the sunken

[groundrules]

Image source.

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

Comments

ota.

[inferus]

A

Wrath sinks down into the depths of the ocean without fear. Little can effect him, and so he does not worry as he slides further into the depths of the water. He does watch out for those who exist within his team. There are many traps within, and he is ready to assist any who are vulnerable to it whether it is a physical trap or the trap of the ship below.

He leans forward, grips hold, speaks in the commanding tone of the devil, difficult if not impossible to ignore.

He's calling you out of whatever mental control has attempted to wrap around your mind. The devil is stronger.

B

Within the ship itself, Wrath has been careful not to disturb anything that might fall to pieces. He takes a chunk from a mirror nearby if only because mirrors have been a recurring theme throughout their stay. However, his main focus is the captain's quarters where they've been told a secret may await them - the answers to years old questions.

His dark gaze zeroes in on the door as he levels his fist toward it.

C

Wrath can sense the magic is more at the root of this coral. He intends to go deeper still, but few mortals can withstand it. It's his second trip down, and he stares down at the length of it.

His gaze turns up toward the person nearest to him.

"There's more to discover below, but you won't survive it." Feel free to disagree with him, but that is Wrath's impression. "Stay or head above and wait for my return."

C

[downswing]

At this depth, the maws of the nether-sea's pressures tighten and clench and grind around him, pressure like prickling that fissures the inner linings of his lungs. He thinks it foolish — nothing has changed, but the instinctive, coring certainty that to slip steps or heartbeats farther southbound is to propel himself into the orbit of disaster.

Below, he cannot see more to discover.

Below, he blinks and thins his gaze, and the cracked round gasp of his surprise is a mute, sketched disturbance. He watches. Something watches back, in the way of predators that slither and prowl at the forest's edge, before their violence seeps over your skin like an oil's spill. He feels light-headed, as if the membrane of the suit has entombed him — as if he has far too long not been hunted before.

And this strange abstraction of power made man, Wrath, wishing to head alone. Lan Wangji remembers, distantly, a king among his blood-drenched creatures. Remembers Emilia pronouncing no fear of him. Remembers he is an observer, a companion, a stranger — superfluous. Do not barter in gossip.

"Half an hour's escort down." A simple compromise. Past that, he cannot lay claim to venture. This, he can offer — must offer. And to sweeten the agreement, "Emilia would wish it done."

[inferus]

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."

[downswing]

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.

[inferus]

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.

[downswing]

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?"

[inferus]

"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?"

[downswing]

"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."

[inferus]

"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."

[downswing]

"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.

[inferus]

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."

[downswing]

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."

[inferus]

Death.

Wrath senses it too. He was made for it - the angel of Death, Samael, the poison of his Maker - that is what his name means, that is what his purpose was before he fell from Heaven and claimed his own purpose, choice, reason. He stares below but he lifts his gaze at the question, surprised that Wangji should ask or care at all.

"I cannot die." This is not entirely true, but the item that can kill him exists within the world he comes from. This world may try him, however. It already challenges his powers and limitations, and he is certain the mortal across from him is smart enough to think of those complications.

Still. Pride is not his sin - that is his brother's. Wrath attempts to never make foolish decisions. He would not be an expert strategist, a general of War otherwise.

"I will trasnvenio... - teleport to the ship the very moment I sense this world may have challenged that."

B

[traaaaaash]

Eda swims along, taking in their surroundings with curiosity. She's been on ships before, sure -- mostly to rob them -- but a shipwreck is new. Not that there's that much to see. Mostly stuff you'd find on a regular ship, just falling apart and overgrown with sea life. She does note the mirrors, and before they entered, she snagged some pieces of parchment from the coral.

When they reach the captain's quarters and the guy next to her seems to want to punch it open... well. "You sure you wanna do that? You're gonna catch splinters."

[inferus]

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."

[traaaaaash]

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.

[inferus]

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."

[traaaaaash]

Eda just blinks. "I guess." But then she stretches all four limbs away from her body, grinning. "But hey, we're in! I gotta say, that's a pretty cool power you got there. What is it?"

Looking at you curiously, Wrath.

[inferus]

...cool? The slang eludes him hilariously, but he does understand she means it as a compliment.

"Demon magic," Wrath answers simply as he moves forward toward the desk at the back of the Captain's Quarters, pulling out drawers to look through them for the logs they're meant to find.

It is, of course, more complicated than that, but that is the easiest way to explain it all without going into detail. He never makes any attempt to hide what he is - certainly not the demon portion. The rest becomes more complicated, generally, than it's worth explaining.

[traaaaaash]

"Demon magic?" Eda puts her fingers to her chin, clearly doubtful. "You look very human for a demon. Are you some kind of shapeshifter?" Eda herself hails from the Demon Realm, but her world's demons usually look... quite different.

She decides to take a look around and swims to the walls of the cabin, but barely perceives what's in front of her as her attention is drawn to something niggling at the back of her mind, first quiet, then louder and louder, taking up more space in her. It's fear, and she imagines she can hear the Owl Beast roaring within her, or maybe she can --

And then she's in a familiar place: her gray, endless mindscape, getting darker in the distance, lost in infinity. She is as of yet alone, but who knows when that will change?

On the outside, she will look asleep as her curse overtakes her.

[inferus]

Wrath does not have the opportunity to answer her before something shifts. It's enough to draw his attention from his search, rifling through paper in the water. His gaze sharpens, recognizing something about the change while it is wholly unfamiliar in many other ways.

A curse, an entity within her... triggered by her fear. The ship itself appears to have some psychic effect over those who go near to it, but Wrath's mental wards means it has little affect over him.

The curse and entity within her appear to be one and the same.

He steps away from the desk, and then speaks, voice laced with magical command (the kind only a Prince of Hell can wield). "Return." It isn't meant to control but is more of a mental shove in hopes of pulling her out of the place she has been shoved into.

[traaaaaash]

It takes a moment, but then she hears a voice. She blinks once, twice, and finally her eyes actually open and she's awake again. A few more moments pass as she gets used to her surroundings again; and there's a familiar itch under her diving suit, telling her she's growing feathers.

This draws a groan from her. "Ugh, not again."

[inferus]

Wrath raises his eyebrows as she returns, but it appears her body undergoes other changes as a result of this... curse. He is accustomed to the variety of changes that can occur due to a curse, but this is... complicated.

"...what is happening?"

[traaaaaash]

For a moment, Eda contemplates this -- but ah, screw it. Just about everyone on this trip knows about her little condition by now anyway. And she should probably have about learned that keeping it from people doesn't actually help, shouldn't she?

Eda sighs. "It's my curse. Ever since I came here, it's been acting up again. But!" She reaches into the bag she brought, which is mainly filled with fish for the mermaids, and produces a bottle containging a shiny liquid. "I got some elixir on me."

But then she pauses and looks at it a bit awkwardly. "You know, I didn't think about how I'd actually drink this down here."

[inferus]

"I could tell it was a curse, an entity of some kind within you," Wrath says as his gaze moves back to the desk, determined to find what they came for. He doesn't know how much time they have especially with the ship falling apart.

He sifts through papers.

"...an elixir to lessen the effects of the curse? It would be difficult to drink it without drinking saltwater as well. And whatever else exists in this water."