plot roll | they walk among us

[groundrules]

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THEY WALK AMONG US | THE NEUTRAL ZONE

Neutral Zone bridges connect Eidris and Minaras in the two one-hour intervals of each day — 6:00-7:00 and 18:00-19:00 — when both citadel halves are overground. These are safe and shielded spaces — until protesters linked to the Remembrance resistance join the milling crowds.

Protestors rent ’eyes,’ paying exorbitantly to possess the bodies of willing strangers. They are difficult to spot until they’re right beside you, trying to lure or abduct you into the cause of forcibly reuniting Serthica. Both Eidris and Minaras offer bounties for Remembrance members. Remembrance lieutenants are meanwhile actively recruiting, asking an act of fealty to join their ranks.

✘ OBJECTIVE: capture Remembrance members or play spy within the group.

■ Shallow inquiries reveal Remembrance members have been infiltrating the Neutral Zone crowds for a week prior. The Eidris and Minaras administration offer 50,000 coin for every member of Remembrance brought in.

■ The job is encumbered by the use of ‘eyes’: Remembrance members make their getaway by abandoning their rented bodies when they face trouble. To avoid this, Minaras and Eidris loan out miniature hand-held body-lock gear that will keep someone’s awareness in the body they occupy for six hours. To activate the lock, touch the bracelet to the subject’s nape. Each body-lock gear can only be used five times.

■ Remembrance members typically wait until you’ve reached a narrow and crowded part of the bridges, before slipping beside you to whisper their pitch: ”Don’t you miss your family? Was only one citadel, once, our Serthica. Could walk free to our mines, then, to our factories, our dragons. What’s division done for you, except make rich people richer?”

■ They withdraw into the crowd at the first sign of hostility, but will entertain whispered conversation, if you appear interested. Some speak of their leader Chrichter — an allegedly honest, stalwart man of the people — as Serthica’s true hope for the future.

■ Remembrance members work in groups, with a scout alerting the others when constables walk by.

■ Characters sensitive to life forces might feel the ‘eyes’ have multiple spirits inside them, or the spirit that occupies the body is very blurred and undefined (because of regular substitution).

■ As Remembrance seeks political leverage, the easiest way for new conscripts to prove their loyalty is to bring a captive or coerced member of the Eidris or Minaras aristocracy or a person of passable standing — …who may be an unlucky NPC, or one of your allies, finally polishing their acting skills.

■ Keep up the act: Remembrance has zero tolerance for those who belittle or question the cause.

■ Some members of Remembrance might abduct you, using chloroform and brute force, and pretending you are their good friend who has taken drunk or ill in the crowd. If you have been kidnapped or are joining Remembrance freely, prepare to be blindfolded and led down a winding path through the Neutral Zone — and into the impoverished underworld of the Mouse House.

■ The headquarters of Remembrance is in a large, now destitute train station. It would have once served the coal train that traverses the Mouse House daily. High-standing Remembrance lieutenants access the station with large, peculiarly shaped keys.

■ Everyone in the group wears a mask — you receive one as you head in, both for privacy and to fend off the stench of pestilential wet and mould.

■ The Remembrance base is dusty, chaotic, brimming with scraps and random tech projects. Here and there, find dissected or repurposed droids, along with several man-sized burlap mannequins and mislaid toys. No child is ever present. On the walls, colourful graffiti writes, OPEN THE WALLS, PLAY WITH YOUR DOLLS, TWO PENCE A POP, WHERE HAVE YOUR DRAGONS GONE?, BRING OUT YOUR DEAD…

■ Remembrance reunites a motley crowd of desperate men and women. Their households were either destroyed by the ‘coal sickness,’ or divided when work obligations confined some to Eidris, others to Minaras. Several group members are tinkerers, devising new protest weapons and gear — including the terror bullets witnessed during the trade summit. Many members work honest jobs overground, with a minority serving the Neutral Zone. They have minimal interaction with the Mouse House.

■ Remembrance offers the train station as a crude, but functional shelter. Best avoid sleeping here overnight — in your wretched dreams, your dark-fingered hands go to your throat, and decay haunts your body, as you attempt to flee a sinister mountain at all costs.

■ Remembrance leader Chrichter is a frequent (masked) sight, seen speaking and planning with his lieutenants. There is word of a coming attack during the ‘Unwinding.’ It is unclear if Remembrance expects to attack or be attacked.

■ Now and then, the headquarters activity shuts down, and you should hide as overground constables conduct Mouse House raids .They never enter the train station — and Chrichter and his men often prepare bribes. But you’re fair game if you’re captured for your own negligence.

■ A locked back room in the Remembrance headquarters leaks rare rivulets of blood or blackened water. Sometimes, you hear fists banging on the door or animal-like howling for a scant few seconds. Everyone studiously ignores these incidents. The door only opens once — when a furious Chrichter exits, kicking a lifeless burlap mannequin off his clawed, bleeding back.

■ You can enter the headquarters freely if you supply the passcode, WAKE UP. You might want to release the forced Remembrance captives on your way out.

QUESTIONS

NPC ACCESS: CHRICHTER

Comments

[groundrules]

Cutting into the wall-membrane, Wrath and Fei can enter a fully dark, cavernous, flesh-lined room of about 20m2. It feels ominously quiet, anticipatory, but also sleepily soothing as the pulls of the walls drone on. Wrath and Fei might feel calmer, rested, and healing, if they've suffered recent hurts.

The room is packed with some 20-25 mannequins, some standing, some collapsed on the floor, some fully strapped to the walls. They transit in between states of being: from burlap sack dolls to human beings with fully defined features and soft skin. In the latter phase, they feel 'human' and alive, no different than other Serthica citizens. Some mannequins fluctuate between these states in a matter of seconds, others take minutes.

Dark water comes to knee level and seems to be actively drenching and infusing the mannequins' burlap. The mannequins that are able to remain humanoid for longer have darker burlap skins that has visibly been immersed in the water extensively. Sometimes, when these mannequins become humanoid, they turn their poorly seeing eyes and ill hearing ears against the membrane-walls and attempt to touch beyond, because they perceive light or sound stimuli.

The longer Wrath and Fei remain in the water, the more they experience immense cold, fear, a feeling of stuffiness and claustrophobia. Wrath's magic and Fei's stamina slowly drain.

Up close, they find each mannequin has a chain with twin dog tags on their backs. One tag lists a name (irrelevant for plot purposes, handwave a name) and the other has an engraving with a different childish phrase, like, hello, birdie, squirrel, eat your nuts!, the train goes, choo-choo. There is no pattern to the phrases.

Suddenly, the mannequins swiftly wake, utterly panicked. They attack as much as they can, clawing and thrashing, possessed of enviable strength that dissipates as they exit the womb-walls and the waters' reach. Some will try to choke or pin down Wrath and Fei, but they will soon give up in favour of exiting. The mannequins are not malicious, as much as they are frantic, hurting those in their path out of fear they'll be hurt instead. Fei and Wrath mostly need to fend for themselves in narrow quarters, while the mannequins flee.

Xiao Xingchen's blood seal can contain the dark water from spilling out and protect Magnus and him from immediate harm. The mannequins will leave the room — and soon enough, after causing light carnage among Remembrance members, the headquarters.

Unfortunately, this isn't the end for Fei and Wrath — over the course of the Arc, they will go through Serthica and the Mouse House feeling watched — the mannequins will remember them, and that they were identified as a threat. Any future encounter with unsocialised mannequins (this excludes the one Finn and Jim might choose to bring home) will find Wrath and Fei either heavily surveilled or targeted. The mannequins cannot stop spying on them, when they are within reach.