westwhere | unkharil

unkharil | event

UNKHARIL

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Leaving the House of Manouk through waypoints, the party arrives back to the present time of Akhuras, in the jungle swathes of Unkharil. Those undergoing a canon update fleetingly detour into their home worlds. Old or new, you wake with a start, on high alert — body ablaze with static electricity. Some characters might struggle with vertigo, misted memories and dimmed powers for up to 48 hours, while their bodies readjust to no longer being lost in time.

You are in the care of a highly disciplined, if largely nomadic caravan — the refugees of most holy Alem, the kingdom built upon hell that succumbed to the undead. Karsa informs new recruits that the party assisted Alem’s king Deimar with evacuation efforts and with sealing the gates of hell, months prior. Their kingdom lost, Deimar has now taken his people to his mother’s ancestral grounds of Unkharil — a temple-fortress in a valley bordered by four tall mountains that serve as its protective walls.

Legend says the four mountains pillared the heavens, while snake god Kharil-asuk nested in the valley below to recover after birthing the world. So long was his sleep that cloud gods sent down the first bursts of lightning and thunder — frightening awake Kharil-asuk, who slithered into the jungle, never to be seen again. Since, sacred Unkharil has served as site of worship and coronations.

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King Deimar — whimsical, breezy, but cuttingly sharp — welcomes you in Unkharil, until the Merchant finalises your travel arrangements east. His people are weary, battle-worn and starved for kindness. Where applicable, some might optionally remember you under the false identity you wore in Arc V.

Seek out accommodations in the stone huts of the temple-fortress or the humble, often single-person cells that were dug bluntly into the mountain walls for hermit monks. Unkharil was deserted over the years as Kharil-asuk’s cult lost worship — but superstitious bandits have kept their looting away from temple grounds. You may still find furniture, pieces of clothing and worship, while refugees can spare clothes and food supplies.

TASKS

■ Assist with cleaning and reconstructing the destitute grounds of Unkharil, raising new stone columns and cleansing altars. Those with a connection to nature or the animals sense this is a quiet, revered territory.

■ Many survivors of Alem’s siege suffer from burns, cuts or trauma you can allay. The orphaned, widowed and wounded appreciate a kind word, company or help settling in.

■ Find a thin golden stream in the jungle, whose tepid waters may accelerate healing, improve your spirits or give you a day of staggering good luck. Bring back waters for recovering refugees.

■ Learn to use mountain scaling gear (rope-bound pairs encouraged) — or tame a 3-meter Kalioperus flier (useful for scouting and the Wailing below). Refugees and the few remaining temple monks may assist, but it’s learning by doing on the slippery mountain sides and with the thin-tempered fliers.

■ Largely warriors, Deimar’s people lost numerous troops defending Alem and now replenish their forces by teaching their youth weapons combat and light magic. Come dawns, join them in the courtyard to learn a skill or offer your own lessons. Alem instructors are strict, disciplined and martial — but fair. Characters who lack natural magic can learn to operate gem-triggered spheres that generate shields or a burst of fire/lightning. You may keep the gems after, but your character will need a few weeks of study to achieve mastery.

■ (Learn to) fish, hunt and forage to renew supplies. Beware flesh-eating fish in some jungle rivers. Ride an okapi?

■ Yet wary of traders, Deimar (grudgingly) invites merchants to revive their routes to Unkharil, with many caravans, errant scholars, priests, necromancers and sorcerers arriving to study his proposition. Some arrive all the way from magical jewel city Taravast — including an exuberant acolyte of old master Wrath! — and may offer exotic food and drink, or unique items. You may trade or earn coin by selling services or performances. Musical, art and thespian instruments can be found on the grounds.

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QUESTS

THE HEART(H) OF IT

”Rise and shine, lads! Heat of a jungle’s sun won’t be waning, no use waiting it out. The iron here’s rung cold too long. What little’s left of it. Shows the place was run by monks. They abandoned the smithy, once the fires guttered, and the mines, soon as the mouths collapsed only a little! Ha. Spoiled devils. Even left behind the ore already dug out. You go right in and fetch some iron… some copper, some silver… whatever yo find. We’ll get the blaze going. Time to forge. Don’t worry. We’ll make it worth your while.”

— Eitam, master forger

Deimar’s ironmongers revive the smithy of Unkharil but require precious ore and materials for manufacturing. Scale the steep mountain of Masida that walls in Unkharil to the east and infiltrate its abandoned mine to recover some previously discovered, but abandoned goods. Beware crumbling paths, rotten wood stairs and moulding ropes, as parts of the mines threaten collapse. Refugees supply golden fireworks that can shoot out to alert anyone within the mine you are in danger. Blacksmith rewards await.

PAVED WITH GOOD INTENTIONS

Visiting merchants are willing to resume trade, but have ongoing safety concerns.

■ Meet a first set of incoming grain-bearing caravans in the jungle and escort them on the last six-hour leg of their voyage to Unkharil. These are hefty and slow wagons, frequently targeted by bandits who dam their paths or pretend they are wounded, while their brothers attack from tree outposts.

■ Destroy the encampments of the vicious jungle-based Red Claws bandits. These outlaws typically attack in groups, share nightly meals and drink to strengthen their ties, providing excellent ambush opportunities. They cover their faces with a cinnabar or blood print of their leader’s palm.

■ Hold talks to appease the merchants Balthazar (easily impressed by shows and the arts) and Anathula (who wants a clear business pitch). Give diplomacy your best!

THE WAILING

”… they were so happy, so holy, then why do they shame themselves with tears now? You must be wondering. The truth does not honour us: first, Unkharil’s priesthood only accepted brothers from among those who survived snake’s poison. But the chosen were few, and the lands needed tending. Then, Unkharil accepted brothers from men of great skill, literacy and wisdom. But the learned were few, and the lands needed tending. Then, Unkharil accepted orphans, survivors of the jungle, men of the snake’s vision. But wanderers were few, and the lands needed tending. And soon, what recruits Kharil-asuk did not provide, in his mercy — his priesthood took… from the breasts of widows, from pillaged homes, from bandits. They kept even the most unwilling.”

— groundsmaster Kayik

Unkharil’s new residents soon find their beauty sleep disrupted by nightly wails, projected from several of the monk cells dug into Mount Nathadi, which walls in Unkharil from the south. These are the ghosts of former monks, whom you can appease by scaling the mountain and cleaning their cell, recovering their bones for burial (where applicable) or providing a minor service for the ghost (your choice of what the monk might desire: perhaps the recitation of a poem, an update on the weather outside, a good deed, etc.) Many of the monks were especially devoted to Kharil-asuk and to theories of reincarnation — for the lives of men are to the soul like a snake shedding its skin — and may impart you their wisdom.

WATER MY CROPS

Help Deimar’s people to revitalise local soil, seed gardens and crops, build dams and redirect jungle rivers. Water or lunar tide sorcery also work. Alem refugees were primarily warriors and will need you to illustrate the basics of gardening and land care.

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TO DAYS GONE BY

To welcome the start of their new lives, the refugees hold two nights of celebrations. During the day, you prepare tall bonfires or purify the lands with incense and sage-infused water, finding you are readily welcome in every home.

■ The first banquet night (OOCly on 25 August) pays homage to the lost: the survivors of Alem remember the siege and encourage you to speak of your own dead. Letters of penance, love or remembrance are written to the dead, read by the witness of your choosing and burned in bonfires. Heavy, syrupy and thick drink abounds.

■ The second banquet night (OOCly on 5 September) honours the living: everyone must show and express gratitude to someone alive, for any reason. Grit your teeth and offer thanks.

SERVANTS OF AFIRU (warning: snakes)

”There was no strength left in the bones of Kharil-asuk, after birthing the ground and the sky and the moon, and man and his mountains. And the first son of his likeness paid the price: brave white Afiru, small and feeble, but how proud he was! And the dozen men who caught him, not knowing his right divine, thought they did him a kindness to cull his pain young: to set him on a slate of stone and cut him in small parts, and eat of him for their dinner. Fools! Each bite of Afiru took root within them! Come morning, a dozen men woke in the image of Afiru: half snake, half human, beastly and cunning, their roiling bellies only quenched when they ate of their brothers. So, Afiru seeded his curse, and that same stone plate is now his altar: and just as he washed it with his life’s blood for men, so too must men now pay the price of bleeding.”

— old village tale

Within the jungle depths sleeps the minor, ruined temple of serpent god Afiru — malicious son of Kharil-asuk — whose mind-thralled servants abduct hapless innocents as sacrifices to the deity’s naga emissaries. Infiltrate the decayed temple to ruin Afiru’s altar — releasing his servants from their thrall and ending his worship. The naga priests are half beasts, half men, but deathly silent and possessed of fiercely sharp and venomous claws and fangs. If poisoned, your wounded limb swells, then numbs, then darkens as the toxin spreads through your body. You have 12 hours to get back to Unkharil, increasingly groggy and stiff, and drink a cure — or may pre-emptively carry a few doses, going in.

A HUNDRED MOUTHS (newcomers only)

Large stone gates carved into the northern mountain that walls in Unkharil hide an ancient granary whose wares could allay starvation… and interest visiting merchants. To open the doors, you must fit missing ruby beads back into the gate’s carvings. The gems, you learn, were picked out and dragged away by feral Kalioperus fliers — larger and more vicious than the ones you ride — and taken back to their nests at the very tip of Unkharil’s walling mountains. Report your ruby finds — rewards await.

ANOINTED (warning: snake)

”I saw him! With my mind clear, and my eyes shut, and my heart open. And he was beautiful! I ran in high grass, and my feet tore, and my dress ragged, and do not listen! I was not as the others are, greedy. I wanted nothing, nothing! He asked, ‘Daughter, what do you wish of me?’ And I said to him, ‘Only to see you.’ And he said, ‘So be it.’ And after mother Moon rose, and the good rain downed, and it was silence in this world he gave us, but for this breath, that was the murmur of the skies! No vastness greater than the drums of his heartbeat, and his sundered gaze: one eye, it was blood, and the other gold. And together, they saw me. He saw me. And he loved me! So he gave me the silk of his shed skin, to remember him by. In the morning, old women say, hunters found me in the jungle, stroking a piece of old, mouldy rope. But I know, it was him, it was the Father. And he saw me, as they do not see him”

— Laila, weaver

Deimar inherited his mother’s lands, but his uncles are likely to contest the claim of a pauper king with a feeble army. To legitimise his rule, Deimar wants the blessing of snake deity Kharil-asuk. The few remaining locals of Unkharil say the great serpent may be seen on stormy nights with lightning and thunder by those who wait at night in the jungle, after purifying themselves with meditation or partaking of ‘mind-cleansing’ asuk — a strong drug that triggers hallucinations and prophecy. The enormously large serpent body of Kharil-asuk — two-kilometres long, 100 meters wide — slithers before his chosen and must be chased into the depths of the jungles, no matter the animal and bandit dangers, before it disappears.

Inquisitive and untamed, but not necessarily malicious, Kharil-asuk often seeks to shrug off his pursuers, camouflaging in the landscape. He speaks as a voice in the heads of his pursuers, assessing them with questions about true worth and what entitles men to land, wisdom and nobility. He may attempt to drive those he deems unworthy for their past sins (betrayal, murder) in the path of mortal danger (cliffs, bandits, traps). Anyone can chase Kharil-asuk and speak with him. You can still sign up for a RNG to receive his blessing.

NOTES

■ Newcomers may be introduced to the large undead dragon, now bound to the party since Arc V. Formerly a tormentor of Alem, she keeps her distance and flies outside of Unkharil for now.

■ This downtime event lasts until 15 September and is followed by Arc VII. Pace yourselves and engage in as much or as little as you want, quests-wise!

QUESTIONS

NPC INBOX

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

You guys don't eat meat?

( like at all? he sounds genuinely surprised by that. he knows vegetarians exist, of course, but a whole culture?

that seems difficult. )

I wouldn't call animals defenseless. Maybe some fish are but they'll bite you if given the chance.

The sect — ( No. A pause. He has learned — learns still — that the men and women they encounter in travel are more often than not as unknowing of cultivation as he is of working the rod that stares back at him, abandoned on sterile ground. )

The school of my people cherishes frugality. Modesty. Peace. ( A balance disrupted by slaughter and bloodshed and the cunning use of meats for one's own satisfaction.

His lips purse, line soured. A brief, if telling hesitation. )

You may beset weapons, greater wit, your larger scale upon them. What sportsmanship? What justice?

( A chicken cannot hope to best a man ten times its size, armed. )

What about survival?

( not to say that people couldn't survive his way because he obviously had but still. )

People need food to live. And fish provide food. Fish eat other fish. Animals eat other animals. But we're not supposed to do that ourselves?

Are we are uncivilised as animals?

( When men can plow lands and seed vegetables and cultivate their rice? A short, tender shake of his head, aborted. )

The sect tackles death. How may it add to it so readily? ( ...but then, why does Lan Wangji bear a sword? Why is the foremost art of his people a treacherous compulsion of the same dead they pledge to protect?

He does not answer questions unasked. Never proposes them. There is within inherited duty a principle that one must defend the same notions of centuries prior, with rigidity and without fail. For all men change. )

Some people would say we are.

( it's not an argument that he thinks either of them will win. it's circular. he shrugs his shoulders. )

Death's a part of life. It's going to happen one way or another to you, me, animals. It's just...life.

( things die. )

What do you eat where you come from if not animal meat?

Crops. Vegetables. Fruit. ( A sufficient array of opportunities. He does not think his diet limited, his horizon darkened. ) Meats, only on cusp of starvation.

( Or, if one is Jingyi, on the cusp of whim and the midst of travel. And does Lan Wangji perhaps appear emaciated? If concern runs so fluent, so deep.

It shames a part of him he had not anticipated still open to the feeling, flush rising high and deep on his cheeks as he barters a crouch, then starts to carefully wrangle the rod. No matter his feelings — it is expected he will make use of himself. )

If you teach, I shall learn. ( ...the fishing. Presumably. )

You want to learn to fish?

( well, probably a good sill to learn, honestly. especially with how much they were outside and in the elements. wasn't like they could just go down the street and order some food. )

Unfortunately, a lot of it's about patience. Did you put something on the end of your hook? To bait the fish?

( they weren't going to come to an empty hook. )

( The end of his hook. A bait.

He stills, watching the rod in his hand, the instrument Bucky wields with greater, coveted certainty. And he knows, a shiver dancing down his spine, he may not escape this next step of the incursion. )

Must it be... a creature? ( Even he knows of the typical baits: smaller fish, worms. Wriggling, desperate offerings. He hesitates. ) A living being.

( ...if he must cruelly stab a living worm through the hook, it may well undo him. )

That tends to attract the fish better but I think there's other things that you can put on there.

( but bucky grimaces at the possibility. )

Really, you're even against using worms to catch a fish that could feed a lot of people and keep them alive? One worm?

I accept the requirement. Its efficiency.

( This, mouth soured, corners dragged down and unyielding. He looks away — then again at the rod — and, silently, he deposits it by Bucky in unspoken supplication.

Be everything as it may. )

You may attach the bait. ( ...he is fine to proceed, so long as he needn't look the worm in the (absent) eye. )

You want me to handle the worm?

( fine, fine, he can do that. he makes a face and gestures the pole closer. )

You better catch something with this since I'm baiting you up. That's my requirement for doing this. Gotta sit here auntil you catch something.

...thank you.

( And so, Lan Wangji, severer of arms, slaughterer of armies, titled for blighting eyes —

...politely leans his rod forward and looks away while Bucky crushes the poor worm's life on the hook. He waits until pressure eases off the wood, and he suspects Bucky has finished with its handling, before dragging the pole closer to his body. )

I shall not dishonour you.

Take a breath, man.

( bucky baits the hook easily enough (sorry, worm) and then he let's go before nodding at the lake. )

It's not about dishonor, okay? Just...it's supposed to be relaxing. That's what my friend tells me. So, just cast the line and let the bait do its work.

( ...halt. Everything. Anything. Here lies one man, mouth gently agape, staring — his pole held high, as if a sword, gripped far too low.

That's what a friend tells me. Then — and perhaps this is the right moment for a gentle breeze to card through Lan Wangji's hair and dramatically mark the occasion — Bucky is not himself a veteran of the fishing cause. )

...you have not mastered the art?

( At least he's no longer focused on the worm. )

Nope.

( bucky shakes his head, giving his line a little tug. )

I hadn't done any fishing until a few months ago with a friend of mine. He spent a lot of time on the water so —

( when in rome. )

I've caught a few fish though. I don't know if it's worth it yet or not.

...you had friends. ( Here, silently, he casts out his own line, painstaking and studied in his imitation of Bucky's poise.

At first, the bait does not hit water. Then, clumsily, with a splash — it submerges. First, he crouches. Then, the position inelegant and inorganic, he slips to kneel.

...it strikes him, a moment after, just how his words may land. He corrects himself, the sharp lines of his posture: )

Friends learned of fishing and hunt. Not of battle. ( And unspoken, As you are. )

One or two.

( he's pretty sure that maybe more than that would consider him a friend but he doesn't think he's there yet. )

I'm still learning how to make friends.

( He waits — draws his line closer — and narrows his gaze when faint rippling at a distance breeds the possibility of fish afar. It does not materialise. He waits, patiently, right foot tapping to a beat that lingers silent.

Bucky speaks, and it is — a precious thing, far too innocent from the mouth of a man grown. Yet Lan Wangji turns towards him with sudden, impossible interest. )

It is not so simple, is it? To kindle ties, as they say.

( The making of friends is an act for which he lost the affinity early, if ever he possessed it. )

No.

( nope, not at all. and he knows he makes it even tougher because he pushes people away. he doesn't think he deserves to be anyone's friend so he just keeps his distance. )

Less of a chance of hurting anyone if you're just no one's friend.

( not healthy but it's how he operates. )

False. Some assume, through association.

( They presume, project, insist — and take steps guided by these assumptions to abduct, maul and slaughter. Lan Wangji knows all too well the dangers of his association: to lead is to imperil.

And so, chancing a glance aside: ) No caution is all-encompassing.

( Friendship need not be shed, if danger cannot truly be side-stepped. What is the purpose of empty sacrifice? )

Sounds familiar.

( maybe not in those words but still. bucky's lips twist. )

I wasn't myself for a long, long time. Did a lot of bad things. It's just easier to keep on my own now.

( even if he wasn't really succeeding. )

( Not... as himself. Estranged, perhaps, from his own person. Or sickened. Or simply entwined with different beliefs than those that shape him now.

Possibilities, probabilities. Lan Wangji should not presume — for all he gazed upon this man and sees the curious silhouette of similarity. He should pretend to pay better mind to his rod and line, as the wind picks up, waters rippling. Should at least stoke the base kindling of interest.

He cannot. )

You are not alone.

Yeah.

( he can't help the huff of amusement. not at the sentiment but at how familiar it is.

he glances over at wangji and shrugs. )

You sound like some people I know back home. Not a bad thing.

( He supposes this is the time, the moment, the exact peak when men — bond. Together, at a river's side, negotiating the shrapnel of talent with instruments they have never before wielded and wave around curiously now, sharing the burden of their hearts.

...only, this is Lan Wangji, who has never met a circumstance he will not sour with a slow, careful blink and judgement unfailing: ) Your people slaughter innocent fish.

( It is a 'bad thing,' with inevitability. ) Perhaps you have more friends than tallied.

Edited 2023-08-24 19:06 (UTC)

You still sound like people back home.

( because yep, he's heard that before. bucky shifts slightly, not liking all the attention on himself but not wanting to try and so obviously change the subject either. )

I don't tend to keep a tally though.

( he just assumes he has no friends. )

Maybe I'll make friends with the fish.

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