interlude: ellethia

[groundrules]

ELLETHIA

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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.

Feel free to tag into this log or make your own posts!

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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

Comments

[badlypoisoned]

[...]

I suppose it was my mistake to travel with a god of misfortune.

[scrapgege]

... I'm sorry.

[There's not much else he can say, really..... His bad luck does increase exponentially with the curse mark back and Hua Cheng not here.]

Well, as long as we still have some candles, we should be fine.

[badlypoisoned]

[He doesn't say, 'don't worry about it'. But at least he doesn't say, 'you should be sorry'.]

I will have to ask you to stay away from the remaining candles.

[scrapgege]

Haha, yes, of course...

[Haaaaaa, whi does his bad luck strike again at such inopportune times? he's gotten slowly used to not having any in the past year, and now that it'w back it's actually a little miserable.]

If anything tries to get on the boat, I can fend it off.

[badlypoisoned]

Then I'll leave that to you.

[You have to earn your keep somehow!

Having said that though, there is something that appears to be trying to climb onto the boat...and maybe he pretends not to notice to see what you'd do.]

[scrapgege]

[Well, Xie Lian spots it as well.

And he is going to.... punch through it. Literally. His fist goes through the creature's ribcage. And then, for good measure, he'll rip off the head, and then throw both of the pieces, head and mostly disemboweled body, right back into the water.

Hopefully, whatever is down there will find this appetizing enough and leave them be for a little while.

Ah, but now his hands are dirty... and putting them in the water might no be a great idea. Oh well.]

[badlypoisoned]

[Hm. He looks a politely impressed...which is not the most impressed but still a little bit.]

Do all martial gods prefer to be so messy or is it just you?

[scrapgege]

Well, I'm better at that with a sword... but I don't have one.

[And he doesn't want to use Ruoyue on these... things, or people, or whatever they are.]

I know it works. Back in Sa-Hareth, taking off their heads seemed to stop them.

[badlypoisoned]

Apart from some insects I suppose that is a method that is almost guaranteed to work,

[He has a sword but he's not lending it to you.

Still, he holds the candle with one hand. Then he reaches into hiss robe to pull out a small pouch.]

Catch.

[And that's all the warning you get before he throws the pouch at you. It is full of rocks.]

[scrapgege]

[He'll catch it, and almost fumble it from the boat... but no, it stays in his hand.

He's... clearly puzzled, though.]

Hm. Thank you, but... what is this for?

[badlypoisoned]

As they say, 'a flying flower or plucked leaf and be used to injure'.

[He smiled.]

I have no flowers or leaves but here are a bag of rocks. I'm sure if jianghu's masters can make use of it then a martial god should have no problems.

[In other words, use them as projectiles.]

[scrapgege]

... So they're not special or anything? You're not going to want them back?

[Because he is not going to dive to get the rocks back if he uses them to fling at things.]

[badlypoisoned]

If you throw it through the head of some creature and try to give it back to me afterwards I will probably throw it back at you.

[He says it very cheerfully...but he would definitely throw it. At your face. Hard.]

They're just rocks I picked up off the side of the road. Fengyu Gate isn't so dishonest as to charge a fee for such things.

[Not for no reason anyway.]

[scrapgege]

Then, thank you, Young master.

[here, have a cupped hand salute and a bow of the head to go with it.]

I don't know, though, when we met, it almost felt like you would charge me just for speaking with you.

[badlypoisoned]

Someone who could just punch through a creature's head isn't likely to pay me for some rocks.

[Is that the only reason...]

Though I will admit, most people who go out of their way to seek me out are prepared to pay me for my time.

[scrapgege]

... The truth is, I'm not likely to pay you anyway because I don't have any money, Young master.

[So, really, that makes things very simple. Being in debt and faking his death to flee is just a fact of life.]

[badlypoisoned]

Martial arts manuals, objects of interest and even favours are acceptable forms of payment we have accepted before.

[Though not from everyone, naturally.]

[scrapgege]

I.... don't really have any of these either.

[He can owe you a favor, but do you really want him to...]

[badlypoisoned]

Good thing then, that I'm not charging you anything.

[Nor does he have to. A promise of a favour from a person who goes to hunt large venomous snakes is meaningless as Xie Lian is clearly the sort to help where help is needed...and also doesn't strike him as someone who would follow a contract if he didn't wish to.]

Though I do wonder...does being a god not come with any monetary perks?

[scrapgege]

That's if you have a lot of believers, or do a lot of great deeds that earn you merits. otherwise, no really.

[badlypoisoned]

Ah, I know in the stories they say our bureaucracy is modelled after the heaven's. [Or maybe it was the other way around?] But for it to be like that seems a little depressing.

[scrapgege]

Haha, yes, it's kind of the same as a human court, I would say. Most of the gods were human once, so it makes sense, it's what they know.

[badlypoisoned]

How boring.

[But perhaps it is also comforting...? He wouldn't know. Not being a god and all.]

If it were me, I wouldn't want to be tied down with all that bureaucracy. If I had wanted such things I would have gone to the capital and taken the imperial exam. [He says that but he never actually had the chance to try...but that sort of life seemed so...dull.]

[scrapgege]

I haven't been there in a while, to be honest. And I still spend most of my time in the mortal realm.

[He's never been one much for bureaucracy either, even when he was human.]

[badlypoisoned]

[They have that in common, at least.]

...but because of that you have no money?