hatthevar | blood rains

[groundrules]

Drawn to undead creator Matthias, the party heads into Hatthevar — former wasteland of myth and superstitions, now city of ghosts.

The first log of Hatthevar spans until 31 January.

A small part of the event is open to players both in and out of the game, who can bring dead characters in the bazaar!

HATTHEVAR

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The party enters blood-rained Hatthevar during a daily one-hour truce between the citadel and the undead forces that assail it. At the gates is undead Lord Rathakku of the Brotherhood, keen to usurp his distracted maker Matthias; in the skies dart the forces of dead wind lord Anurr, who has no love for the Brotherhood.

Hatthevar’s ghostly champions — including enormous ghosts that consume men and floating spirits that strangle with chains — defend the grounds. Matthias neglects the war, persistently summoning spirits from various worlds and points in time to revive them.

KNOCK, KNOCK

Wispy, shadowy silhouettes closely watch the lone gate of Hatthevar. The party infiltrates at sunrise.

Characters who have died, practise necromancy or are death-touched enter freely. The living must consume Karsa’s foul potions that absorb their shadows and partly mute their powers to pass for dead. Holders of Matthias’ severed limbs or organs, or of dark mirror shards or dark water, are closely watched by the dead and perhaps pursued.

Everyone must create new names and stories covering their identity and circumstances of death. Crafty ghost sellers will try to learn your true name to capture you in slavery.

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Spend a few days acquainting Hatthevar, its constant rains, vicious gambling dens, bazaars, oracle halls, wish shops and nests of memory thieves.

Show kindness to the newly revived spirits who struggle to remember themselves and roam in the citadel’s bazaars of curiosities.

Optionally, some characters are struck by misfortune. Capture a crafty, palm-sized spirit rabbit to improve your luck… or stumble upon a larger, dark hopper to ruin it.

Most sleeping quarters are available at downtrodden inns or in lavish gambling dens, for exorbitant prices. You can’t shake the feeling of someone watching through holes in your walls.

MATTHIAS

Three days after arriving, the party receives a note from Matthias that reveals the origins of his pact with the dark water to propagate the dead in Akhuras. Matthias says he has been working to bring the spirit of his dead daughter Cosette through the beacon for revival. She materializes briefly in Hatthevar but disappears before he can find her. Retrieve Cosette, and he will surrender the party his power over the undead.

Full note

” Well, hello! Is it nippy beyond the walls? Not cold here, just… the rain. Tried wishing it away, but… waste of money, those wish shops. Not like, what is it you call it? The dark water? It’s ancient. Back in Ellethia, we thought it came from the sea. All began with a mirror shard. That, and constant pressure to race against decades of Taravast research into curing death. We got there first! That’s… my claim to fame: I wished death gone. It was work. Work ate me. Then, the dead woke up, killed everyone, and there wasn’t much of a profession left. Or of Ellethia. The dark water wants flesh, so… I’ve made it death lords and armies, and I’ve left parts of me to anchor it. In return… it gives me revival. But, look. I had a… daughter. Cosette? Blonde and eyes green and blue and like her mother’s, and only five summers old, but she thought she was so clever, kept telling her doll so. That’s all you’re left with. Memories. She died, of course. I’ve been working to resurrect her, and her spirit shows up every few days in Hatthevar. She disappears before I can find her. I’m not… good at bargaining. I’m a magical engineer, really. Tinkerer! But my time’s running short, isn’t it? Just look outside. And all I want is Cosette. You want the beacons? Have them. You can have my power whole. I’ll give it. Some of you will need to help hold the walls up, and others might want to look into the funny business in the lagoon, if it’s linked at all to Cosette, though I doubt it. But, truly. Bring me Cosette, and the deed’s done. You can have everything.”

The Merchant distrusts Matthias’ proposal, but sees potential leverage and urges the party to investigate the girl and the lagoon. From here onward, everyone heads to their assignment:

COMBAT

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Assigned: Bucky Barnes, Carol Danvers, Deimos, Emilia, Jiang Cheng, Luffy, Natasha Romanoff, Nynaeve, Stephen Strange, Wrath, Wrathion, Zoro

The first line of defence against the swarming undead, you must hold off swathes of enemies across three territories:

THE WALLS

Despairingly tall and uncomfortably narrow, overseen by Matthias’ ghostly cannibal titans, who neglect to discern between friend or foe in their broad, relentless strikes. Blood rains pour down thick and nearly blinding. From the skies, you face the frost-breathing 10-15 meter-tall wyrms of undead blizzard lord Anurr, unaffiliated with the Brotherhood. Stick together: when alone, Anurr’s winds speak to you of your deepest doubts and fears, compelling you to surrender — or to let go of restraint, briefly berserk, and attack your own.

■ Serthica survivors may call their dragons to assist. Through Jon Snow, the party can also summon the giant, but slow and poor-sighted frost dragon Irenia to help on three occasions.

THE COLD PLAINS

Just outside of Hatthevar sprawls a desert-like cold plateau, where treacherous dunes shift to swallow you whole and the bestial forces of the Brotherhood’s most capable undead general, Rathakku, hide in wait. Hard-shelled, slippery and sleek his creatures lie buried and thrust up their arm-rows of hundreds of blades that cut into the legs of passers-by, drawing them into sand.

THE UNDERPASS

A series of subterranean tunnels connects Hatthevar with the cold sand outposts. Scour the myriad of dusty, tunnels and purge it of large scorpion-human hybrids that carry multiple weapons and whose sting leave men hallucinating. Oversized serpents abound, their venom prone to paralyzing their prey. You can make or procure antidote potions from Hathevar. Matthias’ ghostly titans are closing off all tunnel entrances to Hatthevar — don’t end up sealed in on the wrong side.

! Collectively, the party must kill at least one frost wyrm, one scorpion/serpent and one sand lurker to keep all three levels safe. Turn in your threads before 28 January… or let the citadel suffer in part II.

EXECUTION

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Assigned: Five, Lockwood, Mo Ran, Vanessa, Yelena, Wen Kexing, Zhou Zishu

Your objective is to locate Matthias and secure the beacons that are currently in heavy use. Securing one or more beacons will help you get home.

■ Your best bet for intelligence are the treacherous networks of underground memory thieves and slavers, who attempt to steal your freedom or your recollections.

■ Your next option is the gang of Erkul, who ruled over local oracles and Hatthevar whole before Matthias’ arrival. Coarse, slippery but cunning, Erkul sullenly nurses his weight in wine at the gilded Sanctuary, Hatthevar’s foremost gambling den. Street sources say the establishment’s passcode each day this month is a fruit name. Erkul’s crew sell highly potent opiates.

■ Ransack some Whispering houses for information, equipment, poison or arsenal. Small, dusty, cluttered and often creaking, Whispering houses hold a wealth of dangerous artefacts, from haunting poltergeists you might accidentally release by reading out their names from tomes to flying rope that throttles you. Large dread hounds instil blood-curdling fear in anyone who looks into their eyes.

■ The five beacons of Hatthevar are only briefly active each day as Matthias makes his summons. They are guarded by swarms of colossal leonine-shadow creatures that only attack if they feel any fear in your soul (of it, or anything else), pouncing to claw and shred you apart. To claim a beacon, Karsa may provide a cold, coal-like token that must be placed in the middle of the transport dais, within inevitable sight of the shadow lions. You must wait 15 minutes in place for the token to take root. Report your conquest before 28 January!

■ Every six hours, Matthias sends ravens to check on the shadow-lions. You must either trick them, leave the lions alive or capture the ravens.

CARE

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Assigned: Allison, Eda, Hermione, Kamala, Lan Sizhui, Sanji, Winnie

Carer’s have the lion’s share of all duties — and the party’s few lingering resources. You must look after the group and the ghosts of Hatthevar: meandering, disoriented and fragile, the spirits who were freshly wrenched from death’s snare become easy prey for the Undead Brotherhood, the elements and the ghost slavers. Rescuing or attending vulnerable spirits can gain you allies.

■ comfort ghosts who recover from revival or struggle with their memories. Many are stranded in the Whispering houses or chained into servitude in the gambling dens.

■ rescue spirits from the immense slaver clan of Ras’Kalur, which tricks newly summoned, dazed spirits in the bazaars to sign away their freedom, promising someone to look after them. Ras’Kalur’s people often raid streets and shelters, forcibly dragging spirits back into their camps at the outskirts of Hatthevar.

■ barter to rent or buy abandoned taverns to give the party a resting space during their stay in Hatthevar. You may need to pay locals in favours, from helping them carry out petty acts of revenge to making up with a grudge-bearing wife or paying penance to their ancestors.

■ heal, cook and provide for combatants on the walls, taking care not to fall in the crossfire or frost wyrms or of allied but negligent 12-feet ghostly titans.

■ as the least suspicious party members, negotiate for information or supplies on behalf of the group: make friends with gambling den owners and the two-bit shady crooks who know their daily passcodes to enter, or with the regulars of the Whispering houses.

INVESTIGATION

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Assigned: Ben Hargreeves, Benedict, Caitlyn, Cal Kestis, Jon Snow, Merrin, Nami, Rin, River Song, Wei Wuxian, Wen Qing

■ You know from Matthias that, as a result of his beacon summons, the spirit of his daughter Cosette appears every fifth day in Hatthevar for a few hours at midday. Despite this, a young girl matching Matthias’ description (5-6 years of age, green-blue eyes, blonde, prone to laughter) is never seen. Matthias alerts you whenever Cosette appears.

■ Day of first appearance: Matthias feels her presence in the bazaar, where the day’s main attraction is a puppet show that draws a heavy crowd. At midday, a chime sounds, and the puppet show performs the sad story of a daughter quarrelling with her father over his absences. The daughter-puppet flees into the woods, while the puppet-father refuses to reconcile and follow her. The girl is killed by animals, and the puppet-father grieves, heartbroken. All the women or girls in the crowd, including you, find they burst into tears.

■ Day of the second appearance: Matthias senses Cosette is in the alley of Whispering Houses. You notice the typical bustle of the alley and shady movements, as discreet, embarrassed, or desperate patrons scuttle. You see no small girls but hear of three trades that took place at the Whispering Houses, carried out by different women: one bought a memory, one sold one, one had a memory replaced. Pay for a memory trade to learn more.

■ Day of the third appearance: Matthias feels Cosette near the Oracle Hall. The hour passes by the time you climb the stairs and are received. The Oracle confirms only one person has visited — a blonde woman — and says to “tell your master that an hourglass keeps track of new time, but can’t give the old one back.”

You get three clue questions/character and should communicate with fellow investigators. Please share key findings by network before 25 January!

EXPLORATION

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Assigned: America Chavez, Buggy, Connor, Elayne Trakand, Lan Wangji, Licyn, Red, Wen Ning

The river Liu neatly divides Hatthevar, its clean waters progressively darkening towards the edges of the citadel, where they pour into a vast, serene and heavily misted lagoon. Veterans sense an eerie chill from the familiar dark waters that so often accompany the undead.

Like Matthias, Karsa says a strange power sleeps at the heart of the lagoon.

■ travel by raft with a companion through the lethargy-inducing fog, as tar-like people peer up from the waters or swim below, never quite attacking you unless you fall into water. They (and the currents) try to upturn your boat.

■ Scattered lit candles drift on water as you advance. Pick one up, and you find one of the floating creatures of Hatthevar has joined your raft, carrying a rope-chain. It says it and its kind are former oracles and truth-speakers of the citadel — and urges you to speak, pledging to kill the first person who lies before you leave water.

■ Farther out, you discover four half-sunken ships that have crashed into each other over time, their decks now forming a rocky square-like structure. You can carefully navigate your raft to reach this construct, or make your way by hopping onto floating deck parts and the debris of other rafts.

■ Once aboard the square structure, you find all the decks are heavily rotten, creaking and prone to collapse. You hear a maddening, shrill scream that steals control of your now convulsing body, until you find yourself driven closer and closer to the end of a plank or a deck hole against your wishes — unless you are physically detained until the shrieking ends.Sharp-toothed mermaids swim below.

■ Reach and explore the curious ships’ graveyard, to peer into the black well in the middle of the square infrastructure.

QUESTIONS

NPC INBOX

Comments

[valeas]

Not on your own, you don't.

[ He will need her.

Time, the absence of it, tends to be on his side regardless. A moment of hesitation or indecision, wasting precious seconds on argument, can mean death. Her attention lowers to the sky below, catching movement out of the corner of her eye.

Clouds sir from beneath, as though something is poised to strike, the faint glimpse of crystal blue eyes— ]

[downswing]

( He should not dally. There is a point past which delays are harmful, criminal, an exotic eccentricity. They can only afford so much contemplation, so much consideration — )

Catch me.

( And then, without notice, he jumps. It's a simple, blunt thing, landing a testy proposition. His footing falters. The entire dragon — and he has broken his fall on the lower, tail-facing end of the creature — falters, unequipped to handle the additional weight without rebalancing.

He should lift himself, advance. Fails at first, fumbling, then finally speeds on, climbing. He thinks to raise Bichen and stab the dragon's back with his sword — but it is armoured by thick natural shell, and his first attempts barely drive the blade's tip in to anchor him. He holds on, through it — then propels himself up, pulling out and drawing his cutting wire to wrap around the creature's throat.

The trouble is less tightening the rope — it's pulling. For all his strength, the dragon's stronger. And so he finds himself screaming at Emilia — )

Make it give you chase! ( So that the wyrm might push itself into the wire, trying to capture Emilia. )

[valeas]

[ Testa di —

No sooner Lan Wangji jumps, Emilia is left with her heart thrashing in her chest and the lure of Anurr's winds. It whispers to her with an urgency that is almost irresistible, and she jerks her head, as though the gesture alone will chase away the thrall.

This does not work, but the screaming does.

It remains a feeling like no other, body versus gravity: the frost wyrm is bigger, but Opal's leaner, faster. Emilia gains them full speed to pitch Opal into a sharp descent, breaking through clouds and rolling back to fly almost parallel to Lan Wangji and the wyrm.

Taunting, she means to draw its attention, before she tugs at Opal to go faster. Faster still, until they gain a real advantage. ]

[downswing]

( And they fly, Emilia yonder, ever ahead. Opal is at times a mote or a monster, ever diffuse, her flight in curiously perfect, fluid synchrony with Emilia's position. He wonders, faintly, how they achieved coordination with so little time spent together. The mind link, he remembers, jealousy gutting him low and deep — to think that these creatures possess such an easy time of achieving a true understanding or relationship, while Lan Wangji must struggle to be perceived.

No matter. No time now for bitterness or grudges. The wyrm dives, and Lan Wangji pulls back the cord reins, helped along by the beast's momentum of pulling itself in the opposite direction. Good that it does not quite grasp what is happening to it, that the bite of the cutting string is too incremental, too subtle to alert the beast to stop working against itself.

...then bad, when the progress of the cords stops, altogether stymied, helpless against ice. He pulls. Sends out parchment talismans, but their fire is comparatively too minor to work against so much ice.

He finds himself wishing to scream instructions at Emilia again, but withholds himself, recalling the distance. Then, teeth chattering from prolonged exposure atop a dragon if ice, he records a pendant message transmitted to Emilia's communicator: )

The frost keeps cords from catching. Fire at its throat.

( ...and possibly try not to incinerate Lan Wangji in the process. )

[valeas]

[ There are moments where Emilia having the intensity and passion of a blinding sun is, ah, unhelpful. But it works for her here, when there's no time to think, really — if you give into second-guessing, you're already some steps behind.

You trust your instincts, and you act.

She hears Wangji at her ear, same as that fateful night in Taravast, and she directs Opal to turn so that they are facing the wyrm as opposed to away. She puts enough weight on her feet that sudden and brutal shift forward doesn't have her falling.

There's a healthy distance between the beasts, least for now, as Emilia hurls a mote of fire at the frost wyrm's throat. In theory. The wyrm thinks it is now playing a game of chicken with the dragon at the other end, hurtling toward Opal with great speed.

Another mote — a tad less precise oop — as she thinks to Lan Wangji finish it. She swoops down with Opal before there can be a collision, but also anticipating her need to play catch. ]

[downswing]

( There. Blaze.

He thinks, more fool he, that the creature's well swollen, broad span will protect him — that the blaze strikes at its front, and he swerves at the back of it, and it'll be fine, it will all be fine.

Then fire strikes. Envelops. The wyrm's protective layer of frost dissolves quickly, in hard fissures, and Lan Wangji finds himself collapsing into the skin-scale back of the beast, now that the chill has been removed. He breathes with it, feeling it — somehow more livened. Pities it, barely an animal, brutally disposed but intrinsically unable to understand the damage it causes.

Lan Wangji's mouth meets the scale nearest, brushes it, nearly fond.

Then, he pulls at the cord strings, throwing himself back towards the spine of the creature to inject distance and also to — tug. The wire catches, winds, cuts. Frosted blood spills each way, part dark water — fountain-like.

It is not enough to kill it within instants, but the wound deepens, blood-matter wells, the creature's waters spill and ebb and flow. It begins, slowly, to drift down, wings batting in a dissonant brutality, as if it still believes it can float or fight or regain its footing.

The trouble now is, between the wyrm's confusion, the blood, the scattering of wings — how the beast's body begins to roll and tip mid-air, lacking balance — Lan Wangji can barely catch a glimpse of anything below.

Emilia will be there, surely. When has she ever failed to be there, for him? She took his mother's death for him. She will come.

...surely.

He jumps. )

[valeas]

[ The wind clouds are as unforgiving as the frost breath of the wyrms.

For a moment, all is roaring white, whiter than his robes, and she fears she has lost sight of him. She searches, wild-eyed and chest taut, for this infuriating man that against all possible odds has become her friend, long after he was a mirror.

She is heedless of the bruising on her thighs and arms, the brutal result of hours spent pulling and climbing and diving. Nothing so aggressive as the aerial turn she gives once she makes out the faint shape of Lan Wangji... plummeting.

The sheer force of the acceleration makes it feel as though there is an impossible weight on her, and she uses her muscles to hold on like hell and counter it, to shift her center of mass. The side-to-side near spin almost leaves her dizzy, but she stays fast.

It's seconds, it's all seconds.

She thinks she has positioned herself just right that he may land on Opal, but she's ready to use her magic, knows he has his own, though he might not call it that. The wyrm, too, continues to descend, a combination of the desperate batting of its wings before it died and the violence of the winds careening it closer to ... to a building. A building that most assuredly isn't empty.

Has Lan Wangji settled in? Because Emilia is accelerating again — ! ]

[downswing]

( The trouble, he understands belatedly, is not the landing: the dragon, good-sweet Opal, knows the way of that, better than he might hope. He thinks, belatedly, to use his sword for flight, but the winds only stoke and harden, and he is no fool to risk their currents undefended. No, gravity and Opal do not fail him —

The challenge is when they work too well.

He breaks his fall, ribs first, ache spreading in him like living fire, bursting. Teeth clenching, he thinks to allow himself a moment to absorb the pulses and needle points of impact, to breathe — only he's tumbling off already, casualty of his dead weight and the shifting dragon, and his cold-stiff hands fail to clasp the dragon's scales.

It's Opal who intercedes again, raising her wing to block him, just as he's about to roll off, and only settling into a correct flight pattern once he appears to have found some semblance of balance. There, flushed to a feverish degree, climbing back up to assume position behind Emilia, not too proud to keep his cheek from flattening, squarely, on the swell of her shoulders, nose, he knows, frigid.

She'll make do.

Thank you, he understands, is the anticipation. And he rasps: )

...dead? ( Not this time. )

[valeas]

[ Emilia exhales in what is meant to be a wry and short laugh — this is hardly the first time Lan Wangji has posed this question, likely — but it comes out half-sobbed in a way that startles her, heart still pounding too fast. Hands slightly shaky at the reins.

She truly thought she would be too late. Thought the dragon would crash into the building and devastate many other lives. Thought the winds were right to whisper in her ear after all, that she is little more than a forest fire made to scald, not save.

A slight shudder in her frame, visible from where he sits behind, is mostly what betrays her.

Quick though she is to wipe her tears, she says hoarsely, ]

No. Not dead.

[ They're still here. ]

[downswing]

( She weeps. It isn't in tears unseen or the rasping hoarseness of a voice, wind-whipped and drowned amid the brutal unambiguity of dragon wings, rains of steel and arrow —

But in the timid, choked, visceral convulsions of her gut, beneath his arms. How she tightens and loosens and makes room within herself for this small, sour thing, her fear. Like a child with a toy she cannot surrender, hands stiff and nails blunt in the keeping of it.

Courtesy suggests he should not say nothing. The less he acknowledges, the less he shames. Emilia has earned the right of the empty, tidal relief that comes of surviving the impossible, of winning over overwhelming odds.

And yet he speaks, sluggish and still cold, like he might have to his son once, to his rabbits now. Clumsy. ) ...shhhhhh. I am sorry. I am sorry.

( What for? He cannot remember. Some cruel and careless thing, his doing. His life, perhaps. The part and whole of his existence. What does it matter, in the end? At times, all men and women require is to be heard. )

You are safe. I am sorry.

[valeas]

[ Emilia tastes salt at the corner of her mouth, though the tears dry just as quickly as they trickle down, cold and cutting on her cheeks. She is oddly touched by his attempt to soothe her, no matter how clumsy. They are not soft with each other.

She has not told him that he is dear to her, and if something were to happen to him, she would be crushed. Does not know how to say it now, despite the fact she trembles with just narrowly having avoided his death, and many others.

He tries, and so she does not tell him it isn't her safety she worries about. Nor an apology she was seeking. They have, at different turns, imposed their will and decisions on each other, leaving the other to rush after. And they always do, at least for now.

It's all they have.

With another shuddered exhale, she gathers herself back up. ]

Don't be sorry. Just survive.

[ She needs him to. Wei Wuxian more so.

Not awaiting a reply, she communicates wordlessly to Opal once more. With the beating of her wings, they're off again. ]