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.

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

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

( Wrath is wet from several trips within the water. The pamphlets gives some insight into the city but not enough. He had hoped to find information about the Merchant here, but with knowing so little about him in general-

That seems near impossible. )

I do not mind.

Finding information about the Merchant (not that I believe that is what he is truly called) is proving more difficult than I would have liked. Of course he would not point us in this direction if it could reveal too much about him.

He's marvelously good at revealing nothing, and that's the least suspicious thing about him, though - I did have an idea about that. At the Botanical Gardens, there are a fair few memorials carved. There had to have been more survivors left behind than just him. If we can't find anything to tell us something useful, maybe we'll find someone with firsthand knowledge. The Merchant seemed to have a very clear picture of where he was sending us, perhaps he's familiar with more than just these ruins.

[ After stewing on the bits and pieces of information she found while pouring over these ruins it was a relief to finally cross paths with someone to discuss them with, as the sudden rush of ideas might suggest. ]

That would be useful assuming we could find an individual with ties to this place. I doubt that will be easy, and we will not likely find them here given the state of this place.

( But it would be entirely valuable to have another perspective about this place, about what the Merchant sees and has experienced. It's a good idea - not one he had considered before. )

Bonaccarso apparently knew who we were from the start, and he laughed at the Merchant calling himself by that title.

We traveled with refugees from Sa-Hareth to Taravast, surely the survivors of this citadel dispersed similarly. When we arrive at this new place we're being sent it can't hurt to ask around, most of what I've heard about Ellethia has been second-hand information, someone who was there would certainly have more to say.

[ Lily's eyebrows shoot up, surprised by this new bit of information about Bonaccarso and the Merchant, and she gives a thoughtful nod, appreciative of this new puzzle piece. ]

He is someone with tremendous power, whoever he is. He's proven he knows about the rulers of the undead armies time and again, and he has enough sway over them if he's able to negotiate deals for our passage like Bonaccarso and Rigarda brokered for Taravast's safety.

( Wrath nods his agreement, solemn as he may be about it. If he were to meet the merchant, he would be able to tell if he was even mortal, but he doubts the individual would be so foolish. )

And he sent a key to Wen Qing and I in Taravast to open a door- somehow knowing it was the two of us who were looking into what was happening with Vannozza. His seemingly near omniscience is... frustrating.

( to say the least. ) I do not like being used. ( No one does, but there are many reasons he crawled on to his throne in Hell. )

It's clear he's using us, whether for personal revenge, or some greater scheme is unclear. He sent Rufus to find us with explosives, they're meant to go off when they make contact with the undead. He wanted them to be included in that crate of weapons, it was an easy request to grant but–

[ Lily tipped her head to the side, shoulders rolling in a shrug. ]

Given the nature of Taravast's truce with the undead, something that will certainly be taken as an act of war.

( Wrath's expression shifts to one of dark understanding. It's another example of a time when he sent someone to do a specific act for him - aware already of a plan in place, who was involved, where to go. )

Bonaccarso believed he was a man motivated entirely by revenge beyond even what occurred within Taravast. I do not know how much value we can place in his words, but he was aware he was near death. I see little reason for him to lie, and I am generally able to tell when someone does. ( lie. )

Regardless as you've said, it's clear the group is being wielded as his weapon.

interlude: ellethia

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