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alem | stage iii
Mar. 5th, 2023 06:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
groundrules
Hi guys! The last log of Arc V drops on 8 March — it might have a few more atmospheric details, but you’ve got everything you need to plot/plan/hustle & bustle below!
Rathakku’s forces deepen their siege, with sharp-clawed harpies, fire-bearing catapults and archers raining hell upon Alem. The last two watch towers collapse, along with half the roof of the Keep. Several structural pillars dissolve and most windows shatter.
The Lord Who Waits has tired of patience.
THE CASTLE
- ■ Attack is vicious and perpetual: Rathakku’s creatures descend from above, harpies make lairs in dark corners, and the fallen rise as undead enemies. Rathakku now necromances even the recently deceased, who retain a sense of personhood. Characters with mind control and necromantic abilities can take over these units.
■ The dragon Irenia dips in to breathe frost onto Rathakku’s forces, but never lingers long. She disappears on March 20.
■ Aware of his native Ellethia’s implicit role in raising Rathakku, Zenobius offers to teach you how to use the rare metals and saltpetre of Alem to create generous explosives — a set that triggers a very high blast, and a smaller shipment that can annihilate any magic — including death and summoning sorcery — in a 20-metre radius for two hours.
■ Expect frequent quakes in the fortress, as catapults strike and the roof and pillars wobble. A hard winter is no longer contained by shattered doors and windows. Huddle together.
■ Paladins fall into zealotry, calling to sacrifice young princess Cle-Florens to ensure their success in battle. Deimar does not dissuade them, but lowers the number of guards protecting Cle-Florens’ quarters.
■ The voices that haunted Alem now multiply, increasingly likely to drag you into a dream-like state to descend into the glacier lakes underground. Spy thereabout at night, and you spot demonic fire sirens of golden scales, who gather in the fourth glacier lake’s cave to urgently complete their task before Alem falls. Their leader produces a purse of dark glass shards. A siren painfully transforms her tail into human legs by consuming such glass — she intends to infiltrate the fortress as a refugee. Sign up for a RNG thread to interrogate this mermaid.
■ With a few more shard crumbs, the sirens summon a ‘Jatharin’ — a fast dispersing silhouette that floats ethereally. They give it a white-silver string punish Prince Haiva for wronging a sister.
■ The Jatharin survives only two hours in the human realm. Those who visit Hell may recognise it is descended from the Motherless. It lacks human consciousness and memory, remembering little of its target’s description and pursuing what ‘young men (with pale hair)’ it finds in the Wards. It is invisible to all who did not witness its birth — so keep your companion out of its way. It approaches a target and chains itself to them with a shadowy ‘umbilical chord,’ before sucking dry their life force. It can also deplete energy through… mouth-on-mouth action.
■ The Jatharin cannot be outright stopped, only avoided, enslaved or consumed. It can be distracted if you take an aspect similar to Haiva.
■ Sirens summon a Jatharin for three nights. (11, 14 & 17 March)
THE DEPARTING
- ■ King Deimar orders caravans to urgently evacuate, carrying refugees and provisions through mountain routes into a new settlement. Able men, guards, healers and merchants make preparations around the clock. Help them.
■ Courtesy of Jimmy and Nacho, merchants Batthour and Eles provide some last-minute wagons and resources. An Alison-coached Deimar strikes a tenuous agreement for supplies.
■ Having received healing flowers, Prince Haiva seems entirely recovered — far more confident, he menaces guards to assist the caravans. Deimar watches uneasily. Haiva asks the party to lead the refugees through the icy mountain passageways, where Rathakku’s immense bat demons loom.
■ The caravans journey to a well-warded settlement near the base of the mountain — former paladin monastery Hassir. Those who wish to avoid conflict can remain here.
COME HELL, THEN DARK WATER
Hell is ruthless, but pragmatic — and must be sealed, before Rathakku controls Alem and weaponises it.
The growing cracks in Alem’s underground Room of Seals widen to reveal full-fledged stairs. More and more demons emerge as the rifts broaden. You have mere days to close Hell, ICly starting on 18 March.
- ■ Back/forward date your posts and logs as needed. Network access is spottier in Hell.
■ Deimar’s paladins accompany the group below.
■ To prevent the outpour of Hell, you must reach Level III and record disrupting at least three Motherless.
■ Each level of Hell shows stains or streams of the familiar ‘dark water.’
LEVEL I
- ■ The Room of Seal leads into an underground passageway where corridors have increasingly been sculpted into stone walkways.
■ Demons and skeletons are chained to stones or pillars, begging water. The dead are fickle: some offer directions, others answers to your questions. Most lie.
■ The stairwell to Level II is behind locked gates, on a stone dais framed by a wall of flames. To reach it, cross a threadbare walkway of bones in a large hall room that has largely submerged into lava.
■ The bridge might succumb or break in parts, forcing you to jump onto talking floating skeleton heads.
■ Skeletal hands reach out to destabilise or drag you into the fire waters, as do demonic lava mermaids.
■ As you near the dais, the wall of flames might depict either the time when Thyvault’s people slaughtered the lava sirens, or your worst memory of betraying or failing someone. That same person is found shackled with long chains on the dais. If you never wronged anyone, this is someone to whom you are dearly indebted. At times plaintive, at others incensed, they appeal to your guilt or goodwill, bartering the gate key for their release. Their chains will only open if someone agrees to take their place in imprisonment.
■ You can steal their key, kill them — at which point, they return to their true form as a reptilian shapeshifter, or offer to take their place. Do so, and your character is stuck in Hell, suffering the intense heat and occasional clawing of mermaids, until Hell closes.
■ Up to you if anyone else can see your character’s memory in the flame wall. Please trigger warn adequately.
LEVEL II
You descend deeper, into an underground urbanscape infested with flesh-like structures. Some stretches of land and stone are covered in membranous surfaces, letting you feel the faint, distant heartbeat of Hell. Other landmarks — lairs, adornments — are made of the remains of fallen demons.
- ■ Step lightly and rapidly. Flesh-eating demons roam these lands, as do hungering hell hounds and golems that chase you for parts to patch their limbs.
■ The next stairwell is guarded by a deathly groom or bride, their tentacles barring your path.
■ To proceed, you must gain the ring they are safe-keeping for a future ‘intended.’ You’ll need to persuade a local demon, assemble a passing corpse bride, sell a companion or offer yourself to betroth them — and negotiate a dowry.
■ The groom is crafty, cunning, eager to manipulate you into offering your soul as a dowry; the bride is cruel but irresistible, stirring you and your companion to violently compete for her hand.
LEVEL III
Behold true hell, an endless wasteland, its horizon fathomless and grey. Your mouth tastes of perpetual ash, bone dust scattered at your feet. You walk aimlessly for hours in fields of gravel, haunted by stone snakes and shapeless bone creations.
- ■ Demonic creatures rally as armies, fighting each other for crumbling territory or for overground dominion, as they prepare to invade Alem. Some drag rows of dead men behind them, whose souls you can liberate furtively when the demons make camp, or are assaulted by Deimar’s paladins.
■ Some of the lesser demons may part with information, if you give them memories, important trinkets or a taste of your soul.
■ Most paladins are on this level and will shield you. You hear from them or from passing demons that Hell is now able to seep into Alem because of the Motherless — dark and flickering silhouettes, two-three times the size of a man, who float high above ground. They send down thick ropes like umbilical cords that consume the energy of whatever they attach to. They redeliver this energy as tectonic blows against Alem above.
■ Beyond a hatred of the Room of Seals, the Motherless lack conscience, speech or allegiance. They are drawn to the warmth of living things, or the purity of their spirit. Their ropes are broken easily — but the presence of a Motherless can quickly drain you.
■ They are visible for a few blinks when they fling their ropes down, but otherwise roam invisibly and can only be recognised by the trails of barren land and aridity in their wake. You know a Motherless has stopped above you when you are suddenly paralysed by chilling fear — run, at all costs.
■ The Motherless swarm when endangered. They cannot be killed.
■ Deimar’s paladins share that, hundreds of years ago, their brethren committed ritual suicide, so their spirits could perpetually hunt the Motherless in Hell. You find ghostly paladins walking listlessly in lakes of dark water, seeming to remember nothing of their mission or their former selves. Try to remind them of their duties without entering the water and also stranding yourself.
NOTES
- ■ Hell demons can recognise if your character is canonically connected to hell. Up to you if that’s a (dis)advantage.
■ Everyone should eventually make their way to the Hassir monastery.
■ Sealing Hell (or failing to do so!) will play heavily into the broader story…!
■ Sign up for a RNG thread with an unexpected travel companion on the trek to Hassir.
PLOTTING & PLANNING
For one hell of a time, fill out: