westwhere | interlude: ellethia

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

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( Strange midnight hours, strange tides. They drift by each other, ships in the night, the molten pace of their trickling candles hypnotic. Hours on end, Lan Wangji has sharpened his focus to a point-tipped dagger, plain, but it slips, oily and viscous, tempts him to lethargy.

Then, the reminders are served: in a nearby vessel, the traveller drips, nearly tips down and over, eases. He stays himself, before Lan Wangji must intercede, howl of the late-hour breeze plangent in his ear, and the rippling of foamed waves a startling, jostling distraction.

Fricative, his next breath bruises his lungs, the pace of his inhalation. He means to scream — stays himself, then the vessel, his hand bridging the rims, when the passenger wrestles the thrall to wake himself first. Good. Efficient. )

You have wo — ( And then, flame betrays them, blinks and sleeps and the candle quiets. No time to hesitate. They were told — ...but then, they are always passed their instructions, always fail them thereafter. ) Jump in. Make haste.

( Better to sacrifice one boat and spare a man, than to dally and attempt to waken the flame again. )

[Rufus remembers the instructions- he had made sure to memorize them but being out here, remembering them was easier said than done especially when he had felt as if he had been caught up between a trance and a memory as he had stared into the water.

He's angry at himself for allowing himself to get caught up in that but that wasn't going to change anything now. Now he had to just focus on surviving this however he was able to and Lan Wangji's prompt was something that he could focus on.

There was no time to question the stranger who was offering help as he recalled the warnings that they had been given- he was sure that he didn't want to find out what kind of evil the candles were supposed to protect them against.

It's awkward to move between boats but he doesn't hesitate, not giving himself time to think about the possibility of falling into the murky water below. But he's able to get in without touching the water, settling in while making sure the candle remained whole and dry.]

Thank you, your aid is appreciated.

( The boats compromise their balance, tip, waddle. Every heartbeat, another creak of slipped wood or burble of foaming water threatens the belly of Lan Wangji's ship will give, the rim will putrefy, the sculpted fineries that dress the boat's skins will recede into themselves, erased through friction.

No such poor luck, despite the midnight hour and the lazy beam of a sullen moon that watches the strike of their misfortune with indifference. Nobility does not flatter Lan Wangji this once — more often, when a raft eased in a slow, honeyed drift beneath his feet, another man led it. Boats are not for the strain of Hanguang-Jun. The blisters that thicken the joints of his hand were only ever won on swords and war drills.

Now, he recovers the hard belt-length of an oar and drags it in lazy, clumsy circles, nearing until the two boats kiss and the man may yet cross over, lifeless hands rising from dark waters to seek out the frays of his coat. Tip of his tongue sour, Lan Wangji thinks to call on his talismans — but another breeze imperils his candle, and he diverts himself with taking his brazier closer to his leg, where he might stretch the long span of his sleeve at a permissible distance above it and guard it well. )

You owe nothing. ( Think even less of this. ) Have spirits sought you before?

[Rufus can't imagine how Lan Wangji is able to move in all of those long layers. Granted, he's not one to judge since he's used to wearing layered coats himself but nothing so loose-fitting. He admires the kind of coordination it must take to wear something so flowing without getting tangled up.

The question catches him off-guard and he has to think about it for a moment/ He had lived in a city of steel where scientists tried to play god. Spirituality wasn't a good return on investment unless it could be used to further the interests of the company.]

I don't think spirt is the right word- more of a powerful, vengeful ghost or memory.

[It's not just the frigid air that makes him feel cold but he keeps his gaze away from the water. He's not going to let himself get pulled back. He has to focus on making it to the other side so best focus on his rescuer.]

I take it you have some experience regarding spirits and such then.

( His newly found companion is indifferent to spirits, to exorcism. Perhaps not death-touched. All the better then, to start from clean slates, silks without stain. If the man does not wear his past and his sins, the ghosts of the land will be find he delivers them fewer weapons.

One of Lan Wangji's hands anchors him on hard wood, churns the dust and wet there. The other paces the trembled lines of his sword's hilt, nipping at edge and crest. Silence sleeps between them, but the dead only ever wait. )

Some. ( Only a lifetime, tattered. ) Tonight, they sought you. They may yet claim. ( Marks, memory, harbingers. The lichen of spiritual... affection linger on man, no matter how barren his soul. ) Watch your limbs for marks or sickness.

( The eyes, at times, the mouth. A shortness of breath, a malady that coalesces then gains indefatigable traction, often lacking tactility. Shadow hurts, the blessings of haunting. Subtlety only suits the dead when they are yet strong enough to possess.

And after...? )

They must know I was haunted in the past. Marked by a vengeful memory.

[He had thought the last traces of Sephiroth and Geostigma had left him before coming here but could something have lingered? His skin was clear of the black marks that had been slowly killing him but something deeper could remain under the surface, something that can't be seen that still taints him.

He has to focus right now instead of dwelling on the past. He won't allow Sephiroth to have any power here.]

Can you banish them? The spirits?

[Without the light they are going to need to have some defense and he doubts his shotgun would be of much use against something so ethereal. He clutches the edge of the boat as it starts to rock, the black water shifting around them as if something under the boat is looking for something.

And then it stops, an eerie quiet settling over the water.]

( He stills, before words need be spoken, a sudden, molten animal paranoia escalating the stairs of his spine, crawling up his nape.

There is a moment in swordsmanship where advantage is determined by patience before anticipation — where to win the hour, you must first charm the natural paralysis of your petrified body into balance and languor. He knows the hour now. Breathes and finds the beads of his sweat gelid, weighted on his cheek, his brow.

They have but one candle — Wangji's own. The creatures intuit their feast was stolen, and the man Lan Wangji has rescued reeks impossibly, inexorably of fresh kill. Only if he were bled and yet wounded, could he more heavily inspire —

He acts before he thinks to argue, sinking to bring up the lone, dripping candle and offer it to the man, before gently releasing his sword Bichen of her sheath. Silvered, she gleams cold and indifferent beneath the moon's watch, a line of dappled light in flickered reflection. And he whispers: )

Lend your hand. ( Yours, for it's the man the sirens want, circle him like a lessened and trembled thing beneath wave and water. ) A shallow cut. We bleed you to distract them.

[So much for no one seeing him bleed here- he takes the candle with one hand and holds out the other. He hopes that he's right in assuming that he's free of the disease that had been killing him, washed away by the rain.

So he holds out his hand, nodding to give permission for the other man to cut his hand. It was better than the alternative, he had no intention of going swimming in that black water tonight.

He doesn't waver even as the boat rocks again, the sound of something gurgling around them. Instead, he keeps his eyes on Wangji, eying the sword. It's beautiful, he's never seen anything like it before but he's going to have to trust that the other man has enough control to only do a shallow cut in a boat that is rocking back and forth in almost pitch black darkness. There isn't much of a choice, however.]

Take what is needed.

Less.

( A petty, minor correction. What is needed is life's blood, past the first pour, crowning beads and trickle. The moon would eclipse herself, the man's heart would jolt and quake, and there would be a hiss of the trembled, roiling water, then a hiss of the capsized boat and her creaked wood, and a hiss of jaws snapping, the sirens' festered appetites readied for the feast.

The first cut comes too shallow. In the attempt to lighten his hand, Lan Wangji softened the stab to excess. The second attempt slits skin easily, fat of the palm bearing the brunt of the bleeding. In Bichen's wake, Wangji splinters her to the long, starved side of him, blade wet and yearning, and mermaids batting their tails to send the boat rocking, when he paints an arc with the sword, and precious droplets of the man's blood infest the waters.

Another fractious miscalculation: he had thought, spill the blood, pour it in water. But the creatures below are too — agitated, hastened to slaughter. They would beat the boat to sink, if the blood lands too close. They require bait that can travel, and, knelt on the board, Lan Wangji is fast to produce it, unravelling the gifts of his journey resources to reveal the spun blanket and cut out its parts. Rolled, they barely hold shape, but he passes each makeshift, hard-pressed ball to the man in silence. )

Hold and wet them. ( In your bloodied hand, he need not offer. ) Throw them far out, at sea.

( Let the sirens fetch, if they wish their quarry. )

[Rufus only winces slightly as the sword cuts through his palm, grateful for Lan Wangji's precision with the blade despite the rocking of the boat. Those creatures are out for blood- literally, his blood but he knows that if he allows himself to give in to fear then he won't be able to think clearly.

He takes the cloth and clutches his bloody palm around it, clenching it as tightly as possible to soak the cloth as much as possible. The blood loss wasn't ideal but if they were going to make it to the shore then the creatures would need sufficient blood to be appeased.]

Alright-

[First one cloth and then the second, clenching his fist down tight despite the pain. The pain focuses him, he can hold onto that to keep himself alert as he makes sure to soak the clothes through as much as possible. As soon as he's satisfied that he's soaked through the fabric as much he's able to one ball is tossed to the left, the other to the right as hard as he can throw them.

The waters calm then, suddenly, but he doesn't relax, holding his breath as he waits.]

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interlude: ellethia

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