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

[in_theworks]

"We already had, like, the French Revolution," Wrench points out with a shrug. "They had muskets or musketoons or whatever, so I'm not that far off. Plus, I'm pretty sure the BBEG wouldn't see a grenade to the face coming. I could be, like, the secret weapon!"

If only someone would help him find saltpeter. The rest, he's not sure he'd have a problem coming up with.

[joker_wild]

Akira tilts his head. "Aren't those the people that follow Mickey Mouse around?"

Yes, he knows the difference between a "musketoon" and a "musketeer", but he has to make the joke - and he makes it so drily it might be hard to tell whether he's actually confused or not.

[in_theworks]

Wrench looks away, into the proverbial camera, and jerks a thumb in Akira's direction, the mask flashing an accompanying (-_-)

"Is he putting me on or am I putting him on?" he asks no one in particular. When he looks back to Akira, he tells him, "Pretty sure that's Mousekateer, but you know."

[joker_wild]

Akira blinks at him, following the look into nothing - and then huffs out another laugh when he realizes what's going on. "Oh, that's right," he says, like he's just now realizing it.

"But they would have had gunpowder there anyway, right? If they had muskets? So it shouldn't be a problem to get it."

[in_theworks]

"The actual French Revolution did," Wrench corrects, mask deliberately showing a (x_x). "I'm not sure if fantasy Venice did, if only because people were a little too busy being human flamethrowers."

Which is much better than gunpowder, anyway -- or much worse, depending on what side of that you're on.

[joker_wild]

"I mean, a flamethrower would be a lot of fun," he offers, one corner of his mouth lifting in a smirk.

He's not actually sure which of the other Thieves would have more fun with a flamethrower.

Probably Ann.

[in_theworks]

"Oh, absolutely," Wrench agrees, at once. He's still hoping to find someone to teach him magic, for want of being a human flamethrower, himself. "But also a little more complicated than just a grenade. I'd have to invent napalm and gasoline, for a flamethrower."

Never mind the fact that he probably has the chemical formulas for both memorized.

[joker_wild]

"True," Akira returns with a frown. "Well, maybe you can work up to that? I mean, eventually you're going to be somewhere that has what you need, right? Or if not gunpowder, some other kind of explosive that will work just as well?"

[in_theworks]

"Hopefully." And he's really, really hoping. The loss of his ability to make things go boom has been a big one. "Ooh! Maybe there are, like, fire flowers, like from Mario, here somewhere!"

[joker_wild]

Akira understands that reference, and he grins.

"Considering the undead mermaids and everything else I've seen so far? It would not surprise me to find a patch of them somewhere."

[in_theworks]

"Yeah, well. You find any, man, you let me know." Has he mentioned he really wants the power to set things on fire? It's a character flaw. Or something. "Or, like. I guess we could go look for them, together."

Since they're both dressed for the occasion, now, and all.

[joker_wild]

He looks from Wrench back toward the rest of the group. "I think we're more likely to run into some Dry Bones here."

Because zombies.

"But we might be okay as long as we don't start hearing dungeon music."

If Wrench wants to take a look around, he will absolutely be his exit buddy.

[in_theworks]

"We could totally handle Dry Bones, though," Wrench tells him, confidently. Yes, he knows that Akira's talking about the zombies, not actual Dry Bones, but they could probably take them, too. Probably. Maybe.

Either way, with a shrug, he tilts his head inland. Yes, please be his exit buddy.

[joker_wild]

No, Akira was talking about actual Dry Bones. If they're going hunting for fire flowers, they might run across other Mario things, too.

"Definitely," he agrees with a laugh. "Let's go," he agrees - and he'll move to walk with Wrench, pulling away from the rest of the group.