serthica: war & peace

[groundrules]

Clockwork Serthica’s arrival event stretches til around 3 September. You’re welcome to hit up this log or make your own entries. Characters not assigned to a region can still access it, as long as they’re discreet.

Please share cool plot clues via network — and have fun!

WAR & PEACE

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SUMMARY: The Merchant assigns the group to determine if the dead lurk within Serthica’s adversarial halves. Eidris and Minaras hold a summit to normalise trade within Serthica’s elusive Neutral Zone — while a resistance movements attempts to capture Minaras lead figure Arabella. In Eidris, locals must calm a maddened dragon and her cohort and retrieve her hatching eggs. Minaras hosts its eerie civic indoctrination that seeks to extirpate physical and moral decay.


FAIR FORTUNE | SWITZERLAND | EIDRIS: THERE BE DRAGONS | MINARAS: EYES ON YOU

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FAIR FORTUNE

The party at sea is smuggled into Serthica with help from false passport papers secured by their Mouse House companions. The two groups meet at Serthica’s port customs, in time for the Merchant’s private transmission:

”Good afternoon. I salute and thank the efforts of our recent additions. You performed exceptionally.

You will hear Serthica is sundered by war, sickness and irreconcilable differences. In truth, she is likely divided by the interests of those who weaponise fear and manipulate opportunity.

In Eidris, they claim Minaraians are not human. In Minaras, they speak the same of Eidris. Disgust, dismay and paranoia have created a… system of profound physical avoidance. If this is mere fearmongering, it is distasteful, but inconsequential. However… if one of the citadel’s halves has succumbed to the dead, who now know to feign they yet live… this marks a dire escalation. You must study this.

Your transportation beacon sleeps in the holy grounds of Vassarizhia. It will light within months, when the Heart’s clock quiets for its annual winding. You may visit the grounds during the upcoming trade summit.

While in Serthica, your only objectives are to survive until the beacon’s eye opens, and to discover the dead present. I pray but question you will prevail.”

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SWITZERLAND

After a lengthy inspection of their passport papers, the party is steered towards the Sanctuary of Serthica’s Neutral Zone — a vast institute near Serthica’s great clock tower. Here, representatives of Eidris and Minaras assemble at midday for peaceful negotiations to improve distant trade relations.

■ The Merchant recommends mingling to broaden your investigation into Serthica’s dead. Even Minaras leading figurehead Arabella will attend.

■ For peace-keeping, entrants to the Sanctuary must surrender their weapons or allow them to be sealed, if they want to carry them in. Weapons are released on departure. Physical enhancements that characters cannot remove (ex: vampire fangs) are excepted.

■ Those who are unwilling to give up or seal their weapons can head on to Eidris and Minaras.

■ Summit attendants receive badges reflecting their Serthica identities, or can divert the greeting droid and liberate the insignia of a delayed delegation. Higher-ranking badges earns you more lenient treatment and higher security clearance.

■ Eidris attendants receive golden armbands or scarves, those of Minaras dark blue.

■ In bustling halls, officials negotiate grain exchanges, new train railways, the currency exchange rate and the saddening conditions of Mouse House exiles. Alas, if only someone (not them) could help.

■ Those drafted into the talks are toasted with a green, mint-like potion — an unadvertised truth serum intended to keep negotiations honest. The potion’s effects last two to four hours, compelling truth but not speech. But do talk: candour wins answers.

■ Artisans display their finest novelty items in the main reception hall. Aggressively enthusiastic traders seek testers and investors for their wares — potent opiates, goggles that show you the world in 10 years’ time, even detailed plans for luxury teahouses offering droid companionship. Extricate yourself with as much coin and dignity as possible.

SLEEP, CHILD, SLEEP

■ The great clock of the Neutral Zone strikes 18:00, triggering a light three-minute earthquake and the rise of nocturnal Minaras.

■ The Sanctuary loses all electric power. As servants rush for candles, you might notice some native summit delegates behave peculiarly: their eyes look glassy, faces trapped in an expression of comical, exaggerated dismay. Many are frozen in tense positions. Others move in sluggish, uncoordinated and jerky spasms. One might catch your wrist and attempt to speak in staggered, guttural croaks.

■ Lights return once the earthquake finishes. Locals resume regularly and do not seem to have noticed any erratic behaviour.

SLEEP, CHILD, SLEEP
CONTENT WARNING: TERROR ATTACK

■ Starting her speech, Arabella of Minaras calls a tribute for those lost to the great Culling sickness that struck Serthica mere years before. The vigil is interrupted by a fusillade of rifle shots fired from outside, through the Sanctuary’s wall-long windows.

■ The bullets exclusively target Minaras delegates and do not contain gunpowder, but a thickened, pale liquid. Once shot, those wounded experience a hysterical, incontrollable terror and the certainty that their greatest fear is hunting them. Many of the shot delegates develop an instant flight response and seek to claw their way out of the Sanctuary, with no care for whom they trample in their path. This terror lasts 30-60 minutes. Please content warn if you graphically describe your character’s greatest fear.

■ As rifle gunshots die down, a voice from outside introduces the Remembrance coalition, pledging safety if the summit surrenders Arabella.

■ The Sanctuary activates emergency measures: protective magical wards start to slowly reinforce, while attendants risk their lives to return characters’ weapons.

■ You could team up and help Arabella’s few remaining guards to escort her to safety in Minaras. Drop a line if you take this route.

■ Outside, you find the Sanctuary’s grounds have been drenched in a thick fog that barely allows you to see steps ahead. Your senses dull, and you are gradually prone to sleep — while masked men close in with rifles and vicious droid hunting hounds.

■ Help Sanctuary guards take out the assailants — and submit your character for a RNG draw to interrogate a lone captive.

■ Characters who later investigate the Sanctuary can find some of its windows have been very carefully pricked, fissured or even minutely holed, easing the way for attack.

Crawl back to your home base in Eidris or Minaras — you need the beauty sleep.

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EIDRIS | THERE BE DRAGONS

Eidris’s relaxed atmosphere might balm your rattled nerves after the Sanctuary’s disasters. Startled citizens gather to offer you help settling in, while dragons seek you out to curl up and nuzzle.

Eidris is governed by natural order and harmony, achieved through firm etiquette, consideration and reminders to slow down. You can hole up in a room in one of the many abandoned and repurposed villas, or group up to take a whole house. Local technology is a blend of mechanical gears and magic that substitutes fuels. Sorcerers are frequent, boastful and admired.

Dig deeper, and you’ll find the people of Eidris are unwilling to linger on negative experiences and gradually lose memory of them. If queried, many natives have normalised intermittent amnesia, with some using their link to their dragons to stay anchored in the present.

■ Acclimate to your roles in Eidris and enjoy the sweet welcome of neighbourly gifted meals and knitwear and a personal, signed letter of support from king Thivar.

■ Eidris prepares for the rare hatching of dragon eggs, lain by the beautiful fire-breathing Aiva — one of the fewer martial dragons used by Eidris’ military. Two weeks into your stay (around 25 August, forward date at will), word spreads that Aiva’s mate has been deeply injured by a Minaras scouting ship during the 6:00-7:00 overlap period when the two citadel halves are both overground.

■ A panicked, distrustful Aiva collects her silver-shelled eggs from the formal nest quarters, hiding them on the rooftops or in the balconies of tall, dangerous buildings. Several other martial dragons assist Aiva by guarding these hideaways until the young dragons can hatch.

■ Eidris calls back most transport dragons to avoid altercation with their fire-breathing, paranoid brethren. This might strand some riders on the nearest decrepit rooftop, while testy dragons fly by. They don’t initiate attack, but are more prone to warning tail sweeps or light charring, if you come close.

■ Dragon lord Cain d’Ubiq urges riders that can reconnect with their dragons to help retrieve the 1m, 50-kg eggs and deliver them back to the dragon grounds nest before they hatch by sundown — terrorising the baby dragons that wake alone and ripping into local architecture. Other riders are needed to spread a trail of deep incense smoke in the air that can soothe dragons from their outburst. Lend a hand!

■ Characters who enlisted for dragon riding on arrival could be middling riders by this point.

■ Aiva’s children hatch moments before the clock ticks 18:00 and Minaras also surges overground. Characters linked to a dragon feel the birth: first as an overwhelming exuberance, then as an all-consuming and irrational dread that briefly reduces them to inexplicable tears.

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MINARAS | EYES ON YOU

A sharp departure from Eidris’ laissez-faire is watchful Minaras, where citizens obsess with schedules, orderliness and time — as if every second is both borrowed and wasted.

Newcomers can choose between one-person 2.5x2.5m ‘sleep units’ in packed industrial homes, or pool funds to rent small refurbished alcoves that once served as hospital or science halls. Space is a luxury, silence a myth: helper droids constantly fuss after their masters, steam engines cough outside, and the gentle thrum on the streets betrays the current-shifting omnipresence of large Watch ships.

Civic sound systems periodically bleat reminders for citizens to STAY HALE, STAY WHOLE, alongside tips for basic droid care, the latest in scientific discoveries, paid ads and reminders not to park your robotic carriage near hydrants.

■ Quickly learn the ropes of your assumed identity, as Minaraians have a duty to report peculiar behaviours.

■ Watch ships prevent lawbreaking while Minaras is overground. Crime rates spike rapidly when Minaras falls underground.

■ More than violence, Minaraians appear to fear their pocket watch times being wrong, filth and sickness. The smallest cough earns a stern glance and a wide berth.

■ As part of Minaras’ periodic social indoctrination, you are robotically escorted alongside your peers and other unrelated Minaraians to a civic integration centre. Here, you take turns before a mechanical droid sphinx labelled ASCLEPIOS that asks, ”What rots you? and compels an honest answer (this can be emotional, mental or physical sickness, minor or severe).

■ A painless tattoo appears on the back of your hand, listing your Decay (ex: ‘malnourishment,’ ‘a choleric temper’). Others in the indoctrination centre must help you mend through acts of care (ex: cooking you a meal, helping you meditate). The tattoo fades after 72 hours, or once sufficient acts of care have ‘cured’ you.

■ After one week (around 20 August, but feel free to forward date), a transmission from Arabella informs watch, aerial, military and health units that Minaras is changing the daily schedule of its scout ships. The last scouts will now be deployed at 4:15am and return to base by 5:00am.

QUESTIONS

Comments

number one ► star trek

[unas]

[ lmk if you'd like me to write a specific starter, otherwise i'm for you to wildcard based on the info:

-- una is in minaras as a vigil officer which gives her access to ships, scout plane schedules/info etc etc.

-- una is going to be doing a bunch of inbox stuff (if she knows you) or has a very open inbox (here) for anyone wanting to get any ship/plane info.

-- her rot is going to be the lies that she tells starfleet/everyone. i'm open to the acts of care both giving and receiving (let her cook for you, or have nice chats etc) ]

Rot

[biomed]

( McCoy spots Una in the crowd shortly after his own turn with the Sphinx, as he scrubs fruitlessly at the words marring his hand. 'Hysterical'; he wants to laugh, to hiss, annoyed and disgusted in equal turns, at the outpouring of worries he felt compelled to share with the automaton.

Squeezing between two idling bystanders, ignoring the growing tightness in his own chest, he darts– well, speed-walks as quick as he can –toward the Commander, easily closing the distance. )

Good to see you, Una.

( The cheer in his voice is strangled, the tips of his ears red. He shoves his hands in his pockets and does not dare to look at hers, to intrude on something so personal. )

[unas]

Number One.

( it's a quiet, gentle correction on her name, clinging to something that feels comfortable and familiar when secrets and truths make her explicitly uncomfortable.

her eyes are looking out across the room, looking to find somewhere quieter, gently leading him across to talk )

[biomed]

Right, sorry, Number One,

( he blurts out, momentarily stricken, an uncertain pause before he's in motion again, keeping pace with her. mccoy waits for them to find a quiet alcove and plunges his unmarked hand into an inner pocket of his suit jacket, then another, retrieving his tricorder. )

[unas]

( she finds a table, some chairs by it, taking a seat at one. it's quieter more in the sense that anyone around isn't paying attention, is passing back and forth on some other business )

What is it?

( she assumes that he'd found her for a reason, though maybe that's her trying to think of business to ignore what this place is )

[biomed]

( tricorder produced, he hides it under the table– alongside his hand –to scan the word, its letters slightly raised on the skin, faintly red at the edges. like a tattoo, but lacking in the sting. )

You received a mark, too.

( Bones decides he's not feeling shame for something forced onto him, and shows her his, his mouth set in a line. )

[unas]

Yeah, I'm pretty sure that anyone that walks into this place would.

( she only takes a brief look at his before looking back up at him )

It's part of this place. It doesn't mean anything.

rot

[bravelyrunsaway]

( Being visually familiar with members of their strange consortium with no better bounding directive than venture east, under the merchant's directive, Licyn approaches more out of the ongoing low restlessness beneath his skin speaking of less magic than before, but still something, and the more psychosomatic ache of the words 'tattoo'd' as his 'rot' across his back, twisted around and by the scars there. )

What I would give for our merchantile friend to have a lovely visit with that mechanical beastie.

[unas]

I doubt they will, and many others may not see it.

( not those on the other side, those without cause or ability to cross over. and she's considering leaving herself, if not to go to eidris but to find a quieter place )

[bravelyrunsaway]

No, over half of us won't, isn't that the rub?

( he still thinks it'd have been nicest to have the searing merchant dragged in here to chatter out whatever boring truth burns itself into his flesh after, but no, it's hardly like licyn can do anything about it.

so he shrugs his shoulders, settling himself back. )

What're they offering you to deal with your 'truth?'

[unas]

It's a truth I already knew.

( though somehow now it bites harder than what she'd already felt about it. a truth she never wanted to talk about )

It doesn't matter.

[bravelyrunsaway]

Hah, three days worth of being stuck here says it matters at least that much.

( he cants his head to the side, offering up a grin. )

Not that there's much they can do for incurable 'rot.' Nosy snobs, the lot of them.

[unas]

They can't keep us here for three days.

( they could try but una definitely wasn't intending to stay for three days and she'd happily try and find a way out )

► inbox

[somebadnews]

[ Five has been scarce since getting off the boat, and anyone with access to the network could probably guess why. Between his distrust of their companions and the nightmare they found themselves in here, he's wanted nothing more than to focus on what actually matters to him.

Una notably didn't weigh in on the campaign against him, so he's hopeful that she's staying motivated to get out of here. With his sanity fraying, it doesn't hurt to have someone to look over his math. ]

You said you had something for me. Do you still have it?

[unas]

I'm watching the ships if you want somewhere quiet to talk about it.

( since there's literally no one else up here on post with her )

[somebadnews]

[ Watching the ships that are watching them. He's not opposed to meeting her, but it's a big city, Una. ]

I'm going to need better directions.

[unas]

I'm on the Carousel. It's one of the ships.

[somebadnews]

[ ...Not what he expected. They just got here and she's already infiltrated one of the ships. Or was she arrested again? ]

How'd you manage that?

[unas]

It's my job.

rot

[rumorate]

[If Allison had arrived in this place prior to Five returning to her life, she might have had "Liar" herself. But time and experience has replaced that with "Anger," scribed on the curve between her thumb and forefinger.

And she can't say she disagrees with it. But she also doesn't really consider it something that's "rotting" her. If anything, she thinks it's something she's owed.

She glances up when Una makes her way closer offering a small smile as she schooches over to give space.]

Need a seat?

rot & wildcard combo

[winscenario]

[ Curiosity has always been Jim's weakness, sometimes it works out for him and sometimes it doesn't. He knew exactly what that sphinx was all about but he still went— though in his defense , he didn't prepare himself for how strong the compulsion to talk would be.

It's not that he's embarrassed by the word on the back of his hand, but it does invite some conversations that he's not sure he's ready to have. So after Minaras raises overground and night settles, Jim goes back to the flat, determined to end the day on a good note. When she arrives, he'll be climbing down the narrow stairs leading to the roof. ]

Hey, [ he greets her with a smile. ] Are you busy right now? There's something I'd like to show you.

[unas]

( uncooperative would be one of the words that could have described una when mccoy had tried to help her after they'd both received the 'marks'. whilst she was under no illusions as to what ate at her, not needing the compulsion to know that truth, it was a messy bag for her, one that una kept tightly to herself.

getting back, having busied herself with distractions and the math that five had given her, she'd been ready to call it a night. until he'd caught her )

What is it?

( she'd stop for something interesting )

[winscenario]

Wouldn't be as fun if I spoiled the surprise, would it?

[ Not that it surprises him that she asks; she doesn't strike him as the sort to always appreciate surprises, even good ones. ]

Come on, it'll be worth your while. You'll be back to your numbers before long.

[unas]

( there's a raise of her eyebrow at his promise and una's assuming that it's something on the roof )

Alright, show me.

[winscenario]

[ His smile widens, and he turns to climb back up the stairs. There's a small ledge at the top and he's sure she would manage more than well on her own, but he still offers her a hand. There's a fairly long word written on the back of his hand, and though he doesnt go out of his way to hide it, he still keeps his hand tilted just enough that it's not so easy to read. ]

Watch your step.

[ Just as he says it, something large flies slowly overhead, a huge whale that seems to leap straight out of a cloud. It seems to be made of the cloud itself, and it lets out a long, deep singing wail, almost as if greeting them. ]