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

[inferus]

This test is meant for Five.

Wrath knows it as soon as he sees the man on the dais even though he does not recognize him (will recognize the name if it's spoken out loud). He hasn't met all of Five's siblings, but he doesn't need to to understand that this is one of them.

He should have anticipated this (and some part of him had wondered). Hell itself can feel the agony within his friend's curse, which is at dangerous levels of intensity at present. Now it seeks to test him as well as it once tested Emilia (as if it was her first time in the Sin Corridor, and in some ways, it was), and the test will be far more dangerous and effective than it ordinarily would be.

And Hell never refrains from utilizing its full power.

When Wrath speaks, it is with a firmness, a command to the words that will not outweigh the sight of his brother: "It is not real."

[somebadnews]

Five can hear Emilia and Wrath give their warnings, but he's still staring resolutely at the flames. The smell of ash invades his senses and it's all he can do to not let himself be distracted by how familiar this feels. Not the way it is for them. Hell was never his home, and the apocalypse was never more than a barren smoldering wasteland, yet he can't escape the way this seems like somewhere he belongs.

His expression contorts from confusion to alarm as he glances to the others, but their reactions don't match what he sees. Memories of himself as a child, the day he left in arrogance and abandoned his family. When he was lost to time. He steps forward when the vision twists and pulls like a curtain to reveal his brother, shackled in chains.

Something breaks in him, and with it all reasoning drains away. Of all the siblings he's searched for and failed to hold onto, it's the one that was lost long before who finds him. He tried to fix the equations, he tried...

"Ben." The name nearly chokes him, and for a moment it feels like the anguish he's carrying around belongs to his brother. Some of it must with how tortured he looks, and it overtakes him the moment he loses his hold over the curse. Not real. Five takes a shaky breath and lets it out, but Ben doesn't disappear and his screams of agony resonate deep within him to drown out anything his companions have to say. When Ben lifts his head, his scared eyes lock with his and he barely mouths the word 'Five' before he disappears in a flash.

In another second he's at his side and looking panicked at the chains. He asks for his help, and Five nods hurriedly, but when he tries to call on his powers again nothing happens. The metal feels real when he touches his binds, and so do the flames bearing down on them.

"I'm not going anywhere," he promises. He won't. He doesn't know how to bring his brother back, but he refuses to leave him here to rot.

[valeas]

Love makes one do all sorts of great and terrible things, but reason is hardly among them. Emilia knows their friend is lost to them the moment he utters the name Ben like he is anguish made flesh.

With the curse he carries, she suspects that may be true.

She also knows there will be no arguing with Five because she knows herself, what she might feel if it was her own sister on the dais. A sister she's mourned and condemned at turns, but loves fiercely all the same.

Ultimately, Five is too quick for her. One moment he's at her side, and the next he isn't. The shifter who wears Ben's face looks relieved for it, but also looks fearfully over Five's shoulder toward Wrath and Emilia.

They're the enemy, now. Dangerous. Not family like him.

Won't Five see?

"Don't let them hurt me," is a plea that seeks promise, seeks certainty. It comes right as Emilia sends a flame toward the shifter's hand as it tries to touch Five.

[inferus]

Ben.

Wrath remembers Taravast. He remembers how even without the effects of Hell, even when Five's curse was relatively new (but still so full of anguish - a cycle until he removes it permanently), Five teleported to a roof because tentacles were there, because he thought it was his brother.

It was not, of course, but he nearly got himself killed then.

Now all this time later, and it is happening again, but this time with Hell's added influence, pulling his love and grief for his brother out of his brain and shifting his view of the both of them in turn. Five is already speaking to the false illusion as if it is real despite the warnings they gave them.

Speaking will change nothing.

Wrath does not have to wonder if the same effects will happen now. Emilia strikes out at the creature wearing his brother's face, and Wrath prepares himself to stop Five in his tracks the moment he attempts to move, freezing him in place with his magic and a word uttered in dark command:

"Stop." The illusion is not the only creature powered by Hell.

[somebadnews]

Five has barely made sense of why Ben would be in Hell. It pulls at an old guilt that brings him to the conclusion that he's there because of him. He has no idea how resurrection works, but how often are the gates of the afterlife open? This is his chance to save him. Somehow he found him in this horrible place, and he's begging for his help. The sudden alarming pleas of his brother are louder than any curse, and in a heartbeat his attention shifts to the nearby threat. He follows Ben's terrified gaze to see fire coming at them and his hands glow as he pulls at the reserves of his powers, ready to put an end to whoever dared hurt his family again —

Instead, the glow flickers abruptly and he stands unmoving as the flame reaches its target.

"No." He can't move. Uncomprehending agony overtakes rational thought. He feels like a trapped animal, pain swallowed up in a murderous rage, but his own body refuses to respond to his commands. Too slow, he was too slow and he was right here this time. Ben is hit while something invisible holds him back, and he can only shoot a wild and venomous glare at the demons sent to torture them.

He can still hear his brother beside him, burned and openly pleading now. He's been here so long. Five can stop this. He can take his place. Isn't that what he deserves? It's impossible to tell if it was his brother who asked, or a question resonating in his own mind and thumping against his chest, but Ben has a point. Five doesn't belong anywhere else. His only purpose is to save his family. What wouldn't he give to the brother he failed?

Unrelenting, he claws at his powers to rip open space and pull them to safety but no matter how much he tries, it remains just out of reach. It isn't supposed to end this way.

[valeas]

Emilia does not let herself be moved by either of their pleas.

If she allows herself the vulnerability now, there will be no hope for Five Hargreeves. She refuses to resurface from Hell only to tell Allison she has lost a second brother to borrowed agony. She refuses to let her own heart get in the way, whatever becomes of her relationship to Five.

At least he will live long enough to hate her for this.

Hate them.

Wrath issues his directive, and she's all too aware there is no time to waste. She moves where Five cannot, releases the hold on her knife the way an archer loosens an arrow. The sharp point of the dagger's blade lodges straight into the shifter's throat, pleas now gurgled. The sound of Five's name choked.

It is terrible, and it is anguishing, until it isn't. Ben's skin starts to turn scaled and green, his voice revealing a true demonic nature. Five has failed in its mind, and now the shifter screeches at him reproachfully in a language he will not understand. The chains rattle far louder than before, the attempts far more violent.

She strikes yet again.

[inferus]

The gold in Wrath's gaze sharpens with enjoyment at witnessing the violence that his wife's hands create. There's a sharp smile, watching the blood from the demon spurt out as the sharp point of the dagger slides into its throat. It awakens him. He moves forward with his demonic speed until he is in front of the creature. His wife has already readied it - it is not one of his demons, it does not serve him though it should.

It never should have attempted this with Wrath standing there. It should have shuddered in its skin, tried to retreat from it at the sight of him, the sight of the Goddess Fury as well. Instead of shutting this Hell away, Wrath wishes he could destroy it for being an abomination of what this place should be - unbalanced, out of control.

He reaches up, wraps his hand around the demon's neck, and snaps it with one fluid motion, removing the key as the body falls to the ground at his feet. This will fit the gate- a test as they knew it was, and their mortal friend failed it miserably. The anguish still roils from his curse in waves.

Wrath turns back to Five, releasing him from the magic that held him in place with a wave of his hand.

"Leave."

There is no magic to Wrath's command this time, but his voice sounds like it comes from the walls themselves, and his expression leaves little room for argument.

[somebadnews]

To his logical mind, Five may have figured an obvious trap out as fast as they did, but he was already miles beyond logic. The world is ending, his family is dead or dying, and it hurts. He's so tired of everything hurting. He jumped into Hell out of desperation, only to find one of his biggest regrets pleading with him to save him this time, to offer one last shot at redemption. Of course he'd take it. Wanted to.

And they were going to kill him again.

No, no no no no, don't—

Five pulls inwardly, calculating the seconds rapidly passing by so he can shove time backwards and break it if he has to, back to when he could spare him. But time stubbornly slips through his fingers and he can only stare in horror as the figures — moving faster than a shadow — stab his brother. Ben's plea for help ruptures into a horrible strangled noise as he chokes on his blood, and Five's mind goes blank, frozen in his furry and unbearable grief.

And then Ben isn't Ben.

The shadows start to take shape when the other snaps the demon's neck and Five blinks as he recognizes Wrath, then Emilia. Without warning the present slams into him with a force that leaves him shaking. It wasn't real. The moment he's released from Wrath's hold, he staggers on his feet, and he looks from one to the other and back to the twitching corpse he doesn't recognize. Too late. His heart drums in his ears as his devastation and cursed agony mutate into a force he can't contain. His brows break from confusion to fear as he struggles to keep himself from hyperventilating.

He's losing his fucking mind. White-knuckled fists pull at his hair as he attempts to latch onto something. Focus on the pain; anything to ground him. The walls vibrate and tell him to leave here and it takes too long for him to figure out where the voice originated. He can see it in Wrath's expression that he's failed them. Distantly, Dolores echos his sentiment. Get out. You're no help here.

Unable to speak, he nods and stares instead at his hands. He takes as many breaths as he can manage and screws his eyes shut while he attempts to find himself. Ignore the urge to look down again and risk seeing his brother lying there instead. If he saw it now, there would be no coming back until he'd quieted the urge to give into his worst urges and washed his grief in blood. Finally, he finds a thread to pull and grasps it with both hands.

In a flash, he's gone.