let's set d o w n some (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
groundrules) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
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
no subject
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.)
no subject
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.
no subject
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?
no subject
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. ]
no subject
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.
no subject
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.
no subject
And Lan Wangji — ...starts to rise, pearls in hands, turning them between his fingers to catch the various, ungenerous beams of lingered sky's light and search them for stray coils of colour. This one pinked, the other blue. The third... deep in what might be greys, or perhaps a sliver of buried copper. But then, Wrathion begs his question. )
Sizhui is... ( Accomplished, earnest, honest, true, courageous, a scholar. Too quick to grow past the pillar of Wangji's knee, then seek out his own fortune. Possessed of precious, tender depths of dimples, when his smile yet deepens. Above all: ) The kindest of us all.
( Perhaps spoken unwisely. He has not crossed each path, taken the temperature of the group's every feverish temper. Yet, he suspects, of all the hands roaring for blood, Sizhui's would curl into fists first and strike his own bones before searching another's. )
Thin strings would suffice. ( But then, understanding dawns: ) But I defer to the jeweller's craft.
( Creativity should not be choked in an artist, only gently patronised. )
no subject
He wants to question if the preference for thin strings is Sizhui's or Lan Wangji's, but decides against it -- he can calculate that himself with a little careful observation. ]
When do you want these by?
[ Is there a deadline? That will help him calculate how much time he can pour into them. ]
no subject
( A test, from his mouth, lashing Wrathion's patience — a question, when his gaze lifts up, lashes long and heavy in a manner nearly demure. He lacks, in all things, the finish of Zewu-Jun's political etiquette, the natural inclination to weaponise concessions and pretty words and thaw an interlocutor's defences.
Wrathion is a dragon, besides. The common subterfuges of brother's manners or Wei Ying's flirtation are lost on him. Stranded on a well-trafficked deck, Lan Wangji feels more equipped than his betters to handle Wrathion in honest exchange. )
The week's end. ( A pause, then, because he owes an artist an explanation for choking him with the insult of a tight requirement: ) I have purchased a service. It wants repaid.
( But then, carefully curious: ) How will you prevail, absent a forge? Your... own flame?
no subject
Melting metal is not a problem for me.
[ He sets down his pencil, turns one palm upward and conjures a small flame into it. ]
Forging it as finely as I'd prefer will take more focus, but I do like a challenge. Does your family have a symbol it embraces?
[ He's still thinking about Sizhui. He may need to stalk this child to get the right vibe, but if there's a family symbol that's easy mode. ]
no subject
And settles, discreetly, a hand on his ribbon, where the clan emblem sprawls in the silvered filigree of a cloud sprawling. Better to suggest than openly pronounce, to tease with modest beauty. The Lan do not perpetuate cosmetic arrogance, but here, in this, they allow themselves the minor, petty pleasures of beauty.
A challenge, perhaps — the sketch of the cloud is simple, but the anaemic proportion of each line and detail could pose difficulties. Worse feats to master, perhaps, but Wrathion has voiced himself equal to the task.
Who is Lan Wangji to deny him? )
Our home sanctuary. Cloud Recesses.
no subject
It seems only fitting to include that, then, for your son.
[ You know, home symbol, family, tying it altogether. ]