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

[downswing]

( ...there are, in the schools of exorcism, a distinct variety of exotic approaches to tame the dead: those who steer towards aggression, those who lure, those who wait. Those who seduce ghosts, those who weaponise them.

Then there is Xie Lian, who speaks to them as if he were a fishwife at the marketplace, peddling her wares.

Extraordinary, before Lan Wangji's unblinking eyes, not that he makes the attempt, but that it appears incorrigibly successful. He tilts his head to watch the spectacle, at once bemused, amused and unable to fully comprehend what persists before him.

He opens his mouth to say something. Closes it. Opens it. Then, finally: )

You forget yourselves. Shame your ancestors. There — ( Pointedly, behind himself, where the Motherless floats and sprawls. ) Thrives your enemy.

( Let shame, guilt and regret do the trick. )

[scrapgege]

[Xie Lian blinks at the sudden intervention, turning to look at Lan Wangji.]

... Now that's a little harsh, but... I man, he's not wrong. You were brought here to fight those monsters, weren't you? How come you're not fighting when they're right here?

[The ghost seems to .... flicker, becoming almost transparent, and then somehow more tangible, its outline more defined.]

If you need a little bit of energy... here !

[Xie Lian slaps a talisman square on the ghost's chest, and it immediately staggers a little under the sudden onslaught, but then gets even more visible.]

The enemy...

Yes, right there. Go ahead.

[downswing]

Do not feed spirits whose temperaments we do not —

( But then, Xie Lian has already deposited far too much of his energy into the ghosts, sealing their connection. If the deadened paladins wish to abuse his kindness, now is their hour. If they pretended stupor all along —

No matter. The ghosts... liven. Gain honest, material form, abandoning their prior translucence. They yet glisten and carry a diffuse shape, in the only signs that betray their impermanence. And they are silent, lacking true will and direction, struggling to focus beyond what Xie Lian and Lan Wangji suggest.

In their hands, their swords seem foreign, some barely recalling their how to hold them in a proper grip. They remember this and each other in increments, stunned to turn around and find the familiar faces of comrades, perhaps friends.

And Lan Wangji, less kindly than Xie Lian, Bichen's tip scratching the horizon: )

Men do not rest when their work is not yet done. ( Forgive him, Uncle, for taking advantage of a ghost just so. ) Heed your orders.

( And to Xie Lian, as an aside: )

...they might have turned on you.

[scrapgege]

[Well, Lan Wangji seems well-suited to giving orders, and the ghosts seem content enough to follow them after their meal of qi, so that's good.

As for the warning, he shrugs.]

They're not powerful enough to harm me even if they do. And since I can't use my own power directly or it'll get sucked in, it might as well serve in another way. I only wish I could give them more.

[He tugs at the bandage around his neck that hides once of the cursed shackles which have fascinated both Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian, and so far resisted their every attempt.

Then again, if he didn't have the shackles on, the question of sealing this place would be a mere triviality.]

Have you ever seen demons like those before? I don't think I have. I know of demons who can suck energy of course, but I've never seen any with this appearance.

[downswing]

( This, at least, a question academic, while their eyes wander where the droves of dead men crawl and trail after each other, shadow after shadow, a string of forlorn silhouettes —

Gaining strength they share, lent from Xie Lian's resources. Seeming to thrive as their murmurs evolve into full-fledged speech, as they nurture each other to move forward. The duty. The mission. The goal.

Lan Wangji can hardly believe much will come of it, until the sword one knight — one paladin — wields thickens and gains weight and substance, until he sees them concocting a strategy. Until a handful dash forward, chasing in the distance, where a Motherless is enjoying its feeding. )

The dead do not feast upon their own. Only the living show them cruelty.

( Through gestures, through summons, through attempts at control. Through pained and distant memories. )

This is... cannibalism. ( Almost as unnatural as observing the paladins in their righteous hunt. ) You have witnessed the dead preying on dead before?

[scrapgege]

It happens all the time.

[At least, where he is from, it does.]

Most ghosts and demons prefer to attach to the living of course. It tastes better. But ghosts and demons will absolutely kill and eat those that are weaker than them.

The way a Calamity ghost is made is by battle royale. They all converge towards a certain mountain, Mount Tonglu, and they kill each other on the way until only the strongest ones are left. And then in the kiln of Mount Tonglu, the remaining ones will battle and only one will come out.

Still those particular ones are a first for me. And that name... 'Motherless'. It's very specific.

[downswing]

Lacking a cradle of birth.

( Something, descended of nothing. Something that shrieks farther out, as the swarm of paladins accost it. Something tender, vulnerable, easily defanged — for all its crushing, terrifying ability.

Absently heeding Xie Lian, Lan Wangji turns on his heel to observe the spectacle of carnage before them: the ghosts convinced to remember their duty, re-enacting forms and strategies long learned. Some seem to have rediscovered the particulars of hunting the Motherless, grouping to plunge, to claw down and kill, materialising more into this realm as they regain purpose.

Others simply drift from one rote attack to the next, mimicking the behaviour of their brothers in arms. One Motherless is cornered, another — and where did they find a net? — trawled.

They watch the work untouched, like emperors, like leaders of the sects. Like Wen. )

Or a feeding source.

( Is that not what mothers are? The primordial found of growth for an unborn child. To look at their cords, these creatures simply... chase one who can nurture them, perpetually disappointed when their victims go depleted. )

[scrapgege]

[Xie Lian is ready for another infusion of power if one should prove necessary, but it seems his little boost was somehow contagious and the ghosts are rousing each other now. Just as well.]

This world is very different from what I am used to. Gods, demons, ghosts, where I come from they all stem from human souls. What they go through and how they go from one state to another can vary and take more or less time, but they were all human once. Well, except the once like nature spirits, who are more absorbing energy around them and become sentient, but otherwise... You would never see something like that.

[He gnaws on his finger for a moment as in deep in thought.]

The soldiers above, they are undead, called back from their rest. these things... the Motherless... are they 'unborn'? Sort of the opposite? If that's the case, why would an undead lord want to get them out?

I have to guess they wouldn't attack his troops, so he must want to use them but he'd have to be able to control them first.

[downswing]

( The Motherless are not slaughtered outright, but two cords now stand ruptured. Fueled by Xie Lian's energy, the soldiers scour the lands for more, cruelly efficient in ways that suggest painstaking, laboured repetition.

They have done this before, taming the Motherless, restoring peace to the land. This may yet be their eternity. Lan Wangji, who has never felt the swell of mercy burdening his lungs past his ability to breathe, only murmurs at great distance, Thank you. )

They appear to... fabricate the fissures. To break through land and bring forth Hell. ( But then, precious nothing guarantees that they would not turn upon Rathakku's legions, once they gain control of land. It is a strange truce between the lord who waits and the hell he so covets. Perhaps that which he most desires would yet undo him.

And Lan Wangji concedes: )

Little betrays they would not cannibalise Rathakku's forces, also.

[scrapgege]

They don't attack the dead. The dead don't have what they want.

[But also, as annoying and powerful as they are, these monsters seem... lackluster.]

Still, I don't think it's them he wants. They're not much of a prize... So that means there's something else down there, something valuable enough for him to besiege this place for almost a year.

... The water itself, maybe? It looks... familiar, doesn't it?

[downswing]

( They do not attack the dead, their kind, their kind. They do not metabolise suffering too alike their own. This, Lan Wangji understands, however perfunctorily.

This ecosystem cannot survive long-term, if demons do not breed and the Motherless yet consume them. If the water around them, dark and vast and bottomless, keeps drawing the natural predators of these creatures to forgetfulness and sleep. )

What draws them to its sickness? Its lethality?

( Its vast, endless realm of destructive possibilities? He remembers: that in Taravast it thralled, in Ellethia doomed. In Ke-Waihu, somehow, it salvaged. In Serthica, it was lubricant to illusions, a critical component to deceptions of decay. )

It offers... nothing.

( To them, at least, it has only ever been an obstacle. )

[scrapgege]

That's the whole question, isn't it? The one question no one here has given an honest answer to. They keep dancing around it. But someone knows.

[Deimar at least, some of the Paladins probably...]

Once we get out of here, it's time to ask for some answers. Probably less politely than we have so far.

... Oh, look! It seems they're overtaking one! Should I give them a bit more energy, maybe?

[downswing]

You have no more to spare.

( What little is Xie Lian's own is borrowed, as if he were a beggarly bride, forever indebted to her patrons. Xie Lian wears his generosity like fresh silks, showing them off at the marketplace: it flatters the look of him, but achieves little of substance for the longer term.

Even now, the paladins round, rally and assault, and Lan Wangji would champion their triumph, if not for the emptied, husked sense that accompanies his own lack of a contribution. )

I did not think us so mannered.

( A pause, then pointedly: ) You intend to mimic Five?

( In asking less politely. )

[scrapgege]

Hm? What do you mean by that?

[What has Five done now, and does it involve punching people or putting their heads into the ground, because if it does, then yes, he might intend to mimic Five.]

People lie to protect something. Their lives. Someone else's life. Riches. Power. And in this town, everyone is lying, except the people who are starving. What are they protecting?

Deimar is not a coward. He's fighting. But he doesn't want to save this place, at all. Why? What is he trying to protect that is worth throwing an entire city away? Worth potentially sacrificing his own sister? Worth maybe even his own life, even if he is not going to give it away cheaply?

I fought in a desperate siege before, against an enemy that I slowly became convinced we couldn't win against. I fought my hardest, because I wanted to protect my people, and my country, and when they rejected me... I fled. I ran away. I let them crumble under the weight of the fate I couldn't spare them from anymore. It's not my proudest moment, but to the last I wanted to save Xian Le and its people.

I don't understand what or who Deimar is saving.

[downswing]

( And what does he mean by that?

But he ignores the query. What spite he has bred against Five may keep him stitched together and warmed, may build the foundation of his own sanity. Best unshared.

And then, Xie Lian offers the rest: it strikes him a question they should have asked early, one of deeper philosophy than the likes of this... curious, strange-minded daozhang might seem able to foster, at a first timid glance.

Whom is Deimar saving?

Lan Wangji's gaze is watchful, weighted. For once, alight with knowing. At Nightless City, whom was it they fended from Wen Ruohan? Their prides, masqueraded as purpose. And beyond that? )

The world. ( Sleeping obliviously atop disaster. ) From this. From hell.

( From an ancient, barren and mournful territory that only spreads and devastates. From ruin. )

[scrapgege]

Hm. I'm sure he believes that. It might even be true.

[Given what they've seen down here, there are, indeed, malicious forces at play that should not be left out, although whether they are as apocalyptic as they have been led to believe is also a matter of opinion.]

But I don't think that's everything. He's hiding something too. And he didn't seem too bothered by potentially having to sacrifice a child to stop this.