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westwhere2022-06-22 08:42 pm
groundrules) wrote in westwhere2022-06-22 08:42 pm
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.
PLOTTING
ota!
i. ahoy, vernalis
When the sirens abandon their posts for the distant blood-bathed bait, he heads for the Vernalis.
You’re an animal thing, aren’t you? Magic suspends priorities of physics and order, but biology remembers. Hand drifted to his throat, to his temples — above him, water spumes and coils. Beside him the wreckages of ships sprawls like an empire of hungry mouths and scoured rib cages. He breathes in shallow, measured heartbeats.
Beside him, his day’s companion is a burst of diffuse light, the pale greened jade of proper functions. This, from night hunts, he remembers — there is strategic advantage in two persons pursuing the task of one. Caution and efficiency are both satisfied.
He accepts person as his shadow and seeks, sinking down, to make no nuisance of himself, when they dissect the old bones of ruined vessels in their path, then make a corridor between a galleon’s crossed masts, then stumble, at long last upon the Vernalis — where Lan Wangji nudges, and a cabin door howls and creaks loose, rust-ridden and strong, before it nearly topples over.
He dashes back, blind to his companion behind him, to the force of his own retreat, to his shoulder striking a nearby wall —
To the cabin spilling dust, rattling, threatening disintegration —
To the mermaids that swarm, then erupt out of it, evacuating the premise with such haste and conviction that they spare Lan Wangji not a beady glance —
While the entire cabin starts to gently, patiently crumble beneath their eyes, Wangji’s hand hovering by the knob. The rest of the door may or may not have nictated into ashes, infesting the water beside them.
...well, then. )
The path is clear.
ii. there goes the shark neighbourhood
Statistically, the apparition sits — drifts — in the liminal space between marine inevitability and an extraordinary spectacle of Lan Wangji’s particular misfortune. It shimmies, gallantly cutting through water with the natural grace of any sharp-toothed menace who has decided to make its next meal your purgatory.
The trouble isn’t the shark’s daily excursion to bask in its territory, the latest catch of the currents, the braids and nets of coral that have dexterously shielded Lan Wangji from animal threat so far.
It’s just that this shark is so very, overwhelmingly… pathetic.
Too slim, to start. Angular and unwieldy, its eyes mismatched. Maws fully armed, but the back of its teeth lame. Its colours splendiferously… beige. The fish it petrifies out of its path appear comically complicit, like a veteran courtesan coaxing a fresh patron that she is a virgin suited for the bridal veils.
As it prowls, the shark appears to sneeze.
It’s… heart-breaking to watch.
Lan Wangji, who has never encountered an animal he would not draw to his chest, feels at once compelled to flee as a matter of the shark’s dignity, embarrassed to witness its floppy advances, and privately confident that to end its ungainly life now would be to do it a kindness. Even the Vernalis, a house of ruins below and behind him, seems belittled by the shark’s presence, like a tavern’s reputation destroyed by vocal drunks.
Gaze either thunderous or cataracted, the shark dashes towards the general vicinity of where Lan Wangji and his nearest, dearest companion are hidden —
And nearly blunts its nose against the coral net, sparking the pulses of the plant’s magic and depleting itself of vigour. It seems even more tragically foolish and wayward than before, now.
And Lan Wangji, shame-bound to behold this: )
Its... life is yet struggle.
( Look at this shark. Heavens above, it’s somehow alive, but floating miserably on its back now. )
iii. the deck meet-cute interlude
Perhaps he is.
Imprecations greet him, the roiling zest of tempers run ragged and thin, their ends fraying. Captain Kreil metabolises the sight of him with a smile all red-ready teeth, then spits him out with clunky, callous instructions to strip him of any paper he carries, then of the diver’s garments.
Sailors scavenge him: the suit, his parchment. The crew would even claim the trinkets born of Wangji’s negligent exploration, but Caladan Kreil sees the dewy swell of fat fresh pearl in his hand, the catch of snagged reddened coral, the roof of abalone, its shell oily and dark, and rounds Lan Wangji’s fist around them. He keeps his loot.
Then, they abandon him, alone on the deck like a homely courtesan or the babe of a misalliance.
When he falters, prey to the sudden, imminent sickness of understanding what they witnessed below, at the Vernalis — when his pearls and sea findings spill from his hand to spatter on the deck like constellations — he’s slow to stay their course.
Too slow, by far, and dazedly lethargic to collect them on his knees, when they roll beneath the step of a passer-by and nearly trip them. )
Apologies.
ii.
Or, well. Truthfully, Eda doesn't know. She's not exactly too familiar with marine life. But hey, you know what? Eda is a weirdo, and an outcast, and if there's one thing she respects, it's creatures who are the odd ones out.
Which... means that she has the compulsion to defend the shark's honor. ]
I don't know, is it? Maybe you're just assuming that.
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Of course, he may be mistaken.
But then, the shark majestically rolls over halfway, until it appears to drift on its side, as if neither gravity, nor the currents, nor common sense can prevail upon it to resume the motor functions that do credit to its biology.
A school of rattled fish swarms, seemingly troubled that the shark might have fallen into catatonia. It shivers a fin in their direction, either urging them to scatter, or to push it over. They flee, perturbed.
Lan Wangji, astounded, drags a hand to shield his mouth from the temptations of vocal horror. )
...perhaps. ( He could sound less dubious, if he made attempt. )
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As long as it's not attacking us, who cares.
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The failure of one reverberates in a community. For all that animals lack accountability, the inability to perform their role — to kill, to diminish the numbers of complacent fish in the depths, retaining them listless and unafraid — impacts more than the existence of one. )
The waters suffer without a choice predator. ( All should care. For, by the heavens that do not reach down their light, this shark is... no pride of its species. )
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Nah, there are enough others around. I'm just assuming. At least the mermaids seem to need hiding from predators, so I'm pretty sure we're good here.
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If not for its stubborn persistence beside them, Lan Wangji might speculate it's on its algae-braided death's bed, but no, the creature continues on, fins flapping mightily as it... drifts... by, mouth partly agape.
Fish wander in, then out. Those who snag against teeth become an accidental, foolish dinner. Perhaps this is how the shark thrives and survives, through a series of distinct and bizarre accidents.
Lan Wangji feels overcome with a warmth of sentiment best described as 'embarrassed kindness.' But they have an assignment here that surpasses cheap sympathy, and he starts to swim behind the coral's curtain, movements syncopate. )
Let us seize the ship. The... ( Most pathetic sea shark known to man and monster. ) Creature will not pursue.
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But yes. Much as this is fascinating (and it is, really), they do have a mission. Eda nods. ]
Let's dive, then!
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iii. the deck
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. ]
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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.)
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Pearls scratch easily, and there's nothing to be done once they're damaged or marked. You can only handle them the lightest cleaning materials. I could do it, but I normally stick to gems. My charge is of the earth, it feels more natural.
[ He lets the hand with the pearl in it drop to rest on his leg, shifts the other to pick up a blue gemstone and turn it over in his hands. ]
They're good for spellwork, and embedding the spellwork into something suitably decorative.
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But Wrathion produces his talent, and Lan Wangji, mouth agape while he watches over the glory of fat beads and trinkets in his lap, picks out a pearl — pale, pinked, like the start of a spring flush on a maiden's cheek — and holds it out in slate sunlight.
It catches light, reflects it warm. Hesitantly, Lan Wangji holds it out in offering, as if he expects Wrathion to claim the piece in earnest. )
I require four pieces, chained. The rest, your due. ( To sell like a fisherwoman at the market. Though far from Lan Wangji to judge. ) You are amenable?
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Absolutely no idea, he might be stuck with them for some time. Perhaps he could turn them all into crafted items to sell, so he might at least have somewhere comfortable to sleep the next place the merchant organises for them.
Wrathion isn't a person to say no to a trade deal. It's worthwhile to take every advantage you can when they might all be swept from under you.
He holds out the hand that has the pearl he caught from the floor in it, allow Lan Wangji to add the second one to it, then examines them both thoughtfully. ]
Do you mean four separate items, or one piece with four pearls? It would help if I understood the occasion, too, and the recipients. Different tastes, you understand.
[ A wedding gift for a family member is different to a formal gift for an associate, or a gift for a lover. They all have different degrees of acceptable ornamentation, and the audience matters. ]
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So many shades of confused ambiguity seem to cross Lan Wangji's face for a heartbeat that one might be rightfully startled into the belief that he is almost, heavens help him, learning emotion.
But there is a natural limitation to silent consternation, and he reaches it, hand soft over his pearls and choosing his playthings between them in a sundering of the masses: this to have, this to give, that to work, this to keep.
Rolling, they knock and circle each other, threatening distantly to hazard the way of Wrathion's knee, before Lan Wangji sets down his hand a firm barrier and, frown deepening like a thin ravine, all but glaring the spheres into avoiding their natural gravitational temptations. No. Be good. )
Four items. Allison Hargreeves, Emilia, Beitang Moran, my son. Three gifts of service, one of kinship.
( And a careful admission: ) Your skill may compensate my faults in diplomacy.
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He sets the gem he was holding back in its pouch, picks up his pencil and flicks to a page at the back of his notepad, scribbling quickly in draconic runes as he frowns at the pearls and thinks. ]
Emilia I know best. She is proud, careful, elegant, strong.
[ He thinks a moment, tilts his head. ]
Beitang Moran is equally proud, pragmatic, a strategist. I'd say more reserved in his tastes.
[ Another scribble. ]
Allison I know less well. Loyal to her family, careful with her words, strong.
[ A pause, he tips his head thoughtfully. ]
Either as a group we all have more in common than we think, or you favour people with particular traits. Tell me about your son.
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I.
[He mutters the words as the whole place seems to crumble. The only comfort is that it won’t crush them if it collapses, because it’s quite far along already.]
He expects the logs to have survived this?
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They expect us to survive this.
( And Lan Wangji, reduced to a stiff nod and the smell of burned dust in his drenched surroundings, drifts quietly to inspect the remains of the toppled cabin. Residue brittle in his hand, like paper scorched. What candour matter has, that it should return to the same primitive qualities, no matter what environment houses it.
He had expected, at wild sea...
But it stills something in him, to wrench out the viscera of one semi-preserved lining from the door frame and find the piece of wood — )
...husked?
iii. the deck meet-cute interlude
None needed. ( he'd stepped on the pearl on purpose to stop it from rolling away. damon crouches down in front of the ninja looking person, dropping what passes off as a blanket over his shoulder. it's clean. he sweeps his hand across the floor, collecting a few more of the pearls before depositing it back in the man's hand, making sure that he's not going to drop it again before he lets go. ) You look wrecked. ( totally not an exaggeration even. ) Was it worth it? I'm thinking, maybe a few more, and you might be able to make a bracelet for an infant.
( he's been watching the dive efforts, occasionally helping to pull people out of the water, assist with distracting those pesky mermaids; just trying to listen in on conversations and things like that, but honestly, he's not getting much information from anyone. still, this beats taking on another shift in the galley. )
please sir, help this men find his balls
No need. He thanks with a mute mouth, gaze diffuse — pressure finally released of his lungs, each breath a calculated progression. The slow drip of water from his hanging hair fits the gauges and ravines of old deck boards, foot-battered.
One of the pearls slips back into a wooden crevice. He looks up, and — ...ah. No. In his hands, now. )
Retain them. ( Rasped, fighting its way out of him. ) They were... residue. Not the cause of submersion. Hundreds of dead sleep below.
( To the victor go the spoils, and there's blood with this gain, for all Lan Wangji's hands come impossibly, impertinently clean. Fingers curl, white knuckled, around the pearls Damon had positioned in his hands. Fists release. He feels like an immaculate ghost of himself, solicitously beholding the music box gears of his body winding, unwinding. He does not own this flesh. It screams at him unanswering.
When he clutches what he can catch of Damon's limbs beside him — an arm, the joint of a knee, indifferent — it is to anchor himself in rise and speculate, at the last moment, that the mean, ached sway of the ship, fighting fresh currents, will not break his footing.
A fool's gamble. One, dead weight, fell seamlessly. This round, he seems intent to also coax Damon down. )
finders keepers -- for now
Okay, buddy. I've got you. ( the perks of being a vampire. he's fast and strong. as for whatever random things the little mermaid here has collected? the pearls, the coral, etc -- damon will use compulsion to get a passing crew member to help pick it all up and deposit it into his jacket pocket. easy peasy, lemon squeezy. )
Oh, what am I gonna do with you now... ( he murmurs the words out as he stands there for a moment, glancing around to see if there's anyone on the deck who knows who this guy is. any concerned humans about? a doctor? friends? family? no? guess they're on their own then. luckily for the stranger, damon's already had his fill of blood or it'd be all too easy for him to feed and toss this body overboard. he decides to play nice. time to head below deck where it's warm and toasty. )
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But he rests awake and commanding enough of his senses that his cheek bruises to a feverish flush, gaze first unsharpened, then regaining focus. Mild, his hand clutches Damon's arm again, spasmodic — a shoulder. Very well. If he is to be... salvaged from the dregs of his indignity, he will at least make use of the human crutch provided to slip himself back to his feet.
Next Wrath suggests he should retreat from long the long dive before pressure and breathlessness decay him, he might, perhaps, consider obedience.
...before declining once more. )
You will set me down. ( A pleasant start, perfectly civil. Like Lan Wangji's teeth, all vicious, canine fang. Grit and grin and show the bite of them. He does kick, though his leg twitches. )
Apo — ( No. Denied once, before. And the repetition of misdeed rejects the root of gratitude. If Lan Wangji cared to be excused, he would perhaps not have persisted in making a nuisance of himself. ) You gave no name.
( As if, between bouts of swooning, Lan Wangji completed his end of the greeting formalities. )
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Yes. I gave you no name. ( he studies the man's face, keeping his gaze on him, trying to see if he can even focus on what he's even saying right now. ) Didn't seem necessary at the time. Look, let me just help get you to somewhere where you can rest, hm? You're hurt. I'm Damon. ( there. a name. is he going to continue to kick up a fuss here? they're currently standing on the stairs, halfway between decks. it's not really the best place to be hanging out, considering there's human traffic and not a whole lot of space. )
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The man — belatedly, Damon — is an accessory in this journey, a crutch made tender when Lan Wangji seeks to shrug off the hand that presumes on his shoulder, only to catch Damon's upper arm instead. More of his weight can redistribute at each step, if he has the affixed point of certainty.
A slow, trembled walk. An octogenarian would greet him proudly. Might even ask of him why he races on his path. )
Wangji, clan Lan. ( Absent-minded, tongue slack. Habit, more than the manicured forms of introduction. ) At ease. My health will remember itself.
( No need for the fussing of a healer, for Wen Qing glowering down like a winter storm. ) Below water, a... plant leeches strength.
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Let's talk more about that when we're properly below deck and you're not going to break your neck if you fall. ( he's taken his hand off of wangji's shoulder, but he's staying close, letting him use his arm for support purposes. ) Think you can make it? It's just a few baby steps. ( he glances over at the guy. ) Oh, I know, I know. Your health will remember itself and you don't need any help whatsoever, and blah blah blah. Let's just pretend none of this ever happened, okay? You came out of that water in perfect form and did not fall over like a dead tree. My lips are sealed.
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meet-cute meet-cute
You're safe at least.