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lostcompass2022-12-05 05:22 pm
groundrules) wrote in lostcompass2022-12-05 05:22 pm
Entry tags:
silent night
So long to Serthica on 5 December! Come nightfall, the sorceress Karsa abandons the party to lick the wounds of her depleted energies. Fearing a spartan winter journey might cripple Zenobius, the Merchant reluctantly agrees to a month of travel reprieve.
The party journeys six hours east by zeppelin to a forest-bound enclosure, where a minor castle has been repurposed as an inn. You are the guests of eerie noble Mistress Isakanami.
THE GROUNDS
The inn’s four wings encircle an inner court. The party shares the northern wing with Isakanami’s staff. Individual quarters include floor mattresses, oil lamps, coffers and a wall-sized wooden panel on the door, depicting a spring landscape. Salt is lined nightly on the corridors before each door.
Enjoy the kitchens, bathhouses, two training halls, meditation quarters… and the damp but generous wine cellars.
The weather is crisp, cold, perpetually given to light snowfall. Rare blizzards erupt on 10, 17 and 25 December. Stay warm!
Areas of note:
THE SPRINGS: they’re hot, but mostly they’re cold — restorative streams that slowly heal wounds. They regress but don’t completely cure deadly illnesses. Grit your chattering teeth and bear it.
THE MOUTH: a 1m-deep pit in the inner court, filled with swords and shields: some rusted, some in fine form, some dull, some sorcered. You can collect one sword.
THE WELLS: A triad of sturdy but ancient wells. Each day, you find drops of fresh blood by a different well, which is now firmly lidded.
THE LAKE: deeply frozen, its thickened ice nearly opaque. You can skate, fish, or admire the narrow shadows beneath — 2m-long creatures that occasionally ram the ice.
On 21 December, a creature breaks through, seeking to drag inn servants in. Help the staff who begins to freeze back the lake by shovelling snow in.
THE HOUSEHOLD
A gracious lot, the inn’s keepers happily coexist with several spirits. Most ghosts make minor mischief: sometimes you are locked inexplicably in your quarters, items go missing, you're joined in the springs by a polite ghost holding on to its decapitated head, and you hear the laughter of children or fireside chatter from invisible soldiers.
Attendant ghosts sometimes emerge at night to perform household duties. If you meet them, you are advised to silently nod and ignore them. Engage and you are compelled to finish their work, listen to their stories and let them sleep on your mat. You’re saved if someone sounds one of the many bells or chimes scattered on wall ropes.
Inn staff line salt nightly at your door to ward off the Salt Breaker. If you wake inexplicably or feel a blood-curdling chill after midnight, you are told to check the wooden screen on your door — if its spring landscape is now progressively changing seasons, you must silently go from room to room until you find one where the screen shows a spring painting. If you stay where the landscape shifts to winter, you drop asleep and experience a night of harrowing nightmares. Replenishing salt lines as you flee to delays the Salt Breaker.
House rules:
- ■ Earn your keep: clean the inn, replenish its magical wards, purify stream waters, attend to the other guests, cook, sew, tidy, hold tea parties, teach sports or battle skills to regular guests, heat towels, forage, keep creatures at bay — figure out a credible job or service.
■ All doors and windows magically shut at 21:00. Spend the night in the cold or the abandoned stable of the inner court, if you miss curfew.
NOTEWORTHY GUESTS
■ A small and awkward cult of twelve books the western wing yearly to spawn the world-destroying demonic boar Zulu. They’ve been faithfully laying out seeds, bulbs and nuts in creative patterns in the gardens, fasting and chanting for eight years without success. Bring them snacks… or summon Zulu.
■ A guild of seven merchants who’ve sought to ruin each other for years is ‘team building’ in the southern wing. They’ll offer you money or gifts to spy on their peers’ correspondence or cause them minor grievances — oversalt their food, deprive them of soap, cut holes in silks.
■ None friends brought a bride to party in the eastern wing before her imminent wedding. They’re loud, effusive and quick to draw you into drinking games.
THE SURROUNDINGS
Walk past the inn’s extensive grounds into dense stretches of snow-struck forests. Villagers forage for wood and timber. The inn would be grateful for the forest’s healing herbs, mushrooms and winterberries.
Careful: packs of starved direwolves swarm lone intruders, their frosted breaths briefly freezing you in place.
The night of 13 December, villagers launch a search party for a missing huntsman. A brave few wish to destroy a large direwolves’ den — look after the villagers, talk them down or help them retrieve what they fear will be the huntsman’s remains.
Some villagers trickle back on 14 December, asking shelter, warmth and medical assistance.
SISTERLY BONDS
Every few nights ( 8/19/28 December ), the ghosts of three sorcerer-sisters and their legions wage battle on the grounds. They seek their father’s dark-bladed sword, said to grant his heir glory, prosperity and power.
The sisters’ forces are reborn each battle night. They pick up weapons from the Mouth pit and drop them back, come morning. You notice they are drawn to water and reflective surfaces: they’re immobilised (and captured) if you get them to look in closely. This — or making them yield — gives you a temporary power boost that either feeds your existing abilities or that you must channel through brief bursts of elemental magic (yes, you might spit fire or your fingers might spark electricity for a few hours).
Ghost soldiers chase each other across the gardens, balconies or on the rooftops. They cannot enter uninvited and entreat you to let them in. If you broke curfew, silently hide in the deserted inner court stable to avoid getting caught in their crossfire.
The sisters offer coin, jewels or good luck blessings to those who help them defeat their rivals or find the sword.
Soldiers do not outright try to harm you and the sisters passionately plead their cause if they encounter you. Choose wisely:
- i. Saimei: the soft-spoken eldest who wants the sword to ensure world peace, but whose armies behave ruthlessly.
ii. Okutami: the cold-blooded second born, who commands assassins and thinks the sword can restore her family to glory at whatever cost.
iii. Mirasada: the chaotic youngest child whose beauty entrances her followers (and you); she only seeks the sword to vex her siblings.
This is a lighter month to tide the holidays and give characters a brief respite from their Arc duties. Those itching for action can optionally get involved with the sisters, the mystery of the wells, the Salt Breaker or the wolves — but feel free to stick to domestic tasks or bring your own fun!
■ Shout for NPC threads!
■ Check the calendar for the latest dates.
■ We’ll have a midmonth check-in, if you folks want more material. No mod-led log is planned currently, but you’re welcome to your own posts/logs!
■ QUESTIONS
We’re combining our plotting and CR meme this round, so please fill out the below and spam, baby, spam:
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PREFERRED CONTACT: PM, or catch me in the discord server! If you aren't in the server but want to chat I can PM you my discord!
INTERESTS BEYOND RP: Tabletop RPGs, staring into the abyss, spending far too many hours playing Civilisation or Frostpunk, little cakes, MMOs, animals!
CHARACTER & CANON: Wrathion & Warcraft
THEIR ONE-LINE ELEVATOR PITCH: Black Dragon Raised By Humans Now Achieves Worst Of Both Worlds!
WHY THEY'D TANK A BLIND DATE: Casually dismisses their prospective partner's opinion, begins explaining down to them.
THEIR JOB AT THE INN: Replenishing wards, keeping creatures at bay, might do a little sewing if he's feeling it.
GENERAL PLANS:
Wrathion is in desperate need of a recharge after last arc, it did a number on him and as a result I'll be avoiding the Saltbreaker stuff because he needs... sleep. He hit critical levels of 'completely fine', if you know what I'm saying.
He'll be low energy at first, especially when it's very cold, but as he recharges he'll pile on some more layers and get himself going.
Considerations:
- Stirring the pot with the resident merchants. Potential to try and play them all off against each other, maybe in a competition for higher fees too? Maybe fishing for gossip?
- Might be nosy about the wells
- Potential for direwolf hunting shenanigans? That is within his skillset, in theory. Maybe direwolf fur would make a great addition to his clothing.
- Doing some crafting to wind down. If you need something fixed, it can help! Otherwise he'll be probably be putting his sewing skills to use since he's got some nice fabric from the last arc. Maybe he can make some more snow-appropriate clothing.
CR YOU WANT:
- People sharp enough to see he's withdrawn and patient enough to wait out his stubborn 'I am fine' routine, he's never had anything wrong in his life you see.
- Fellow fussy people who just really want to enjoy a good spa day. How come they had to come to a haunted hot springs inn? With night-time ghost wars? Terrible. Complain bitterly with him while combing your hair.
- People to have catty arguments with. Man has never been wrong in his life. Source: him.
- People to cattily commentate on other people with. Those shoes? With that outfit? Tch.
- People to talk shop with. He's at his strongest when trying to problem solve things, so join him at the conspiracy theory board and add some red string. Who is Pepe Silvia?! Does Pepe Silvia know the White Wanderer?!
- People to very openly address the things he thinks he is expertly hiding, like: not being human, being close to Anduin, being suspiciously intense about non-human things/magic user things and especially dragon things, being hotly abrasive about anything that sounds like Experiments. He is very subtle about all of those things, very few people if anyone at all have noticed he is sure. How did you find out?!
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u called
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But then some of the dragons gave birth to like, baby dragons that were dead, but appeared alive.
Wrathion's problem is, in his family history there was a whole 'we cannot cure this insanity so we should kill them to keep everyone else safe' situation. But, uh, he later worked out.... he could actually have help. Just didn't know how at the time. So the agony of CAN WE FIX THIS? IF THEY'RE DEAD? SHOULD WE TRY TO SAVE THE PEOPLE WHO AREN'T SICK YET? IF THEY'RE HAPPY ARE WE FUCKING THIS UP?
.... Really messed him up. Especially with like.... dragon children, which was like, sticking fingers in the sore spots because he cannot actually have dragon children.
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- In the Bath Houses. We are trying to warm up and get clean, relax, but also having moody convos. Wrathion has absolutely no shame about being naked. He spends a lot of time combing his hair.
- In our quarters. Wrathion has his screen door open, it is mid day, he is Sewing his Fancy Fabric and probably running some enchantments over it. A ghost keeps moving his scissors and thread. This is tiresome. Perhaps Eleven can help him keep all his tools while they vibe.
- Outdoors --> Indoors. Wrathion has been gathering things. He is not a fan of the snow, really. He wants to head back indoors, but first they must finish collecting firewood.
- Wildcard: You have a better idea! You pitch it to me!
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I see potential for soft content here. Anduin is a good listener, and a good blanket snuggler. Or uh, dragger to hotsprings-er. He will fuss over you if that is what you need, sir.
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Please start at the bottom have mercy on his curls.
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Also he has long hair himself that is fine and likely tangles easily, so he Understands how to do this Properly. Let him Take Care of You, he knows what's good.
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It's okay though, Kahl's technically not human either. Non-human buddies?
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Making a new friend who's actually a big lizard, on balance, that isn't too strange.
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