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.

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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

It feels like both of their lives, before and after they'd met, have been colored with trauma and chaos. In some ways things have only gotten more difficult but even when they'd been apart from each other, she'd find herself thinking of him and how he would be able to handle the more dangerous parts of being within the inner circle, and what would result in a safer world for their child to grow up in. She wants Dawn to live, not just survive the way they've been doing.

He mentions something odd, and Lorna stiffens a little in his arms, processing what he's just said to her. After a moment she sits up and straightens, looking directly at him.

"What do you mean we won't remember it?"

Marcos only avoids her gaze for a moment before he settles back. It's really good news, so he doesn't know why he hesitated to tell her. Maybe because a part of him is still worried that it might not be true.

"That's what they say." Which seems crazy. They've been through so much here, and in the end they won't remember any of it. What if John and Clarice are still out there somewhere, would they have no idea what happened to them? — But he can't let himself get bogged down in 'what-ifs' when they are so many unknowns. They have to have hope that things will be alright.

"...I spoke to a couple of people who used the beacon. They returned to the moment they left and couldn't remember ever being here. If we use it, it should be like we never left."

It is good news, and Lorna isn't sure why it hits like a truck to hear it. Maybe it's just enough of a shock that she isn't sure how to take it, even though - it's good. It's really good. Dawn won't remember them being gone and they'll return to her as they were before, without any aging or trauma from where they'd been.

So she isn't sure why her first reaction is for her eyes to well and her throat to tighten. Her hands get clasped between her knees as she leans a bit forward, just so she has something to do with them as she tries to process what Marcos has just told her.

"Did they say where they ended up returning to?" Because they'd ended up going through a portal before ending up here. Would they end up at the moment before they'd decided to follow Clarice through it, or would it be the moment before? Would they end up using the beacon only to wind up further away from their friends and their daughter?

Marcos watches her with concern in his eyes, though he understands the emotion. Right now he's just clinging to secondhand knowledge and hoping it will go the same way when they reach another beacon. It's that lack of certainty that makes him wonder if he's being too trusting and setting them up for disappointment he's not sure either of them could take.

"As far as I know, they were taken to the same place. I can ask." It's good news, but still hard to come to terms with. He knows that missing their chance to go back hit them both hard, and they haven't really talked about it. He shifts to rub her back, reflexively warming his hand as he moves it along her shoulders. "Are you alright?"

Lorna rubs at her eyes hard, not wanting to cry when she knows it's something she can't afford to focus on. Not when they're about to head somewhere else that's just as dangerous as the place they've had to abandon. She doesn't want to forget, but she doesn't know if she can afford the hope.

"I'm okay." It's mostly true because...it's good news. She's been fearing they could return home only for their daughter not to know them; to hate them for leaving her behind just as she had hated her father for so many years. "I just - I don't know. I don't think I've let myself think about what might happen if we get to go back."

She loses the battle with the tears and some spring forth, and she leans in closer to Marcos as she feels him warm her, grateful for the contact.

He gets it, really he does, and it makes his heart clench seeing how affected she is by the first bit of confirmation they've had. So they go back with no memory that they were ever here. That doesn't mean they suddenly don't have any other problems.

There's one other concern: the two of them aren't the only ones who went through that portal. What happens if John and the others don't find their own way back? Will they even know that they're trapped here somewhere, if they're even still alive?

"We've had a lot going on, you haven't exactly had time to." Beating themselves up for not thinking of the future when they've been surviving day-by-day won't do either of them any good. It's a reminder to himself as much as Lorna. "Maybe we'll pick up where we left off. ...Rebuilding won't be easy, but at least we'll have our family together."

She's barely let herself think about John, Clarice, or the others who had come through with them, or the fact that they haven't seen them since. Or at least she's been doing her best not to think of them, it's hard enough knowing that they'd had to leave their daughter behind. But maybe it's a thing they can find out about, if they end up getting to go through the beacon when they reach it again.

Lorna wipes at her cheeks, her arm curving around his back as she reaches for his hand.

"No, it won't." It wasn't bound to be easy even before they'd gone through that portal, but knowing that they won't be missing anything if and when they get to go back makes for a significantly less difficult time doing so. "But we'll be able to do it. When we get there."

Not 'if'. She's refusing to entertain the possibility of 'if'.

interlude: ellethia

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