unkharil | event

[groundrules]

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

Comments

[downswing]

Do not invite them. ( Impetuous, playful, a child. Too much of Wei Ying in her, imminent battle translated into jest. It is the bravery, he has learned, of those who are never in repose, who treat no danger as colossal and no moment's peace as enduring.

No matter. This, he knows how to counter, how to shield. He walks ahead, step dripping, sooner than leading, knuckles kissing the inner walls as he adjusts their course.

He thinks he hears sounds, sibilant. Water. Or hisses. )

Let us follow the shallow walls. ( Serpents, he suspects, would be likelier to revert to their tunnels, to prefer them to open ground. He hesitates, between knocks — )

You came with the house of necromancers. ( A gift, as it were. ) They harmed you?

[nochnaya]

[ Should she be flattered to be compared to his cultivation partner? Sounds like she should be flattered.

Either way, she moves to catch up with him, studying the smoothness of his gait, how quiet his steps are. That isn't a skill everyone learns, and it makes her wonder. As she walks beside him, another milk serpent slithers past her feet, though she doesn't react in any other way than to watch it go by. ]

I rather think we're inviting ourselves instead.

[ After all, this is the serpents' home, not theirs. Technically, they're the ones trespassing—they can't be surprised when they run into snakes. ]

Are you worried for me?

[ She's teasing, a small smile playing at her lips. ]

You need not be. The only harm they caused was to my patience. I have very little of it for mad old men. [ That means you, Manouk. ]

[downswing]

Women are often imprisoned by misfortune. ( Visited by lesser, if empowered, entitled, despotic men. If his ancestors and Wen Qing have taught him anything, it is that there is no imbalance of ethics or skill — only one of privilege and perception. Women are exposed to harm with reckless impunity.

...and the likes of Manouk would not have hesitated to impose it. Much to their luck's gain, their sojourn was short — and heated, by the ends of it.

Now, they may enjoy more of the tempestuous, high temperatures of the jungle, settled mantling on Lan Wangji's back, and the short seeping churn of dust and gravel, raining down from ceilings above.

And they walk — until, next Lan Wangji's fingers descend on the wall, there is a thick, hefty, immutable sound, and they have hit a sequence of foundation pillars, once more. Whatever tunnels the serpents deploy do not go farther.

They could investigate the region, scout and learn.

...or Lan Wangji can twist the hilt of his sword forward, knock it against stone, to push in, push in, push in — and attempt to topple the front of the wall down. Then, blithely, over his shoulder: )

Lend the shoulder. We crush the wall down. ( This tunnel is turning somewhere inside, and they want in. )

[nochnaya]

[ Though she takes some issue with the phrasing—imprisoned, to be specific—she finds that she doesn't take issue with the sentiment, at least. Count Dooku, General Grievous, Taron Malicos—all harbingers of her and her people's misfortune, all men.

So, fair.

As Wangji traces the walls with his fingers, she turns her gaze in the opposite direction, taking in the rest of the site. Empty, half-dark. Still eerily quiet, but the eerier part is that she doesn't get the sense of impending threat—yet.

Also, where are their missing refugees?

She whips around when he starts banging at the wall with his sword, holding her hand up, palm out. ]

I can lend more than that.

[ It's probably too late to stop now, since he's making such a racket. So she reaches for her magick, raising her hands up and whispering a short spell in Dathomiri. Bright green ichor envelops the wall, cracking it open—revealing what's inside. ]

[downswing]

( Do not deploy sorcery indoors, close to supporting pillars, the ceiling will come down. A hard-learned lesson every fresh-eyed disciple collects at the feet, not of his master, but of the debris that comes with the structure falling atop their heads.

He readies to interject — brings his other hand out, talisman prepared, to rouse a defensive ward — and stills, when the woman's sorcery coalesces, green, but not enters the wall through an incision, rather than an all-encompassing burst.

Instinct commands a flinch of him, all the same.

The wall opens — inside it... as suspected, a tunnel. To look at it, frayed and its shape riotous with tremors, he anticipates the passage was built through brute force and repeated use, rather than architectural construction. All the same, a bent back will see it suit.

He walks in, first, couching minutely with the stench of old and debris and stale air. And behind himself — )

Call light. ( A woman who can blow up walls can surely manage flame, without requiring a fire talisman. )

[nochnaya]

[ Don't worry, Wangji, she's got this. Cal is the one who makes things break and she's the one who puts them back together again.

Usually. As you can see, she can break stuff too, though she's much better at making sure she only breaks what she's trying to break.

She wrinkles her nose at the stench of old, stale air and the cloud of dust and dirt kicked up by her spell, peering into the newly-revealed tunnel. It's dark and dank, the walls and floor roughhewn, but even with her natural night vision she only sees it stretch on before them, empty. Or mostly empty, except for more small milk snakes slithering along the ground. ]

Oh? Do you need the light to see?

[ She shoots Wangji a Look, raising her eyebrows knowingly. The answer is yes, obviously, and she certainly could call light... in fact, it's a simple spell she's done a thousand times.

But that had sounded an awful lot like a command rather than a request, and so she'd rather make him work for it a little. Just to see what will happen. ]

[downswing]

( And does he?

His gaze, squinted, is a tense slit, the ferocity of a wild animal. He can see, if unwell. He cannot thrive, so.

But then, perhaps the woman is — incapacitated by his request, slighted and dwindled. Her sorcery may be limited, thin and scant.

Perhaps he has asked beyond her possibilities — shamelessly so, with disregard for etiquette. A nod, subtle, then he fishes a piece of wayward parchment from his innermost layers, presenting it artlessly in the open air.

It burns his lungs like a long-held, staggered breath, this strain to infuse his qi in low increments. Then, a heartbeat later, the parchment is open flame. Light, at a cost, but present. )

Apologies. Neglected the depletion of your resources.

[nochnaya]

[ For a moment, she eyes him without comment, trying to decide if he's being genuine or facetious—but it appears to be the former, which amuses her to no end. She's used to people being thrown off balance by her humor, but to miss it entirely?

Dryly: ] How considerate of you.

[ No, she isn't going to explain a thing.

She does take much more interest in the magick he cast to light the parchment—it must be an essential part(?) of the spell, which is something she hasn't really seen before. She has her talisman, tucked away in the pouch attached to her belt, but it's more of a focus for bigger magick, not a resource to be spent. ]

The paper is necessary for your spell?

[downswing]

( He thinks, weighing the secrets of the sect against the pale interests of a practitioner with whom they are likely incompatible. She is improbable to cultivate any natural qi energies she might possess, let alone to cut a clean path to Cloud Recesses, to wield these instruments learned against his people.

This base, juvenile trick of talismans is hardly their own alone, to start. And so, conversationally: )

A medium. It focuses energies. ( Narrows their purpose and carefully, scrupulously weaponises them. Parchment only metabolises or refines that which already presents itself. ) Requires continuous exertion.

( However small, it is still a thought in the back of Lan Wangji's mind, a private and lingering annoyance. No matter. It is — all too literally — in hand, and the maws of the tunnel break and open, a void before them.

He walks in, untroubled, for all the stench of closed-off air, for all the claustrophobia. Stones scratch and snag his silks. He thinks to warn her — reconsiders. There are those offended by caution.

Then, steps ahead: susurration. )

Those weapons you confirmed. Make ready. ( There is a glistening of golden scales ahead. )

[nochnaya]

[ A medium... a singular something for the fire to burn? Interesting. So it is like her talisman, in a way. Sort of. Honestly, this is her first time coming across other kinds of magick—where she comes from, there's the Jedi's use of the Force and then there's her Nightsister magick, and that's it.

So, truly, she's interested. But first: ]

Oh? Do you worry about the depletion of your resources?

[ She's teasing—and she'll keep teasing, since she hasn't managed to get a satisfactory reaction out of him yet.

That's when she notices the presence, the energy, of someone up ahead—or something, considering they're gamboling around a den of snake-priests—and unsheathes the knife at her belt, reversing her grip on it with a twirl.

Then she nods at Wangji, a wordless assurance that they're in this fight together, wraps her magick around her, and disappears from sight in a tangle of bright green ichor. ]

[downswing]

( ...stamina management is not for the weak, madam. Remember that here, as in all things, size matters.

Their intruder has taken that learning to heart: broader than the corridor should allow him, less human than serpentine. He — perhaps, he — slithers on the ground, the pulses and boosts of his tail pushing him forward, while he swiftly digs in his elbows or the flat of his palms to slide along. At first, Lan Wangji thinks the creature impossibly incapacitated, its long protruding fangs and the proximity to ground prohibiting him from efficient attack —

But then, all at once, the naga slams his muscled tail against the corridor, sending the ceiling rattling, debris peeling down —

And, hissing, Lan Wangji throws his sword over to stab the thing where it stands, missing by mere fractions and recovering the blade when she boomerangs back, only for him to turn back to warn — )

Stand to the side. The walls will be stabler —

( Only, the woman is gone. )

[nochnaya]

[ She's long gone.

Merrin slips into the in-between and reappears behind the snake-man, already forming her magick into another spell, her hands awash with green fire. Wangji's sword ricochets through the air, narrowly missing their enemy, as she grabs for the falling pieces of the ceiling, huge chunks of rock and stone, with her magick.

They stop their descent in mid-air, swathed in ichor, and she throws her hands out as she telekinetically pushes them towards the snake creature. From behind, she manages to catch him—him?—by surprise, battering him with rocks and half-burying him under rubble.

He screeches—it's an odd, hissing scream—and lashes out at her with his tail, which she hastily teleports out of the way of—back, deeper into the hallway, out of reach. His tail crashes into the wall instead, rattling the entire corridor, more debris falling from the ceiling. ]

[downswing]

( It should be done cleanly, with honour.

The woman — woman? — makes nothingness of herself, lost to air, then the rumble of tumbling stones coming down, down debris and down at his feet, and his blade Bichen hissing in swing —

He should have waited until the creature, already wounded, no longer wilted from confusion. Until, sportively, it had a fighting chance. But more of the wall tatters and groans and comes undone, and they cannot risk more of its animal, unfettered violence.

...this will be his excuse, later, when the serpentine body sits cold at his feet, and he has finished the execution the woman began. Even now, in the last throes, the tail bats and pulses before coiling for one final winding.

He looks up. Away. )

You might have been harmed, unseen. ( As Lan Wangji was throwing his sword about. )

[nochnaya]

[ Merrin isn't quite so honorable, hence the attack from behind, not when the snake-man is both ready and capable of bringing the entire corridor down on them all—survival isn't always pretty or principled. But she does feel a little pity, as she always does, whenever the situation comes down between us or them—and she chooses us.

After Wangji puts the creature down, she approaches its body and waves her hand—its hauntingly human eyes close, by dint of a little magick.

Then she looks up at Wangji, her eyebrows raising. That can't be... concern, can it? No. Impossible. ]

You need not worry. My partner is also prone to flinging his weapon around in battle. I have adapted.

[ And it's only gotten worse since Cal started slinging around that blaster Bode gave him—not only does she have to watch out for his lightsaber, but now she has to watch out for blaster bolts too. ]