stage iii

[groundrules]

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

Comments

[silverneedles]

Another word, then. Helpful. [ Something unkind, but necessary, with a war raging around them, a monster rattling at their door. It's different from Qishan but familiar, the way war is familiar. The scent of death lingers. No necromancer, but she is a physician; death is no remote possibility, the shape unknown, but a pivotal factor in her life. ]

A-Ning was the kind one, among us. [ Not her. Kindness was a weapon that could be turned against her. Here, in the cold, watching women and children cling to life, it's easy to remember that. ] This might not be kind, but it is survival.

[downswing]

( An unkindness, but no ravens. Survival. And is this the draw, then, the undiluted advance of hostilities at range? That she may reap her vengeance and her bloodshed, yet never witness the profligacy of her death stroke?

It is a simple thing, to kill without consequence. Even children may do it, with their first talisman, a miscalculation of parameters, fire sparked where a house might catch flame, protective wards raised a heartbeat too quickly and entrapping the huntsman and the hunted in tight, claustrophobic territory.

Death unseen is death that does not touch you. Shrivelled and drowned in grime, and palms greased with ash and condensation and dust of saltpetre, and still Wen Qing might call herself innocent. )

Will you search your dead after? Close their eyes?

( Will she know them, keep their toll? Remember their faces, honour them with incense thereafter? What is it good men and women do, when fate conspires to shape them into murderers?

He does not remember. Perhaps, beneath the layers of his pristine jade skin, the beast of greed roaring within him never knew. )

You took to the task. Burned hands? ( This is, after all, still work of explosives. )

[silverneedles]

[ Search for her dead. Will she? She peers down, weighing the rock in her hand. It feels different than the explosives, rough where they are smooth, heavy in a way they are not. But there's no urgency to use them, not when the siege seems manageable for now. She could, she knows, lighten up on practicing her aim. She hesitates, not yet throwing the next rock. ]

Will it help? [ Her or the victims or the world itself, she isn't sure. Death lingers in these walls, so close to the living; will rites help them pass, never to be dragged back to this world? ] Did you do that in your war? [ Her voice sharper than intended, but she drops the rock back to the small pile she'd collected at her feet. Her fingers flex, dirt and charcoal on them. ]

Some burns. Nothing incurable. Hopefully a skill I will never need again.

[ But who knows, the way this world has been. ]

[downswing]

( His war. It stings, in a manner metallic, like every mouthful of blood he's swallowed on from stab wounds, every gasp that's made him choke. A part of him has risen above petty, learned malice. Another is his namesake, and Hanguang-Jun was born to slaughter. )

My war against you?

( As if ever they have fought another. Distant, the realisation: another siege, against the Patriarch, one night's incursion. More dead littered and reborn then at their feet than throughout the entire Sunshot offensive.

He remembers: viscera like oil, stuck, dried and flaking in craters on his skin. The clutch of his hand clean on Bichen's hilt, the guqin flaying enemy charges through distant vibrations. Another man claimed those deaths, let them bloom on his ledger like river flowers. )

You wish to know how it is I dwindled your people? ( Crassly, cruelly. So they're doing this, then, stripping skin off bone to show off her old wounds. Here, where they're soot and nightmares, and it's a slow trickling like ink dropped when he raises Bichen's blade to deflect an assault of arrows, without turning.

Death can wait, politely, until they have finalised their conversation. )
<p?

[silverneedles]

[ It was their war, although she tried to stay distant from it. It was of little use, too valuable to Wen Ruohan, too much a Wen to stay uninvolved. She wasn't on the front lines, fighting against the clans that rose up against the Wen clan, but she was in the chambers with Wen Ruohan and his madness, which damned her just as much as any fighting could have possibly done.

But then, even if she and Wen Ning had stayed in Yiling, peaceful and unprovoked, no Wei Wuxian and the Jiang siblings invading, they would have been damned.

I know how you dwindled them. Sword and spiritual weapon. [ He says it, sharp and cruel, and Wen Qing feels a stirring of anger, but there is little need to indulge, when there is so much anger all around her. She's not an angry person by nature. ] Did you find them and close their eyes, Hanguang-jun? Pray for them to find the bridge to the underworld?

[ She picks up another rock, and hurls it into the mass of warriors beneath them. ]

[downswing]

I did not think of them.

( The truth, made terrible, stripped of the false elegance so often attributed to the Twin Jades of Gusu Lan, to the cultivation sects. They were not creatures of kindness, only of war. They did not nurture what they could cull. )

Did you? Your blood. Bones. Name.

( Your family, for all she peeled from them like flesh from bone, spat in the memory of Wen Ruohan as if he were barren earth and she the last mercy of waters. He remembers: that they all turned on Wen Ruohan and wished him a litany of terrors, but Wen Qing proved the kinslayer, the traitor, the most cold-blooded of all.

She did not simply fail her uncle. She fled his cause, narrow back turned to the broad-spanning majesty of the sun. And now she crawls here, another refugee, defiant. Always on the wrong, tenuous footing.

No, this once, she has earned — safety. The chance to fend for herself. )

Right your back. Chase balance. Stability. Then, shoot. ( He is no master of the bow, although — ) Wei Ying may assist.