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westwhere2022-01-03 07:56 pm
groundrules) wrote in westwhere2022-01-03 07:56 pm
Entry tags:
- 2ha: chu wanning,
- asoiaf: daenerys targaryen,
- avatar: zuko,
- dragon quest xi s: eleven,
- final fantasy vii: rufus shinra,
- harry potter: lily evans,
- interlude: ellethia,
- kingdom of the wicked: emilia,
- kingdom of the wicked: wrath,
- oh! my emperor: beitang moran,
- oh! my emperor: su xunxian,
- persona 5: akira,
- sarah connor chronicles: john connor,
- sword of frost: yun yifeng,
- the gifted: marcos diaz,
- tian guan ci fu: xie lian,
- tokyo ghoul: kaneki ken,
- umbrella academy: five,
- warcraft: anduin wrynn,
- warcraft: wrathion,
- watch_dogs: wrench,
- wheel of time: moiraine,
- witcher: yennefer
interlude: 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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
■ 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.
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.
QUESTIONS
no subject
They disappeared together, which is why Allison hopes that wherever they are, they're together. Not only will it make it easier to find them, but they'll be able to protect each other.
"Things were a little crazy, so we didn't really have time to look."
no subject
Shit, how long has it been since he forgot that he had another sibling? His mind is already racing with possibilities, mostly around that curse he let fester. After he broke Winnie's mirror, he used those shards to suck out the anguish he absorbed, what if it took something else?
At least Allison remembers. He'd like a more precise time to return to, but the dragon attack was around an event that he can pinpoint if they were both there then, and christ does he want to be off this boat so he can start working on the math. Why couldn't she have told him when he could actually do something about it?
"Well. That changes a few things." He's trying to stay calm, but he's not doing a perfect job. It's easier to be angry when he isn't the root of the problem. He had no idea just how big of a problem it was until now. "I thought the worst thing I did was leave you out in the snow."
no subject
Klaus, she's not so concerned about. He at least seems to remember Klaus existing, which is a step up from the Vanya situation. Part of her is starting to realize that maybe Allison and Diego were the favorites because the actual favorite was forgotten.
And that's just not fair.
(No, she really is quite concerned, but her brain needs to latch onto something not as serious right now.)
She wracks her brain, attempting to really test the limits of this.
"Five, how did the Apocalypse start in 2019?"
no subject
He doesn't know what makes her bring up the apocalypse, or if she's just reaching for something to pull his attention. Usually it's all he can do to get them to focus on it for more than a minute at a time. They don't know what it's like to see it every time he closes his eyes, and he's supposed to keep it that way.
"It was...," he trails off and looks away, his face pinched as he attempts to follow what he knows logically must have happened. They were all there, but just as he tries to picture those final moments, a splitting headache interrupts his thoughts. He swallows a lump in his throat and carefully shakes his head again.
"We couldn't stop it, so I took us back."
no subject
She could prod at the lack, try to keep pushing to try and find the limits of it, but if he really can't find the answer to that question, the big question, then he really doesn't remember Vanya, and whoever fucked with his memories didn't try and coat over it. Probably because they didn't know to.
"How did this happen?"
no subject
"If I knew that, I'd know when to go back and stop it." He made too many mistakes, so pinpointing the right one isn't easy. "...Maybe something to do with the mirror."
no subject
Could she rumor it out of him? Could she rumor Vanya back in? As easy as it is for her to erase memories, she can't say putting them back in would stick. Not without knowing what it is Five did or what happened to him.
"Do you think the mirror had the power to remove a whole person from your memory?"
no subject
"I don't know." He rubs his face with his free hand and tries to figure out where the holes are in his memory, what caused the apocalypse, but it keeps slipping away from him. When he pulls his hand away, he feels something wet and quickly swipes again at a trickle of blood.
"That's all I can think of, unless it was you." And she wouldn't have. Except he wasn't in his right mind back then, and he can't remember who he ran into. That thought doesn't sit well with him, none of this does, and he eyes her more warily. "...Are you sure they're alive?"
no subject
But they haven't found a body. They haven't found them wandering around among the undead. So in the Schrodinger's Cat of how things work around here, Allison is preferring to believe that Klaus and Vanya are alive, rather than presume the worst.
"But we haven't seen any proof they're not."
no subject
There's a possibility that it wasn't a random accident, and someone knew exactly what they were doing by targeting what he cares about most. Either they were trying to prevent him from doing something, or they were hoping to send him away and didn't think anyone would come around to fill him in. Unless there's something more serious going on in his brain, but he's quick to dismiss the headache and nosebleed so he can concentrate on things he can actually fix. (His nose is still dripping somewhat, but he ignores it.)
"You need to rumor me." That's the obvious solution, and he doesn't know why it took him so long to come to it. He sets down the candle and gets in a better position. "We don't know what else I'm missing, so tell me to remember everything."
no subject
"No. It's too dangerous. Not until I know exactly what happened." What he did to himself, for better or worse. She's not going to do further damage to a fragile situation. He doesn't need to remember Vanya right now - it's not life or death. They need to do further snooping first.
no subject
"If they're still here, I might know where and I just can't...," he trails off. There's very obviously something wrong with him, again, and he has no idea how to fix it if Allison won't cooperate. He looks between her and Diego, and something stirs in his chest.
"Let me worry about consequences after I've found all of you." If that's not enough to convince her, he needs is to get off of this boat so he can figure out what to do. He just has to remember enough to retrace his steps, maybe it won't matter if he doesn't know what one of them looks like.
He waits for a sign that she might see his reason, and when it doesn't come, he frowns and blinks away.