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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Marcos didn't notice the man was writing something until he interrupted, so he's thankful when he doesn't seem to mind. It's difficult to tell who is who in these masks, but the flash of his eyes when he turns is hard to miss. He's almost too distracted by them to reply — only after a moment when it sinks in.

"Grim is right." He holds his breath when a couple of birds fly by, oblivious to what's happening to them. Nobody told him if the suits are all that's keeping them from suffering the same fate. "...You can sense magic? If it's not that, what else could it be?"

"Something more scientific," he suggests. "A plague corrupting the land. It's a common tactic of the undead where I am from, although... with different effects."

Similar, but... different. This endless cycle of life and death is different, whereas blight kills everything more decisively and corrupts things left alive. He frowns in thought, eyes dropping away as he tries to remember the specific side-effects of blight. The land is rendered sterile, he thought. The scar was evidence of that. Any plant life that doesn't die is warped. The plants here seem to be alive, overgrowing everything. Perhaps it is only things with discernible souls that are impacted?

That gets a couple of raised eyebrows. This is the first time he's heard from someone with experience with the undead. A plague is at least something he could wrap his head around, but the way this place cycles through life and death makes even less sense than what he's seen.

"We didn't have undead where I'm from. This is all new to me." He watches him for a minute, still stuck on the word 'tactic'. How do they even prepare for something like this? "So you think this was intentional, or just a side effect of them... taking over?"

"Hard to say," Wrathion admits, "since I am unfamiliar with the temperament and tactics of the undead legions here. Perhaps the merchant would advise us on how common this is. Where I am from, the undead would use blight to drive back the forces of the living -- making land uninhabitable to them while it was acceptable to its users. Depending on the strain and potency, some blight simply kills everything living it touches, some turns living things into more undead."

He tilts his head, scanning the area in thought before turning to Marcos once more.

"The rot and destruction here is similar, but the rebirth... unusual. If not for the lack of detectable magic, I might have imagined the passage of time was being was being... altered."

...Sometimes Marcos really doesn't know how good they had it back home. Sure, they were persecuted, hunted, and experimented on but at least they weren't dealing with the undead sucking the life out of everything they touch.

Time alterations would make sense with what they're seeing, if it was at all possible. Honestly, he's not sure how these flimsy suits are enough to keep them from getting caught in the same cycle, but apparently they deemed it safe enough to travel through.

"Your guess is better than mine. I've seen a lot of different mutant abilities, but nothing that could cause this." Although it's not completely out of the realm of possibilities that someone has that power. If they did, he assumes they wouldn't register as magic. "...There should be a record of what happened somewhere, right? The Merchant must know."

Wrathion's face pinches briefly in frustrated irritation.

"I would not be surprised if he's well aware of everything that happened here, and what we'd be walking into, but thought it more educational for us to work it out ourselves."

Not that Wrathion doesn't like a puzzle, he does -- but he doesn't like games. He prefers people to be direct, even if that means being rough. If he needs to understand something, explain it -- don't make him spend forever in a place putting together the pieces just to make a point

"You haven't spoken to him either, huh?" He sighs, understanding that frustration. From their brief messages from the Merchant, he doesn't get the impression that the ones who came before him did them any favors.

"I don't know what we're supposed to be working out." Something horrible happened here, but what can they possibly do now? "I'd feel better about it if we knew it was contained here. If this could spread, they've got bigger problems."

"He considers it a lesson in consequence. Taravast did not go the way he wanted it to, and he believes that is simply because we don't understand exactly how the undead legions work. Rather than explain, he's taking us on a little tour."

Wrathion's tone suggests complete disapproval of this, because honestly -- what is the point? Why not simply explain? Why do this whole song and dance? It feels like a power move, rubbing their noses in it and getting them to train themselves. Wrathion dislikes it, dislikes feeling like an animal being domesticated and punished when it doesn't behave as expected.

"We're agreed on the corrupting effect here," he adds finally, "I would like to understand better how it works."

"I'm not sure there's anyone else here who's left to tell you." Which might be a good thing. It's bad enough seeing animals go through this cycle, he doesn't want to imagine what it can do to people.

"The undead supposedly won here, but maybe that's not the whole story." Not that Marcos really has any experience with this kind of thing, but it still seems strange that they would have moved on completely after conquering this place. "Maybe whatever happened here made it completely useless to them, or they intentionally cast a spell that was supposed to keep them out and accidentally cursed the land. ...I mean, the only undead I met blew himself up the minute we came to shore."

"I've been considering a mixture of both," Wrathion admits. "Perhaps they tried to stop the undead, and the clash of powers caused this."

The mixture of death and undeath. It would make sense to him, since this effect along does not particularly speak to him of something that would be... useful to the undead, that they would do alone. Things living and dying endless does not permanently add to your number, and it's... regional. Seems to happen only once you enter the area. No, something happened here specifically.

Marcos can only guess based on what he sees, but that sounds logical. It also sounds like nowhere he wants to be. Even if it is free of the undead, from the looks of it the cost could be worse.

"You'd think that kind of cautionary tale would have traveled everywhere. I guess I should have been asking more questions in Taravast." Instead of getting involved with the local witches who hired him only to all die horribly. He hadn't known what he was doing, and he regrets just going along with everything. "...Have you talked to our guide?"

"Enam? Only briefly. He seems familiar enough with Ellethia and the local herbs. I'm not certain how much he answers to our benefactor, however."

The Merchant. He may have been given a party line to follow, or guided on how much to tell them. He may favour answers that suit the Merchant, given that he's in his pay.

A tricky thing, but in truth they have few other sources of information currently.

"The Merchant wouldn't have hired him if he didn't think he could navigate his way through here, but I still don't know what we're worth to him. I'd like to know what his instructions were, or if the plan was to lose a few of us to teach us a lesson." So he can occasionally be more pessimistic than he seems. Marcos just gets that kind of vibe. Maybe it'd be less trouble for him if they all died in some abandoned island.

"At least it gives us a better idea of what's out there." That's what he says, but he still sounds a little resentful. They could have shown them this and still given them a heads up about what they were walking into. "I wasn't sure what to expect from my first trip out of Taravast."

There's a thought. It is entirely possible, after all, that they were brought here to learn in both the practical and the painful sense. Wrathion's eyes narrow in thought, mulling that over.

"Taravast was where you arrived?" he prompts. It was the same for him, after all. He's met people who arrived both before and after -- what is the rate of arrival? How common are arrivals? Are there people arriving that nobody knows about, in the wilds of this world? Surely there is some pattern...

"Yeah," Marcos looks down and away when he answers, because he doesn't love recounting his arrival. In retrospect, it might have prepared them for how bad things would get, but he's still bothered by not knowing how he got in that situation to start with. "It was an experience. They had us drugged in a cage for days. The group here helped get us out."

He can tell that Wrathion is trying to figure something out, so he decides to take it back further. It's been a while since he's compared stories with anyone.

"Back home, we knew a girl who could open up portals. She said we needed to see something, and we followed her through one." They really should have asked more questions at the time, he knows, but... well, she had come back from the dead, it seemed like the least they could do. He clears his throat. "Next thing we knew, that's where we were. She's been missing since then, so we don't know what she was trying to show us."

Someone who could use portals would be... useful. A shame that person with missing, then.

Yet Wrathion's attention is stuck on a different detail.

"Drugged in a cage?"

For days? He feels a low, simmering boil of anger start in his stomach. That sort of behaviour isn't... as uncommon as he'd like, but he never feels any less upset over it.

"Who?" he prompts.

Not that he can immediately do anything about it, but it's always good to know who to avoid -- and who it isn't worth pulling his punches with if they come to blows.

He looks slightly guilty for bringing up something that was already done and dealt with, but he nods. Of all the things he's seen, that still ranks as the worst. People should know what can happen.

"Who drugged us?" He guesses that's the 'who' he means from his tone. "...I never really found out. We were suspended in a cage over undead witches who only communicated by showing us visions of them burning. They never asked anything of us."

Which bothers him still. The witches seemed to be goading them to fight each other to death, but whoever put them there must have had some other reason.

"I wouldn't be surprised if Bonaccorso was behind it. That was months ago now. He's gone, and I haven't heard anyone else getting captured the same way, so I don't think we need to worry about them."

Bonaccorso.

Wrathion slides his eyes away and frowns in thought. The fact that they never found out is... disturbing, but if it was Bonaccorso then the man has at least lost his head.

"Hopefully you're correct on that front."

The last thing they need is a risk of more kidnapping. He glances around the area again with a frown, then over at Marcos again.

"We should keep moving. The sooner we're away from this ground the better."

Surely if they keep walking they'll reach the end of... whatever this plagued area is?

Marcos wishes he could say for certain, but he just nods in agreement. Everything that happened in Taravast was like a fever dream, especially those first few days. So much was left unresolved, and what happened to the witches in particular still weighs on him.

There's nothing he can do to change it now. After sharing that disturbing memory, he doesn't blame Wrathion for wanting to take some time to digest.

"You can go on ahead. I'm going to spend a little more time searching for that herb they're looking for." Though he'll likely give up soon and go back to help set up camp. If something insane doesn't happen before then, which gets him to look up at Wrathion one more time before he leaves. "Let me know if you run into anything."

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interlude: ellethia

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