westwhere | stage iii

stage iii

THE ASHES

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Rathakku’s forces deepen their siege, with sharp-clawed harpies, fire-bearing catapults and archers raining hell upon Alem. The last two watch towers collapse, along with half the roof of the Keep. Several structural pillars dissolve and most windows shatter.

The Lord Who Waits has tired of patience.

HIGH CASTLE

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■ Attack is vicious and perpetual: Rathakku’s creatures descend from above, harpies make lairs in dark corners, and the fallen rise as undead enemies. Rathakku now necromances even the recently deceased, who retain a sense of personhood. Characters with mind control and necromantic abilities can take over these units. The recently resurrected have yet to decay substantially and hide they perished in order to infiltrate.

■ The dragon Irenia dips in to breathe frost onto Rathakku’s forces, but never lingers long. She disappears on March 20 but will return post-Arc.

■ Aware of his native Ellethia’s implicit role in raising Rathakku, Zenobius offers to teach you how to use the rare metals and saltpetre of Alem to create generous explosives — a set that triggers a very high blast, and a smaller shipment that can annihilate any magic — including death and summoning sorcery — in a 20-metre radius for two hours. Zenobius is a hard, curmudgeony taskmaster: expect to be worked and criticised to the bone.

■ Expect frequent quakes in the fortress, as catapults strike and the roof and pillars wobble. A hard winter is no longer contained by shattered doors and windows. Fire kindle and other supplies run scarce. Huddle together.

■ Paladins fall into zealotry, calling to sacrifice young princess Cle-Florens to ensure their success in battle. Deimar does not dissuade them, but lowers the number of guards protecting Cle-Florens’ quarters.

■ The voices that haunted Alem now multiply, increasingly likely to drag you into a dream-like state to descend into the glacier lakes underground. Spy thereabout at night, and you spot demonic fire sirens of golden scales, who gather in the fourth glacier lake’s cave to urgently complete their task before Alem falls. Their leader produces a purse of dark glass shards. A siren painfully transforms her tail into human legs by consuming such glass — she intends to infiltrate the fortress as a refugee. Sign up for a RNG thread to interrogate this mermaid.

■ With a few more shard crumbs, the sirens summon a ‘Jatharin’ — a fast dispersing silhouette that floats ethereally. They give it a white-silver string punish Prince Haiva for wronging a sister.

■ The Jatharin survives only two hours in the human realm. It lacks human consciousness and memory, remembering little of its target’s description and pursuing what ‘young men (with pale hair)’ it finds in the Wards. It is invisible to all who did not witness its birth — so keep your companions out of its way. It approaches a target and chains itself to them with a shadowy ‘umbilical chord,’ before sucking dry their life force. It can also deplete energy through... mouth-on-mouth action. Clean executions: Victims make no sound and barely shudder throughout their entrapment. Some say, these are painless deaths.

■ Sirens summon a Jatharin for three nights.

	HARPIES Fast, perpetually furious, prone to consuming human flesh. Deterred by loud noise and vibrations. Imbue their claws with poisons that prevent blood coagulation, extending bleed-outs.
	CATAPULTS Deliver projectiles of stone, fire and minor explosives. Rathakku’s most ferocious instrument, taking down Alem’s foundations. Manned by four undead apiece. Sturdy but slow, best targeted aerially.
	FIRE SIRENS Native to Hell. Deeply bound to ‘sisters’ and ‘family.’ Possess golden scales and shards of the previously encountered dark water mirrors. Their song is tinny but compelling. Their speaking voices are crackling and gravelly. Survive the glacier lakes’ cold by exuding flame. Skin burns to touch.
	JATHARIN Smokey, dispersing silhouette. Invisible to those who did not witness its birth. Kills by consuming life energy. Descended from the Motherless of Hell. Cannot be outright stopped, only avoided, enslaved or consumed. Can be distracted if you take an aspect similar to Haiva. Leaves a golden string on unintended victims.

THE DEPARTING

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■ King Deimar orders caravans to urgently evacuate, carrying refugees and provisions through mountain routes into a new settlement. Able men, guards, healers and merchants make preparations around the clock and will gladly accept, command or guilt your assistance. Help them.

■ Courtesy of Jimmy and Nacho, merchants Batthour and Eles provide some last-minute wagons and resources. An Alison-coached Deimar strikes a tenuous agreement for supplies.

■ Having received ‘healing’ flowers, Prince Haiva seems entirely recovered — far more confident, he menaces guards to assist the caravans. Deimar watches uneasily. Haiva asks the party to lead the refugees through the icy mountain passageways, where Rathakku’s immense bat demons loom.

■ The caravans journey to a well-warded settlement near the base of the mountain — former paladin monastery Hassir. Those who wish to avoid conflict can remain here. Prepare to kill any wandering pursuers, before they may alert Rathakku of the settlement's location.

	MOUNTAIN BATS Monstrous, blood-thirsting. To the size of 1.5-3 metres. Bulky, quicker to use their brawns than their speed. Stalk together, but compete for food and want to drag their prey to some great distance before consuming it, for privacy. Use that time to escape.
	HUNTSMEN Undead forces, typically old resurrections of Rathakku. Once human natives of Alem. Excellent knowledge of hiding spots and the mountain. Hostile, take perverse pleasure in the game. Will prolong a chase for sport and give their hungering hounds the chance to catch you. Unusual kinship with local animals, who sometimes obey them. Some scent blood.

COME HELL, THEN DARK WATER

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Hell is ruthless, but pragmatic — and must be sealed, before Rathakku controls Alem and weaponises it.

The growing cracks in Alem’s underground Room of Seals widen to reveal full-fledged stairs. More and more demons emerge as the rifts broaden. You have mere days to close Hell, ICly starting on 18 March.

■ Back/forward date your posts and logs as needed. Network access is spottier in Hell. Deimar’s paladins accompany the group.

■ To prevent the outpour of Hell, you must reach Level III and record disrupting at least three Motherless.

■ Each level of Hell shows shallow stains or streams of the familiar ‘dark water.’

LEVEL I

■ The Room of Seal leads into an underground stone passageway. Demons and skeletons are chained to stones or pillars, begging water. The dead are fickle: some offer directions, others answers to your questions. Most lie for their own gain.

■ The stairwell to Level II is behind locked gates, on a stone dais framed by a wall of flames. To reach it, cross a threadbare walkway of bones in a large hall room that has largely submerged into lava.

■ If the bridge ruptures, jump onto the nearby talking floating skeleton heads. Skeletal hands reach out to destabilise or drag you into the fire waters, as do demonic lava mermaids.

■ As you near the dais, the wall of flames might depict either the time when Thyvault’s people slaughtered the lava sirens, or your worst memory of betraying or failing someone. That same person is found shackled with long chains on the dais. If you never wronged anyone, this is someone to whom you are dearly indebted. At times plaintive, at others incensed, they appeal to your guilt or goodwill, bartering the gate key for their release. Their chains will only open if someone agrees to take their place in imprisonment.

■ You can steal their key, kill them — at which point, they return to their true form as a reptilian shapeshifter, or offer to take their place. Do so, and your character is stuck in Hell, suffering the intense heat and occasional clawing of mermaids, until Hell closes.

■ Up to you if anyone else can see your character’s memory in the flame wall. Please trigger warn adequately if you are describing sensitive memories.

LEVEL II

You descend deeper, into an underground urbanscape infested with flesh-like structures. Some stretches of land and stone are covered in membranous, dense, thick surfaces, letting you feel the faint, distant heartbeat of Hell. Other landmarks — lairs, adornments — are made of the remains of fallen demons.

■ Step lightly and rapidly. Flesh-eating demons roam these lands, as do hungering hell hounds and golems that chase you for parts to patch their limbs.

■ The next stairwell is guarded by a deathly groom or bride, their tentacles barring your path.

■ To proceed, you must gain the ring they are safe-keeping for a future ‘intended.’ You’ll need to persuade a local demon, assemble a passing corpse bride, sell a companion or offer yourself to betroth them — and negotiate a dowry.

■ The groom is crafty, cunning, eager to manipulate you into offering your soul as a dowry; the bride is cruel but irresistible, stirring you and your companion to violently compete for her hand.

LEVEL III

Behold true hell, an endless wasteland, its horizon fathomless and grey. Your mouth tastes of perpetual ash, bone dust scattered at your feet. You walk aimlessly for hours in fields of gravel, haunted by stone snakes and shapeless bone creations.

■ Demonic creatures rally as armies, fighting each other for crumbling territory or for overground dominion, as they prepare to invade Alem. Some drag rows of sullen, depressed or bellicose dead men behind them, whose souls you can liberate furtively when the demons make camp, or are assaulted by Deimar’s paladins. These captives did not all originate from Alem.

■ Some of the lesser demons may part with information, if you give them memories, important trinkets or a taste of your soul.

■ Most paladins are on this level and will shield you. You hear from them or from passing demons that Hell is now able to seep into Alem because of the Motherless — dark and flickering silhouettes, two-three times the size of a man, who float high above ground. They send down thick ropes like umbilical cords that consume the energy of whatever they attach to. They redeliver this energy as tectonic blows against Alem above.

■ Beyond a hatred of the Room of Seals, the Motherless lack conscience, speech or allegiance. They are drawn to the warmth of living things, or the purity of their spirit. Their ropes are broken easily — but the presence of a Motherless can quickly drain you.

■ The Motherless are briefly visible when they fling their ropes down, but otherwise roam invisibly and can only be recognised by the trails of barren land and aridity in their wake. You know a Motherless has stopped above you when you are suddenly paralysed by chilling fear — run, at all costs.

■ The Motherless swarm when endangered. They cannot be killed.

■ Deimar’s paladins share that, hundreds of years ago, their brethren committed ritual suicide, so their spirits could perpetually hunt the Motherless in Hell. You find ghostly paladins walking listlessly in lakes of dark water, seeming to remember nothing of their mission or their former selves. Try to remind them of their duties without entering the water and stranding yourself.

NOTES

■ Hell demons can recognise if your character is canonically connected to hell. Up to you if that’s a (dis)advantage!

■ Everyone should eventually make their way to the Hassir monastery.

■ Sign up for a RNG thread with an unexpected travel companion on the trek to Hassir.

NPC THREADS

QUESTIONS

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So.

( if the stench of death and fire and offal from those who died unclean and hadn't enough left to be resurrected isn't enough, there's always the scent of moving dead to keep his nose over busy. not that it's strictly on his mind right now; licyn simple notes it, and in the moment where deimar is here and licyn is the temporary single guard (attendant, look at his virtue here, all those who keep thinking heroics are actually a viable trade) between yelena returning and others of the paladin's, he asks: )

At what point are we allowed to attempt your evacuation? We're down to the dregs, and word on Hell is coming sooner, not later.

( so he presumes. he has yet to throw himself near there after being wrath's magic extra hand, so to speak, in keeping it sealed as long as they could. moot point now. )

( Excuses must always be made for madmen and kings, both likely overcome with the instinct to not run, man, run at first opportunity. For his part, Deimar appears — tired, blood-smeared, still futilely waving the sword he thrusted in something, earlier.

Something with viscera and hurt. )

Out of rats? ( In terms of evacuation priority, the humble rat should really get to go first. )

( he barks a laugh at that, shaking his head. )

The rats? Smarter than you lot, they left a while ago.

( patting down one of the many depleted pockets, attachments, the casings of things he keeps on him as he moves, and there. tosses the clean enough rag and oil to deimar, the small leather bulb of it meaning a dropped catch only makes for sad sounds on contacting the ground, not broken bottles. )

For your sword.

( He seems, for a few heartbeats, content to let the rag and oil collide with hard ground, to wilt and spread and shatter. At the last moment, he leans in and catches both, the curl of his mouth a timid suggestion, Waste not, want not.

A nod in thanks, candid. It'll do. )

Yes, yes. We're very stupid, and you're very wise. Then, why haven't you gone? Off with you.

( There are enough seats in the caravans to house any fool. )

Rest of the fools I'm burdened with.

( his pseudo-pack, more necessity than true amounts of choice. said with a shrug, dismissive, but the reality is he's not going to be hauling the lot of them off, and so? )

Slightly higher chance of things not going straight to storm-struck horrors if you manage to pull through, too, so here we are.

Yes. And what a place it is.

( The next cough nearly rattles his lungs, too much dust, too much debris. A fever of filth, assailing him. He wipes his brow with a wrinkle forehead then thinks, politely, to hold it out.

...soiled, but still a king's offering, surely. )

I can't leave. No, not yet. I leave, every rat leaves with me. I'm afraaaaaaaaaid. Yes. Yes, you are stuck with me a little longer. ( Laughter, hollow. ) Imagine that.

You agreed to be stuck with us first, and I thought it was stupid from the start, but alas. No one listened to me then, there's no surprise that no one does now.

( He snorts, under his breath and with a raised brow, but hey. If he's offering. He can shift away from where he's standing more relaxed and wary guard than he appears, accepting the offering. Such as it is. )

Will you have strenuous objections if we run off with you once your people are gone and this Hell is as handled as it'll be? Paladins are down there. Along with some of our more... interesting individuals.

( Who also happen to all be attractive. Deep sign, at least this party of fools is easy on his eyes. He shifts abruptly, attention to the broken archway, sword out as he goes into motion. The creature that doesn't quite make it to the entrance is lacking full limbs, partly scorched, summarily divested of head in a sweeping cut. Even as the body falls, Licyn captures it with one hand, the head thudding to the ground and rolling unevenly to the wall. The rest vaguely waves a remaining arm at him, in a last vestige of animation, before the body is nothing but its deadweight.

For now. He grimaces, using the uh. Kingly offering. To clean his blade again, once the body is set on the ground and he takes his steps back, all too casual as dust and debris scatters down overhead. No structural cracks he can hear over their immediate heads in this location. Yet. )

So delightful. Why don't we invite the dead to more parties, they never know how to quit.

( More death, more destruction, more brushes with inevitable reminders of his fragile flesh and its failures. He watches the man dispose of yet another foul, distasteful creature and basks in the pained reminder that all evil is for the better, and perhaps they benefit from abandoning Alem: they could never possibly hope to cleanse all this gut and blood from the tapestries.

In the end, he spares Licyn a compassionate smile, an awkward, stiff but well-intended pat on his shoulders. There, there. Now, don't spread the love of your stains. )

Have no worry. We'll take any rat that's crawled off our ship. Only... humane. And besides, you seem to have your uses. Smile more, and we might even keep you.

( A pause, then: ) But your women. Emilia and Caitlyn. They can't stay long with us. You make sure they're gone within the sennight. Attaboy.

Edited 2023-03-14 21:06 (UTC)

( He snorts at that, his smile lazy in response. )

Shouldn't be a problem. We'll be heading further east. A few fewer mouths for survivors to be concerned with feeding.

( That attaboy though, and here, he smiles with teeth. Still amused, head cocked as he listens to rumbles and groans of stone and death, but no. Nothing approaching. )

I'll resist wagging too hard for you, love.

( He's in no way wagging the tail that isn't around (right now) at all. )

...no. We don't laugh about this part. Keep your women away. They'll be in close quarters of him.

( And a thin smile, lost somewhere between amusement, horror and cutting impatience. Weaponised. )

You know whom I'm speaking of. And if you don't, you can guess. ( This time, he's rushing to his feet, gathering his bearings. Seemingly intent to exorcise himself out of the premises, before he speaks too soon and out of turn. )

His thoughts never strayed from her, even after she... mysteriously vanished. ( His voice lightens on the word, to a point of parody. ) And they share too much of her likeness.

( he snorts, one sharp shake of his head. )

His obsession precedes him, yes. I'll tell the both of them to make use of the skills of others in our company, that disguise features. Unless he has means to see through such things?

( genuine question, aimed for the importance of it: licyn will carry messages, because it's advantageous to his survival when the group stays intact. not fractured. wrath not rampaging, which he will, oh, should emilia be touched.

he follows, the man who moves like a predator and takes no care to disguise it as something more human. )

Haiva? ( Bitter laughter, strained. To think how well he spoke of his brother, mere days before. ) Haiva's only achievement is that of being firstborn.

( Some might say, no act of his make or design. But then, Deimar's attention wanders onto newer, fairer pastures: the set of guards that saunters by, maudlin. The refugees that follow. The breeze and draft in their wake.

This fortress is all scavenged holes.

And he whispers: )

You think we could have kept him distracted from your girls for weeks, if he could see anything that's farther than his nose?

( to that he... nods his head. point. while licyn's been uninterested in the politics as a living thing, it's crept on over the weeks, impossible to ignore. )

Vataz's father.

( the stench of death wafts in, no fresher than the rests, then swirls around and dances ahead of them down this call, to the next. and the next. and the next shattered juncture, where ice and pain drip through as clearly as despair and resignation. )

( For once, he seems startled, if not confused. Stilling to tip his head with the feline curiosity that so often seems to overcome him. )

...no, my uncle played no part in this. Well. He killed most of the.... ( A shrug, half-shaped, as if he understands he is skirting the dangerous liminal space between disclosing much more than he should and yet not enough. )

You know the stories. You must have heard. He culled the last of the sirens, with my good cousin. And... dozens of other good men no one can be troubled to remember. ( Now, the smile turns, all teeth, lining lips bloodied by cuts of warfare. )

A man turns more amenable to murder, when you tell him it's his holy duty to rid the land of demons. And not just good Haiva of his homicidal sisters-in-law.

( To think, Deimar wouldn't have been the worst sibling-in-law of this entire proposal. How very splendid. )

But who cares anymore? We're all about to die. No one's special.

( A low, unamused chuckle, and he shakes his head, the starting look of confusion and the canted angle of his head paired with it resolved in one gentle swoop. )

No one ever was. Think he's realised that yet, or are you the last enlightened brother?

( The sister was always certain of the necessity of her death, so no, she has no idea that no one's special when it comes to the dying. Ah. Youth. )

My word on speaking with both women. I'll whisper their way once Yelena's returned to us. And if there's anything else you wish to be plain about, I'm all ears—too thick, you know. For the subtleties.

( Said so blandly, with such a perfectly sincere expression, that he is clearly to be trusted. )

Yes. I'm starting to understand that.

( But it seems, at the very least, likely to amuse him — to catch and hold his interest. He nods, and it's no performative gesture, no thespian adieu, but the slow, clean consideration of a man who has successfully identified his instrument and must now find a prime opportunity to use it. )

See your women safe and away from... Haiva's interest. His mood runs mercurial. That's all I'll say.

( That's all, to see how he hesitates, that he can safely speak.)

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stage iii

Deimar

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