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

[fushichou]

[He allows Lan Wangji to push him off, unsurprised considering the man's nature. Eyes flick between him and the monstrosity across the way, keeping tabs on both. It seems they haven't been noticed yet, but that could change in an instant.

At least Lan Wangji seems to get a hold of himself before long, though Kanesada isn't sure he trusts him to be entirely good to go.

And when next he glances toward the tentacle monster, he finds...nothing.]

Shit.

[Where did it go? It couldn't have just evaporated into thin air, right?]

Where is it?

[downswing]

It was — ( But he stays himself, breathes, gazes. Attempts to the best of his dwindling ability to gaze into the ether, where only the shifting, heated trembling of air wafting betrays the Motherless, drifting.

They cannot assume where the creatures are seated, not when they remain invisible, beyond reach. For all it tempts Lan Wangji to presume, as he collects himself, rights his body up, and shifts his laden limbs into position.)

...north. ( No, look down, where the grounds seem plagued, exhausted of nutrients, receding and shrivelling into themselves. The presence of the Motherless can only be deduced by divining the territory they've crossed. )

Search the ground for sudden aridity. We find them.

( And slaughter them, to a one. )

[fushichou]

[Search the ground. Right. Right, okay, now Kanesada sees and understands. The ground changes and while being in literal Hell could probably serve as a few explanations for that, they have to grasp anything that makes even a little bit of sense in their situation.

Still, the fact that these things can turn invisible is a pain in the ass. That makes it more complicated than it needs to be.]

Think if we fight back we won't end up like that the thing it sucked up?

[The question doesn't have a lot of logic behind it, but there must be some way to go up against the creature. He draws his sword in one hand and bends down to grab a pile of earth in the other.]

[downswing]

( A fair question, dented by the impossibility to predict the absurd, the grotesque, the unknown. He has not studied these creatures, cannot presume to know the full extent of their ability.

And how does their youth, their strength, their prowess compare with the insatiable appetites of these creatures and their devastation? They seem so vast and all-consuming, they even drain the earth.

Lan Wangji's grip on his sword is perfunctory, tired. He watches Kanesada from the corner of his eyes and see him like he might a landscape at the start of autumn, before it is made barren and ruined. )

Are there those who would mourn you? ( A pause, because it is an unkind thing, to presume there are ever those who would go ungrieved. ) Apologise to them.

[fushichou]

[Kanesada focuses on the ground, his fingers flexing and unflexing where they grip his blade's hilt. He watches and makes sure he knows where the now invisible awful monster is at all times.

At least, until Lan Wangji asks him something kind of rude. But also understandable? He turns to look back at him for a moment, clicking his tongue, then turns back toward the monster.]

Honestly? Not sure about anyone here. Maybe. Probably not. Just people back home. Can't exactly tell 'em to burn incense or whatever.

[The marks on the ground appear seemingly without direction, but as he watches, Kanesada sees them slowly making their war toward him and Lan Wangji. The other man makes him think, though. If he breaks here... Because Kanesada has to be ready for that. He has to accept that anything can happen.]

Hey, promise me something. If my sword breaks, take it back with you. Don't leave me down here.

[It. Me. Same thing. He'll explain later if Lan Wangji asks.]

[downswing]

( No one to grieve them, no soul to wish them unharmed. No sympathies lost for them here, and Lan Wangji will not pretend to share in that indifference — not with a son, a soulmate close — not delude himself that he would go mourn for more than what every lowly man gets: a heartbeat, a day, a year.

He has come on this world as nothing, to no one. He will leave it only as the sum of his footprints. )

I shall carry your soul and your body. ( Slips of the tongue are a wretched, common thing in the face of terrors, of death unwavering. Kanesada is simply — troubled. ) I pledge.

( He'll slide and drag this man on his scar-stricken back and find a sea's side for him, a wretched, storm corner where sands might ensconce him and the waters sing his sleep. This, all men who have carried a sword earn, an end to turbulence. This, Lan Wangji will gladly offer, even as Bichen bursts alive in his hold, and the Motherless drifts close, known for the consumption on the earth below it. )

Though you shall not die. Demons would grieve your loud mouth.

( He plunges forth. )

[fushichou]

[Well. He doesn't really know what he expected when he asked to be taken back. He supposes that's good enough. Lan Wangji looks strong enough to drag his physical body across a decent distance, but Kanesada isn't sure if he breaks if there would be a body to claim. He hasn't seen any of his comrades break before, but technically they're spirits. Wouldn't these temporary vessels just disappear?

Whatever. Lan Wangji is right. He has to be. Neither of them will die here, either because of living ties or threats of annoyance to the ghastly inhabitants down here. He won't compose a death poem just yet.

Kanesada laughs, though, and readies himself.]

Yeah, right! Hell could use some excitement like me!

[A white figure is swiftly followed by red and blue, his left hand raised with the rotten earth. He scatters it when they approach close enough so he can visualize where the creature is vertically, as well as by the ground.

And when that dirt meets resistance mid-air, Kanesada growls like a feral thing and slices across with his blade. Contact is made, but he steps back, grabs more dirt, and waits to see what the creature does next.]/

[downswing]

( Excitement.

In truth, he had anticipated the method of dirt tossing would fail — that the creature's heft would repel the filth, and provide indication of its presence, but it might yet cover distance too quickly for them to make use of the guidance.

It works, Kanesada a storm, and Lan Wangji, blade in hand, ruinous behind him. Slashing, hurting, putting the pain in a creature they cannot see. The cord, he knows, they must crush that.

Invisibility will not disadvantage them completely — they can cut, within a radius, far more and quicker than the beast can withdraw. But all the better to make the work efficient.

If dirt flies off the monster, then it has a weight, a center.

It retains shape and presence, and that is all that wards require to anchor. One of Wei Ying's talismans, when it is drawn, inevitably — wards, but made weak, a sphere of light surrounding the living thing they strike. One first talisman is wasted, cast without meeting target. A second. A third —

Then the fourth prevails, meeting something in air, then bursting in a tight sphere of energy around a massive creature. It moves as the monster does, surrounding it, no more able to fully reveal the creature's shape but still betraying its overall presence. Hit the heart of it, target south, the cord will be there, somewhere.

Kanesada is farther out, closer to the creature — and Lan Wangji hisses: )

There. At the heart. The cord must dangle. ( Unseen, but at least they have some indication, for as long as Lan Wangji can hold on to the spell. )

[fushichou]

[Hurtling headfirst toward an enemy one doesn't know well is not particularly smart, but sometimes necessary. Besides, the thrill of the fight heats his human veins and Kanesada attacks more viciously each time.

Every time he approaches the invisible monster, there is a clenching in his chest, though, as if the memory of witnessing it destroying that other demon seeps in. Or maybe it's just worry about damaging his blade, which would be the worst outcome. But he has to do something. They have to do something.

So he swipes at the unseen tentacles with one hand and continuously tosses dirt with the other, at least until whatever Lan Wangji throws finally sticks. A visible and moving presence, permanent for the time being. Good. Finally, Kanesada can grip his sword with both hands, dealing harder strikes every time he does. If he could just hack through these tentacles, just get them gone, gone, gone and fuck this thing up -

At the heart. The cord.

He hops back again, braces himself, then leaps at the creature with another cry, throwing even more of his strength behind his attack.]

Just die already!

[downswing]

( Hold the wards. Hold them. Brittle though they are, strained by the cloying, claustrophobic sorcery of the surroundings, hold them still —

He cannot move to Kanesada's aid, cannot offer Bichen's blade and her tender succour, not without transgressing against the equilibrium of the magic already cast. So, grip tight, jaw locked, the world around him screaming with the tinny beating of Kanesada's sword against an invisible, jarring heft —

He waits. And waits. And does not shiver when a brindled whirlwind drags sand to bruise his back and cheek, when Kanesada's attacks feel land-changing, seismic. When, finally, the grounds no longer wither, but liven again, and though he had not thought the wasteland could never rejuvenate — now he sees it.

And he calls to Kanesada, the proof of their victory, won: )

...settle. ( There is an animal within this man, a beast Lan Wangji had not glimpsed before. He speaks to it, tenderly: ) Settle your fury, it is done.

[fushichou]

[Every slash of his blade brings Kanesada more and more satisfaction. This is what he was made to do, not be an ornament like Hachisuka Kotetsu - though he is definitely a pretty enough blade - but to cut, to bite, to taste an enemy's blood. He is a sword forged in the middle of conflict, intended to kill.

It is easy to let this bloodlust overtake him whenever he faces a formidable foe. He may not physically taste blood or whatever the enemy has in place of blood, but his hands grip his sword tighter and he throws more strength behind each attack. Again and again and again until finally he feels the blade tear its way through and he falls to his knees.

Kanesada stares ahead and sees nothing while catching his breath. Just takes this moment after victory to exist before he pushes himself to his feet before he undoubtedly has to jump right back into the fight -

Until Lan Wangji speaks. Settle, he says, and Kanesada remembers. He is the weapon, but he is also the warrior. He has to be human, too, as much as he can be, despite his soul being anything but. He looks at Lan Wangji and blinks, then shakes his head clear of his thoughts.]

Right. Right, yeah...

[Lifting his blade, he settles it in the crook of his elbow and swipes it against his sleeve, clearing it of whatever viscera may still cling to it. He sheathes the sword and takes a new breath.]

Thanks. For the assist.