westwhere | bygones be bygones

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bygones be bygones

BYGONES BE BYGONES

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Welcome to the finale log event, stretching until 22 February. You can find a summary of recent events here. The finale log is broken in four sections:

■ Anurr’s attempt to enter Hatthevar by corrupting party members

■ The citadel’s increasing hauntings and abductions (largely CR-building scenarios)

■ Investigating a ghost ship, for final clues

■ The fall of undead creator Matthias

Thank you for being here & enjoy!

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WALLS, WAILING

The tide of war are turning: his scorpions and sand lurkers defeated by Emilia, Wrath and Benedict, the undead Brotherhood’s foremost general, Rathakku, pulls back his armies. A handful of monstrous creatures remain and will grudgingly serve the trio as their new masters.

Wind master Anurr, foe of the Brotherhood and its maker Matthias, continues assaulting the citadel with ceaseless blizzards. Those exposed to the storms may hear dark or saccharine voices that corrupt, threaten or woo them to open one of the four (north/west/south/east) gates of the citadel and allow Anurr’s forces inside.

■ Those prone to loneliness, despair or self-doubt are the most vulnerable to Anurr’s coercion and can easily turn aggressive, if anyone attempts to prevent them from their goal. A burning need to free the winds and a hatred of Hatthevar overwhelm you, while Matthias’ very name sets you off in a rage.

■ Those coerced are invulnerable to Anurr’s blizzards and the broader cold but highly susceptible to heat and flame. Their skin turns pale, limbs stiff and nearly gelid. They are slower but much stronger, and their touch can chill. They must be warmed — either by fire-side or trapped into heated rooms — to regain control of themselves. It may take up to 48 hours before they’re fully back to normal, waking up at night with a longing to walk into the wind.

■ The gates of Hatthevar remain guarded by enormous man-eating ghosts, but these sentinels have been worn down by war and are more easily overcome. Pass them and your companions and open the gates — and you will win Anurr a healthy advantage.

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A HAUNTED PLACE

Two of Matthias’ beacons have been conquered by Vanessa, Wrathion and Five, who retain them as long as they stay along. Inevitably, they are often hunted by spirits.

Not realizing why his summons have weakened, Matthias directs more and more energy towards the three beacons under his control. The turbulence agitates the spirits of Hatthevar, who become secretive, paranoid, prickly and increasingly riotous.

■ Some scatter quickly as they see you — others gang up, mutinously targeting ghost slavers or anyone who reminds them of those who wronged them when they were alive. Hauntings multiply, while ghost slavers take advantage of the riots to conquer parts of Hatthevar.

PART & WHOLE

Combative crowds, often led by ghost slavers, are especially drawn to characters who own any of Matthias’ limbs or organs. Promised rewards, they seek to abduct such owners or anyone unlucky enough to be mistaken for them, dragging them to decrepit, barely standing and abandoned Whispering Houses while they barter payment from Matthias.

■ Ghosts are fiercely attentive but also superstitious watchmen: spook them, organise a rescue party or sneak out.

■ Watching the walls, you see ink brush paintings of the silhouettes of men, their beady eyes sometimes shifting to look at you. At other times, their limbs seem to shift minutely, as they begin to run towards you, until shadow men burst out of the wall to detain you. They pull back, if you also stop moving.

■ Those who possess Matthias’ parts may find ghosts are unusually submissive to them. Their tokens will likely get seized, if they are captured.

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TROUBLED

Hatthevar succumbs to hauntings, friendly or foul. On any given day, you might experience:

■ THE BURIALS: Come morning, your shoes might be missing, buried in the nearest dirt patch — or you yourself might be entombed in the gardens, forced to dig yourself out before you suffocate. The crystalline sound of chiming bells can lead rescuers to you. Ghostly hands might try to hold onto you, if you are dragged out.

■ THE FACELESS: Lithe faceless dancers dart through the crowds of the ghostly bazaars, carrying demonic wooden masks that they place on the faces of stunned passers-by, fleeing thereafter. The victims now look like the demonic masks, while the masks have copied their likeness. If this happens to you, run after the faceless dancers, steal the mask and put it back on your face to recover your original appearance.

■ THE WATCH: Walking through the streets of Hatthevar, you find yourself visibly, unmistakably watched by an increasing number of people. First, they only steal glances; then, one or two point you out; small groups begin to whisper about you; finally, you notice whole crowds are standing eerily still, watching you covetously and seemingly struggling to keep themselves back from assaulting you.

MASTER GAO’S HUMBLE HOUSE

Least said, soonest enjoyed of Hatthevar’s new fashion of culinary delights. Amid a pick-up in crime, the street food vendors disperse, leaving behind a smattering of secluded establishments drenched in dizzying incense and patroned by… ethereal diners.

Master Gao’s family restaurant promises a once-in-a-lifetime experience, amid ghosts, ghouls and the monstrously dead. Take a seat at a private table, where you are treated to a pleasantly sweet, liquorice brew — then informed politely that you have been lethally poisoned and will die within two hours. Already, you feel your body feverish, overly stimulated, your thoughts given to wonder.

Focus, focus: the antidote, says the listless waitress, is in one of the numerous incoming dishes. A game to focus you on enjoying your meal. Even one bite will heal you.

THE MENU

Still on the fence? Reviewers say:

★★★★☆ Came for the bao buns, stayed for the screams of endless agony.
★★★★★ most places on lotus street went to the hell dogs, master’s gao stays lit, the demon bacon’s sizzle drizzle
★★☆☆☆ Two stars for the incredible heart of virgin sacrifice, cooked al dente. But this will be our last visit, after unprofessional staff treated us as if we were at our first cannibal rites.
★★★★☆ Hand-made blood pasta, rolled like grandma used to make.

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THE HEADLESS DANCER

Five and Wen Kexing share that word on the street is Matthias has favoured two hideaways. The most widely known one, where you are headed first, is the Headless Dancer: a ghost ship that appears on nights of the full moon in the misty lagoon near Hatthevar. Half-sunken and ragged, the Headless Dancer appears like a conglomerate of titans’ bones, carved and welded together. It is a proper sea vessel, atypical to sail through a lagoon.

Your objective is to search the ship for any sign of Matthias.

■ As the vessel passes, you hear a staggered, loud rattling: the chattering teeth of the skull heads that shape the ship’s hull. These hungry mouths reach to crush and gnaw you, if you fall in the waters close to the ship.

■ A pirate crew is hard at work to keep the vessel afloat. At first, the men appear normal, but their skeletal, corpse-like appearance is revealed when they come under moonlight.

■ Many crew members ignore you, chained to each other and the deck and condemned to perform their tasks while singing their ol’ song. Only the captain speaks liberally: cursing, whipping his men and carrying a bundle of chains as he makes his rounds. Hide — at times helped or betrayed by crew members — or risk getting chained down by the captain, your powers entirely muted until you are released.

■ Midway through your visit, the ship sails back into the fog, beneath a strange wave of clouds shaped like enormous fish and sea life . Spears and chains that resemble fish spines plunge down to pin the ship in place: they fly across the deck, at times skewering and stabbing crew members. Take cover or jump overboard.

■ After a few moments, the spear-chains latch onto the vessel’s sides, turning it over and submerging into the lagoon. Instead of sinking, the Headless Dancer breaks water, once again upright… in strange new sides (the ‘Other Side’) in the middle of an intensely violent storm of blood. The previously skeletal crew and captain are now fully human and are struggling desperately to keep the ship from sinking, despite furious winds and the vessel taking substantial amounts of water. You understand quickly this is an illusion or memory of some kind: there is no saving the ship. Spend the last few minutes before the Headless Dancer sinks trying to stay afloat and search the captain and main passengers’ cabin for clues. Within 20 minutes, you hear the mast of the Headless Dancer give way, while the rapidly flooding of the hull causes the ship to break in half. You fall unconscious, waking up battered but alive in the real-world shores of Hatthevar, the splinters of the Headless Dancer’s deck stuck beneath your nails.

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HE BLEEDS

Following our latest vote, the People have overwhelmingly chosen that undead creator Matthias will die.

Carrying out the plan is open to everyone, whether you did or didn’t get involved with the voting — jump in freely!

Matthias will be discovered in the second lair location uncovered by Five and Wen Kexing — the Whispering House of Hatthevar’s foremost wish maker, the Red Lady. He dwells on the first floor, which has been turned into an immense room decked in dark mirrors, whose windows have been entirely barricaded.

There are two types of mirrors: some show you exactly what you most wish to see, progressively captivating you while rapidly depleting your stamina and vitality, until you are reduced to dried husks and bones within the hour.

Looking into the second type of mirror, your character sees a person of tar that reaches out to touch them until their hand exits the glass. Upon contact, your character is overcome by a feeling of intense, spreading coldness, as if their insides are being infested by a rapidly propagating alien creature. They may feel its highly primitive, emotion-led thoughts: a jumble of jealousy, the wish to have a shape and manifest, hatred that your body is not malleable, fear, hunger. The creature takes your body over within the hour.

You can escape both types of mirrors if you cover them, do not look into them, or if someone breaks the thrall (by taking your attention away from the mirror or by physically removing you).

Matthias is often away from his hideaway, giving you valuable time to plot and tinker.

Killing him will involve:

■ Scouting the Whispering House. The Red Lady, a powerful sorceress, is unlikely to allow intruders to go where they please inside her home. But the ‘I’m just a poor wish maker, looking for the bathroom’ excuse is a time honoured classic!

■ Using Matthias’ severed limbs and organs to reduce his power: this can be done by destroying the parts. Fire will do the trick.

■ Setting down traps (tentacly or otherwise!) in Matthias’ quarters to detain him.

■ Creating an illusion or shapeshifting someone to look like Matthias’ daughter Cosette and distract him, when he returns.

■ Feeding Matthias a memory potion that will force him to remember his part in Cosette’s demise.

■ Killing him. Per RNG gods, Emilia gets the dubious honour of delivering the killing blow (most likely, with help from a special tool obtained from the Headless Dancer). Everyone else is still free to char, sting, entrap or force feed memories to Matthias!

Since several people might get involved, it’s probably logistically easier if you play out prep work or threads in groups of no more than 2-3 and assume other party members are around.

You can either NPC Matthias yourselves in your threads or ask for mod involvement.

Note: everyone who threads out any of the events of Matthias’ capture or demise can “inherit” some of his power over undeath once he is killed. Your character will then have to choose what they do with this power (keep, transfer or disperse it).

QUESTIONS

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It did. [ It was an imperfect solution, but now he knows who his brother is. That's better than nothing. ]

I should end up with fewer nosebleeds.

Always a good thing.

[She takes a deep breath, before glancing out over the world outside the windows.]

What are you thinking? About when all this is done?

[ The emotion that was lacking when he spoke before seems to switch back on when she asks that question. It sounds to him like she's asking what they should do, and he wishes he had a good answer. The general consensus seems to be that once they take care of Matthias, the beacons will be available and work long enough for all of them to escape.

It's an easy choice for Kamala, Wrath and Emilia. Not so much for the Hargreeves. He's worked so hard to find an alternative. ]

I don't want to leave Ben here. He doesn't deserve that.

No, he doesn't.

[She doesn't want to leave him here alone either. If they can't bring him home - with either of them, given that they're returning to three different points in time - then it doesn't feel right to just abandon him without even Klaus to keep him company.]

Do you think that if we stay, there's still a version of us that goes on to finish what we started?

[ What they started, meaning this 'reset' Allison was banking on. He sighs and brushes his hand through his hair. ]

Part of what took me so long to get the right equation to get back was because I wasn't only looking for the exact moment in time. I needed to make sure it was the right timeline of the countless other versions that exist. To make sure you're the same siblings I left.

There's probably a timeline where you didn't press that button, or even survived that long, but there might be one where you did. It wouldn't be us, it'd be another timeline's version.

[ He shrugs and takes another sip of the coffee. Makes a face. ]

I was hoping for a third option. This world hasn't ended yet, but we've come close more times than I'd like. [ This isn't a place for his family to live the life he wanted for them. Even if he has spent more time with Allison than he has since they were kids, it's not fair to her either. ] I want to take him with us.

I think as long as there's one universe where Claire and I get to be together, that'd be okay. Or I thought that maybe if you go back with what I know, there might be a better way to fix this without resorting to trusting Dad.

[Which, you know, always a win.]

But yeah. I don't want to leave Ben here alone, and I don't want him to have to go back to a word where he's dead either.

[ It pains him every time she mentions Claire. He wants to fix that for her almost as badly as he wanted to meet his niece. Though she hasn't said it, he still feels responsible for erasing her from existence. ]

...I've been thinking about that. I heard about the potion they want to develop, to keep your memories. In theory, I could use that knowledge to change the timeline.

I just don't know where that would leave us. You'd be jumping ahead of me, which means we might run up against another paradox. If we brought Ben, we'd be facing another set of problems if he runs into his alternate self. Going back causes problems beyond the kugelblitz and Dad's reset button.

[ Then there's that third option. ]

We could go somewhere else.

Yeah. I don't want to leave Ben here alone. He doesn't deserve that.

[None of them except Five have ever been alone, not really. Ben's always had at least Klaus, if not the rest of them. Leaving him behind doesn't feel like the answer.

But when Five mentions going somewhere else, she glances to him, confused.]

Like where?

[ He takes a deep breath. It might not be possible, but they have made friends in high places. They'll be able to tell them if it is. ]

First thought, follow Kamala back to her world. Hang out there until we bridge the gap. [ He hasn't discussed that with her, or anyone else, but he's considering all the options. ]

I've been trying to do the math, and I just... need more time. If we could hide somewhere that isn't collapsing in on itself, maybe I'd get somewhere.

[Allison pauses, then she considers with a nod.]

From the way she talks, it seems like their tech is way more advanced than ours.

[Given that they are stuck in the land of typewriters and no cell phones or internet.]

But do we know for sure that we could follow them home?

[ So there’d be a leaning curve, but that’s honestly the least of his concerns. He’s getting desperate, but if they don’t exist in her timeline… it shouldn’t break. ]

We don’t. Nothing is guaranteed to work, but what’s the alternative? We’ve barely been surviving here, and I don’t think that’s going to suddenly change when we kill Matthias.

I don’t know what the answer is. It shouldn’t just be my decision.

[Allison takes a deep breath and nods because he's right - and also, now probably isn't the time.]

Maybe when all this is done and Matthias is dead, you, me and Ben sit down with a bottle of booze to figure out what we're going to do.

[Because they're celebrating. There should be drinking, right?]

[ He won't argue that. Even if he has been trying to cut back on the drinking, he can't think of a better way to have that conversation. ]

I don't want to get his hopes up. We might have to compromise, but he shouldn't have to. [ He rubs his eyes and gulps down more of the coffee to shake how tired he feels. ]

Maybe you should talk to him before. We did, and I think he was just telling me what I wanted to hear. [ And it's been too chaotic since they left the castle to revisit. ] He's got a bad habit of sacrificing himself.

He does. But he still needs to be part of the conversation.

[They can't just make choices for him the way Klaus did for so long. He's his own person with his how autonomy. He needs to start exercising that, and he can't do that if they keep making choices for him.]

He's only going to get better at not doing that if we give him the opportunity.

And what? Correct him when he makes the wrong choice? [ There's precedence to be concerned.]

I'm not saying he shouldn't be a part of it. Just that I think it'll be easy for him to pick a reason why he should be the one to suffer if we decide to jump back to 2019.

Then that's on us to make sure he doesn't.

[But they'll figure it out together. At least they're all on the same team and not constantly at each other's throats the way they could be back home.]

[ He nods, and sighs. It's no easy choice, and there's good and bad in whatever they decide. He wishes he'd been able to figure something, anything, out from all he's worked on his finding some loophole where everything turns out okay.

At least she agrees. There's not even a hint of argument between them on how they feel about their brother and his second chance on life. ]

You're right. It's up to us.

[Allison nods.]

Anyway, I have to go meet Wrath to check out the ship. But you'll check in? Let me know if you run into trouble?

[ Five exhales, but doesn’t protest. If he didn’t want her to go to the ship, he wouldn’t have said where to find him. He doesn’t like it, but he would be more worried if she hadn't said she's going with Wrath, and it's not like they can afford not to check. Even if they do run into Matthias there, Allison has her rumors and Wrath is the one person who might stand a chance against him. ]

I'll keep you updated. [ He's got more to do before he checks out their other lead. ] And I'll be listening, if you need help getting back.

Me too.

[If he gets into trouble with whatever he's getting into. But with that, she's off to the Headless Dancer to have a not-so-fun Titanic moment.]

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bygones be bygones

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