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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
You would have made Diego proud. [ Which is only half a compliment, but his brother had a hero complex that couldn't be beat. ] I was about to—
[ On cue, he turns at the sound of boards creaking, as a handful of undead pulling themselves up from the water behind them. Not counting the ones regrouping on land. He has a feeling they're going to make it difficult to reach the forest if they don't teleport there.
He doubts Kamala will be happy about leaving people who aren't so capable of defending themselves from their dead relatives. Like hell he's going to leave her here to fight them by herself, so they'll just have to deal with this. ]
Hold that thought.
no subject
[Yes, Five heard that right. That is what Kamala took away from the five minutes she knew Diego. If he knew Aamir Khan it would make perfect sense.
Sadly they do not live in a world where they can chat about their lame brothers. They live in one where the undead attack pretty regularly. Kamala spins on her heel to slip into her preferred fighting stance. Both arms raise, hands clutched into fists as the light wraps around and hardens as protective armor. She chooses to face the creepy water corpses first. It doesn't even cross her mind to use the run option Five can easily provide.]
Listen up! Every time one of you pops out of the water, you start hurting people so you better stop now or else I have to hurt you.
[Unsurprisingly, they only advance. Kamala huffs in irritation.] Well, I tried. [A purple light hand shoots out to shove the ones exiting the water back in hard enough to go flying back in.]
no subject
The bravado is definitely a Diego-move, so he can only hope his brother didn't rub off on her too much during their brief time together. Although neither of them could shoot out light the way she's doing right now. He nods in approval when she beats one of them back into the water, then leans down to grab what looks to be a broken fishing rod. Anything is a weapon if you believe. ]
Take the water, I'll work on the ones behind us. [ While keeping an eye on her, of course. Hopefully she won't be watching him when he teleports again to jump to the advancing undead and finds creative ways to mutilate corpses with a stick. He's fast enough that she could blink and miss it, which is what he's counting on.
He loses the rod by the third body that hits the ground, and then he's back to searching it for a better tool while looking back to the water to see how she's handling the others. ]
no subject
Kamala settles for grabbing them with purple construct hands and tossing them hard back into the water. Any extras are easily knocked back in with the extended limbs each time she moves. She shields herself from any splashing largely by instinct; a thin layer of purple surrounds her as she works.
Here's the thing: they can't get tired. The ones that aren't taking massive damage from these tosses just start to come back. One soon tries to grab at her ankles. She yelps, stomping on the hand with a boot of light. Her face of disgust at the mess she makes is the stuff of legends.]
I think there might be too many! [She is already jumping onto a construct to get into the air. It's only then she notices Five's predicament. She immediately scrambles to get to the spot earlier where she and Eda found the paddles.
She grabs it with one extended hand while shoving back another wave that seems to be emboldened by the ruckus she's making each time she tosses one of their kinds in.] Five, catch! [She tosses it in his general direction with zero doubt he'll catch it. He's kind of cool like that.]
no subject
He looks up when she tosses something his way, and he blinks a few feet to catch it. A paddle. He nods his thanks; he can work with that.
A few more flashes of light later and he returns to Kamala's position, still holding a shortened and now very bloody stick. Easy to miss in the dark. Once they've cleared enough to respond, he gets her attention. ]
You're right, there's too many. [ He may have handled most of the ones crowding from dry land, but there's no shortage of undead in the water to replace them. Kamala seems to have enough energy to keep going, but Five only has so many surprise attacks in him before he runs out of juice. ] The only way we stop this is if we chase off the Huntress.
[ The question is which is more dangerous. He debates that while shoving a stick into the face of a corpse trying to crawl its way on up the deck. ]
...We need to get to the woods.
no subject
Kamala forms a solid shield with some concentration and shoves it forward like a battering ram. Bodies fly like ragdolls. She fails to contain a wince at the sight. That will buy them some time to answer the question of how they're retreating.] Can you take us both or do we need to use my platforms? I promise I won't drop you.
[Granted she doesn't have the best track record with it. She thinks Five will be better following her lead than actual children.]
no subject
At her question, he's back to the problem at hand. God, he hopes he can. It's not that he isn't impressed by Kamala, but one way of travel is much safer than the other. He grips his fists and feels his powers starting to strain and the blue light flickers. A jump that big and he might not be able to do it again for a while.
No choice. ]
I've got it. [ And with that, he takes her shoulder and blinks them as close to the woods as he can manage. Then it's just a matter of rewriting history before it screws them again. ]