westwhere | the sunken

the sunken | moonrise

THE SUNKEN | MOONRISE

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The final Arc VI event lasts three days ICly and until 23 July OOCly. Yancai goes back another two years in time to the Huntress’ visit, Miang-Si’s corruption and the memory-meddling rite of the ladies of the lake.

The party can choose to stay neutral, only heading to the House of Commerce to access its now-active beacon — or they can inevitably get mixed up in the affairs of Yancai and endanger the village’s time loop.

For a quick catch-up: the latest clues | everything about Arc VI.

BOAR’S HEART

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Rattled, on high alert, feeling watched and skin prickling from static electricity, characters wake to find Yancai has gone back another two years in time. It is now nearly dry, barring rare waterways. Mould is absent. The village bustles with activity: a heavy influx of new arrivals comes by sea, and frequent fishermen’s and merchants’ markets set up in the open road — enjoy fresh fish delicacies, discounted pearls, rare cloth textiles and dyes that include the unique Yancai green!

■ No more hauntings take place, and only one moon loiters above the village. Villagers still remember the party under their false identities.

■ Word has spread of the conflict between elder Quanze Tsaymien’s council and a beautiful woman who has taken up in the forests at the village’s outskirts. Gossipmongers say she wastes away in the woods weeping — while ground cracks beneath her feet, grass wilts, waters poison and animals drop dead nearby. Young men are drawn to her and are later forcibly recovered in a state of rambling, feverish exhaustion. Village healers gladly accept your nursing help.

■ Village elders have given the woman — correctly identified by the party as the Huntress — until the following sunrise to leave Yancai on pain of death. You have 24h to encounter her.

■ The forests are livelier than in previous iterations of Yancai, but you feel perpetually… watched, as if sharp eyes follow your progress. These heavy gazes may belong to the young men bewitched to protect the Huntress, or to razor-clawed venom-spitting creatures that hunt her.

■ You may find some of the aforementioned creatures bleeding on the forest path. They possess slightly above canine intelligence, cannot communicate in human tongues, and hesitate to let you approach — but nursing one might reward you.

■ The death-touched (necromancers, those who died or revived, or otherwise marked) may optionally feel compelled to join the Huntress. Physical distance dwindles her pull, as can your own magic or solutions.

■ Luck (?) leads you to a silent and bloodied forest clearing, come sunset. Here, two dozens of Yancai’s recent dead have risen alive and surround the Huntress, some battling the creatures that assail her, while she speaks to 16-year-old village beauty Miang-Si. There is a gaping, if regenerating hole in the Huntress’ chest; in one hand, she holds her yet-beating heart she cuts in several parts she wraps in parchment. She asks Miang-Si to bury these pouches near Yancai to ‘hold her power close,’ in exchange for permanent and ever-blossoming beauty.

■ Wait as the Huntress and her forces retreat — then catch up to Miang-Si, capture her, or find the pouches. The ground where they are buried is desaturated, brittle, nearly pulverised. Hawks and ravens circle above and plunge down to claw at intruders, or attempt to pick up children or feebler adults. To the magically or death-sensitive, the pouches emanate a revolting aura of withering death.

■ Beware if heart pouches were buried beneath aged, thick trees — their roots burst out like nooses and writhing spiders’ legs, looking to either slam you against the tree trunks or entrap you within.

■ Finding at least two heart pouches prevents the dead from rising in Yancai in the years to come! Keep the heart cuts fettered — touching these parts directly can overwhelm you with the need to consume this or other hearts, to compensate for the sudden and unfeeling… coldness in your chest.

WAKE, UNWAKEFULLY

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Sunrise finds the Huntress gone from Yancai — while waves of the dead rise from the sea to attack the village. Some come chained, or dragging pieces from the casket-ships in which they were set for water burial.

This is the first undead attack witnessed by Yancai villagers, who are largely clumsy, slow and petrified. Some sentimentally believe their revived relatives never died and plead not to kill them. Many are caught in undefended areas, such as open port harbours, fishing boats, markets — and need help to travel to their families. The Huntress’ spell starts dissolving by midday, with the dead largely pulling back into sea and lake waters

■ Beware the village waterways: touching the water replenishes the strength of the dead and saps yours. Look closely at the bottom of the waterways, and you find them lined with dozens of resting corpses. Some wake slowly, as they clutch shards of glistening black mirror — best to… use a very long oar… or plunge very quickly to recover shards.

■ Carrying a mirror shard puts the dead around you to blissful sleep. Those who possess a cut of the Huntress’ heart can take control of up to 20 of the risen dead. Necromancers can control up to 10, even without such a token.

MOTHER MOON

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Come midday of Day II, Yancai villagers start to move freely and reunite with loved ones. Waters begin to gently rise and flood the grounds, while the first spores of black mould appear on walls.

The first to help the injured are the washerwomen of Yancai, who favour the young and magically sensitive. You notice they work in perfect synchrony and have developed a hand sign language they can teach you. Keep an ear out, and one might entrust they are hedge witches, the so-called ‘ladies’ of the lake.

■ Join them, either invited or unseen, when they gather at one of Yancai’s three great lakes. Each lady picks up one of the silver coins tossed in the water for luck-bearing. Take one yourself, and you will be able to breathe and speak underwater, following as the ladies dive and swim through thin underwater passageways. Beware countless skeletal remains that line the lakes and sinister fish — both burst out to shackle your limbs, or sound the alarm about intruders.

■ You find the ladies have begun to shelter and ward the dead in lake caves, to avoid their rising up again. The ladies re-emerge in the forest, speaking of a protection rite they agreed with the elders’ council. They are not strong enough to break the Huntress’ lingering spell, but hope to later recruit nascent witch Miang-Si, who teases she has power from the Huntress. For now, the ladies have decided to create a five-year time loop, moving Yancai back and forth in time whenever the dead attack.

■ To achieve their rite, the ladies use large pieces of black mirror confiscated from the Huntress’ dead and the energy of the hunter’s moon that shines down a bloody red tonight. Those with a lunar connection feel the moon aches, disgusted by this violation. Even those unaffiliated with the moon feel irascible and prone to violence while under its gaze.

■ Interrupting the rite rescues the moon, earning you a reward, and breaks villagers from the five-year loop, allowing them to live their true lives. It also exposes Yancai to the dead, unless you remove the heart cuts. Co-ordinate and choose wisely.

■ The ladies conduct their chanting, rune-painting and summons throughout the night of Day III in the forest. You have a wealth of options to break their spell: interfere with the magic flows, disrupt the guarded ash circle of convened witches, summon irate villagers to raid, persuade Miang-Si to intervene, break or steal the rite’s black mirror pieces… You can also reach out to the coven’s strongest witches, who agreed to sacrifice themselves to become overseers in the time flux — the Lumberjack, Red Lady, White Woman, Man in Black and the Milk-Toothed Babes. You can still sign up for a RNG draw to chat.

BAIT & BEACON

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To take attention off the ladies of the lake, Yancai’s council organises a sumptuous masked banquet and charity auction for the victims of the undead attack at the lavish House of Commerce. The House has been thoroughly cleansed by the time of your arrival, with only faint, clumsy traces of blood, decay and debris lingering from the previous offensive.

On site, servants are still jittery from the undead assault, while openly armed guards walk the grounds and answer any small provocation. Be kind to the staff or offer sympathy for their likely recent losses, and they might let you in unnoticed, or offer a hand.

■ Anyone who brings an item for the auction or who ~~can pretend s/he~~ possesses massive wealth can join the banquet. Show up with anything you can brazenly talk up as elite, exquisite or one-of-a-kind — or perhaps auction your services?

■ The House of Commerce contains a locked room with the village’s now fully active beacon. The Master of Commerce has the only key-tokens to access this quarter, somewhere in his study room — pick a lock, sweettalk the staff, or work your magic to get inside the study and grab one of the rune-inscribed tokens. The study room brims with scrolls, globes, letters to and from the Dawn’s Reach Trade Company and maps of… Arc I’s Sa-Hareth in the west, where hand-written news reports say the dead are rising.

■ Back at the banquet, the richest wine and… relaxing herbs and powders are offered freely or sometimes slipped into food to ease spirits. Aiming for levity, participants don comical animal masks or play a local game of ‘bait or hook,’ whereby they approach you with the aforementioned fishing bait or fish hook in closed fists, asking you to pick one. Depending on your choice, you must ‘bait’ the audience with a song or dance, or ‘hook’ them in with a joke or anecdote.

■ Around midnight, attendants are invited to an increasingly competitive auction, punctuated by elbowing, loud voices, crowding and the occasional threat. Beautiful concubines might stick to your arms, asking to be purchased this or that (exorbitant) small nothing as a gift. Participate to keep up your cover, but beware landing in hard debt!

■ Most banquet goers pretend they are indifferent to the undead attack, but some question whether the woman of the forest was to blame — while others mention that the mysterious, far too independent coven of the ladies of the lake is meeting even now, and might be cursing Yancai.

■ However you spend your night, the witch Karsa asks you to infiltrate the House of Commerce by dawns and attempt to leave through the beacon. This will only be possible if at least one person has picked up a key-token…!

QUESTIONS

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( And is she? She knows, intuitively, the look of her, of these woods: a lone woman, beautiful. Attractive. Compellingly so, once to her husband and to the numerous men who pursued her. )

It will pass. ( She does not look up, hand splayed on her chest, digging in. Claiming her hurts back. ) Ride on, stranger.

( But then, derisively: ) Or buy a horse first.

[He scoffs at that, and his lips press together.]

Seems you're more in need of the aid. Every step a struggle.

Is that why you stay in this village? No horse?

[He's a bit derisive too, at least in the way that makes it sound like he doesn't think so.]

I'll ride you instead.

( A horse. Her horse. How does he —

She snarls, before she can remember herself, some part of her sensing the shift in power, in dynamic. Whoever this man is, the extent of his knowledge of her is not accidental, it cannot be so.

He comes too near. And reeks of — )

There's a smell to you. You reek of... water.

[His expression darkens at the suggestive comment. Faint chance of that.]

I smell of snow, might be.

[Might have been, if he was in his proper place. But he cannot tell whether she means he smells of the village, or he has been dead and now is not.]

What do you know of the water here, lady?

...no. No, there's more to you. There's...

( She clicks her tongue, turning enough to perceive him from a distance, gaze shifting from his body to the ground, never meeting his eyes. Those who lock glances with her relive the worst of their sorrows, she has noticed. Another aspect of her curse. )

You're part of it. The water. The mirrors. I smell it on you. You're part of...

( Here, her hand goes out, pale and slight, in offering. Once, Anui was the most beautiful woman of a land whole. Surely, she has not surrendered this much of her appeal. )

Everything you ask of.

Aye.

[He acknowledges it, with a bend of his head, but does not take her hand. She is beautiful, or was, but a beautiful woman awaits him somewhere else, a woman whose creatures are all life and flame.]

Do you need help now? [He is not sure that he really cares, but he sees the outstretched hand and wonders if it's any sort of real appeal.] I have met your people, your husband as was. My allies aided you. I only missed meeting your child because I was away from the city he had come to.

This is not Ke-Waihu, not Anurr's lands --

Why are you here?

( Her hand first holds — then trembles — then drifts down, the cut of her gaze sharpening. She sees him for what he is, now, not a saviour, not a potential instrument, but a mere intruder.

Perhaps one of countless many voices and faces who deride her, who live only to mock her hurts. Her husband's instruments. )

I am running. From that devil. That monster you call my husband. You have seen him? You have known him? How can any woman stand him? He is grotesque, he is feral, he is unforgiving.

( She gave up her child to blessed Waihu, and for her sacrifice, he shames her. )

[Perhaps she is running. He doesn't know what to make of it, with the way she's played with time. Still -- ]

He is dead.

[He tells her flatly, with a hint of reproach.]

Long since. I did not deal the killing blow, but I watched him die for the last time. I learned why he became what he was.

What do you mean? I saw him, mere weeks gone. On my tail. Chasing.

( But then, weeks are not as nothing. Blows take mere heartbeats, and could it be so simple? That man, that monster, no longer seeking her death?

Once, she had called him beloved. Born his child. Even now, her mouth wavers, trembles, and she looks first askance, then away, and the hand that clutches her heart curls in, dipping partly into the hole. Seeking that which would not beat for him, even if it rested within her body. )

If you speak truth, if he died. Then I spit on his grave. And brother Waihu will be grateful.

( ooc: just to confirm: she only knows the Beastmaster alive because this time period is now five years before the current one — but the Beastmaster remains dead c: )

[The little clench of her hand -- the trembling in her fair face -- softens him, but only a bit. Might be that she loved her husband once; all he knows points to it. Might be that her reactions to the news mean something else, but he does not see relief in him.]

If it's weeks to you -- well, time is out of joint.

You can leave this place. He will not find you.

He always find me.

( This, disgusted, irritated, plain. Resigned, only in the way in which she might accept the turning of hours, the downing and rise of the sun. )

As if he's the first and only man who's ever lost a son. ( Then, snarling, white of her teeth glistened. Even these, she knows, pretty. Every part of her is. ) As if I didn't.

( Perhaps, some might say, the difference is in the surrender: that she orchestrated the child's demise, where her husband only suffered it. All the same. )

[His demeanor hardens again.]

I knew a woman who gave her little girl to the flames. She did not want to live much longer than that, and so, she didn't.

Why did you? Why did you let your child burn? Why did you send him to it?

[Why would anyone? His jaw is tight; his anger at this breaks through in his voice, but only a little.]

( Here, her voice breaks — unclearly, if for love of the son she has lost, or sudden, overwhelming, all-gripping deference before a greater power than her own. Religious revelation is all consuming. )

Because he was called. It was his destiny. ( Assisted, perhaps, by the prophecies and encouragements of Ke-Waihu and the sect leaders of the House of Ravens. )

My boy, so smart, so handsome... they said, his father's son, but I knew. Brother Sanwon wanted him. How could the Brother not?

( The volcano demanded, and it would not be denied. )

And he wanted to go. He never opposed it. I spoke the words, but he. He understood. How could I have denied him his place in history?

[He looks appalled.]

It's a mother's duty to protect her child from those who would hurt them. And he was not only your child. Might be that he did not speak because he trusted you. I don't think there are any words that could --

And look what has come of all of this. Chasing each other all over the world and bringing nothing but death. Did the man in white come to you, too?

Or perhaps — ( Hissed, snarling, hand to her absent, bleeding, gaping wound. To her missing heart. ) He wanted it. And you know nothing of him, of our family.

( ...one torn, dissolved into hatred and hunt. She raises her gaze, nearly seeking the man's, to inflict upon him the horror of her sorrow. )

Matthias, is it? Oh, he came. He made me into... this. He said, I will make it so your husband can't catch you. And he didn't lie. He's a funny man, like you. But he doesn't lie.

[As he looks at her, he feels sharp pains in his chest and side. Knives. He grits his teeth at them. But the pain in his chest is also like what he felt when he held Ygritte as she died -- the pain anyone might feel watching someone they loved die. He wonders if The Huntress felt this when her son was fed to Sanwon. He doesn't know if it's worse if she did, or if she didn't.

He should want to be far from her, but he can't bring himself to pull away.]

Aye, he gives all of you just what you think you want. Gave your husband the power he had, too. Worked at him until he took the offer. Set you against each other.

He has not helped you, lady, whatever you think. [His words are labored now.] He has made you his tools.

Oh, I know. ( This, hissed again and embittered. Almost as if she wishes to whip herself with her own cruelty — or the version of herself that didn't catch on, at the right time. )

I know what he did. Lied to me, pretended to be on my side. For his amusement. And now I'm running a world whole, and that monster, my man, gives me chase. And he's given us both gifts, did Matthias. Don't you think I see?

( And spitting aside, blood on her lips. ) No, I'm not loyal. Kill him with both hands, if you want.

[His breathing is labored now too, but not for the same reason. The pain still fills him, and he feels cold, and still disinclined to leave her side, though it would be better to.]

We mean to. He lost a child too, in Ellethia. Might be that -- well, never mind.

You should leave this place, woman, leave this place or aid us in our fight. [Ragged words. He wishes for Dany, who seems so apart from everything that happened to him when he was in the Watch.] I know that we have aided you against your husband. It will be a time before you see it.

Oh? And is he the first man who lost a child?

( Think of her hurts, her losses. What difference is there between what Matthias has surrendered and what Anui herself has sacrificed? )

A time...? What do you mean, stranger? Will we be as friends, then? ( A smile, drawn out cruelly. )

Perhaps you'll take me on your arm and walk me as your woman, then. A widow. Will we be allies? ( It seems preposterous, unlikely. A tenuous proposition. And yet she hears and heeds. )

We have a great number of allies, but I have a woman.

[The one with the dragon, he almost says, then realizes he does not wish to tell her who Dany is.

He shudders. So cold. Only dying is this cold.]

That doesn't mean we may not come to help each other someday.

[What comes after that, he doesn't know. They fight her after they fight Matthias, all truces ended. But something strikes him.]

The man in white... did he ever speak to your son? Did your son see something? Something to make him want to go to Sanwon?

( Another woman, of course. That is what they all say, before they make attempt against her, all the same. She has learned, has Anui, that men are entirely wedded to their appetites. That they will never rise above their base urges — to own, to fuck, to kill.

Only Matthias plays his game. )

Matthias, he only came after. Spoke to my man, they say. ( A shrug, slow. As if it nearly does not impact her, for all it lead her life to its ruin. ) He never met my son in Ke-Waihu. And my son... died. Of course, Matthias... you ask, surely, you must mean — if he raised my son from the dead?

( Here, her shrill laughter seems almost pleased, at long last triumphant. ) No. He cannot steal from Ke-Sanwon. The volcano held my son.

( ...as far as she knows, he never survived. )

[He shakes his head, hasty and desperate.]

Your son lives. Not as he was, but he lives. I do not know where he is now. Look for where there is sickness -- he may be there. May be that there is no sickness any longer -- I know that my company aided him. I did not see him, I was in the desert with my queen, but he lives, as you live. Others saw him and spoke to him.

( She is still, frozen in place, her limbs paralyzed. When she moves, chin jutting, it is as if she is a wild animal, seeking succor. As if she must run. )

What...? How do you know? How are you so certain? You — ( It feels almost as if she herself uncertain if she welcomes the news or fears it. ) You did not even see him, you say so. You say so.

( It cannot be. He is dead. She saw him dead. )

I trust that the others in my company saw him, spoke to him, tried to help him. I trust what they say. The child lives as you live. Four years, five years on.

[Which is to say: everyone in this conversation has died and come back.]

You might find him, or he might find you. Look for where there has been a sickness.

[He does not know if it is consolation or a threat; he only hopes it is incentive for her to leave Yancai, leave the girl, leave the dead in peace.]

...no. No, it can't be. How would they know, how would — are they from Ke-Waihu? Your people? They knew my son?

( How else would they know he was her son, if not for having seen him prior? She shudders, but sounds, all at once, young and strained, finding her purpose.

She feels... raw. )

I want to know, I want you to prove. How do you know this was my son? ( And hissing: ) I will reward you for it. Tell me.

"I met a traveler from an antique land..."

northerndragon - 2023-07-15 06:59 (UTC) - Expand

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aprescoup - 2023-07-15 16:11 (UTC) - Expand

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the sunken | moonrise

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"I met a traveler from an antique land..."

brb carving legs of stone