the harp(y) was a big winged lyre | event + test drive meme

[groundrules]

Hello, hello! Fresh out of the box is the action spanning 14-31 July, also serving as our second test drive meme (TDM). The event is broken in three parts: one exclusive to TDM participants, one that's for the existing crew, and a communal section, as... sparks literally fly, when characters cross paths.

OOC planning & questions are HERE. Existing players can use this log to party, or you can alternatively make your own logs & network posts. Our TDMers are stuck in this playground only, but — to replicate the game experience more faithfully, they can ask questions and briefly interact with NPCS HERE.

Tiny reminder: eastbound is an invite-only game for size control, but if you found yourself here, love the setting or the playerbase but don't know anyone — PM @ groundrules, we'll figure something out. You're welcome to make a note in your top-level comment title, if you're a TDMing newb, shiny and chrome!

TDM TOURISTS | OLD TIMERS | COMMON TIMELINE | NOTES

TDM TOURISTS

A great day to be alive, chipping manicures and clawing out of a salt mine just in time for a befuddled undead cavalry to whisk their visitors away, one by one as they're recovered.

TDM characters receive quartz stones that function as translation and (network) communication devices, before they are presented to Haltham.

Cursing his luck, Haltham informs newcomers they are in the frozen citadel of Sa-Hareth, controlled by undead warlord Anurr. Characters were wrenched free from the mines of deposed death king Unhalad and... two weeks behind the eastbound caravan that is the Merchant's troupe — their one ticket home.

IS THERE AN ACCOMPLICE IN THE HOUSE?

As Haltham brokers their getaway, newcomers are foisted on Caspar and the Lucky Hands, a gang of thieves set to hijack a port delivery of silvered powder. The Hands handle the theft on D-day, but pairs of newcomers are each saddled with a stolen pouch to transport furtively across Sa-Hareth.

They must escape frequent sentinel searches and other petty thieves to rendez-vous within a day at the dark, dusty and overpriced Hog & Mead tavern in the Merchants' Arena.

Anyone caught by local enforcement can spend a few hours imprisoned in a converted fishermen's warehouse, guarded by three underpaid officers, before breaking or talking themselves out. Thank your predecessors, who ruined the only decent jailhouse.

ALL ABOARD

The travel hell punishment fits the larceny crime: after rendez-vous, Caspar, Haltham, two undead and the TDM tourists join some noble passengers, who seek refuge in Taravast after vocally supporting Unhalad.

They board a seven-wagon streetcar pulled by twelve mechanical horses, heading out of Sa-Hareth down the haunted Stairs of Sighs passageway.

To keep the peace, newcomers must pretend to also be disgruntled Unhalad supporters — and to know nothing about the many bags of exotic opiates that Caspar has dragged aboard.

As they advance down the Stairs canyon, characters may observe each night brings a full moon and blood rains that disappear without trace, come morning. They can also hear the melancholic, indecipherable song of a woman — and find themselves dreaming nightly of burning alive, or being buried under hot tar. They will wake alert and increasingly distrustful of their companions.

At one point, the express train horsecar will pass by a galloping arctic bear, which will stop to salute. Do not feed it.

Characters receive a red helleborus brand on their left wrist to identify each other. It disappears within a week's time.

Test drive questions HERE.

» THE NEXT STOP

EXISTING PARTY

THE WAR IN WORDS

The recent emergence of the dark tar-like creatures gradually unsettles Lord Arha and his ghostly armies into violent outbursts. Throughout the day, the legions become progressively corporeal, no longer flickering out of existence and retaining their memories. They remain dead.

The following morning, the harpies throw down their usual homages of splintered aged bone, now alongside withered parchment. The strips feature excerpts from the letters of Arha and the Lady Hatisse — which Mazyar and his people can translate.

After reading one such parchment, a soured Arha takes unasked command of Mazyar's caravan, imposing benevolent but firmly enforced curfews. Grim-faced ghost soldiers start to keep watch of characters at all times. Some will accuse caravan travellers of being witches or spies of Taravast's Attaryl school.

Those crafty enough to pick up Arha's discarded letter can see his hands have smeared it bloodied. Translated, the missive encourages Arha to turn back with his armies from Taravast.

DON'T HARP ON ABOUT IT

All hell breaks loose as Allison, Lily, Wei Wuxian and Five follow tar harpies inside their makeshift "nest" — going down a steep pit into one of the canyon mountains, and reaching the cavernous and shifting corridors of a stone temple. The passageways lead to small chambers that host stone tombs, many opened and still holding the remains of bones and drips of tar.

Angered by the intrusion, the laired harpies turn aggressive and exit into the canyon, starting an attack spree. They throw rocks, claw or fly down and pick up stray animals and humans. Arha and his army can help you defend against the creatures.

With their main entryway compromised, some harpies will leave the lair through the fissured canyon wall, creating a crude and claustrophobic opening. The sorcery contained within the temple will seep out, with magically sensitive characters finding they can no longer quite tell the difference between the living and the dead. (All) characters can now sometimes briefly see the flickered figures of people they deeply miss around them.

Existing character questions HERE.

» AND THEN YOU GET VISITORS.

OLD TIMERS & TDM TROOPS

FASTER THAN A SPEEDING BU—

Gone rogue, some harpies will target a rapidly incoming seven-wagon streetcar, destroying or flying away with eight of its 12 mechanical horses, and the sad coachmen. The remaining steeds are completely unmanned.

The existing crew can wave their handkerchiefs as the train horsecar speeds by the caravan, set to crash into a canyon wall — or lend a hand to evacuate our TDMers, more Sa-Hareth refugees, and... our good friend Haltham and two of his creatures. Also, opium.

TDMers can meanwhile (haphazardly) board off or try to take control of the mechanical horses.

Write your starters as you will, or plan out the fate of the train horsecar HERE.

FRIENDS & FAMILY PROGRAMME

Following their unlikely survival, newcomers can join the existing party as part of smuggler merchant Mazyar's prosperous caravan. They will receive food, decent clothes and a donkey, horse or elk mount — a rare upside from the ongoing blood rain weather forecast, and the tar-drenched harpies that throw down aged bone.

They will also notice that Mazyar's caravan has been escorted by a ghost army led by the Lord Arha. He travels to free his lover, the oracle Hatisse from her alleged imprisonment by the witches of Taravast. All characters will experience a blood-curdling dread whenever they think to tell Arha or his men that they are dead — but speaking the words is now possible. Report HERE, if you'd like to break the bad news.

As the caravan stops for a few days, the existing party and newcomers can make merry, recover or raid the open haunted temple — where they may find several untouched stone tombs, including one engraved with a sculpture of Lord Arha. It will prove highly difficult to remove that lid without a group effort... but for that, or any other tomb questions, GO HERE.

NOTES

FRESH MEAT GONNA EAT

TDM events count as game canon, if you app in.

You can do network-style posts & log starters. Invent a username for communicators — but you're stuck with it after!

You can use the two allied NPC undead during the train horsecar disaster portion. Deploy them as you see fit to keep your character alive. The undead come with higher strength, speed, hunting instincts and a... disturbingly cold presence.

Haltham can make last-stand miracles happen for you, but at a heavy price. Inquire here.

OLD TIMERS, THINE WRINKLES SWEET

Existing characters won't be able to tell whether the newcomers or each other are living, dead, memories or ghosts, as a result of the (temporary) temple magic.

...yes, any leftover opiates are up for grabs. Hooligans.

You're welcome to respond to network posts from TDMers — but please keep your network posts in eastbound, think of Ye Olde AC.

Comments

A.

[downswing]

[ Parchment, scattered like sickness in the wind. Calligraphy assembled, short and quick in some rows, leisurely sprawled in others. He thinks — glimpses the difference, though his eyes stray with purpose, excuse themselves from indiscretion.

They walk among ghosts, their toils unshared, take comfort in a woman's lullabies, drenched in the plague of her longing. They intrude in ways Gusu Lan would celebrate as a victory of arrogance, to be recorded and despised in public histories and private conversation that nears, treacherously, gossip.

...and then there sits master Moran, brimming with academic interest in that which duty, honour and elegance dictates should lie past their reach. Lan Wangji wishes himself surprised. Then, he wishes himself comfortingly eaten by the earth, whole.

And instead, he approaches where Moran's collapsed with his loot of another's bearings, casting long, dark and grudging shadow over the evidence of disruption. ]

Perhaps our eyes are uninvited upon them.

[ Take a hint. ]

[beitangmoran]

[He knows exactly what Lan Wangji means, and truly, the man's scruples honor him, but at a time where ghosts are walking among them - something that should not be happening - and monsters are happening left and right, certain scruples feel misplaced.]

Well, if they did not want us to read them, they should not have dropped them on top of our heads.

Not to mention, these people are all long dead, not that this seems to mean much in these lands, or that they seem to know. They might as well contribute to helping us out for our trouble.

[Yes, he's still deciphering, squinting his eyes at a particular line until suddenly comprehension dawns and he scribbles another note down.

[downswing]

[ Forgive a young master the wasp needle of a slanted brow, the measured breath, the poignant, unyielding indication that he hears Beitang Moran and, noble hands incriminated by withered scroll, finds him wanting.

They duel in knife-sharpened glances so often, it is a wonder they yet so seldom see eye to eye. It itches, Lan Wangji's nails biting into the flesh of callused palms, the instinct to deploy the considerable unfairness of a cultivator's speed advantage and rip the pages from Beitang Moran — for nothing, if not the childish satisfaction of depriving this man of his vulpine smugness, his placid smiles.

Rip and tear and return the letters writers to the comforts of their privacy, however ill broken. If a tomb is denied to them, will this little also be withheld? ]

You believe beasts held the brush? [ And if not, then surely: ] The winged creatures do not give what is their own.

[ To take advantage of an accident of residual, resentful sorcery lies — beneath them, surely. ]

The dead begrudge disrespect.

[ Learn, master Moran, of these ghosts you distrust. ]

[beitangmoran]

[Thankfully, over years and years of living in an Imperial court and presiding over it for a length of time, Moran has taken to being supremely indifferent to other people's opinions of him - something that Lan Wangji himself might actually be familiar with.]

The creatures? Of course not. Beasts cannot read and write, Master Lan.

But in our predicament, information is at times much better currency than money. Not taking advantage of it would be stupid.

[He spares a glance towards the ghosts and shrugs.]

They are dead. They will get over it.

[downswing]

[ It wrenches something of him, drags sharp knife in quick stab and twists, entrails a wet knot of pulsing pain pangs and the memory of it — The Yiling Patriarch has died, all hail the hour, all bless it.

And Wei Ying's name torn, rewritten in brush strokes, venom-dipped. Honour tattered, claims to Yunmeng Jiang buried twice over, deeper than the day of his defection. What the dead cannot defend, the living will gladly flay bare and set down as a king's spread for waiting vultures.

He sees it now, in Beitang Moran, this yearning to take with grotesque greed, because there is none who may stay his hand. Sees, and knows the practical truth of it — that parchment rained down, that the story of the lord Arha and his unseen beloved yet haunts them. That to appease a spirit, one must probe it, and so lives the very core tenet of the ultimate intrusion: Inquiry.

And still. ]

They lived once. As you and I.

[beitangmoran]

Once. A long time ago. I know death seems to be a rather transient concept here, but they do seem rather more dead than our friend Anurr seemed to be, and it does not feel like a good idea to ignore this.

[Growing up in an Imperial Court, you soon learn to grasp at any piece of information you can get your hands on, simply to make sure to stay alive.]

You certainly do not have to look if you do not wish to.

[downswing]

[ Anurr. The dead of a world abandoned, gelid. He remembers, fire burning, the cold encasing, salt and white and hardship, gravel under his scratching hands. Remembers, above all, failure.

They have tasted too much of it here, coating his tongue poisoned and raw. He breathes, aches, swallows. And he casts master Moran the depth of his gaze, to drown him like night water. Letters, papers, too much of the road is mystery.

It aches him, suddenly, hands curled in white-knuckled fists beside him, to consult possibilities previously abandoned. ]

...master Moran. We may not be rid of death soon. [ It will settle on them like road dust, stench percolating. ] We may prove bound.

[beitangmoran]

[Moran is still focused on his literary endeavors, squinting at certain bits of flowery prose.]

... No, I suppose not. It does seem to permeate the whole lands here. I have yet to understand how Anurr managed to last this long. I would wager, on sheer stubborness. It feels like he simply refused to die, somehow.

[downswing]

[ Should he, perhaps, lend a fire talisman for use on this fine occasion? Master Moran dedicates himself to the reading with the mind and manner of a distracted scholar, indifferent to the courtesy of lifting gaze to meet the eye of his interlocutor.

He is... discourteous, but committed, and Lan Wangji and he have stealthily advanced past the fragile rites of performative greeting to trespass into mutual, grudging tolerance. Master Moran ill spars him not even a moment's notice. Soft-stepped, Lan Wangji, as if by accident, kicks his letters out of way, as he passes. ]

What is dead cannot once more die.

[ And Anurr's people have already shed their lives' waters, withered and given to bone burial before Lan Wangji had crossed their path — before others, they say, unbound them in the jailhouse. ]

He lived, absent alternative. Survival is no merit.

[beitangmoran]

[Sorry not sorry, Master Lan. Beitang Moran is a man accustomed to people being grateful for simply being allowed to be in his presence. Even the modicum of attention he is vaguely sparing towards you would usually be met with bows and expressions of gratitude. Then again, his people know to try and not disturb him when he is busy with reading usually.]

And yet what was once alive can once more live. I find no amusement in the fact that this place seems fit to break the laws of physics on a regular basis, but it certainly happens.

[Says the guy whose cohorts can turn invisible, petrify others, create clones of themselves or run at speed unheard of. Anyway.]

... Hm. It seems they had a fight of sorts.

[downswing]

The dead...?

[ But he stays himself, turns head and long gaze to wash over master Moran's face, the sharp edges of his cheek. Sees and knows and senses him, less the parts of his fragmented speech, more the whole of his recent interests.

The letters, he knows, and for all Lan Wangji aches to consult them, for all he intends them the privacy their urgency refuses — he does not shut his eye or shake his head, does not neglect the burden of truth and fresh revelation.

Tensions among Arha and his lover Hatisse would signal a start to conflict, an indication of the bloodshed that's since come. He breathes with the fluttering of grass blades piercing stone, and breathes with faint, distant trickle of water, and breathes with the frustration of giving Beitang Moran satisfaction, then takes one knee, the second, and joins him close. ]

The lord and his lady. What quarrel?

[beitangmoran]

Hmmm... It's not very clear. I am still deciphering the language more than reading it. But he seems to have had a few harsh words for her, and she did not take it well.

[And given how prone to flowery poetry the man was, he would not take that well. Men prone to flowery poetry rarely do. They usually are very volatile.]

My understanding of her story was that there were two factions of magicians in her country and they were at odds. He seems to say her side might have provoked the other and it was foolish.

[downswing]

[ The lady, harshly spoken to — accused, on behalf of her brethren. And was she to blame? More fool the man to neglect claws and fangs and feral strength among women, than the one to place his faults at their feet.

Lan Wangji's hand hastens soft, when he takes the knee to join Beitang Moran, obediently recalling to coax the parchment pieces he'd kicked back to him. ]

All war is foolish.

[ Though the injuries to pride that cause them run stark-deep, bleeding. Though men escalate mere affront to feuds spanning generations. What of Jin Guangshan, building empire on brick and ash of the bones of Qishan Wen? Knowing their errors, counted, keeping that tally fresh? ]

He resented his lady?

[beitangmoran]

I do not quite think I would say 'resent' is the right word. I surmise he was worried for her safety and his words came out harsher than intended once they were on paper, as the medium is likely to make, unfortunately. Tone is hard to convey in writing.

[And it probably did not convey well in that instance.]

She seems ti have been angry and dejected in response, and so of course, being of the disposition that he is, he would run to her.

[Go on, read the letters, Wangji.... wait can you even read the language.]

[downswing]

[ He cannot read, but he can pass them onward, right their creases, stretch them well and playfully spread on open ground. He can create the mound of master Moran's lecture materials, and does so, no more lacking a library attendant than he proved a sword's master, the custodian of a guqin.

Here, this shredded paper first, ends frayed. After it, the one that seems as if wet-drenched in tar at its edges. ]

Then, their love was true?

[beitangmoran]

[Well, well, well, glad to see you come to more reasonable disposition, Master Lan.]

On his side, it seems certain. On hers... I cannot tell. If one only but reads the words, I would say yes. But knowing what we know of the end of their story, either she completely deceived him, for a reason yet unknown, or her feelings were true but she was coerced into enacting his end, somehow.