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lostcompass2022-02-14 07:45 pm
groundrules) wrote in lostcompass2022-02-14 07:45 pm
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arc iii: house of ravens
Welcome to Arc III: House of Ravens — with brand new locations and individual curses and 'family' residential assignments.
As we depart lore-laden Ellethia, pass your eyes over a few key takeaways. It's all aboard on the vessel Salamera II for a trip by sea over 14-22 February, before arriving at the elusive village of Waihu-Jeou.
Jump into plotting, after a quick peek at what to expect from the arrival log of 23 February, which will also serve as our test drive meme.
As the Ellethia travel arc has been fertile ground for background revelations, here is a small, incomplete selection of some of the key information gained & publicly revealed by party members over the network, info share sessions, etc. Characters can be assumed to have access to this background:
- ■ Ellethia was racing to outdo the feats of Taravast’s Attaryl witches, who prevailed to extend lifespans.
■ The Sleepers of the lighthouse, known to the Merchant and attended by caretaker Zenobius, were technicians overseeing mirror experimentation in Ellethia's Institute of Technology. Ellethian civilians were conscripted for trials.
■ Zenobius once gifted a doll to fellow technician Matthias Lemaitre — a ‘pale man,’ newly returned from mourning.
■ The previous lead technician resigned, citing ‘ethical concerns’ and ‘national safety.’ They were grudgingly replaced by Matthias.
■ The undead appeared at the institute between midday and sunset of the same day. Fleeing slaughter, Zenobius was pushed into a well by Matthias. He returned after the Sleepers had already engaged with a destroyed 10th floor mirror.
■ The institute was converted into a lighthouse, which a thralled Zenobius used to lure ships to their mermaid-driven doom. Hundreds of sailors’ bodies lie in the coastal seas. There is no death on Ellethia. The close lighthouse premises are unaffected by Ellethia’s accelerated life-rebirth cycles.
■ The lighthouse thrives off granting wishes.
■ Parts of the broken mirror on the 10th floor are thrown into waters to pacify mermaids. Party members were lured to rebuild the mirror. Upon completion, a man fitting Matthias’ description briefly dragged Jon Snow into the amorphous, dark and aquatic mirror-realm, where a creature hungered for shape.
■ The mermaids obsessively covet the lighthouse and mirror despite their wishes or exhaustion.
■ Zenobius’ ‘duties’ ended when the Sleepers died. At that time, he also fell into Sleep, and the lighthouse premises lost their self-replenishing sustenance.
Full details on all the uncovered information can be found in the February plot roll write-ups, here and here.
On 14 February, the Merchant shows his love by sending a large commercial vessel — the Salamera II — to retrieve the party from Ellethia.
To protect the crew, the vessel cannot berth and stays at a sullen distance that characters must cross in their protective red gear by small boat. Pair up in groups of two or three and beware the vicious, waiting mermaids, who will attempt to grab travellers, drag them into water and drown them. Good luck with that.
Characters no longer need to wear their red garments once they have boarded the Salamera II. They receive fresh clothes and ample water and feeding throughout their journey, which lasts until 22 February. A fresh (if gristly) body has been brought along for Kaneki. The crew reluctantly accepts Wei Wuxian’s petition to bring aboard the sleeping Zenobius.
As they depart, the merry mayhemers can see the lighthouse’s topmost floor crumble down, leaving behind just the ruined infrastructure of the Institute of Technology. The intensely sharp-eyed can see a frail figure at the top of the tower, watching on.
In exchange for their hospitality, the captain of the Salamera II requires newcomers to earn their keep through honest labour: cleaning the decks, keeping watch, fishing, assisting in the kitchens (not you, Xie Lian), or looking after the ship’s prized merchantry wares — dozens of exotic parrots, who proudly utter interesting, mean, fond or perverse truths at passers-by in perfect imitations of any voices they’ve heard.
Very heavy storms spark over 17-20 February, with strong winds quaking the Salamera II and threatening to throw voyagers off board — get help asap, if you or the sailors fall over, and lend a helpful hand with any injuries in the line of duty. The Salamera II may need some moderate repairs once the storms break — while handsome shark circle by, waiting for anyone to slip in.
After a... peaceful journey by sea, the group discharges at Waihu-Jeou, informally known as Ke-Waihu — the first of three interlinked villages, which encircle a mountain, its haunted forests and the eerie House of Ravens. A developing guide of the locations is here and will be updated as the second and third village (Waiar-Seong /Ke-Waiar and Waicai-Lian/Ke-Waicai) become available.
The villages have a reputation for their devotion to local divinity and their community spirit, but have suffered a strange spell of chronic drought. The Merchant has heard of underground trafficking of young villagers and other conscripts, funnelled to the forces of the undead lieges. The villagers meanwhile speak of being forced to offer human sacrifice to the House of Ravens, to abate the unyielding drought and other curses. They offer to show newcomers to their beacon, if they assist.
Characters are introduced as part of family or clan units, which have been assigned here. You can huddle up and decide what the clan’s identity story is (refugees? merchants? pilgrims?), and who everyone is within that unit. The Merchant has alerted the villagers that fresh tranches of remaining family members could arrive.
To be fully integrated into the villages, party members must join in the regional faith and accept curses, so they can proudly atone for the sins of long deceased local ancestors — then, for their own wrongdoings. You have the entirety of Arc III (roughly three months) to carry out this redemption work...!
The group’s tasks over Arc III are to:
- ■ Main: end the tributes to the House of Ravens to learn the beacon’s location from the villagers.
■ Atone for ancestral and individual sins.
■ Optional: investigate the village drought.
■ Optional: end the conscription circuit that supplies the undead Brotherhood with new legions.
You’ll get the full feast of details when the Arc III arrival log / Test Drive Meme lands on 23 February, but here’s a small “spoiler-free” summary of some things to expect. This does not include events exclusive to test drivers!
Prepare to…
- ■ Confront a pack of bandits (...yes, hooligans may steal their loot).
■Get lost intraverse a forest area where the environment briefly shifts to spaces from characters’ home worlds, also visible to other travellers. This and certain distractions could lure characters to the forest’s unique dangers.
■ Enter the villages and accept the ancestral curses.
■ Take ownership of dwellings as 'blessed' families.
■ Join the village during a strange banquet celebrating multiple weddings and participate in a particular rite of the procession. Face the blood-curdling morning after, under the curse of the regional fox spirits.
■ Lift the curse of the fox spirits by capturing them in the forest or helping track down and rebuild their ancient miniature worship sites.
■ Behold the first of the drought and its ‘dark waters.’
Feel free to plot & plan for the arrival log here. Make friends. Make families. Throw a plotting form on top:
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makes big handwavey gestures
I don't know exactly the specifics of how the Huntress and Beastmaster control people so I cannot promise the Huntress can't control him (and Wrathion would ICly state the same thing) -- his experience was essentially the Beastmaster trying to control him for 3 days while he fled across the desert to Taravast. Does his shapeshift make a difference? Unsure! He woke up in his real shape (dragon), and couldn't change at first so this is yknow untested. But he did hear the Beastmaster's voice so definitely knows he can... you know. Communicate. Speak. In people's heads.
(Strong dislike on that).
The trick here is Wrathion feels like admitting this means admitting he might qualify as a beast not a person so only one person (Anduin) knows this so far -- but I think if he felt Wrath was a good source of information and a good ally he'd be willing to tell him in some sort of... mutually assured destruction pact yknow, where they both have something they can detonate on each other to ensure they both keep the secret.
One other thing --
Wrathion's entire arc in the last expansion he was a lead figure in was essentially about crafting something to resist mind control. Now, I would argue the mind control source/style is different here so he'd have to start from scratch while essentially having some basic principles to apply as a framework, but he has skin in this game and there's a chance he could work toward achieving the same thing. The end item he made didn't make you immune but it significantly slowed the progress, and he made potions to clear the effects. This is all dependant on an absolute ton of things, and how much Ruxi lets us (me) get away with (I'd imagine it'd take time even if it was plausible, slow burn style) but it's also something he'd mention ICly which equally might make him valuable enough for Wrath to work with, even if OOCly it ends up a dead end.
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https://westwhere.dreamwidth.org/19328.html#cutid1
-Also, Wrath can basically sense a lot of things about people, especially wrt to magic and their souls and etc, because he's super powerful so it's possible he can already sense stuff about Wrathion based on what you'd want him to be able to sense? It's totally up to you if you want to utilize that at all. And Wrath is pretty open about what /he/ is so he would not hide it if Wrathion asked/if it came up. I have a permissions post here if you want to look, and dragons exist in Hell so Wrath's not really going to be shocked.
-Omg that's so cool!!! That would be awesome to work on and learn about, and Wrath would happily help with his own magic/whatever he could do to assist. Wrath is fairly immune to most mind control, because he's also very capable of some wild mind control/can control people through their like Sin itself~ and he exists in Hell where both Hell itself and his brothers are capable of mind control. He just doesn't use it cause he hates it. The Huntress was a specific situation, but even then he was able to resist for a day and resist when Emilia like spoke to him/stood in front of him again. But that would be a great place to potentially work toward as a first step. I imagine they'll also have to figure out like /how/ to kill them, but not being controlled is an important first step haha.
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In general, I think they both have so much against mind control that's like such a good way for them to connect as well as the powers I mentioned Wrath has, which can like eliminate a lot of the communication.
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SO
1) Oh I read this post before but for details on how the Beastmaster works not the Huntress at the time since that was all that was relevant to me. This is good knowledge! Yeah, not being controlled is step one -- especially if they're both working together and they're both at risk. And less energy spent resisting is yknow, more energy you can spend on... killing...
2) Yes I'll fill out your permissions post! I've read it before?? Why did past me read it then not fill it out. There's a little vague wishy washy complexity but the TL;DR is I would say there's definitely enough clues for Wrath to know he isn't human but the specifics may be more like 'things he can piece together' vs 'instant recognition'.
2.5-ish) The dragon thing being hidden by Wrathion is uh, a specific sort of Warcraft Dragons issue. The TL;DR is that black dragons specifically have been bad guys in Warcraft for a long time, and were a little kill on a sight for a while, and Wrathion himself was briefly a wanted fugitive oops? And even beyond that, Warcraft has whole lore segments where people capture them and try to generally beat them until they serve as mounts -- which is not even getting into the cultists because there's always cultists who try to corrupt and mind control dragons. Equally, he has no idea if NPCs like the Beastmaster have cultisty-minions who might see him and report back, since the Beastmaster was specifically hunting him.
So Wrathion is hugely wary about who he tells because everyone here is from different worlds and he doesn't know the specifics of those worlds or how they'll react. Publicly outing himself feels risky! It's entirely a hang-up that is mostly him generating his own drama tbh but that's why he's like, want to warily bargain Wrath into keeping his secret in a way.
3) BUT YES I was hoping Wrathion being able to make something like that would work as a good bargaining CR chip, even if for whatever reason it doesn't work they've both got a hate vibe over it and they won't... know it won't work at the start, they can try!
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1) Important energy to divert to the right action of Killing instead of resisting. Haha, I love the way you put that.
2) Thank you so much for filling it out! I appreciate it so much :D But awesome, I'll keep that in mind going forward and keep in mind what you mentioned in the permissions comment too. Just putting pieces together. I'm not sure if he'd even jump to dragon since dragons in Hell are much different than Wrathion is.
2.5) Oh dang, yeah, that makes total sense why he'd want to keep it such a secret and why he'd be so wary about it. Wrath would agree it's too risky especially with him being like marked by the Beastmaster like he apparently is. D: AND YES, I mean you know what they say about making a bargain with the devil, but... Wrath's pretty bound to his word and words have meaning to him so he'd keep his word if he ever gave it for whatever reason. And I don't imagine he'd have any reason to reveal Wrathion's secret, but would share about what he is.
3) YES, I love that. I was looking at your starter, and I wonder if Wrath could over hear the 'Beastmaster' being said... and maybe not hear what exactly was said so then he wants to find out what is happening at the village. I imagine they know each other from the group even if they haven't officially met yet. But especially since you said it's okay for him to sense his emotions, he'd sense Wrathion's genuine tension about the Beastmaster being the patron. Does that work?
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Whoops.
And yes, that works! Wrath could easily sense him going from casual curiosity to like BIG SPIKE OF ANXIETY at the name before he rapidly leaves and want to work out why!