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]

Once, you hunted to feast.

( Thriving as flesh surrendered to arrow — small slips of furred or feathered nothing, trinkets of animal fear, who cannot conspire against the cunning of human design. What is the justice in chasing, bleeding, skinning, feasting on animals that are merely a lean fraction of their size? When come armed, possessed of strategy and intimate knowledge of the lay of the land? Where is the fairness of this sport?

But Bucky spoke not without: need can circumvent justice. And Wei Ying's touch expels the last of Lan Wangji's shivered, liminal outrage. )

Take a bow. ( The instrument, not the gesture of reverence, of silent and mannered supplication. Was it not the Yiling Patriarch who achieved feats of marksmanship, sight folded, while a captive audience held its collective breath?

Is it not the same man who plays coy within reach, as Lan Wangji peels back to release him and start their path in the jungle's clustered deep? )

It must be — ( His step skids, wavers. The tentacled, slippery stretch of a vine nearly drags his leg down, whole. He rights himself uneasily, a man like a collection of vertebrae, rattled, a string of misplaced bones. ) It is close. I hear...

( Nothing. Sibilant waters. He shudders. ) I hear — it.

[weifinder]

Bow and arrow, trusting my shot? As you will.

( Behold: this is not a fine bow that comes from his qiankun pouch, but it is sturdy, and it will serve, along with the fletched arrows that follow in their quiver, quickly slung across his back. What his husband hears evades him, may be meant to, as a measure of what allows the serpent god its divine conversations, its decisions, with the ones who track after it.

Wei Wuxian smiles, half his attention on Lan Zhan, half his attention dedicated to their surroundings, stepping forward to check the sureness of Lan Zhan's step after he stumbles, as he shudders. As he hears what Wei Wuxian does not. )

Close enough for us to wait? Or shall you lead on?

[downswing]

( He requires a finer instrument. This strikes Lan Wangji not because his gaze, thin and feverish and wandered, can capture the full extent of the misalliance between Wei Ying's bow and his proportion —

But because, shamefully, he wishes this man burdened with jade, silvers and gold. Drenched in the luxuries only a higher house might afford him, knowing implicitly that only Cloud Recesses would yet extend that grace.

No matter his canine, covetous, greedy instincts. He is to lead: walks, tender-footed, balance fragile, the aches of his head unspooling in increments. He only stumbles — thrice before he's abandoned the thick of the jungle to enter a clearing, where the crisp scent of fallowed grass, where the refugees of Alem had cut fresh pathways, lessens.

Here, animals rule. Here, he listens, nearly fails his balance again, recovers in place. Here, hand reaching to support himself against a tree — he looks askance with bleary, hazed eyes. He hears rustling — flinches — and beyond, the thick... roundness of greens and browns and something altogether slippery. )

...there. Wei Yi — ( And he frowns, hears with distinct bemusement, These forests are ten times your elders. And yet you think you may know them? You may find us in our house? ) It... taunts. Hides. That... way.

[weifinder]

( When he laughs, the sharp and sudden delight of the hunt and the stumbling of a partner who is in the dangers they all share, intoxicated in a way unfamiliar and yet resonating. There's a confidence in him to handle what may fall, tooth and claw, fire and earthquake, to defend the one man who flits like silver moonlight between the trembling trees, in pursuit of vastness.

Quick, to step with him into the clearing, scanning the shadows for lights and eyes and the silences indicative of predators weaving through the night. He's close, enough to reach out and catch at Lan Zhan's arm, though he holds himself at quiet each time, waiting for the true fall.

Oh, the wavering, the stumbling, and yet Lan Zhan keeps his feet, and Wei Wuxian's hand at his elbow to coax will not coax to where they'd rest safest, and so he stands. )

If it's taunting, shouldn't we say hello?

( Closer at Lan Zhan's side, opposite the tree. The jungle shivers, rustling of leaves and everything within holding their breath, the beating of their wings, and listening. )

[downswing]

( He feels ragged, foolish. A dolls, stitch loosened, and his step wild, his head half cottoned. Gone is the turmoil of his thoughts in exile. Swirling, a half-seeded tempest.

He feels, advancing towards — bushes, the clarity of purpose. The serpent lives in his blood, the quiet susurration of his presence indelible. Inescapable. Inexplicable.

Lan Wangji recoils from it, from himself. Advances, pace abruptly steady under a dripping moonlight, as if he angles in on the astringent scent of blood, freshly poured. There sleeps beneath these abortive, jolted gestures, the stirring of provocation.

It taunts, he had told Wei Ying, and the ache of that frustration lingers. )

It wishes to know my — ( He tenses, stills. The flinch of his body is a quiet, jolting shiver. ) Your worth.

( 'His companion.' No, he wishes the thought back at the serpent, the half of his soul, as worthy as Wangji. But then, the great snake god finds both lacking. )

[weifinder]

( Step in step, partnered in movement, less intent. Wei Wuxian moves through the jungle as a predator might, but his thoughts, his concerns, aren't for the hunt his husband engages: aren't for the serpent whose grace is courted by these versions of sacrifices, these listed claims of merit and worth.

He's not a man concerned with others asking after his worth. So many years to arrive back here, where he finds himself indelible, where he is self-filling, self-fulfilling, and allows hope and better will to blossom twined with the grounded awareness that people will be people.

So he laughs, the low and rolling chuckle birthed from his diaphragm, shaking his head as he takes his husband's arm in hand, tugging just so. Just this much, just this request for Lan Zhan's attention. )

Ours to know. Ours to embrace, or see made better. You're half of me, side by side, step by step. Stumbling and otherwise, Lan Zhan, seen if not always understood.

( His gaze flits to the dark, the gaps between leaves and greater things, and he smiles, softened, eyes sharp. )

We don't beseech gods or devils alike to know what we are. Lan Zhan, do you know your worth?

( They who don't seek the trappings of glory, unless they do. They who don't seek to rule, but to lead, by example and decision. Or do they? Wei Wuxian knows himself, knows he steps into roles to guide and protect, but it isn't his calling, isn't his desire to sink into the well of any one power and rise from it, swollen, splitting at the edges of his skin. He is a man of intimacies and depths, who gives, and gives, and negotiates what taking means, day to day. Moment to moment.

There is a sadness that comes in any soul which gives of itself too wholly, too completely, without the regard for itself that each living essence should hold. Wei Wuxian has burned bright, has burned as embers, carried in the ashes of his heart the coals of his soul. He has lit fires, and he has burned down fortresses, and he has banked and simmered and flowed as water does, relentless. He has been air that plays against skin, kisses that brush against flushed skin and steal away again, relief and promise and seduction without a resolution to whom, to what, he might lead.

He might have learned and earned a different kind of ruthlessness than what lies under the darkness of his eyes, had he been an ambitious man in the ways people had suspected, had feared. Sometimes he wonders, what did Lan Zhan finally find when he stepped into the role of chief cultivator? Did he find, at least, his avenue to influencing the world? On his own merits, on his own path, support lent still to the trembling foundations of his brother's spirit, to his clan at large, but more than, not limited, not hemmed into only their expectations? Their clemency of constraint? )

[downswing]

Three land pieces, rights over a minor waterway. ( It's born of him quickly, reedy, with the expediency of a childing singing a song long learned. As if it affects him so little to set the weights of worth against his person, and they are indeed all too heartily acknowledged.

He stalls, steps uneasy, sluggish and slowed. Wet terrain, he supposes — from whence its waters? — or vines at every corner. Surely, not Lan Wangji's own frailty of balance. He teeters, still, the sway of his spine and his bones a lost, tremulous dance.

Then, serenely, he starts to strip out the rope of his headband and bind it once over the jutting bones of his wrist, blinking indignantly when it fails to latch on its own, as if it were an obvious and plain and foregone conclusion. And so, silk fails him. )

There was a dowry set aside. ( This, absent-minded, delayed. Fraught, torn of his mouth. Oh, but he knows his worth. It is communicated in the way only second, spare sons earn: in the lightning calculation of fleeting glances, of men who must wonder whether to throw their luck with his own, if he might rebel against Zewu-Jun and contest his leadership, and would Hanguang-Jun want close allies, then? Ah, but he lacks ambition.

Then: perhaps he will marry and unite the recluse, aloof Cloud Recesses with a less timid clan. Then, what will he bring, beyond skill? What can be bartered? What of his mother's heritage remains Lan Wangji's own?

He shrugs, and it comes rusted, lopsided. Three land pieces, one a wedding gift to her. Two of his father's estate. The waterway rights, awarded after his feats of war. Some gold, he anticipates. Silk, for his brother's indulgence.

That is his worth in this world, counted on the fingers of one hand. This same that he reaches out towards Wei Ying, nodding to invite him to attend to knotting the ribbon on Wangji's wrist. )

Tie it to yourself. You wobble.

( ...yes. It is Wei Ying between them who cannot be trusted to walk in a straight line and must be leashed at all times. )

[weifinder]

... They gave you a dowry?

( No, that much is obvious, second son or no, and instead: )

And that was it?

( He slips into Lan Zhan's space, ribbon caught in hand, tying it deftly around his husband's wrist. Certainly the answer had been direct, but that's a calculated worth, one of clans with enough and families with the clan backing to all these things, stuff of noble factions which supposedly were different from the more baseline mortal politics in far flung regions. Or were they?

How different is it from a fallen kingdom, from Deimar's struggles? He clucks his tongue, looping the ribbon around his wrist, keeping hold of its end in his hand. Lifting his arm to show the length that binds them to each other: the Yiling Laozu taking Hanguang-jun for a walk. )

Material things, they come, they go. You choose to stand for justice when it was only the small and powerless affected. You choose to stand at my side, facing each day, instead of turning away. You choose to defend when you were first trained to the sword, and have learned what it means to not only cut with that blade. Or haven't you? Because I've seen it.

( Conversational, a hand outstretched to catch his husband's elbow when he next stumbles, to right him as he should. )

You carry a wealth of worth within you. What more?

[downswing]

( What part of him is not entirely, desolately removed from his senses purrs, pleased, alight with satisfaction as Wei Ying binds their wrists both, child-like and prone. He tugs once, as if to test the tension that drives the headband taut, then — content with the balance — steers them, humming blithely along his way.

Allow him this conceit of normalcy, feet stumbled, ferns bowing before his step. He does not pretend to hold a straight line, sufficiently self-aware to understand — one meagre step. The next. He crawls as much as he advances, and barely does not target a tree.

It is hard, to be a construct of pale silks and limited social skills and the fleeting grace to murmur, behind himself: )

Wei Ying's worth is a turnip. ( Their son. ) A talisman. A sword. ( Possessions that created his mythos, that mourned him better than did Lan Wangji himself. ) A torn book. ( By Lan Wangji's own hand, unspeakable. ) Wine jar... broken. On a rooftop. This.

( Here, another tug of the headband. ) A blindfold. A... a.... ( He slows nearly to a halt, trickles. Cursed, wretched thing, this powder. ) Bracelet. First year... scars. Three scars.

( Trinkets of memory, sweet nothings long gone. He remembers. )

[weifinder]

( He hovers in languid, feline grace, ready to reach and tug and pull and support the wavering progress of his husband, letting the words fall as pearls into the palm of his hands as they come, precious and flawed. not a single one rounded, pleasant curves like the moon in fullness, like well fed cheeks and grass covered hills, dancing in the wake of the wind.

the tug of the ribbon, and the hand he slides again under lan zhan's arm, guiding them around the darker patch that gaped up between roots of a tree thrust up almost to their knees. rich soil, or animal carved hole, but dangerous whichever it was. )

If our worth is in how we lived, and how we live, and how we'll live, we're both worthy, Lan Zhan. Whatever the serpent you chase says. Ah, now, now, let's not antagonise the, er, bushes.

( Or whatever lurked beyond them, scuttling and slithering and slinking, in the stillness of the night, where the soft suppression of all other sounds has reigned supreme. )

[downswing]

( The bushes do not part before them.

It is a long-standing and deeply regretted point of contention in the history of Lan Wangji's tumultuous life that nature does not, in fact, bow before him at a finger's snap. It seems, in fact, woefully remiss to even withdraw its tendrils and other staples of stumbling and leaves Lan Wangji exposed to flattening himself on hard ground.

Observe, a near incide —

But then, Wei Ying's arm upholds him, there is the scratch of a whisper dancing near his ear, and he tips his head in, no better than a curious cat, absorbing Wei Ying's wisdom in pale but accruing increments. )

It is there. ( Here, he points a callous finger to where the serpent seems to slide in far, heat-diffused horizon. He shivers, as if the distance riles him, and he wants to draw nearer, dearer, close to the creature that yet eludes him.

And it strikes him, all at once, lightning fast — pulls laughter from him, airy and quick, when he nods towards Wei Ying. ) It looks like you.

[weifinder]

( His gaze follows the stretching motion of Lan Zhan's finger, as he points toward a space, a place, beyond what's immediately seen, to the source of whatever his drugged state claims familiarity. Wei Wuxian inhales, exhales, the steadiness of it all interrupted with laughter when Lan Zhan laughs, when Lan Zhan speaks, what he does. )

What, handsome as this? Now I need to meet it too, my unexpected scaled brother!

( Or what, that which Lan Zhan chases without reason to intrude, that which he has dedicated himself to pursue without the promise or expectation of reward. More than one way to be like kin: and he smiles, leans in and presses lips to temple and leaves his shoulder there against his husband's shoulder, his gaze aimed forward once more. )

Would you wish it caught too?