HONEY, WE’VE GOT VISITORSSa-Hareth-brand
Cassandra tries to flag the future, gets left on read.
True story — and then, the dead come.
His offer neglected, a desperate Unhalad resorts to sieging the farmhouse in search for the mirror
that was previously on the Imperious.
He’s in for disappointment, while the party prepare for... house guests over the
early-morning 16 June to 17 June period.
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Around 3:30am (16 June) of a storming night, those who are awake or sensitive to the supernatural may hear the winds and fleeing rats whisper that something comes.
At 3:45am, Karsa’s wards around the farmhouse set off, briefly shrieking. Within minutes, Unhalad’s undead infiltrate the farmhouse, with one slight creature first entering down the kitchen chimney.
A small faction of undead remain on the roof, while a swarming majority circle the farmhouse. Throughout the night, they attempt to break in through doors and windows, making slow progress. They are warier of the forest-facing back entrances.
The attackers comprise droves of undead, some clearly only recently converted in haste. They are weaker for it. |
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Over time, the undead drip into the farmhouse. They lack the coordination for a concerted effort. Attempting to exit within the first three hours of the siege will prove disastrous, as too many undead wait outside.
The undead will seek a mirror, being first and foremost drawn to Winnie, who carries a similar item on her person. Fox and Five will also be of interest. Fox can escape attention by discarding the shards.
Any character that was bound to Anurr’s tree still bears the lingering marks of Anurr’s undeath is especially perceived as an enemy. Regulus enjoys the same treatment, given his extensive recent stay with the free people.
The undead will savagely wreck the house in their hunt, striving to kill those in their path. They can be slain regularly. The older, "properly" summoned undead (identifiable because of their clear state of rotting) should be incinerated or severely amputated to avoid further resurrection.
Because of the overwhelming number of undead, it is best to keep lean, mean and mobile within the house.
Karsa joins the farmhouse around 6am. She’ll teleport in, but the density of undead outside will prevent her from teleporting out safely. Alongside three party volunteers, she reinforces some of the wards, decelerating the advance of the undead. Her group will also throw away any of Unhalad’s markings (salt and ash) out of the house and into the inner garden pond. |
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Come sunset (16 June) Unhalad himself will ride outside of the farmhouse, holding distant vigil over the hostilities with his retinue. On his arrival, unbound farmhouse animals will flee into the forest.
Unhalad will be recognisable because of the immensity of raw power he emanates — a feeling of great and overwhelming despair and hunger.
Options to evacuate the chaos include sneaking out, fighting the undead, calling on reinforcements from any local allies, or holding position until around 8am of 17 June, when Unhalad’s last-minute forces start to disintegrate because of the haste in which they were summoned.
The minority of Unhalad’s forces that were summoned back alive with the appropriate diligence will not break down and will need to be banished.
The free people will not intervene, unless they are called in. |
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If you’ve made it this far into Sa-Hareth’s worst hazing ritual, congratulations. A few more days of crud to go.
Over the next few days before the 21-22 June departure, characters will have to make do with their shattered lodgings and dearth of supplies, or can seek sanctuary back in Sa-Hareth. Any money spent on accommodations will have to come out of the travel fund. You're on your own, kids.
The animals can return from the forest, and the free people might spare some food and water, gifted to those who stood out during Anurr’s trials. The Anurr cultists of Sa-Hareth could also part with a few provisions for their good friends, Xie Lian and Xiao Xingchen.
To opt out of the event, have characters out of the house on the night of the siege. It will be difficult to re-enter. The OOC plotting floor is yours! |
FARMHOUSE LAYOUT
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westwhere2021-06-14 07:23 pm
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Burial Mounds, and his and Wen Ning's response to the incursions when those restless yet spirits surged forth in frothing bubbling malestrom, when havoc was part of happenstance, when melody forced the bending of heads and purpose to ones which allowed them a measure of peace. Thin, fragile, a single log spanning a cavernous divide, steps careful, the pretense of surety to lead him forth.
Burial Mounds, near two decades later, where another man's strife drove spirits to possess the bodies of the villagers, dragged them up the mountain paths, sent them physically hurling like so many puppets on jerky strings: people stripped of one purpose, resenting spirits patched in with another. Stand firm, and sing the chaos, the turning away, the ending, as Bichen sings for blood and endings, and there's some harmony between them, some give and take and harrowing reverberating in marrow, knowing this is done, we are the breakpoint ahead of the blaze of the inferno, we are the levee before the river's gaping maw.
The worst, and oh he doesn't say this, but the worst of his transgressions were the ones seen by hundreds, the push of resentful energies that coiled close and clung like a malevolent cloak when he'd held the Tiger Seal still; forged and dripping with the power others wanted, and he'd known, but he hadn't known. There, too much called on, too much turned to a purpose of possessing he stayed away from, turning a battlefield into a charnel house and it is Nightless City and the pass where Jin Zixuan fell, wide-eyed and heartless, a knife in hand turned against his intent, that keens within. Loss, loss, his fault. No matter the interference, no matter the hands that played the shadows to make them sing, and the second pair that sung him back to the world he'd left behind, thinking now, now, is now when I'm done?
Explain what, in all that, feels powerless? Explain what he felt, cold and numbed to the point of feeling nothing but the whisper and rush of thoughts in his over busy mind, at surrounded, at no way forward, no way out. Explain the terror he knows now they both understand, the loss of one they cannot stop, the sliding with no breaker, the farewell no one is prepared to make too soon, come even sooner.
He laughs, or makes the bare attempt to. An exhausted exhalation, the lilt of it seizing his chest and making it cough up the sounds he hasn't been able to summon since the pre-dawn hours of the morning stretching only a day ago, or perhaps a touch more, or perhaps ten years before this moment.
"The Burial Mounds were my first graveyard. The dirt of that won't fully wash from what's left of my bones." The man he'd been is not someone he can say he was not; the actions of a lifetime ago will forever be his, claimed, even tempered by the shadow manipulations of those greedy in a manner he was not. He closes his eyes, two heartbeats passing, opens them again to stare up at Lan Zhan, to see a summation of a fear that had been his path to the edge, driven and herded, pressing back in rage and heartbreak, until his heart cracked too far, the dark swallowed its flickering light, and he stole the rest of that darkness, that evernight, and shattered it like the seal that still, still people scrambled after like dogs, those feral angry things, snapping jaws and swallowing flesh and bone and everything else that might have been food, even if they weren't starving.
"I'm tired of last stands, Lan Zhan."
no subject
Before him, Wei Ying breaks like notes in dissonance, a string of minor musical concessions to unskilled hands. So much of him is jarring, pained contrast, sharp and biting. Disassembled, dissolved. Foam in water.
"You perform them adequately." Among friends, taunts, wine, laughter. Among soulmates, this: the heavens-decreed right to name to tether the animal of another man's agony, look it in its wild eyes, name it for disaster. How many last stands yet between them? Claws digging dirt, Wei Ying bloody or torn or dead after one and each.
He makes no haste: shivers in anticipation, when he brings up the blade and gives Bichen her last feed, a clean swipe against the soft inner flesh of his thumb. Blood rushes, incautious, grateful for another spill. He has wasted so much already, what is another gift more? She wets, and, glistens, returns to the sheath with thanks murmured and blessings due — and he allows it, the scent of Lan Wangji's meat and his sweat after battle, and the grime tasting of his white clothes only another earthly conclusion. This battle was born of creatures, not sophistication.
He is of them, now. He collapses as one, graceless, breaking the fall on one knee, recalling the second at the last moment, with empty bereavement. Sat beside Wei Ying, always to his right, always bearing witness. Breathing, in and out, and remembering the last of his rites with finality — extending his wounded hand to tap Wei Ying's wrist, careless of his thumb leaving blood tarnish, alongside the gift of an anemic flow of qi. Too much of it with Jiang Cheng now, too much wasted in battle. So little to spare, and this only a token, but his to give, for all Wei Ying will ridicule its pace.
"What price, to keep you alive?" Gently, a father teaching an errant son the market. Trade.
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He can't blame them for that. Not for the years that followed, the holes he left behind thinking there should be none, he was so divorced from the world considered right, he could not be missed for long. Selfish, in ways he couldn't see then, can recognise now.
Lan Zhan collapses like his strings have been severed, bleeding fresh with Bichen's anointment when he may as well have taken from Wei Wuxian's chin, his cheek, his throat. It'd be better reparations, he thinks, but also knows why not, and with Lan Zhan down, reaching out for his wrist, pouring thin trickle of qi in, he captures Lan Zhan's hand in turn, brings it up. Not to his lips, which no one truly trusts anymore, as far as he can tell. His pulse, instead, the turn of Lan Zhan's hand so its back lays against the side of his neck, his pulse steady and sure no matter his exhaustion. His heart beats. Does not stutter, does not strain. Half a wreck, but not for this, and not like this.
"Faith." He swallows, and that, too, meant for feeling. Mouth and throat dry, but in the usual way of things, those that speak of exertion and the lingering taste of smoke and ash and blood on the tongue. Lan Zhan's qi, thin as it is, finds familiar pathways, and no lingering darkness. No tempted holds on energies that would have their ways with him as their spearpoint, but evidence of their having passed through. A sort of hum in the spiritual veins and the familiar aching hole that would have been his core once upon a lifetime, but no hunger, no darkness lying in wait. "Faith, Lan Zhan, that I have more I want to live for than reasons to wish everything to end."
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He watches the ghostly touch of his hand, chasing suspended flickers of Wei Ying's inhalation, shadow of his fingertips brewed in shrivelled dirt and rot and soot. Watches it linger and rise and droop, the wet gleam of Lan Wangji's blood catching the brazier light.
He does not retreat, but fishes, absently, to the side and behind himself, search stuttered. Tells the weight of metal — arrow? sword? he cannot look — and rams it with palm's push into the nearest wall. It shrieks, emptily metallic. Around them, the radius cleared, free of splinters and weapons and dark things that kill, he dares at last:
"Your son played his fingers raw." Later, when Lan Wangji's qi replenishes enough to scratch more than the nostalgic sketch of effort, he will donate Lan Sizhui his share. Flesh stitches, skin moulds together. Power forces the bind. Regrettably, a young man's cosmetic hurts could wait before Jiang Wanyin's urgent requirements. "You have not seen him injured before."
Tell him all hurts heal, for that is what young men wish to hear. That their scars will celebrate, but not define them. Wounds are the champion's claim, marks desired before a soldier first enters war — hated, viciously, relentlessly after. Battles are thieves, raising coin in ache and trepidation. Why give them more, why let them have skin?
Unhalad, Sizhui will recall the name. Wangji too never forgot Wen Ruohan. Walks of thin white on his arms and back, pinched where flesh remarried over two decades, remember him. A cruel, faithless thing, to gift so much to an enemy.
"Steel your face."
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He's never had trouble steeling his face, lying to the world about anything he felt, because he knows the ease it grants others. Sizhui will never see the depth of his aches, now grown; he'll remember little of it from his childhood, because the pretense was all that saved Wei Wuxian at times, the need to give anyone else the ease he wished he felt more deeply than he did.
I am proud, and, This too shall pass. That scars are badges of experience, or like the mass of them across Lan Zhan's back, badges of your choices. Regrets or otherwise. Learned, earned, silent burdens.
He swallows, licks cracked, dried lips. Tastes salt and copper, though they haven't bled. The proximity of Lan Zhan's open wound, perhaps, to sate Bichen in ways that the long absent Suibian may well have forgotten, in her grief.
"Where is our son?" Child, young man grown, facing battles so unlike the particulars of what he should be, but a credit to himself again, as always. Wei Wuxian wishes his eyes were sharper now, but they see shadows in the breaking light, and his vision swims, unreliable.
no subject
They will want for sleep, without true roof or steadfast walls. And Wei Ying, blissfully, obliviously, ever so cruelly coreless —
...no. Sizhui. They will lend each other warmth like rabbits in their enclosure, and if Lan Wangji must herd them to find each other in the night, forgive the selfishness of his direction. Soft-fleshed and sweet, they may curl together, and speak nothing of their frailty: a father may accept the comforts of his son. Already, Wei Ying has paid for the companionship, with every growl and claw and curse of the resentful energies he called forth on this day, his armies.
Unbidden, Lan Wangji's hand trickles a red, bloodied line down Wei Ying's nose, skipping the span of his lips in courtesy, south on his chin.
"You reek of death." And Lan Wangji's blood, to wash that scent. The old way, the ancient claim, life holding over the unliving. Blood seals, but should never serve as first recourse. Uncle would disapprove. Uncle does not watch, owlishly.
Instead, they are two shadows in congress, half balancing on each other's proximity, too ashamed to melt into exhaustion. The rough-spun line that unstitches Lan Wangji's mouth means itself a smile. "Shall I fill Wei Ying a trough?"
Truce, before the Yiling Patriarch. They are young enough yet to tease one another without insult.
no subject
Before he can cobble the words together, make his bid to his equally exhausted soulmate, he's instead startled into a low hiccup of laughter. It jars through him, turns into something natural and flowing after, his eyes shutting as he leans back and lets the whole of it roll over him. Laughter doesn't fix many things, but sometimes it can help heal the smaller ones.
"If that thing's managed to survive," he says, smiling in turn, head leaning against burnt wood that creaks but doesn't give under the intrusion. "Then we both could use the soaking."
Struck by a delayed thought, he lifts his hand, fumbles into the fold of his robes, fingers dragging free a simple linen bag. The tied string of it has half frayed, remaining closed without the prettiness of the bow it'd had a day ago. He tugs it free, lifting it in hand and holding it out to Lan Zhan, smile settling into something softer and more tired again. He'd been in the citadel, stayed the night over. For weather, for safety, for the last of supplies he'd been looking for, and this? Part of that.
"The apothecary said this is good for... relieving old aches, no matter the weather."
For scars, and scented with something cool, natural. Soothing in a way, and he thought it was enough like Lan Zhan, and so unalike anything from their first warm port in the citadel, to not bring unwanted memories.
"I have... another kind, one for Sizhui. For anyone, but, Sizhui." Salve for healing, thralled and different yet again from what Lan Zhan can do, from what Eleven can do, but precious and portable and present. He'd taken negotiating to get that on discount, playing this supply to that merchant, until he'd wound through enough to make it worthwhile. It couldn't fix his brother, who Lan Zhan and Eleven had ensured did not die, barely a destroyed room's space away, but here he's starting to haul upward, in search of their son, to collect him, try to collect the ones who breathe and matter so much to him.
If his knees don't work the first time, he huffs out, and sets on rising again.
no subject
Below, Wei Ying stirs heavy, like the lazy shift of tectonic plates. Lan Wangji's body remembers before his mind wakes: how to intercede, to make of his hand a smooth, tempered crutch, how to keep his back load-bearing. To draw an arm under Wei Ying's and against his back, flimsy in purchase until he ascertains the grit and aspersions are dirt and chafed linens, and not the mending tissue of burn or wounding.
Under the blinking brazier light, Wei Ying seems hearty and strong and whole, more than the trembled collection of bones the Burial Mounds left of him, then death, despaired, after. A deaf, underwater groan bites its way out of Lan Wangji's lungs; he heaves, but lifts, and they settle in their slow, oh so slow pace.
"Steady." On proud feet. They will make their travel, as the boards creak, and ground wood whispers a mound in their wake. Snow, piling down. The cold inches. "He will have your gift gladder if you deliver it in one piece whole."
They raised a child for gratitude, infinitely and deliciously well pleased, no matter what is set in his tender hands. Come of Wei Ying's resurrected hands, Lan Sizhui would accept flowers as willingly as ashes.
no subject
Douse himself in the cold for a distilled purpose beyond perked nipples with contracting flesh and the alarmingly pervasive flow of healing energy into a body filled with aches and pains and memories of even more, remembered where the mind has consigned them to ancient history. It all catches up, in fits and starts, one day. Even for immortals, let alone the lower level cultivators in their mortality craven skins.
Hours before, decades ago, don't seek me will still find them turning toward each other, and Wei Wuxian leans into Lan Zhan's well practised manipulations to hold close, for a moment, side to side and arm draped and waist circled, to tighten his own arm, to make it a half-assed and deliberate sideways embrace. All for the butting of forms toward the empty rooftops, and the easy excuse of it makes it simple enough to do, and say nothing, just exhale unsteadily in gratitude for everything he still has, and dismiss the memories of grief that said he might not.
The snow flakes around their feet, melting on skin, but so much of them still is cloth, not warm enough to change their forms from tiny, heaven-bereft crystals to warming water and chilling force. "Together," as if he doesn't have a tangled relationship with that word, that concept, as if it was not a lesson learned that Lan Zhan calls into question each day with reminders and long merited mistrust, slow to shift. "He'd be gladder as a whole."
Two wrecked fathers, but not the ones they'd been in different ways, not for sixteen years and change, and not before the clearing of one name no longer damned both to the same darkness of opinion. Let darkness be for the time of day, or when stepping in shadows.
Step into the light Hanguang-jun casts, having brought Sizhui into a world of it, and their sun rises as they make plodding steps through new-fallen snow, the eventual blanketing of the landscape back to pristine stillness, as if bodies are not strewn across it, as if the soil will not reclaim them in parts, as if there is nothing that hurts that will not heal, and the sun will always come up, tomorrow.