Unhalad's knock knock knocking at your door...!

[groundrules]

Last few steps of the Sa-Hareth stretch come with Unhalad's mini 16-17 June siege event and the ensuing few days of marauding. Feel free to use that post as a log base, or do your own thing, and discuss any character plans here.

Many thanks to Kalyn, who is lending us Winnie as effective live bait over the event! She won't... regret it...

If you want to have characters severely wounded or killed, there will be more healers and necromancers available in both options for the upcoming arc — for a fee.

The sorceress Karsa will be available on premise once she enters the farmhouse, and you are welcome to NPC her helping your character's plans. To give you an idea, Karsa's primary offensive skillset is fire, so be careful what you have her do in closed quarters. She will not be able to teleport anyone out because the swarm of undead surrounding the farmhouse make it difficult to 'land' safely.

As a result of this... unfortunate domestic development, the Merchant won't be presenting his options on the 15th as initially scheduled, and this will have to be delayed to 17 June. But! Characters should still be out of Sa-Hareth by 21-22 June. Goodbye, winter wasteland. We barely knew ye.

QUESTIONS THREAD

Comments

[weifinder]

Okay soooo:

Wei Wuxian will not be at the farmhouse when the attack starts! He will have been in the citadel having had a late trade night and planned to come back that morning after, only to learn about the attack.

He'll try to get in touch by quartz (with those at the farmhouse, and with Karsa) while heading back to the citadel and collecting the resentful energies he's familiar with there. To those he gets in touch with, he'll offer the following: in his room, there is a collection of talismans meant for reinforcing barriers to discourage and turn away evil spirits. Slapping these up on a surface can be an additional help. He also has a second, smaller pile, that is for attracting evil spirits. He'd suggest using both in order to help see if it controls where Unhalad's undead will make concentrated areas of attack, and to basically help control the battlefield from inside to whatever degree.

So in summary: talismans to repel and attract evil spirits/undead that he'll request they double check with Lan Wangji, Lan Sizhui, Jiang Cheng, or possibly Xie Lian to make sure they're using the right ones for the right purposes. All the cultivators from his world should be familiar with the potential uses of these talismans, considering they made use of his invention (the evil spirit attracting talisman) over the years he was believed dead. Hah.

He won't be attacking with his undead spirit army until the very end of this, which should be a nice coinciding with anyone making the outside rush and/or the run at Unhalad. Anyone sensitive to energies will note a whole bunch of resentful spirits are being mobilised and are amassing nearby beforehand, but the undead of Unhalad's are likely more pressing as a feeling so congrats when even more death is added to the equation. None of these spirits will attack the ragtam group of PCs or the NPCs who've helped them, with of note means Haltham's not a target even if he were somehow randomly around!

Subsequently to all that second-death dealing, he'll be passing out and in recovery until after everyone's decided where they're going next!

This does mean that most my interactions are likely to be over network, or with anyone else teleporting outside (Five, anyone Five moves) and then at the end of the siege, the full on attack with his undead spirit army. As you do.

Note that Wei Wuxian's gonna feel Very Death Energy after this, and during this, and probably will rate feeling similar to the dead so have fun with that, it's just your friendly neighbourhood necromancer joining the fight!

[royal_venant]

Per this comment, can we coordinate this? I'm up for ideas. Way too excited to burn everything down!

[weifinder]

Wei Wuxian is absolutely down for coordinating this, his questions would be practical to start: how does aiming this fire work, can you build in exclusions, can you make a fixed target? His army is shadow undead (more or less) so spirit, not physically bodied unless he shoves one into a body to possess them, which he could, but generally does not

Can Regulus target with his spell? and so forth! Or does it need someone to be hit and then spread it around by contact?

[royal_venant]

Okay, Fiendfyre. It takes the shape of monsters (chimeras, snakes, dragons) in the form of flames, and is almost sentient (which helps with control). It is difficult to control, but a skilled caster of the Dark Arts can control it and direct the flame monsters where he wants them to go and what he wants them to burn.

There is a counter charm to distinguish the flames so if needs be that can be utilized to halt the progression of the flames, and then it can be recast in another direction. (Perhaps Lily can be on hand to help cast the counter charm to better control the direction of the flames.)

If Regulus and Wei Wuxian can coordinate via the quartz translators, Regulus could direct the fiendfyre in a way that distracts or outflanks the undead to route them in a direction towards Wei Wuxian's army.

Does this help?

I don't know if the flame monsters would affect spirits? Not something addressed in canon at all. They seem to seek out material things to burn, and spirits are immaterial, so I think they'd be safe from the fire.

[weifinder]

I'm going to guess spirits won't be affected, but it also means that as far as kind of controlling the field, Fiendfyre is going to be better at it than his spirits, as they're only tangible enough to harm a portion of the time instead of at all times!

That in mind, having it flank the undead so they can't retreat and end up crushed between Fiendfyre and Wei Wuxian's army sounds like a decent way to go, with Regulus and Lily working together to keep as much control of the fire as they can! Wei Wuxian will be in contact the whole time as needed, and it'll be a busy channel I can assume since it's still all-PC public at all times, but he can tune out what he needs to in order to listen to what needs to be heard too!

Probably try to avoid setting any part of the forest on fire, but also don't avoid it if it helps crowd control the undead, and can be extinguished after the fact before going out of control

[royal_venant]

This sounds like a great plan! And Lily is on board with helping control the flames.

Regulus will be too exhausted afterwards to do much more than exist in a spot.

[weifinder]

This is how Wei Wuxian will largely feel too, so a nod of the head in total, and this sounds like a good and sound plan all around!

Because a lot of what I'm doing is network heavy, I'm going to try and make that a network post here in the next few days, if that's any fun for talking on and having them ICly chatter as this all goes down!

[royal_venant]

I think doing it that way will be fun!

[foxable]

with their powers combined

fox would volunteer to work with wei ying on making those lures more effective - he's got some mirror pieces he can't use otherwise that he is going to (mod approval pending) enchant with booby traps

[weifinder]

LMF PERFECT i like how i hit you up below but yes i am here for it, Wei Wuxian can coordinate over the quartz and also--spirits can be tangible enough to carry things.

Does he want undead spirits carrying off these lures.

[foxable]

...

oh

that might be better than sending actual people but also
wei ying
that be really creepy

[weifinder]

he's been walking the demonic cultivator line for years there is nothing he does that people can't code creepy

also yes it is a bit but if it also means those spirits can lead unhalad undead into more spirit ambushes, then isn't that just a win for everyone?

[jeoha]

Yeah no that's a lot better than potentially getting friends killed, so he will agree he will just be a little creeped out about it lmfao

[weifinder]

He could make it worse and try to shove a spirit into one of Unhalad's undead but

He's not going to want to, but yeah for that I say have them talk on quartz because then he can focus on commanding that very specific thing to get in, then rush out carrying what is being looked for (the mirror shards) to lead away

I would possibly toss that to Ruxi though because it means running Unhalad forces into the woods and how that might be reacted to and if Anurr's people are going to go have fun killing anyone or not, or care if there's spirit slaughter happening in the fringes (not cutting down big on numbers but taking a handful out or something)

[jeoha]

it is tossed! o7

[sergeant_slick]

If you want an IC alert to bring Wei Wuxian into the loop, Slick's going to be requesting a headcount over the network as soon as the attack starts! While he's focusing on getting non-combatants accounted for, it'd be an early sign that Shit's Going Down.

[weifinder]

This sounds good! It can hit him on his way back to the Farm so he doesn't just walk too far into whatever scouts might be at the back end!