westwhere | interlude: ellethia

ELLETHIA

En route to their next destination, the Merchant detours the party through his home citadel of Ellethia — the first, haunted casualty of the undead, now divided into Ellethia-Allayar and Ellethia-Hamsour.

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ONE FOR THE ROAD

Macaluso Spina’s plans to escort the group out of Taravast are overturned by the Merchant’s transmission:

”It appears many of you remain indifferent to the stakes of our endeavour. So, you will see them. You go to Ellethia, jewel of innovation, the first cradle of the dead. My home.”

With the sorceress Karsa now gone, the party is entrusted to journey master and kindly-mannered biologist Enam.

Characters retain their bare essentials and what little can be carried on their backs. Magical storage is minimal. Everyone receives bags containing: three raw candles, a bundle of red clothes, a light blanket, two flasks of fresh water, a dagger, two bandage strips, two needles, strong thread, four textile patches, dried food, a pouch with two fistfuls of kiln-dried broken firewood and some flint. Supplies are replenished periodically.

Enam and his six assistants carry larger loads — with two aides transporting heavily bound humanoid forms. They’ve got you, Kaneki.

Ellethia requires delicate travel. The group first travels communally by ship, reaching the East Arakuthia Seas at sunset, meeting 25 small boats that can home between one and three passengers.

The group only travels at sea by night, when the depths are safest. The 3-17 January period covers two nights of seaborne travel, broken by journey on land across the two segments of Ellethia. Sea shipment will take characters from East Arakuthia to Ellethia-Allayar. A second voyage will later deliver them from Ellethia-Allayar to Ellethia-Hamsour. They spend roughly seven days at each land location.

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TROUBLE AT SEA

The small boats have been thralled to slowly progress through mist and water to their destination. Enam quickly discloses the rules of seaborne engagement:

■ Keep the light. Enam offers each traveller a lit candle brazier to wave periodically around the boat and “ward away evil.”

■ If your candle blows out, rush to it light back with help from your boat-mate or other vessels.

■ If all of a boat’s candle lights have been died, travellers have three minutes to light fresh candle flames. The vessel begins to sink, seized by hands of rotting flesh and shadow. Undead mermaids attempt to drown those who fall in.

■ Sunken characters can be rescued by other vessels but remain “marked,” experiencing a bitter, unrelenting cold that no fire can tame. The saviours’ ship are intensely targeted by mermaids that seek to capsize it and collect their lost prize. You are rattled but safe as long as your lights hold.

■ Perhaps you dozed off, or briefly looked away — no matter your distraction, a newcomer (?) has now climbed into your boat, teeth chattering and terrified. These undead visitors are unaware of their condition and beg to be delivered to shore. They are not violent, unless ignored and often spark conversations. Over time, they become paranoid that they will not be rescued.

■ Those who share their names with these creatures feel compelled to take them to ground, where they trigger immediate medium-scale explosions. Other boat-mates or vessels can stop this.

■ Forcibly push your stowaway into water, trick them in, or pose a riddle they cannot solve.

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AHOY, LAND

Ellethia has been cleaved into two — Allayar and Hamsour — by the Huntress, whose extended presence crumbled stone, decayed organic matter and eventually sunk districts and passageways. Crude bridges connect sectors of the citadel that have been partly submerged.

Although the tragedy of Ellethia occurred within the last decade, its ruins have been completely overrun by lush vegetation.

The following applies to both Ellethia-Allayar and Ellethia-Hamsour:

■ Characters must don their fashionable red gear once they reach land. Over 15 minutes of direct exposure to the crisp Ellethia air leads unprotected skin to erupt in a rash, then into gashes and tissue-deep decay. The wound fully regenerates within the hour.

■ Patch your party suit immediately, if it is torn.

■ Science-prone characters can notice no sign of radiation. Sorcerers feel no magic. Necromancers sense a complete absence of death.

■ There is no other human presence on land. Plants develop abundantly. Animals live an entire cycle of birth, growth, maturity and decay in the period between sunrise and sundown, reaching their prime around midday. Corpse remains patch back together into the creature’s new-born form at sunrise.

■ There are no human corpses anywhere.

TASKS

■ Forage or hunt. Replenish resources. Water from Ellethia’s canals is potable.

■ Help Enam find samples of the Widow’s Yearning. The plants grow in small fields whose scent woos travellers into a restful sleep they struggle to wake back from on their own. Widow’s Yearning can be ground into a potent hallucinogen.

■ Explore the pastoral surroundings.

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ELLETHIA-ALLAYAR

The party first reaches Ellethia-Allayar, which hosts the ruins of the citadel’s seats of banking, commerce and governance. Ellethia-Allayar has been deeply flooded, with many streets partly overcome by water.

■ Amid torn-down halls of rhetoric and administration, characters can find bright flags on public office buildings, and glitter debris and street cups on the ground.

■ Several decaying pamphlets remain in the main piazza, whose halls have been submerged 1 meter underwater. If recovered, the pamphlets bemoan: Toss a Bone to Your Taxman: He’s Already Got the Meat, Gristle and Fat, Dowries: Sense or Sentiment? Join Tonight’s March for Free Wedlock, Who Watches through Your Mirrors?, Selling: Minor Palace with Main Street View and Cat, 90 Days Since Conscription: Where Are Your Sons?, Taravast Was Our Fathers’ Question, We Are the Answer.

■ Fresher pamphlets littered on public streets announce extended burial grounds in the botanical garden.

■ Roads and buildings show signs of clawing and trampling, along with spattering of long-dried blood.

■ The carriages, streetlights and infrastructure of Ellethia suggest a technology level near the 1800s.

THE SILENCE GAME

Ellethia-Allayar’s impromptu “canals” have made it a prime target for mermaids, who only infiltrate at midday — the peak of the accelerated animal life cycle.

■ Enam urges retreating to the high ground of the peripheral residential areas, as midday draws near.

■ Between noon and 13:00 each day, swathes of vicious mermaids storm the Allayar canals, working in packs to draw unsuspecting animals or humans into water. Some mermaids are dead, some living. While they always circle Ellethia during the day, they only proactively hunt in this period.

■ The thick fogs of Ellethia throw a boon: if they are very silent and very still, characters can hide even on low ground. Beware: the mermaids’ hearing has evolved to compensate their weaker sight, helping them locate close-by characters who speak or heave.

■ Mermaids imitate the animal calls and human voices they have heard to lure out prey.

■ Most central and public buildings are on low land.

Enam directs characters to their boats again to head to Ellethia-Hamsour within the week.

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ELLETHIA-HAMSOUR

Unlike Allayar, Ellethia-Hamsour is a completely demolished territory, bordering a wasteland. Water infiltrations have been minimal.

The fog runs thicker than in Allayar, compounding the dangers of the collapsing, decayed roads and bridges.

The strong, vibrant greenery only breaks in coastal regions. Beneath the plant beds, you can find signs of the academic, science or technological districts. In some manicured gardens, flowers have overtaken hundreds of newer stone plates bearing local names and the marker, Truth Bows Only to the Sun.

Any remaining stone edifices display intense clawing and blood residue.

Characters are tasked to head to a distant lighthouse, lone in the horizon.

■ Characters become increasingly obsessed with reaching the lighthouse, often neglecting food, safety and sleep.

■ The single-minded focus leaves some vulnerable to being lured into steep pits or down cliff edges, into the sea.

■ Some characters become possessive of the lighthouse and plot to prevent their fellow travellers from reaching it. The lighthouse is not safe, if others get near it. It does not want them. Only you.

PLOTTING POST

QUESTIONS

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[She never thought about approaching it like that. If she tried to disapparate from here, or make a Portkey out, how badly would the attempt go? As much as she wants to leave, she wants to leave intact - she plans to survive through this. So she'll not go down the way of potentially being splinched.

That thought sends a shudder down her spine, not pleasant.

But the question does snap her out of it.]

Ah - yes! I do, though not the same kind. Which is fascinating, there are lots of magic casters here that do magic differently from each other. Yours were the first portals I've seen. Do you control where they take you?

Usually, yes. It doesn't always have to be anywhere specific either.

[ sometimes it was simply a vague idea that opened a portal to random places, which, now that she thinks about it, might have been part of the reason she didn't end up back on the Continent.

she looks at the other woman more closely. ]

How does magic work where you're from?

Not as chaotically as that. [Not that it occurs to her that what she's said is rude, but. She shakes her head, and thinks - Moiraine described hers as pulling from a Source (the Source) but her magic just comes from within. She was born with it, literally.]

I have a wand. We learn spells and curses and hexes and charms, using the wand. Powerful magic-users can do some wandlessly, but I think the wand is meant to be the tool. Or the funnel.

[ Yennefer doesn't take it that way. In fact, the description was apt in how magic is done for her. ]

How do the more powerful magic users carry out the magic then? Do they not draw from Chaos? Or something similar?

[ She's genuinely interested. ]

It's never been studied, I suppose. Or rather the purists think the magic comes from within, so skills with spellwork happens only due to talent, not hard work.

[Which, see her feathers get ruffled there.] Which is utterly [bullshit.] innacurate. It also keeps them in the impression of being somehow superior to the rest of us who don't come from parents who can trace their magical bloodline back for generations.

Sounds political [ which is all bullshit to her ]. Then again, it's the same where I come from. You have the Sources who don't need to draw on any of the elements to perform magic because they're born to do it. Then there are the ones that need to and who train most of their whole lives. But then there are the ones who are neither and can still do simple signs.

[ She pauses, looking at her again. ]

Is that what earns you respect? A magical bloodline?

[ Oof, that sounds far too close to the Continent. ]

[She scrunches up her nose in agreement under the helmet. Something about the way the woman says political is vaguely making it sound like an insult. After her brushes with politics in her world and in Taravast, Hermione's inclined to agree.

At the question of what earns her respect, she is quick to shake her head.] No, there are still plenty people out there who value hard work and talent, even potential! I wouldn't listen to the gits who value a magical bloodline anyway.

Bloodlines don't meet much when it comes to a person's backbone. [A beat.] Could you help me with my helmet, miss? I have...a lot of hair.

[ Yennefer takes it all in and once asked, she steps forward and carefully minds how she's taking the helmet off. As she does, she comments further. ]

Good. Magic should only be restricted to those who want to use it to harm and destroy, though I suppose that disturbs the natural order of things. It's all about power.

[ Long fingers detach the few strands of hair from being ripped from the young woman's head and a moment later, she is free of it. ]

There you are.

[There is indeed a lot of hair - braided, but wild curls escape here and there. Despite how brief this will have to be, at least she'll see whoever she's discussing the meritocracy of magic face to face.

She is such a strikingly beautiful woman, honestly. Bit disturbing.]

Thank you. [A smile.] I don't know if it has much to do with the natural order of things. I didn't really come into mine until I was about eleven, and I've felt pressured to work harder just to prove myself worthy. Because apparently you can't just be a decent witch if you're muggleborn, you've got to be the best with of your age to be taken seriously. And that felt like the natural order of things, to those with power.

Those are some pretty high expectations.

[ Yennefer nods. It wasn't so long ago, contrary to her current age, that she created her first portal to escape a scary situation. Since then, she has set her own bar of expectations, high enough that only she can see it. No one else. She calls the shots. Only she can be disappointed in herself for not reaching it. ]

And do you feel as though you've reached them?

interlude: ellethia

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