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westwhere2021-07-14 07:01 pm
groundrules) wrote in westwhere2021-07-14 07:01 pm
the harp(y) was a big winged lyre | event + test drive meme
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
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.
IS THERE AN ACCOMPLICE IN THE HOUSE?
ALL ABOARD
Test drive questions HERE.
» THE NEXT STOP
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.
- TDM characters receive quartz stones that function as translation and (network) communication devices, before they are presented to Haltham.
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.
- 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.
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
trainhorsecar 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.
- 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.
Test drive questions HERE.
EXISTING PARTY
THE WAR IN WORDS
DON'T HARP ON ABOUT IT
Existing character questions HERE.
» AND THEN YOU GET VISITORS.
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.
- 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.
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.
- 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.
Existing character questions HERE.
OLD TIMERS & TDM TROOPS
FASTER THAN A SPEEDING BU—
FRIENDS & FAMILY PROGRAMME
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
trainhorsecar 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
trainhorsecar HERE.- 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.
FRIENDS & FAMILY PROGRAMME
- Following their unlikely survival, newcomers can join the existing party as part of
smugglermerchant 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.
- Following their unlikely survival, newcomers can join the existing party as part of
NOTES
FRESH MEATGONNA EAT
OLD TIMERS, THINE WRINKLES SWEET
FRESH MEAT
- 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
trainhorsecar 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.
- TDM events count as game canon, if you app in.
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.- 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.
no subject
...and yet, a wife still. He means to question, but remembers: gossip does not become the Gusu Lan, nor indiscretion, nor damage. A wife who is a man, and this man, who is mad, and Lan Wangji, who withdraws from him to afford him the generosity of a wide berth, so he might raise himself on his two feet unhindered. ]
Your partner.
[ Is it not so, on the road? Partners of passage, of cultivation. Wanderers, befriending like-minded purpose. What difference does the rank make, when affection dresses its chosen in the same colours? ]
Then, your tent. The convoy lies north-bound.
[ Perhaps half a shi of this quarter, should Lan Wangji remember the path — should it yet keep, as it once did, amid shifting walls and scenery. ]
You require escort?
no subject
[ It ought to hurt, describing Zhou Zishu in this way: a fated partner, yet the time they can spend together is so fleeting. Fortunately the blessed powder is assuaging his heart’s wounds, for a while at least.
He nods, about to accompany his new companion out of the tombs, when something occurs to his addled brain. ]
Oh—I was trying to get the lid off that one, give me a hand.
[ He squats down again, to inspect the sarcophagus. Is the lid just heavy, or is it sealed somehow? ]
no subject
...wife-that-is-not-a-husband-perhaps-a... and what is the common fixation with this world? 'Soulmate.' Wei Ying holds it arrow-tip close, let it pierce him. This man, wavering on two legs, also bows at the altar of one world's inexorability.
And Lan Wangji, battered between them like the light of his lamp amid rival winds, finds himself at a loss for direction, chasing purpose until... the man drifts again, down by the tombs' side. ]
Why blaspheme against the dead? [ Ah. No, no. No room here to broker argument, to negotiate nuance. Allow him: ] To defile their slumber.
[ They have earned enough resent to tide them, enough ache to last a lifetime. ]
You gave no name.
no subject
[ He blows on the sarcophagus, dislodging a prodigious amount of dust. Clouds of it billow into the air.
He coughs once, before answering. ]
Wen. Wen Kexing.
[ He squats down, squinting at the now somewhat-less-dusty stone coffin.
Suddenly, all the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. Wen Kexing doesn’t have any particularly well-developed spiritual senses, but in this case he doesn’t need them.
Slowly, he lifts his eyes, to directly look at what he’d glimpsed in his peripheral vision. Yes: the dust is disturbed in the air, revealing the outline of a tall, entirely transparent man. ]
no subject
...he is slow in this. Later, he will know his fault. ]
What trea —
[ But the lid concedes, and Wangji's lamp flickers deadened, then alive, and he steps too late to snap his hand over Wen Kexing's wrist staying further advance. Dread trickles down his nape, whispers cold with greedy teeth, grazes.
He knows his part, even as Wen Kexing's gaze locks steeled on the coalescing wisps of dead thing besides him, as Lan Wangji shudders, but intercedes between them. ]
...stand back. [ The spirit only watches, mute and baleful and disgruntled, a... civilian, despite the expectation of infantry and armed men. ] Wen Kexing. [ This is no threat, but no treasure, and each step must tread light. ] Flee the room.
no subject
Yes!
[ Out of habit (he’s lately spent time with individuals who don’t have much in the way of a sense of self-preservation), he reaches for his (living) companion’s wrist, to drag him out of the room too. ]
no subject
All is frail, nothing is as Lan Wangji had intended. He stares down, where Wen Kexing presumes, with desperate earnestness, the intimacy of touch — where Wangji is dragged, as if he were a dog, or a child, or worse still, the boy who still followed a jubilant Yunmeng disciple to their likely death.
...intends, briefly, to hiss down and spiritually spit on the offending limb. But he is of Cloud Recesses, and he will not shame the ancestors with discourtesy. Better to insult them with cowardice instead, allowing himself to match the speed of his... guide, posture nearly toppled over, head bowed strategically as they cross through thin, claustrophobic corridors, to beware the dead behind.
It strikes him, belatedly, to mention: ]
The spirit was benign.
no subject
[ He skids to a halt, still grasping his companion's wrist. He turns. ]
Then why are we running from it?
[ Wen Kexing looks at the man quizzically. This person, he seems to have the sort of face that betrays little emotion, but that's not necessarily what he's feeling.
He smiles. ]
Are you afraid of ghosts?
[ He says this like he wasn't the one running like mad when told to flee. The irony that he is, in fact, the Master of the Ghost Valley isn't lost on him. ]
no subject
He does not correct the assumption — barely rights his own breathing, eyes snapped shut in silent prayer to the heavens, unlistening. Then, he opens them once more, lost prey amid their surroundings, and —
Breathes: ]
Master Wen. [ Tread lightly. ] You were leaving.
[ At great and remarkable speed, which Lan Wangji, now no longer serving a pale anchor, will gladly not intercede with. ]
Leave behind this unworthy one. Your... wife awaits.
no subject
He straightens his robes, and fixes his sleeves. ]
And go back empty-handed?
[ He clucks his tongue, taking out a large white fan and waving it. ]
You must not have a wife, young master...?
[ He raises his eyebrows, clearly wanting a name. ]
no subject
After, he correct his posture, the fall of his sleeves in a careful imitation of Wen Kexing's grooming. Let it not be said a disciple of Lan neglects to answer manners with manners. ]
Your wife expects to be provided. [ A pause, for the gravity of emphasis only the obliging background of a burial ground may supply. ] Of these quarters?
[ And what wealth might a woman — a man, he recalls at the last moment — conspire to reap from such surroundings? Dust and filth and decay, the curse of countless unopened sarcophagi. Stories, perhaps, woven in the treachery of blood and one woman, her suffering whispered every night, unending. ]
Your wife may go unanswered.
[ ...and perhaps master Wen Kexing should well consider the virtues of a marriage where his partner brings an endless waste of expectations. ]
no subject
Yes, he's very demanding! As for these quarters, what's wrong with them?
[ He glances about. His companion's flickering lantern offers only a small circle of light, with deep darkness beyond. The gloom is oppressive, but Wen Kexing displays only an air of pleasant refinement, as if he were sitting in an elegant house drinking tea and discussing poetry.
His eyes slide back to his companion. ]
If I might be so bold to ask, what are you doing here, young master?
no subject
It is too old to accept life in its novelty, even were it opened to cleansing and the washerwomen that trail after the caravan, fussing with linens, righting the robes of children. One could not transform dwellings of the dead into the resting place of visitors, not without disrupting the sad, treacherous course of a burdened past. ]
We seek the remains of Lord Arha.
[ And encounter more readily those of his people, littering the grounds, the open entombments. Where Lan Wangji had scuttled in to raid the room before Wei Ying might dress it in the spillage of his intrusive curiosity, he found this man, Wen Kexing, collapsed over more horrors of filth and no signs of gain. ]
To soothe him unto eternal rest.
…..now that I’ve learned some of the lore l m a o
He’s had other things on his mind lately, but in and out of his bouts of drunkenness, he’s managed to pick up a few details. ]
Oh.
[ He frowns for a moment, making a show of thinking. Finally, he spreads his fan open and waves it slowly (probably circulating some foul air in the process). ]
What makes you think you can? He seems intent on going to his destination, wherever that may be. Perhaps he still has something to do, before he passes on.
uh oh
In Qinghe Nie, Huaisang no doubt shields ten shades of pale laughter beneath similar barricades, unquestioned. Who is Lan Wangji to bring down the whip of practicality on Wen Kexing's wandering habits?
( A man, bemused. Blinking, slow and steady and trapped in a spell of caution. ) ]
His course achieves each year same purpose.
[ Only a madman seeks deliverance through means tried once, again, ten times over. Whatever Arha's methods, they have failed him. Now, the time for exorcism has come. ]
A spirit's bones often betray its answer.
[ If bloodshed was afoot, betrayal, a curse that transcends mortality to haunt generations. If physicality holds the hint to the lord's demise.
And if not...?
...there is Wei Ying. ]