westwhere | the sunken

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the sunken

THE SUNKEN

The silent, dark, opaque seas briefly clear for a short stretch, as the Pariah and Queen Zanyra advance into the Crossing.Below sleeps a graveyard of sunken ships in various states of decay — including the beautifully preserved Vernalis.

Sailors say she was the crown jewel of an army fleet and the fear of every sea she traversed, sinking at least three pirate ships. One day, she disappeared. Caladan Kreil, who met and survived the Vernalis in battle, swears her leader Oscar Santorini was a spartan rule abider who would never have neglected the dutiful upkeeping of his captain’s logs.

A school of vicious mermaids has briefly blocked the paths of the Pariah and Queen Zanyra, orbiting around the sunken ships below. They will dispel naturally, sailors say, when the tides turn within three days. Until then, the ships only make slow advance — and Caladan Kreil sees an opportunity to settle one of the sea’s deepest mysteries.

✘ OBJECTIVE: search the Vernalis’ captain’s cabin for his logs.

■ Characters who accept Caladan’s mission are lowered down in lifeboats and supplied pale skin-tight suits that are membrane-thin, adhesive and transparent. They settle comfortably once the wearer hits water, feeling weightless and emanating light signals — red for danger or injury, white for alert or fear, yellow to broadcast the wearer must return to land, and a calm greenish-blue otherwise.

■ The suits protect wearers from temperature and pressure drops and enable them to fully breathe underwater for four hours at a time. Suits must dry for at least two hours between uses.

■ Suit lights are visible underwater. The green light does not attract other sea creatures, but the red and white lights repel nearby marine life, except for mermaids.

■ You can magically speak and be understood underwater, although in a short range, as sound carries with more difficulty here.

■ Mermaids patrol near the Queen Zanyra and Pariah and swarm the wrecks of the sunken ships below, including the Vernalis. Many lair up in the hulls or raided cabins of the downed vessels.

■ To safely enter the waters, spill a little blood on a bait or make a lure out of fish entrails, toss it, then dive when the mermaids give chase. Alternatively, wait until the midday sun is at zenith and the sirens have been lulled listless or asleep for an hour.

■ Careful: swift, sharp-toothed and long-clawed, mermaids have an exceptional sense of smell and will pursue anyone who scrapes or bleeds beneath water. Although not entirely blind, many have a diffused vision and respond quicker to sound than to sight.

■ The mermaids are largely starved and reactive. Some help guide strangers, if they are offered food or help from natural predators, such as sharks, unfriendly large octopuses and strange tendrils of dark water that appear more prominently, the deeper you sink down. Bring a knife.

■ The Vernalis sits about one-hour’s dive beneath water. It seems to have been caught in a net of dark coral-like matter, without reaching the ocean’s floor. Beware the tendrils of this strange ‘plant’: those trapped within will find their energy gradually depleted. Some of the strings of corals have snagged pieces of preserved parchment or cloth, littered with the names of sailors or the verses of sea chants.

■ Those who reach the Vernalis may notice the ship has only been deceptive preserved — many doors, hinges and pieces of furniture have rotted from within, threatening to collapse upon wanderers. All mirrors, pieces of glass and reflective or metallic surfaces have darkened and become opaque.

■ Those who enter the cabin or hull of the Vernalis will find the quarters eerily silent, but for a methodical, rhythmic pulse — like the drumming of an unnatural, but living heartbeat. Time passes much faster here — keep track that your costume doesn’t flash yellow, and help swim up with those who can no longer transport themselves.

■ The Vernalis affects visitors differently: some are entirely immune, others are overcome by a deep, animal and inexplicable and paralysing fear, or by the urgent wish to flee. Others still feel sluggish, lost and comfortable, for the first time in years, starting to fall in a deep, unstirring sleep (that breaks once they return to surface).

■ Searching the cabins will reveal there are no bodies or bones aboard the Vernalis. The door of the captain’s cabin locks after each entry, both in and out, and must be heavily forced open — once inside, rummage through Oscar Santorini’s wealth of books and correspondence to recover some of the loose pages of his torn captain’s log, then return with your discoveries on land. Drop a thread link with your characters’ good work to receive a summary of the contents of the page they’ve uncovered.

QUESTIONS

PLOTTING

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[ SEE, WANGJI? The shark is totally eating fish!!

But yes. Much as this is fascinating (and it is, really), they do have a mission. Eda nods. ]

Let's dive, then!

[ Well, it was worth a try. Eda smiles and gets up. ]

Okay, one sec, gotta get some more from the kitchen.

[ The pirates seem none to pleased about it and mumble something about Eda using up all their fish rations. ]

Oh, shush, we can catch more!

[ So she makes her way to the kitchens and stuffs a bag full of fish, then returns and takes out one to offer the mermaid. ]

There you go.

[ She sits down cross-legged, because she has more questions and it might be a while. ]

Do you know anything at all about what goes on above water?

Edited 2022-06-26 20:36 (UTC)

There is a familiarity to these depths.

The magic hums and calls to him, but so do the predators which surround. They are not like the ones in the Underworld. He has yet to catch glimpse of anything more than the mermaids, but he understands hunters and monsters. Given he keeps one chained inside of him at all times, he understands them - the claws and teeth.

Wrath stills at the voice. His gaze lingers on Wangji, and he knows the truth of what he says. This world has proven to have an effect on both his powers and what he is capable of withstanding. She would worry even if she is also aware (more now so than ever) of how nearly impossible it is to kill him. This world changes everything, and Wrath has no intention of taking unnecessary risks, but the group deserves the best chance it can have in a world so stacked against it.

He intends to find out what he can. So he nods simply at the answer.

"You should not go further than what is safe for you." Wrath is aware few could survive such depths - thirty minutes is a reasonable amount of time to follow but no more than that. There is a longer pause. "Emilia would wish that as well."

Wrath does stop and then turn toward the voice. As much as he should like to rip the door from its hinges, there is another reason to be concerned especially due to the state of the ship itself.

It looks as if it's barely holding on.

"I worry more about destroying the ship than splinters."

[ Wrath is aware of the mermaid even from a great distance. He watches as it rushes forward, and he can smell the blood in the water himself, knowing it is what draws them near to the individual trying to return aboveground. He moves supernaturally fast even within the water, and then takes hold of the mermaids hand in a vice grip, followed by her hair as she attempts to lean forward to bite him.

His grip on her hand tightens, and the mermaid screeches out in pain as her claws crunch beneath his grip. She may be a monster, but so is he, and he is far worse than her, worse than the sharks that pursue her. He lifts his gaze toward the individual near. ]

There are entrails in my bag. Grab some and toss it as far as you can. [ It would be easy to kill the mermaid, but he does not, for the moment unless she proves to be a continued threat - a creature of hunger and violence which knows little better. ]

( There is food. Much food. So much food. Enough, in fact, that the mermaid's head peers, her mouth gapes, and even she seems momentarily stricken, holding a hand out to have her pick of just one of the fish on offer.

Oh, but they look good, so very full and glistened. Their scales haven't so much as tattered. )

Know what? ( This, as she picks the proffered salmon between two claws, daintily, as if she isn't about to devour it with neither courtesy, nor shame. ) I know much. Many things. You have stick 'legs.' You make fire. Goes red. Many things. Many.

( But specificity has ever helped to anchor her whimsy nature. )

It is often this between men, war waged through fusillades of guilt for the women and children and elders who would survive them. As if it does them honour to weaponise the vulnerability of others, sooner than pluck its bloom from their own hearts.

"Emilia is not my intended." A difference like a blood-edged knife between them. "You withstood a volcanic core."

He remembers: Emilia, Wrath, like birds delivered from ashes. Their discoveries, brokered in Ke-Waihu. What horrors of exploration that knowledge begged of them, with certitude. In Emilia, flame is the root — Wangji has seen it, coiled and clustered, spheres of fire and her temper white-hot. In Wrath, wretchedness is a darker, damp thing, the drooling greed of his hunting hound, perched atop corpses. Still, Lan Wangji gambles, "Fire becomes you."

Then, waters must refuse or erode him, must sit themselves obstacles in his path. Here, Wrath is surely no trueborn king in his domain. And Lan Wangji? The streams of Gusu Lan inured him, but granted no immunity. His face feels at once feverish and blood-drained, the lightheadedness of mounting pressure grazing his skin.

He dives down, at a slow, tractable pace.

( The shark is, through no merit or struggle of its own or even of its species, somehow proceeding with life as it knows it.

...and as no creature should, ideally, ever know it.

But it strides onwards and, Lan Wangji, bereft of opportunity to gently steer it towards a righteous path, only surrenders to sinking down. Pressure rakes his temples, seizes and clenches tight. Past a threshold, he knows, the mind will stay willing, but the body will oppose a deeper dive.

He moderates his breathing, as if the suit yet required his cooperation, and simply thins his gaze to a fine line, when the darkness of the sea's depths spread rich around him, and he is inured to the diminished visibility.

He sees it, scattered before the ship — coral, braided, rot-black and inquisitive. Waving in water, gentle but somehow... remiss. A strange thrum of wicked hunger within it. )

Caution. ( He cannot say why he urges it, only that it resonates in him, a warning crystalline and clear. )

Wrath says nothing about Emilia being his intended. She has not chosen him yet despite the tattoos binding them, and she will have the chance to choose otherwise still, to choose not-him. He accepted their marriage bond when he saved her life from the venom running through her veins, but he will fight for her to keep her own choice - free from outside influence, and thus far, it has not been him that she has chosen. Even that night when he had thought-

He follows Wangji down.

"Are you asking a question or making an assumption?" The description is more fitting of his intended, of Emilia though she has only begun to scratch the surface of what she is capable of doing with the fire at her fingertips, with the vines and flowers she can grow with ease - fire and life. That is Emilia.

He is ice and Death.

"Fire does not become me. It simply has no effect." Like placing a bonfire on a glacier.

I.

It was midday by the time Dany was lowered into the waters. There was no sign of the mermaids for now, but Drogon circled not far above Dany's head. His red eyes watched the waters for the first ripple or indication that one of the creatures had woken up from their sleep. He was a precaution, though she doubted that her dragon thought of it that way. Mermaids were his preferred meal, this voyage solidifying it.

Dany would only be able to count on him for a time. Nearing the quarter point, she was certain that her dragon could no longer dive in after her. There were shadows from what she could see, mermaids stirred awake by the presence of others in the water. Had someone bled? How were they awake already?

Dany moved as quickly as she could while trying not to draw attention, but the sudden shift in color of her suit had her stopping, searching frantically for the danger nearby. The mermaid knocked into her, the claws tearing at the suit but missing Dany as she tumbled backwards in the water. It was near on top of her, grabbing at her with its mouth wide open, gleaming teeth ready to tear at her.

There was a flash of black and red. The mermaid was snatched up before Dany understood how near she had been hurt. She wouldn't see Drogon, but she could imagine him bursting from the waters with his prize between his teeth.

The dragon wouldn't be full yet, she hoped.

II.

In the wreckage, the ghosts of the dead seemed to be painted on the walls. There was no sign, no sound, only the overwhelming sensation of fear. Where Dany never feared such things before, she found herself jumping at every shift in the wood around them. There had been instructions where the notes might be, but in the heat of the moment, it slipped her mind.

She circled around, checking the same rooms in her anxiety. When finally she found the desk, time was running out. She could only bite her cheek to keep from panicking, digging through the desk hurriedly, overturning contents as searched through.

It would take an hour to swim up, not counting the now awake mermaids. Time, time was something she didn't have, but still she searched.

Downwards, pressure opposes him, strips and lashes skin it cannot reach. The suit at once shields and strangulates him, lessens him from man to iota of dust, from a projectile, weight-bearing, to a particle adrift.

Around them, the coral crown thickens, doubles its filigree. On instinct, he reaches a hand out to anchor himself in the nest of threadbare, cloying dark. On caution, he holds back. It seems to him the coral's littered wisps of rot and vine have spiralled into an eternity, and the reach is only south and souther-bound.

"I had assumed," but he knows the segue, inevitable, and battles through it, "Limitations."

Humbling, to understand what Wrath politely keeps hidden: that limits and corners and edges carve out the space of Lan Wangji's reality, but need not his own. "You are fully immune?"

"Yes," Wrath says after a moment, careful to not be prideful about it (he is not his brother), careful to not reveal too much. Though he has taken a different tactic here in this world, the group is all after one aim, and they will make more progress if they work together. It is not like he is in Hell where revealing too much means putting himself at risk with one of his brothers or their other enemies.

Of course, he is immune to nearly everything when in his own world. Even what injures him, it heals. Some healing takes longer than others. Naturally, there is an exception - one exception (it is all about balance, and Wrath is part of bringing that balance more than anyone else). This world is different, but he can still endure where others would falter. "This world has its effects on my abilities and powers. I was not able to enter the lava of the volcano itself after all."

He could only get so close to it which may have had more to do with the nature of the magic inside of it than the lava itself, but he imagines he was able to get closer to it than most.

"You have no specific protection against the depths of water?"

"Will," he offers absently, hand nearly caught in a coral's tangle, then once more losing its anchor point. "Healing —"

To excess. They have seen him, stitch and patchwork of his wounds and his bruises, mending under wavering, timorous sun. And the sects warn, Keep close to yourself the secrets of your clan, like jade beads to your pocket. A man who betrays the techniques of his school betrays himself, his people. And yet, what good the righteous Cloud Recesses here? They are all brush strokes and thespians in hazy theatres of inconsequence.

"...does not extend to suffocation. Perhaps, I may burn less breath, if internal processes regulate." But he sounds clinical to his own ear, verbose. As if, for lack of truths to share, he dabbles in ambiguity, and perhaps this is the sin the precepts wish to choke — the art of words wandered, lost in the wind, speaking nothing, unto no one.

Resistance underwater at length and duress is untested — but for Lan Wangji, easing down and lower down, daring the sharks that coil and roil close to assault them.

"We are not your equals."

"Do not go further than you are able."

Wrath repeats if only to emphasize that any further is not necessary. He can transvenio to the top once he reaches what appears to lie below. Each member of the group needs to be protected and returned to where they belong in time. The group has, in a sense, become the House he left behind - a number of individuals who are under his watch and must be returned to the places they belong to.

He swims further down, examining Wangji for a moment though he appears to face what comes without flinching.

The statement brings a quiet, weighted pause. Wrath does not know what it means to be mortal - to be born, to be raised, to have family, to grow and live. He was made at the start of the world, and he has existed since - angel first then demon. Never has he been human, never has he known life in the way mortals do. When he was an angel, he was powerless in an entirely different way than humans are- humans who have always had their choices to make. Wrath fell so he could have that power, that beautiful power to choose.

"...no." It's soft acknowledgement. "I seek what lies below in hopes it will help us all, but you do not need to follow."

"You may be elder." A primordial thing, ancient when the earth that dispersed from beneath Lan Wangji's feet was young. He senses, more than knows this, with an intimate, arrogant animal instinct that dictates only a person so much more sophisticated in his seniority could surpass Wangji's ability so profusely.

But then, Wei Ying ruled the world, moth to the fire, a ghost cut from young flesh and manners new. Novelty can breed its own monsters.

"Therefore, clear your eyes." Of waters and tears and the pain-sculpted rheumy that elder men cultivate in their sight, when the years chip and dilute it. "Do not see me a child."

His hair darkens against a spreading pool of nether waters. He sees himself, his own extremities — the jade pallor that signals welfare, silencing slowly into white. It will be that, he knows, within half a shi, when his organism begins to struggle against the tightening fist of suffocation. Not yet.

He intends, as Wrath so cleverly dismisses him, to excuse himself before the inconvenient becomes lethal.

[ Wrathion watches Wangji scramble for his dropped belongings with detached curiosity.

This is, after all, a much less polished version of a man who was usually so... aloof. Together. Primly turned out, dignified.

A sailor mutters something as they nearly slip on the pearls, and the dragon watches one slowly roll closer to him and the corner of the deck that he's sat in propped up against a crate. He picks it up, examines the pearl curiously. In his lap, a notebook is open with sketches -- the ship, a few of the sailors, their partner ship, the 'island' they stopped at. A small pouch is laid in the middle of it, half obscuring some of the drawings, with a small number of blue stones tipped out to examine. ]

Not a bad specimen. If we ever find our way to a place with a decent market you could probably sell those.

[ He offers it back, cradled in an open palm. ]

[ Well, that does pique Eda's curiosity. ]

When'd you see fire?

[ The closer they get, the more Eda, too, just senses something off. There's a definite sense of threat in the air, almost as if the place is haunted somehow. She supposes that fits.

The coral net catches her attention, though, and swims toward it, despite her companion's warning, for closer inspection. There seems to something caught in the web -- small pieces of paper. ]

Hey, I think there's something written on here.

( Between gulps of entrails and searching her nails for more, the mermaid peers, first lost, then curious and feline, seeking the traces of the trap. Surely, the human knows. Or does she think mermaids are playthings?

What tricks! With her claws, she points to where candle-fuelled lanterns are scattered on the deck. )

There! Fire. ( And another, at a greater distance, carried by a pirate who searches the sails. ) There too! Everywhere. Days ago. Big fire.

( She may not know the name of the Concord, but she saw from the water how this boat put the sails of that one to flame. )

( Paper tatters, like leftovers spilled from a graceless babe's ill formed chew. As if whatever masticated the seas had dulled its teeth by the time it reached this corner.

Between them, Eda spies the miscreant pieces of parchment first. Once the first reveal itself, it seems to have stirred a cascade of tens, hundreds more, scattered like stabbed banners on their coral perches.

Caution, he had said, but finds his hand reaching, his teeth gritted, his core prepared — and he flinches, when licks of the coral's strength prickle him, electric, eating of his energy.

A name, is all he glimpses. He sends on piece of parchment Eda's way, then another, a third — and withdraws completely from the plant, before it may maul his energy once more. )

It seeks to sap strength. ( The audacity. )

( The deck is uneven. No, the ship's currents drag the great, wailing beast and angle her, trembling. Thoughts scattered, he watches the great, laughing tumble of the beads at leathered feet, sees the round, greedy swell of one tickle the underside of Wrathion's heel.

At the last moment, he steals his hand away before a pirate's broad step can crush it. And beside him, Cleanse the decks, strip'em sails, come, lads, come from a coarse mouth, then pirates setting to the first mate's task. The heartbeat of a ship doesn't still for Lan Wangji's graceless inability to secure his treasures.

He strains himself to catch the lion's share of his beads, sinking them in the pooled nest of silks that straddle his lap, as if he were a laundry woman recouping drenched sheets before giving them their second rinse. Light assists him, still enough of the moody, hungry midday pallor left to wash the deck seen.

Sell these, Wrathion speaks, and Lan Wangji at last raises his gaze limpid, glacial, slow. )

They will make unworthy gifts. ( And the reprimand, light, invisible: Not all that glistens is gold to gain. Not all bears a sale price. ) You are learned in their cleansing?

( Guts of seaweeds in thick rivulets still bathe some of these pearls, and Lan Wangji fears, as all men should, to scratch their veneer, if he works coarsely.)

Eda sees it now, too. "Yeah, that looks rickety. Ugh." She sticks out her tongue. "Gotta maneuver carefully!"

Of course, that particular resolution is immediately torpedoed as a shark comes swimming out of seemingly nowhere and Eda just reacts by diving toward the opening, grabbing Wrath's hand in the process in order to drag him with her.

Wrath says nothing further in response to that beyond a simple nod of acceptance at the request. It is Wanji's choice to make, and Wrath feels strongly about choices.

Still it is far too difficult to describe in their trip down below. The truth is Wrath has no concept of a 'child' though he understands what Wangji means, but he does understand growing, learning, changing. When he was created, he is not as he is now. Still all mortals, regardless of their age (hundreds, thousands), feel fragile to him, and he has a damning feeling of responsibility over the entire group. He has no House here, but he does have a group, stumbling their way through an unknown world and attempting to find their way across universes to return to their own.

His focus returns to the coral, to the thrumming that calls to him as all magic does, but this one is familiar to him.

"There is something beneath, something of great magic the further we go like what was found in the volcano."

Wrath blinks as he's dragged inward with her. He could resist the grab with ease, but it startles him that anyone should simply touch him enough that he does not immediately react. He would have gladly killed the shark, but it appears they are heading within instead.

They end up inside with the shark headed in afterward, and he lashes out with his free arm, wrapping a shadow around the length of the shark to keep it in place.

He straightens once they are inside, pulling his arm away.

"I suppose fighting the shark may have also damaged the ship."

He remembers, again: Emilia, Wrath. Returned like ashes scoured from a brazier. The volcano released them tattered, worn. He watches Wrath now and sees a spectre of possibility, a force that might exceed Wangji's own but can still — dim.

Even the sun wanes, fat in a lone sky. Growth is an accelerated process of not thirty summers. Beyond, regression reigns. Limitations. Depletion. When they nearly brush coral, he thinks all, at once, Death.

"Will you survive descent?" Certainly, Wrath assumes so. And yet, there is the sharp knife of a woman who waits for him, and Lan Wangji owes her better than allowing her intended to pursue his madness. Pride pushes men past their natural instincts of preservation. Why should Wrath prove different?

"The volcano took toll of you, only weeks past." Another call on Wrath's powers? How formidable must they be, to seem interminable? "We need not solve all mysteries at any cost."

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