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

[weifinder]

Water is sound and movement, the sloshings and drippings as Wei Wuxian closes his eyes, lips quirking into a grin that looks a frown, hanging his head like this. Both hands release their holds, and he dunks his head into the water, scores his own nails against scalp and through hair that pulls in protest, but to not avail. He will make it submit, ignore its posturings, rinse oil and ash and the resentment and unrest and anger of the dead from him, and splash his face after. Wring his hair out like a rag, the pour of it raucous, not a tiding of years that clatters into the barrel's grasp, but a tidal wave of them, and the silences and darknesses that never filled with light.

Still are, and he breathes, and Lan Zhan breathes, and a sundered pair does not, but still believes they might, if only they try hard enough.

Damp hair dripping, water turning cold with the chill of the air and making its way down his collar, down his back, wetting his shoulders and chest, his own miniature cascade, he approaches Lan Zhan. Kneels to settle next to him, to give answer, to offer if not truce, than a poor man's hope at understanding.

"Bonds keep," he says, because he agrees, and because he's felt it, felt the cut of it, in their bond, in his shijie's, in his shidi's. In mourning A-Yuan at every living step, at the loss of the Wens, the loss of his sister's happiness, the loss of a world that knew tolerance instead of gain and blame games, casting arrows into convenient pots and decrying their own mastery of the bow.

"So it shall be." Let the soulmates rest, unsundered. Let them be appeased. Let them, "Find Hatisse."

Some reunitings were not meant for happy turns and righteous battles. Some are steeped in pain and heartbreak and betrayal, but whose? To what degree? Go to a school of those who influence minds, and to what degree? (Is this the mess they march toward, he wonders. To politics, and agendas, and gains, and his tolerance for all of them negligible at best, depending on the treatment of the people who looked to their leaders for protection, who looked to them as provisioners of justice, and who could be found wanting.)

"Together?" His back curving, shoulders dipping, hair plastered to skull and back and shoulders, droplets dripping down his face, collar soaked with an honest work's sweat gifted in unlikely turn. A loosened figure of bones and sinews and tendons that arrayed themselves with strength, to turn to sallow softness and back again. Dark and honest eyes that drank in Lan Zhan's face, that parched themselves on that burning expanse, because Hanguang-jun forever suits him, at each up and down.

[downswing]

The screeching parts and unoiled turns of him, the mechanical, scratched fittings of his body — Wei Ying, negotiating the steel of his spine bent, the rags of his hair, the riches of his touch, married into an union of ablutions. The ancestors would bless, but only loud violence seals the conjugal transgression of Wei Ying, clatter of limbs, splashes of suds and warmed water.

If Lan Wangji has learned little else in sixteen years, it has been this: the long, poured, trickling wait, the drop and drop adding to stream, a collection of incandescent moments. How to breathe in a world inhabited by tumults, by boomed voices and thundered intent. Wei Ying takes center stage now because, rubble decimated when he approaches, he never knew the lesser rows of waiting tables exist.

Alone, they sit like stone and ghosts, and Lan Wangji drawls out the moment — lets Wei Ying steep warm-hued like wulong in the glass gaiwan. Unbidden, Wangji reaches to hover his hand above Wei Ying's nearest, close enough to enjoy the wafting heat of another's wet-touched body, but retaining the final distance. Together.

"You bathe as dogs do." The final insult, honey-sweetened with the uprising corners of a traitor's smile, the line golden and peeling. He should yet congratulate: how often is Wei Ying stirred to grand gestures of grooming? Hands red-clean, much has been won today.

[weifinder]

He starts into laughter, the spill of it no tinkling of bells in some artful clattering array, but a light and leaping thing, loud enough to cut outside the taunt walls of their tent and turn heads that as easily turn away again.

"Lan Zhan! Don't scare me like that! Bathing like dogs, as if dogs bathe."

Dogs might be bathed, but as far as he knows or is concerned, dogs embrace filth and violence. He pulls an outright pout, managing to look insulted surface deep, but his eyes laugh, thinking this is fun at his expense in a way with no stakes. Nothing lurks with teeth that aren't blunted to vegetarian diets or honed to simpler blood needs; Jiang Cheng and his four legged beast of a dog are in their own tent, and Wei Wuxian is safe that company, for now.

Together, with that hovered hand and the heat trapped between them. Together, and oh, but is there work yet to do.

Work for the morrow, winding around the roots of problems that can be seen under daylight's starkness or in the flickers of the firelights around them, in this blood drenched encampment.

"Lan Zhan," he says, quirking his brow. "What should be do with all this water?"

[downswing]

A waste of waters, lugged sluggishly across camp side like glistened war spoils, past the rust-bathing of earnest bloodshed. He stirs, startled out of stupor, staring first at the extension of bone and skin, his alien hand, where it threatens sharp descent upon Wei Ying's — then at the span of tender white, Wei Ying's fingers, the cunning invitation of touch of years ago, when, students, they marauded a sect's stretch as if it were the emptied house of their sophomoric grievance.

Is this Wei Ying's due, the lack of blemish, the tender web of veins and fragility unbruised — or is it Mo Xuanyu, lacking worn-in strain, bereft of calluses? Is there an invisible threshold where the spirit old met the body new and twain met into crystalline union? Is this Mo Xuanyu's kindness that rewards Lan Wangji with patience, where Wei Ying's feelings, undulled, spelled themselves as screams of accusation before his earthly fall?

He does not ask. Stifles the humid, clandestine gasp, the selfishness of worry. Raises himself, one leg, then the next, and folds the pieces of his excuses, "Cleanse yourself fully in privacy."

And he slithers out, so that Wei Ying might enjoy the rest of his evening.