutting his usual explanation short. The thought that he could have possibly screwed up his biological clock any more than that is one he really doesn't want to consider, but it does prompt him to take another drink. "As far as I know, I should age again normally. But I haven't really taken any pictures over the last year to compare."

Whenever he looks at himself, all he sees is a kid, so he tends to avoid it as much as he can. The fact that so many mirrors here are cursed just gives him an extra excuse.

He lowers his gaze at the mention of Allison's 'marital issues'. Did she tell him that was his fault? Even if he'd done it to save their lives, he's never stopped feeling guilty for losing them in time.

"That was a mistake too. I hadn't tried it with so many people before." He can't even blame her for trying to find a new life for herself when she thought all of them were dead. Something else he said sticks out to him though, and he studies him for a moment before asking. "You avoid it, but you know how?"

A lot of people would probably kill to be able to reset their age, but that in itself has its myriad of psychological consequences as does being stuck one age for eternity. His own experience is in the latter, but he's fortunate he at least stopped aging as a full adult and doesn't have to deal with getting carded all the time or people talking down to him more than usual.

"You have my deepest condolences on the second round of puberty and all the other ensuing time-related complications."

He considers the question a little more thoroughly because he's sure he could figure it out if he wanted to, but for obvious reasons, he hasn't experimented at all with time.

"It's hard to say really what the true extent of my or any warlock's powers are, especially when certain factors tend to augment our abilities, but I wouldn't want to find out if I could. Not after finally getting my life back on track."

He'd hate to lose all that progress even if it took a lot of heartbreak and tears to get to a good place.

"What made you even try time travel? Just to see if you could?"

Five makes a face at his condolences, even if it doesn't sound horribly mocking. He doesn't have much tolerance for pity, but it is a genuinely horrifying thing that he did to himself. A man his age shouldn't have to be dealing with teenage hormones and growing pains while he's facing apocalypses and zombies and whatever else the universe wants to throw at him.

So he doesn't blame Magnus for leaving time alone. He can appreciate a healthy respect for it, and honestly, even after decades of studying it his accuracy still falls apart after a few minutes.

"I knew I could. I was an arrogant little shit who wanted to prove his father wrong. Jumped too far, and couldn't get back." He shrugs, like that one mistake when he was thirteen hadn't destroyed his entire life, and takes another drink. "Going forward is easy. Time wants to move forward. Going back is a crapshoot."

He doesn't usually talk about himself this much, especially not to someone he just met, but apparently he caught him in the right mood. Whenever it occurs to him that it's been this long, it's all he can do not to stay sober.

"Dimensions are just another complication. It seems similar, but... not." He thinks for a second, then holds out the bottle in his hand, in case he wants any. "I'd rather figure it out myself than rely on the beacons."

Considering how time travel turned out for Five, Magnus has a lot of reservations of leaving Five to figure it out himself. He doesn't want the poor guy to end up a fetus at this rate.

"Sadly, the beacons are probably our best bet. If my magic can't crack through this dimension, then I'm not sure what else can. I'm not just saying that to toot my own horn..."

Some of his magic was compromised upon waking up here while other spells work just fine. Long-distance travel seems to be what was hit the hardest, and he can't figure out what's causing the interference.

"My pentagrams probably won't do much here either, as I'm not sure there is a Hell attached to this realm."

Not that he's really tried all that much to summon demons for obvious reasons. They have enough problems with spirits and beasts that they don't need any greater demons adding to their headaches.

"I suppose if the ghosts were in transit to an afterlife of some kind, maybe I can try to access that, but I'm not confident I can contain something I don't understand fully, assuming something does answer my call."

Despite the failures he just admitted to making, he manages to be disappointed that Magnus is already deferring to the beacons. For someone as powerful as he claims to be, he's giving up before he starts.

Five can't really say he's wrong to have doubts. Someone could argue that for all his efforts, Five has only ever bought them time. Now here he is in another dimension, his family scattered, hoping the apocalypse isn't waiting for them at the end of this. It'd be so much easier to assume there's nothing he can do, but the very idea repulses him. Figuring out the impossible is all he's ever known. He's too old and stubborn to change his ways now.

When he mentions Hell, Five turns to look at him. He isn't the first person he's met to have been there, but it's interesting to note.

"I've heard that." Wrath talked about not being able to reach it, and only the beacon had allowed him to return, however briefly. "I didn't realize they had a Brooklyn in Hell. Are you really eager to get back to it?"

"To some, Brooklyn is Hell, but no, I'm eager to get back to Brooklyn more than Hell."

It'd be nice if he could just bypass the complicated stuff and open a portal to his loft, but when is life ever that charitable towards him?

"The reason why I need access to Hell is to get to Edom, assuming it's not still in shambles..."

Destroying it allowed Magnus to return home, but he's starting to have second thoughts about that now that he's trapped in another dimension again.

"It would be for experimental reasons. I could use the power boost I'd get from Edom right about now, but I could also amplify a spell if I had enough warlocks around."

...Unfortunately, he's the only one he's aware of at the moment.

He looks thoughtful for a moment, considering that name and what he said before. Edom was an ancient kingdom, but a real place on Earth, if he's remembering right. This one is adjacent to Hell, home to demons. Maybe he didn't expect Five to be paying enough attention to that part, but there are some assumptions he can make if it gives him a power boost.

"Is this is the first time you've jumped to a dimension you couldn't get out of?" Apparently he does it all the time, but he's not the first one to say that he's used to moving freely through them. Even when Five does figure out the math, he's not sure how to factor for whatever is blocking them.

"Not exactly. I've been trapped before, but that had less to do with the dimension itself and more because I was the only thing keeping said dimension from spilling into another dimension."

Five can probably imagine what the inherent dangers are in leaving a rift open anywhere. Destroying the entire realm itself was the only way Magnus could go home without worrying about demons crossing into places where they shouldn't be.

"Never open a door you can't close and all that. Sealing rifts are an arduous ordeal. I'm not sure if there is any lingering evidence of what brought us here, but it's definitely not open any longer."

He'd tried feeling out for any inter-dimensional rifts when he arrived, but he hasn't encountered any yet. Whatever brought them here wasn't planning on them letting them take a roundtrip any time soon.

"Unless you've found any indication otherwise... I'm all ears on competing theories."

It should seem more suspicious that he happened to stumble onto someone with experience keeping dimensions from spilling into each other. The idea could easily send him into a spiral of how that could be theoretically possible, but only in ways that are surely not how Magnus did it, because nobody follows any sensible logic around here.

"Oh, I have a few." In over a year he has more than that, but all of them are constantly evolving from what appeared to be a much more straightforward problem when he first arrived.

"This isn't the first time me or my siblings were thrown off course." As he's mentioned. At least it wasn't his powers at fault, but he's still the one that picked up the briefcase that brought them here. "I could get into quantum physics if you're curious how that could happen. Or you could assume there's something more powerful than you pulling the strings."

"I assumed the second already. The more concerning part is whether or not it's a hostile entity or does really only intend to borrow us for a little while to solve some problems."

Hopefully, the latter because Magnus really does want to go home and actually get married. The universe seems to be constantly conspiring against his happiness, so it would be nice to have one thing go well in his life, and he doubts he's the only one. He also probably would have been more than happy to help (for a fee), if he had been given an actual choice in the matter.

"Of course, you could also talk quantum physics at me if that would soothe your nerves and distress. I'll just be here getting drunk and nodding until I figure out how to use the beacon."

Even just plugging into it and using it as a magical battery would go a long way in being able to transport himself and everyone back home, but he also needs to figure out a way to do it safely. While he has centuries ahead of him to work out that problem, everyone else is more beholden to the sands of time, so the sooner they get started investigating, the better.

Five's expression sours at the very suggestion that he needs to spout logical theories to feel better about himself. Or that he's distressed at all. More than anything he's frustrated that they don't speak a common language when it comes to jumping. He's yet to find anyone who could decipher his math, and trying to interpret magic into something he can actually use has been an endless headache.

He's still scowling when he takes another drink, bothered the more he sits with it. The bottle is nearly empty now and he regrets not taking more on his way over.

"Is your plan to stare at it until you have an epiphany?" Five squints at him for a while, but doesn't leave just yet. "There's only one person who seems to know how to use it. She was resurrected recently, so she might have been around when they were built. Of course, if she's sabotaging them, we have no way to tell."

An empty bottle is an easier problem to solve. Magnus snaps his fingers to refill it for Five –to refill his own, too, though he's lost count on how many refills he's already had. The more the merrier?

"You're telling me this now? You could have led with that."

Otherwise, his plan was indeed probably to stare at it until a light bulb goes off... which also might take centuries.

"Who is she? And is she a native of this world? Where can I find her? Feel free to jump in at any point with all the answers."

Even just a name would be a start, as Magnus would probably have better luck getting a full explanation from the source.

The snap gets Five's attention immediately. Then he almost drops the bottle in his hand when it refills itself and he nearly misses everything Magnus says. His mouth parts in question, looking unfortunately like a dumbstruck kid who can manipulate time and space but apparently marvels at party tricks. When Magnus zeroes in on what he probably should have asked first, Five is still distracted, and he takes a tentative drink before he answers.

It doesn't taste any different.

"...Hatisse." Did he not hear this already? She's been following their group for so long that he assumed everyone knew her. "She's a witch we picked up in the last city, after they resurrected her to help with the beacon and she swore herself to one of us. One of us who was pulled back here shortly after he used the beacon she was controlling, so I don't know that I'd trust her motives to get us home."

That doesn't sum up all of his thoughts about Hatisse, but he largely doesn't believe the beacons are failing as much as she wants to keep them here. Or a certain demon in particular.

He frowns and lifts the bottle, because it's going to bother him if he doesn't ask. "How did you do that?"

Magnus is also a little dumbfounded that Five, who's traveled through time before, is baffled by simple conjury. It's not even one of his more sophisticated spells, as evidenced by the fact that he was able to perform it while still feeling largely drained, drunk, and sleepy.

"Alcohol is simple to create. I imagine it was the first trick the oldest warlocks learned."

How else does one deal with existing for centuries without a little help? And one never knows when they'll need an emergency refill to their cup.

"Consider it my thanks for the information, although I'm starting to think I'm not in the best state to play around with the beacon any further."

Meaning he should really lie down and actually get some proper rest rather than searching for a witch at the moment. His curiosity can wait a bit longer, he supposes.

The answer he gets isn't at all satisfying. His expression says as much, but that was to be expected. If drinking hadn't made him overly talkative, he would have saved his breath. There's a difference between conjuring something from nothing, and only making it appear that way. But as usual, magic works because it's magic. If he wants to know how he's going to have to figure it out himself.

"Yeah. You're welcome." He raises the bottle again before taking another large swig. Granted, the ability to make alcohol appear isn't the most practical one he would have picked, but it really would have cut down on how many times he's had to swipe some while no one is looking.

Something he wouldn't have to do if he hadn't screwed himself so badly. After admitting that, he won't be surprised if he doesn't take his warning about Hatisse.

He sniffs and gets to his feet, slightly off-kilter, but he finds his balance after a step. Looking back at the beacon, he gives it one more frown. All this just for the privilege of using something he never trusted to begin with. The alternative might mean listening more to people like Magnus and see if they can't find some common language. He's doubtful, but anything's possible.

"If I don't see you again, I'll assume you figured it out."

"Trust me, if I figure it out, you'll be the first to know."

And even if Magnus is eager to get out of this world, he wouldn't escape and leave all these poor people behind. Even if he only opens a channel to 2019 New York City rather than to everyone's individual worlds, that's got to be better than rotting in a place without internet and cell phones. They can think of it as an impromptu vacation.

...Okay, he's getting ahead of himself. He really needs to nap before he starts plotting for a future that may never ever happen.

With a quick wave to Five, he finally staggers off to get some rest.

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