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

summit smalltalk;

[incantates]

As much as he's eager to temper the tedium of the summit with alcohol, the color and the strong mint scent both give him reasons to hesitate. That and the fact that Magnus has no idea what's inside of it, but he wouldn't be much of a warlock if he wasn't good at a bit of sleight of hand.

It starts with a smile, then a laugh, a whole choreographed display to fool those around him as he subtly snaps his finger to make the liquid gradually disappear so he doesn't actually have to drink as he mingles. In the meantime, his eyes befall a very lovely new companion, who's delivered quip makes his mouth quirk slightly with bemusement.

"Did they saddle you with that terrible of a new identity? How bad can it be? You're not a dragon manure specialist, are you?"

It's the worst option he could think of at the moment. He'd been skeptical over his own new role, but he's clever enough to make it work even if he's not quite so fond of having to borrow other people's couches when he can just conjure his own to sleep on.

[matermali]

Ah. Dragons. She has yet to see one, but after all she's been through, can Vanessa afford to be skeptical now? No. She believes, but the concept still makes her uneasy. The word dragon carries a dark promise that she can't yet comprehend, and it tickles at her spine and stiffens her shoulders.

Only momentarily.

The man's easy nature is enough to again settle her demeaner, and there's an appreciation to her slight lilt of a smile. It's no surprise that someone as beautiful as him can find his way so easily around this sort of gathering. Vanessa had once attended balls whenever invited, but of late she only seems to rain disaster upon them. Now, she is careful not to enjoy herself too much.

"Perhaps better that than the muck of the common man." She doesn't think he will take offense. He seems to be no common man. Are any of those in her new company? "I will have money, but no husband or older guardian to keep suitors at bay. Perhaps if I dress in mourning." As if she isn't already covered in black from neck to toe.

"What of your charge?" She could not hear what role everyone received, as there was too much else to focus on. There's always too much, isn't there?

[ ooc; I know this is late, I'm very sorry! RL got in my way. If you'd prefer to handwave, that is okay with me. ]

[incantates]

Quick-witted, beautiful, and fashionable. If only they'd shared a world of origin so they could have befriended one another sooner, but such is the way of fate.

"If you do need help scaring off suitors, I humbly offer my services to play the role of your decadent paramour you had a tawdry affair and who you may have secretly conspired with to off your rich, old husband. Just putting that out there."

It would have definitely been a funner role than his current one. He laments the loss of a chance to be obnoxiously overdramatic.

"Alas, I am a novelist and a freeloader apparently. Quite popular from what I've been told."

Mostly by his fans who are eager to heap praise. He can't deny that's one of the better parts of being in this world.

"I'm also apparently at this gathering as a matter of research for my next book, but I can't say I've learned anything useful."

Not unless their reason for being here has anything to do with negotiation better import/export taxes for grain.

[ ooc: it's okay, I was also away on a work trip and couldn't tag properly until today. ]

[matermali]

It's such an outlandish offer that Vanessa almost laughs. Almost. She ought to be quite offended, really, and she can't help but use that knowledge to tease him in turn, her eyebrow lifting with a quirk that tugs at the corner of her lips to betrays her amusement.

"You think me the sort of woman to have a tawdry affair? With a novelist, no less."

It sounds the sort of gossip that could fill the streets of London, and one can only wonder where that gossip might lead once in Minaras. Unable to hold long on her firm tone, a light chuckle quickly softens her next words. Not many here seem quick to make jokes, and the levity is surprisingly welcome.

"If you were a poet, then you might have stood a chance."

[incantates]

"I know it's not exactly the flashiest of professions, but by everyone else's accounts, I am a very good novelist."

Or so he generally pretends to be, although he thinks he would make an excellent one if he ever happened to write down his actual life story on paper. He wouldn't even need to embellish much, considering all the day-to-day chaos he deals with back home.

"And I have been known to write a famous love poem or two in my day, so I am sure I could pull a poet off with just as much aplomb. I did once dine with Pablo Neruda while in Chile, and he offered me some great tips."

Whether or not that's actually true, who knows? Okay, so maybe Magnus is still a little inclined to embellish just because he enjoys keeping people guessing. He eventually holds his hand out to give a more honest introduction to Vanessa.

"Magnus Bane, by the way. I've been with this ragtag group of cross-dimensional adventurers for a few weeks now and can hopefully answer a few questions about our present circumstances."

[matermali]

She tuts at the mention of love poems; not exactly her cup of tea, unless they are also sad. Lost loves, perhaps, such as Shelley to Keats. Yearning is a lie if it doesn't join hands with sorrow. Vanessa's teasing will only go so far, however, not wanting to insult his honest work (if it is honest). It may be an alias, or it may be real; the line is quite blurred here, and her perception is not as sharp as it would be in London.

It takes her a moment to recall where Chile is, but she has Sir Malcolm's expansive maps to thank for not remaining completely ignorant. The name, however... A poet she hasn't heard of? He's mentioned as if she ought to know him, and that nags at her. Her knowledge of great poets is quite prolific, but then her access to anything from South America would certainly be limited.

"Vanessa Ives. Miss." She'll nod, and there is a hesitant glance to his hand before she reaches to barely let her fingers hover over his, not quite touching. She's quick to drop it back to her side before he can attempt to grasp it. He offers knowledge about this world, but she's more interested in the one they seem to share. She keeps meeting people from different worlds, and it's quite a lonely feeling at times. Even if he isn't English, she's eager for something shared.

"Are you American, then? It seems rare that I meet anyone here from the same world as I. I have not heard of Pablo Neruda, however. What tips did he share?"

[incantates]

This would be the first time he's ever been mistaken for an American. He almost snorts at the thought.

"Indonesian actually... before it was even called that. Our rambunctious Dutch colonizers preferred the Dutch East Indies back in the day."

But his accent may have faded just from traveling a lot and living in so many other places, so he doesn't blame her for the error.

"I did settle in Brooklyn a couple of decades ago because I love the city, so you're not entirely wrong. How about you? I imagine a little ahead of 2019?"

Just an observation from her general state of dress and mannerisms, all far too formal for anyone born past the second millennium, if he had to guess. At least, it will help him feel less like a fossil if he's surrounded by more people who are still reeling in fascination about the invention of electricity.

[matermali]

Vanessa may apologize for misunderstanding his accent, but he says 'before it was even called that', then goes on about moving to the Americas some twenty years ago by choice, when clearly he couldn't have been a child if that were so. Understanding that he must be far older than he appears, and that this isn't the first time this has happened, her curiosity is piqued. Just how many ancient beings are about? Is he a witch, or a demon? Vanessa is having trouble getting a proper read in this room, finding her clairvoyant tendencies rather muffled since leaving the Mouse House.

Not only is he old, but he is (if she's to believe it) from the future. So...far in the future. What could that even be like? "It would be the year of our Lord, 1892. London." Though that isn't where she was born, she has always loved London and considers it her home. "It is no wonder I haven't heard of your poet, then. Whatever must it be like in Brooklyn in...2019? The Americas were already skipping ahead of London with mechanized accomplishments in my time. Are we still racing to catch up?"

[incantates]

London before it was fun... how he does pity her, but he supposes Victorian England did have its charms. If one squinted hard enough.

"I remember that time well. I used to occasionally visit. Had a good friend from there."

One who always agonized about being dragged into Magnus' mischief, but he's no longer alive to complain about it. Although, Magnus is quickly realizing for those not yet in the know, it's strange for him to refer to events in the distant past as though they'd happened yesterday. While he used to be very wary about discussing his identity back in his world, he realizes that it's all moot when they're a crew filled with exorcists, space aliens, vampires, werewolves... pretty much every oddity in existence. What point is there in dancing around the truth?

So he has no trouble clarifying a moment later– "I tend to warlock around when I'm not moonlighting as a novelist, and Brooklyn in 2019 is a marvel. I could show you when we're not in the middle of poorly-stocked soiree."

By that, he means he can just pull his memories of the place out of his head for her to look at, though he's not sure how much of a shock that would be. Technology has changed a lot since the 1890s.

[matermali]

Victorian England has about as many charms as Serthica, in the sense that horror was just around every corner. As awful as it could be at times, though, she does miss it. At least they were horrors that she was only just beginning to make sense of. Here, she's once more had the veil drawn over her eyes.

That time... A warlock? She isn't familiar with that term being used so commonly, but she has heard it, and it has dark connotations. Then again, so do witches. It's uttered so casually, and so she chooses to accept it just as easily for the moment. Questions (uncertainty) can come later, perhaps, when they know one another better. She won't let her curiosity fade, though. It's better than being mired in depression.

"Show me? Are you an artist as well? Your talents go on and on, Mr. Bane." Though she is familiar with having visions, she doesn't think about how such things can be controlled to the extent he may be suggesting.

[incantates]

"One can say magic is a type of art, as are spells and potion-making. I also dabble a bit in the traditional arts. Mostly for fun."

There is very little he hasn't tried at least once, although he wouldn't exactly hang his own paintings up for show. Not when he has access to a lot of artwork from the great masters of the Renaissance –just from hanging around them so long.

Anyway. That's a whole other story in itself.

"I'll give you a bit of a walkthrough Brooklyn later when we're in more private company. I am not sure if I want to advertise my powers so readily during this whole negotiation party."

He's still not sure if the people of this world are eager to burn witches at the stake and would not like to paint a target on himself. It's better to blend in for now and try to overhear as many conversations as he can, though he can't say the ones he has listened in on thus far are deeply enlightening.

"Why don't you tell me more about what you do in your own world? Something more exciting than being a poor, lonely widow in mourning, I hope?"