westwhere | unkharil

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

"A sword." Fettered tightly at his side, white folding into white. Invisible, but for the rare unambiguous shifts of his skirts and artless steps in slowed advance. He does not illustrate it — better a weapon hidden until the time of bloodshed, sleeping in wait.

The torch's light rains down a vibrant streak ahead, half-blinding. He sees — vermin, as suspected. A rapid shuffling that may be a rat or tumbled stone. Unbidden, he calls to hand a torn scrap of parchment — breathes it alive — and flame blooms, hovered beside him.

"You disbelieve in spirits." A noted distinction: ghosts is ever the insult, calling back to the remnants of the dead witnessed by the living, sooner than the essence that powers them.

A fine time for this conversation, with a tomb of stone surrounding them.

"Glad to hear it. I've got a couple of blades with me. Let's hope we don't need to use them."

A sword is very useful, a weapon that Jacob himself often favours, even if he doesn't have his here. After all, his weapons are much more up close and personal. He doesn't mind a fight, but here, with an unknown companion in a tumble-down mine? There's a lot that can go wrong.

He hears rather than sees the movement, the sudden noise that isn't their footsteps or soft voices. It could just be rock slipping, which isn't welcome. He'd rather have rats than a cave-in.

"I don't believe in what doesn't exist," He says, a little distracted by the noise and trying to find if there are more rats, or more stones about to fall on them. He heads forward carefully, eyes scanning the ground and the walls ahead. "Old Charlie Dickens used to send me out on ghost hunts. Never found any proof, just a lot of con-men and trickery."

"Spirits exist. One inhabits and animates your body at present." What men of science name as awareness and consciousness to alleviate the concerns of an active mind that cannot envision the waiting, all looming, wide-mawed unknown. Far from Lan Wangji to call them cravens, for all the easy slitting of his gaze, feline and quick, conveys that massage clearly.

Stepping close, closer, until he nearly slips again on rubble — he briefly considers the possibility of more vermin underfoot, when the light of his talisman flame reveals peels of glistening and silver beneath. No, too dark still for that metal, Bichen's blade a truer example.

Unwise, to take the knee in territory so recklessly turbulent, so quaking. He does it all the same, freed hand exploring the wet, sweated dirt, where it coagulates into... ruddy peaks. He thinks at first, copper. Only, it lacks the browned undertoned, borrows little of gold, and so, even an amateur chances the guess.

"...iron. How may we extract it?"

"You mean souls?" Jacob replies, but this is not something he's as confident in denying. A soul is a thing he probably has, but it isn't occupying him. It is him. And once he does, it'll be just as dead as the moving parts.

Much better to focus on why the other man has stopped, what he's looking at in the dirt. Thankfully, the answer is quick and easy- this is a mine after all. It's ore. What they're here to find.

He frowns slightly at the question. He had assumed they'd find already harvested ore but perhaps this won't be hard to get out the ground for themselves.

"There was a pick or two back there. I don't know what state they're in, but worth a try." He says, any waits only a moment for agreement before he's heading back down the path.

There are picks. And the handles don't seem to be in bad condition. Chewed a little by rats, but nothing more. He grabs bothand heads back. The creaking and tumbling of rocks seems more intense now, and he's not sure how much time they'll have before they have to leave. Fast.

"Here." He says, offering one pick to his companion, and thrusting the torch into a bracket in the wall. He takes the other, trying to hold it in a way which makes sense- not as a weapon but as a tool. "You used one of these before? I have, but not for opening up rocks."

The ore, fat with possibility, but absurdly difficult to extract. He accepts the gift of the axe with a tentative hand, gaze slanted as he studies the man's position, how his footing and balance shift to accommodate the abrupt onslaught of weight. This is... a challenging instrument, bordering on ridicule.

Lan Wangji wields it with an excess of caution, much as a mother might a sickly babe. Far too clearly, this weapon has never graced him before.

"Perhaps... where there is ore, there may be mined provisions. Sheltered." Hidden. For all he suspects what little that the vermin have not claimed may have been lost to rubble, if not time.

Still, more efficient to attempt, and he finally points the pick with some dexterity, where mounds of half-buried equipment still sleep, at a distance. Curiously, strategically discarded. A... bait?

"Will the mine hold for harvest?" Better they attempt their luck with the picks or the foraging?

Jacob pauses, the pick really no more difficult for him than any other weapon. He was taught how to use heavier sets of weapons than the usual light blades, as well as how to be... creative with what was at hand. With a little effort, maybe they could extract this vein.

But Lan Wangji makes a good point. The mine might not be stable enough for such effort. And truthfully if the originally miners did not make the effort to get this stuff out of the ground, maybe its very poor quality ore. He doesn't want to risk their lives only to be told by the foundry that the stuff is useless.

He turns his attention to the pile his companion indicates and pauses, looking for any obvious fault lines or cracks or debris, but it doesn't seem to be any more dangerous here than the rest of the mine.

"Alright. Let's take the easy option." He murmurs, and sets the pick down. He can't believe thatthe fleeing workers would have set down a pile of ore so neatly, but maybe someone else has been here before them, piled things up with the intention of coming back but... never doing so.

Still Jacob proceeds forwards, examining the pile as he crouches down by it, before picking up a piece. Sparkling like that section of floor.

"I think we're going to need to fill our pockets."

unkharil | event

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ooc: do we want to fight a hostile monster? we can ask the mod to come up with one!

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