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westwhere2023-07-02 05:47 pm
groundrules) wrote in westwhere2023-07-02 05:47 pm
Entry tags:
- 911: evan 'buck' buckley,
- arcane: caitlyn,
- doctor who: clara oswald,
- doctor who: the doctor,
- game of thrones: jon snow,
- harry potter: hermione granger,
- kingdom of the wicked: emilia,
- kingdom of the wicked: wrath,
- legend of fei: xie yun,
- lockwood & co: anthony lockwood,
- mcu: america chavez,
- mcu: kamala khan,
- oh! my emperor: beitang moran,
- owl house: eda clawthorne,
- penny dreadful: vanessa ives,
- star wars: cal kestis,
- tian guan ci fu: xie lian,
- umbrella academy: five,
- untamed: wen ning,
- untamed: wen qing,
- warcraft: wrathion
the sunken | moonrise
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
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
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
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
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/hepossesses 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…!
wake, unwakefully
A groan interrupts her instruction, one rotting, water-bloated corpse making its slow way towards them from the alleyway.
"We'll tell you until when, go."
They girls run, and Hermione turns towards the alleyway. She could fling a spell at it, she could slow it down - more than it already is. But to linger here and fight one person would be selfish, when she guesses there will be more people around who need help to find their way home, much like the girls she just ushered away were.
"You just stay there," she tells the corpse, and runs in a different direction - towards the market - running right into someone else instead.
[ooc: hardmode option is let's get a mirror shard!]
/hoards your cr
"The well-mannered sort," with a brief nod at the corpse in the distance, but then he moves to rest his hands lightly on Hermione's shoulders to steady her, should she need it. A count of two seconds passes before he realises that's not nearly enough, and she might find herself suddenly pulled into a hug. Unapologetically. He'll apologise later if needs must.
"Spare a Time Lord two point four seconds for a hug, eh? Good. You're safe. My preferred state of being for Hermione Granger." He manages a smile. As if this is the time, but it is to him!
"Right — people to be helped! Most vulnerable by the water, I think, where the dead are coming. People milling about unawares. What do we think — that way, towards more dwellings —" The market, where she'd been going. "Or see if we can slow them down by the water?"
like the time lord dragon you are
She hugs back. Unapologetically.
"Thanks, I try," she says, although calling her safe in this place is a wild stretch. Are any of them ever? She shrugs that thought off just as she distances herself from the hug, which is at this point no longer needed - they talk business.
She looks from the market to the water, then back to the Doctor. "What do you have in mind for slowing them down, exactly?"
🐉
"Excellent question! Brain thinking thoughts as we speak in fact. The what will present itself when we get there."
Should he have mentioned ahead of time that he does most of his best planning in the heat of the moment?
"Trying to hold them back here or further in the village only keeps their numbers growing. The water, that's where we need to be. Trust me."
no subject
"So, essentially we improvise," she points out, with one raised eyebrow, even as she follows him to the water.
"It beats doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results," she says, with a sigh, and picks up her pace. The water. Business.
(Wait, she has a fact:) "That'd be the definition of insanity, according to Albert Einstein, you know?"
no subject
Yes, he will absolutely pivot and spin this around into a positive, because he can and must. We, of course, as if the Doctor and Hermione Granger — specifically — have done this sort of thing countless times; danger, risk, the unknown, and here they go dashing towards it with a hop, skip, and a bounce (well, perhaps more of the bouncing on his part).
Another smile because he does love a fact! "It would be. Keep the facts coming please, you've loads of them, I'm sure."
Up ahead, he sees a dock blessedly unoccupied for the moment.
"Point of comfort! If no solution presents itself — and really, why wouldn't it, we're cool, we're a cool pair, a solution should absolutely hang out with us —" There was a point there — "If. Then, between us, we can still hold them back regardless. Keep them from getting further inland from here."
no subject
Improvised on the train, too! Improvisation is clearly a sign of genius. Thankfully, as much as Hermione loves to read and study and excell at school, she's never been shy about making up the rules of her own game on the go. Or breaking some, if they didn't suit her - more and more, the older she gets, really.
Are they? A cool pair? They must be.
"So we either improvise our way through a solution to the invading undead masses, or become the front line?" she summarises, then shrugs. "Alright, I suppose that's motivation enough."
Look at that, they're at the water now.
no subject
"We improvise, yes, and if it comes to it, I won't let anything happen to you. On my life."
Of the two of them, though, she's the far more extraordinary one. That will always be true. He'll have her back, though, no matter what happens. Particularly as they're near the veritable lion's den and he's prattled on about theories and such. Near the source, that's where they should be. But has he led her astray? He'll do whatever it takes to protect her.
Yes, yes, he's been distracted enough. And here they are, at the water's edge, and so peering over — some of the corpses beneath the water seem to be...
"Have a look at this." As if it's the time! But — shiny objects! Sleeping corpses!
the most ADHD duo to ever exist
They can try, and if it fails to work they can go back to escorting civilians out of the grasp of zombies.
But first, a detour. There is something glittering under the water that catches her attention, a piece of glass? A mirror? This world and magical mirrors, honestly...
"What is that?" she asks, and because it feels closer within reach than the sleeping bodies do, she sticks her hand inside the water.
Which is a terrible idea.