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

II

[northerndragon]

They’ve made it down here well enough with Drogon’s aid, but now that they’re here, Dany seems more skittish than she had on the way down. Might be that them coming down together wasn’t a good idea, but it is harder for one of them to stand on a deck for hours waiting for the other to return — so he’s gone down with her.

“At least this one isn’t full of mermaids,” he says, blandly.

In her suit, she would be a strange and pretty one, but the mermaids are so vicious that he does not like to think of her that way. He joins her in searching the desk.

[song_of_fire]

She had been glad for him, if not extremely worried about his safety. Jon was comforting and grounding, something she needed as they descended further and further into the depths. But now that they were in the ship, she was anxious, her chest so tight she almost couldn't breathe. The time limit and the sense that something might be there, she could feel her skin crawling. She wanted to be done, but that meant she wasn't searching as carefully as she could be.

"Not yet," she murmured, rifling through the papers, only giving them a cursory scan.

"We shouldn't linger. If mermaids are distracted, we have sharks to worry about. Drogon can't reach us here."