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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…!
no subject
To... kill her? ]
Well, if she attacks me I will of course defend myself. I'm not sure she'll have reason to suspect us of interfering unless we give her one, however. Come.
[ He moves through the woods with her -- careful, light on his feet. Looking for signs of others traversing too, and specifically of any digging. The forest is not small, of course, but there are some... clues.
Wrathion pauses, looks up at where some birds are circling.
Well, there's certainly something there. He inclines his head towards them, glances at Hermione and begins to move towards the area. ]
no subject
Not that part.
If improvising is up to Hermione, they're in trouble - last time she felt she had to do that, she called Wrathion her betrothed.
Thankfully, the inner turmoil is given something else to do: birdwatching.]
They might be carrions. Let's try to check that area out, and see if it's still green.
no subject
The earth around the tree is disturbed, dead, brittle. That, and -- ]
Well, it certainly feels and looks unpleasant here. I'd wager we're in the right place.
no subject
She purses her lips, then gives him A Look. ]
I'm not taking bets I'd lose.
[ she nods towards the ground that's disturbed, and decides they've got to start digging, so she gets down on her knees and starts to dig with her bare hands. ]
no subject
[ Wrathion gestures for her to pause, glancing up at the birds. One lunges alarmingly close but seems to keep its distance for now.
Wrathion holds out a hand, and reaches. The ground begins to reshape around the tree, earth moving for his will as he searches. A skill of earth dragons that is vanishingly rare in its usefulness here, but for this one task is finally useful.
The tree roots begin to move, begin to unearth themselves and Wrathion glances sideways at one in irritation. ]
... I'm not the one controlling this tree, however.
[ To be clear, that isn't part of the plan. ]
no subject
She waves her hand quickly to defend herself, for good measure throwing up a shielding spell above both of them while the draws the package out by magic.
She should have really just done it by magic. ]
Are you moving the - ah, right.
[ He answered that one by himself. She aims a quick spell at the root, freezing it still. ]
Let's try getting whatever is in there and hurry out of here.
no subject
I wasn't aiming to linger.
[ Why does everyone always seem to think he doesn't work fast enough? He's doing it as fast as he can! ]
no subject
Didn't think you were - just making chitchat - reviewing my life choices.
[ And freezing more tree roots. ]
no subject
[ The package rises to the top, and Wrathion dives for it.
He immediately flinches, face jerking back after having leaned in. Something about it, about whatever is wrapped in the paper, is making him... uneasy. ]
This is it.
[ Said with low, hypnotic fascination. A bird dives for him again, and he startles -- ducks out of the way. ]
no subject
Brilliant, you're brilliant - thank -
[ Cold. Cold, cold, her chest feels cold, as if she's missing something, missing this, a hole in her throat, a heaviness there. She could swear there's something warm inside that paper bundle, something begging to be unwrapped. (Consumed.) Her eyes glaze over for a moment, her breathing shallow - and then there's a diffrent sort of heat around her wrist that snaps her out of it. She looks down at the bracelet from Wrathion, then up at him, then down at the heart. ]
Damn it.
[ It feels like nails running down a chalkboard to do this, but she does it anyway. She drops the package to the ground and summons the first thing she can think of out of her bag - that blasted chastity belt she's been carrying inside the bag since Taravast. ]
Don't touch it with your bare hands - it's her pull.
no subject
[ Hello, he's a dragon, he's immune to everything he decides he should be immune to! Wrathion snatches up the bundle, still cradled in the paper for now, and squints up at the sky. ]
We should get moving, before these birds bother us much more -- or before anything else does for that matter.
[ Can the heart piece itself attract undead? A question worth considering. He might need to ward it into a box, as they did with other unpleasant body parts. Something about the aura of death permeating the area has him unsettled, cold. He doesn't want to linger. ]
no subject
She stuffs the belt back in the bag and dusts off her hands clean for something to do, so she doesn't fluster some more.] Right, fine - you hold onto it. It made me feel like I was missing a heart, so I don't want to touch it - let's get out of the forest. We can store is somewhere better at home.
[That's the easiest word for that abode they were occupying. It has plenty of boxes.]
no subject
Interesting. ]
Agreed. Let us leave this place.
[ He gestures at the ground, the earth smoothing over again, and turns to begin pacing out of the forest -- a glance spared back to Hermione to make sure she is following. Birds begin to dive at him again and he growls, a deliberately animalistic and hoping to put them off. The package shifts in his hands, grip adjusting on it distractedly.
The coldness still permeates. Something of the undead, he supposes. It is... disconcerting. He walks faster. ]
no subject
Don't suppose you have a box or a satchel we can put that in? It might help discourage the birds?
[ Said while breaking into a light jog because - Wrathion walking faster means she starts jogging to keep up. (He gave himself long legs too, didn't he?) ]
Or I'll Apparate us to the house.
no subject
Not that he would ever have fun in such a serious moment. He is a consummate professional. ]
If you're confident apparating from here. None of the magic in this time rift disrupts things?
[ He's fidgeting with the wrapped heart idly. He has not put it in a box, or satchel. This is fine, because of course, Black Dragons are very powerful and there is nothing to be concerned about! ]