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

[bravelyrunsaway]

( oh no it's history, it sounds like something that's more complicated than the present remembers it, but also: you know he's going to go with those infidels being terrible, because what he's caught in scent and seen of demons does not incline him to like them better than humans. at all. even a little. )

Serthica was more a broken clock than much of a toy when we graced their port, infinitely better as we left, stunk less of rot. Sad this place won't have more than a burial ground to visit again for those of you who love it so well. Glad the legacy you and your people hold dear shall persist in the end.

( for all he may not believe it rests on the shoulders of a child, he does believe it rests on the shoulders of faith. and to that end, galatea and her surviving paladins are the strongest showing of it. to that legacy, he toasts, hand empty, glass full.

he can offer that choice in faith. after all, it costs him nothing, but it has sincerity in it. to not wish hell freedom, even if it sounds like it was, in ways, a problem solved and created by the same people, and hell cannot, in the time between, have grown fonder for it. )

[jatharin]

Why did you come here?

( It's ripped of her, raw. Some part aching. As if, beneath her veneer of dignity, she recalls what it is to be a woman, still, a body flesh and bone. )

Knowing what we were facing, why would you come?

( Why join their effort, why witness their hardships? The blood they've spilled and are yet to waste, why add to casualties, to losses, to ruin? ) We were never destined to win.

( This much was plain, obvious in the imbalance of forces, in Rathakku's single-minded persistence at their gates. Deimar, who laughs and jokes about their impending doom knows it in his bones, as does any true child of Alem. )

[bravelyrunsaway]

We travel at a merchant's mercy, with a merchant who has nothing of mercy, everything of greed. We didn't leave, ( he says, knowing the whys, still thinking they're as stupid as she knows they must be: ) because we're filled with too many people willing to sacrifice for the sake of what will survive. The children. The families. The fighters. If your minds aren't as quiet after, they were harmed far before we tumbled into Alem's belly.

( he doesn't watch her, but the straggling line of people who move past, his hand resting nonchalant on the grip of his sword. )

Fighting to survive is the only win you have sometimes. It's learning to live again after that's going to depend on the strength of your people. The ones who survive because of what's been done here.

( that much resonates for him, the quiet certainty in his voice when he makes that proclamation. he doesn't examine why, how his formative identity in childhood was being the survivor whose guilt drove him from those who loved him, and the wreckage of his generation. survivor, and the years of fumbling after that were the learnings of how to live, when what one had once expected to be true was ruthlessly ripped away.

he smiles, at the end of that pause, shoulders hitching with the barest motion. what can he say? )

We weren't placing bets on your destiny changing. Some fights are simply to slow the winning side down.

( and for the gateway, as always, as he's seen once, will now see twice. so it is: so it goes. that changes very little here. when their group has been so active, that's their choice, their consistent foolishness. one he's being dragged into, little by little. the horrors of substitute packs. )

So here we are. With you.

[jatharin]

( He speaks well, for a man bereft of allegiance to Alem, a foreigner who seems to have only just stumbled upon the devastation of the fortress' fall.

He speaks well, and some part of it reaches her, thaws her glance, when she lifts it up, when she follows, rising. When she shrugs off stiffness from her shoulders, and reaches out only to set a hand on his forearm. )

And here you will die. ( Unspoken, If you stay. ) But this is not your story. This is not your end. This is our duty. Our burden.

( Perhaps she sees it now, the truth of their tenancy: that territory stolen must, at some point, be paid for. That they had centuries they were able to spend here, and that slaughter comes after splendor. )

We took this land from demons. And now we may the price of rent. Go, stranger. This is not your war.

[bravelyrunsaway]

( It's an interesting moment, to see her claim the one thing no one else has in his hearing, or to his knowledge. That a place taken at one point is forever restless at its base, that things done for good reasons can come down to paybacks down the line. There's nothing about it meant to be fair; it's simply what it is.

He inclines his head toward her. )

I won't be buried here, stranger. Have faith in that too. And if there's ought what you ask me to do before I take my leave, simply speak.

( A small smile, the slow blink of eyes shuttering over one truth to accept it as it is. She at least faces things with clarity. It's more than he knows that a number of her paladin companions do. He begrudges neither. Admires her for it, to an extent. )

Bear your duty as beautifully and proudly as your people have lived. May they then find the strength for that beauty in what place becomes theirs next.

( Not hers, unless she survives. But she's more than adult. It will always be her choice. )