the unwinding

[groundrules]

Heya! Let loose for Serthica’s Unwinding — our event spanning 24 September-15 October that doubles as a test drive.

This round’s test drive participants do not require an invite to apply. Applications open over 8-14 October. Enjoy!

THE UNWINDING

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TEST DRIVE TOURISTS | OLD TIMERS | DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE
SPILL THE TEA | DRIP BY DRIP | ALL A DREA —

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✘ NEWCOMERS | BARRELING IN

Soaring seagulls and splintered silence. You awaken on the shoreline of steampunk citadel Clockwork Serthica, recovered by the irritable witch Karsa.

She shares translation and communication devices, scarce healing and a rapid briefing: you have reached a world where undead forces seek to weaponise you in their battle for dominion. Karsa’s employer, the Merchant leads travel to beacons meant to return you home.

Other otherworlders have already infiltrated Serthica. Karsa steers newcomers into the impoverished underworld of the Mouse House, to board a rickety coal train serving the citadel.

■ Silver tongues can win you passage.

■ ...alternatively, hide in the obscenely large whiskey barrels the train also smuggles in.

■ Mid-voyage, the train quakes, slamming you into walls and windows. Around you, the stench of bleach, the warm crackle of embers and static magic that builds thick, nearly electric.

You feel faint and fainter, when you overhear Karsa’s murmured, “It’s too early” — “find” — “find” — “it’s like a drea” — “don’t unwind” — “all child’s play.”

And then you’re U n w i n d i n g.

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✘ OLD TIMERS | INHALE-EXHALE

Eidris, Minaras, the Neutral Zone: all abuzz with residential whispers of imminent Unwinding — an annual fixture natives dread without fully remembering.

■ In the two days leading to the Unwinding, characters struggle to tell apart or remember the physical features of natives.

■ Some locals steal you into dark alleys, where they become suddenly stiff, emitting a rusty, guttural Ke-ke-ke sound. They do not recall this after.

The Unwinding kicks off at 6am, when both Eidris and Minaras are overground. Jim Kirk’s fixed music box begins to play, its chipper rural tune overtaking your thoughts: “Up the mountain, in the grove, hand in hand to Ke-ke-ke — Ke-Waihu, fresh harvest’s a treasure trove, each fall we feast anew.”

Earth shatters seismically underfoot, magic depletes, the citadel’s clock tower strikes 6:00 — and an urgent communication from the Merchant is interrupted by static, “You can we-we-we-…-stand it, the white man come — remembrrrrrrrrrrrr live, you are alive, do not be convinsssss —ssss — ssssd otherwisssssss —”

But you’re already U n w i n d i n g.

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✘ DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE

Down and down, you tumble, Alice — through a cavernous tunnel that widens and chokes arbitrarily. Sometimes you float and fly, sometimes you’re thrust sideways. Mostly, you keep falling.

■ Beware objects falling into you: from grand pianos to mystical balls of fire, stray beds, love letters and sharp-pointed weapons. Even a blood-spattered umbrella that shields against anything.

■ You’re dropped unceremoniously into an underground lair, as items keep falling down. Unclaimed, they disappear within minutes. Three jackalopes smoking opiate pipes point you indifferently towards a locked door. On its handle sit a bone dice and a note instructing, ROLL FOUR TO OPEN.

■ The dice can only be thrown every 10 minutes and feels too monstrously heavy to lift otherwise. Each roll makes the effect of the previous throw disappear. If you get:

one: gravity fades, the dice floats out of reach. ( The jackalopes enjoy the breeze. )

two: the floor, barring a few narrow steps at great jumping distance, is lava. ( The jackalopes check ‘hell’ off their vacation list.)

three: an irked dragon coils beside you. (The jackalopes prepare to tan.)

five: the thrower grows and grows and grows, until they must contort creatively to fit inside. ( The jackalopes charge rent. )

six: the room fills with water that nearly reaches the ceiling. (The jackalopes are competitive swimmers.)

seven: everything about your companion irritates you. They even breathe wrong. ( The jackalopes find this awkward. )

eight: The floor slowly expands into quicksand. ( The jackalopes hoverboard. )

■ Roll four and the door creaks merrily open. A second note slips loose, I’m sorry. Head in, your newfound possessions abandoned — and keep U n w i n d i n g.

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✘ SPILL THE TEA

You wake, dressed to the steampunk nines, at a tea party, alongside a companion and a slew of eerie guests: cog droids, faceless people and animated human-sized burlap mannequins. You only hear static and white noise when they speak.

When you leave the table, a fox butler passes you the empty kettle, asking you to, ”Make tea and finish here”.

■ You’re inevitably stuck in a decrepit dollhouse. Heavily boarded doors and windows ultimately open to show plague sickness in the streets. The fox butler closes them, reminding, ”He’ll make it go away.”

■ Travel a corridor of repeating rooms to reach the kitchens, and don’t dally. Every time the clock strikes a new hour, the partygoers grab their sharpest knife and stalk down the house to pursue you. The frenzy lasts 10 minutes before they return to their seats — barricade in deserted rooms, hide behind curtains or climb up the chimney…

■ For tea, the mannequin cook directs you to retrieve juniper and rosemary leaves from the greenhouse, where plant tendrils try to trap you, leaving marks of mould; rescue the milk container from a cat that’s running on the crumbling staircase, and sugar from a dish in the lavish nursery room, where ghostly hands might seek to drag you into walls and send you back down the rabbit hole.

■ Supplied, the huffing burlap cook prepares tea. Just as you’re about to taste the black brew at the party table, a man in white takes and spills your tea out in a plant pot. You only hear, ”You don’t need this yet” — before you’re U n w i n d i ng.

■ On exiting the Unwinding, your pockets burst with plants or leaves of juniper and rosemary. They can alleviate McCoy’s sickness.

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✘ DRIP BY DRIP

You wake up in bloodied clothes in a filled bathtub. You are hounded by urgency, as if you’re hunted. The unease never wanes, as you gather your bearings and join the bustling city streets, armed with a blood-spattered white umbrella. In your pocket, two paper notes: CHILDREN LIE and WHAT IS HIS NAME?(

Your memories are confused: half of you is certain you are a content citizen of Serthica. The other riots that you don’t belong. An excruciating migraine strikes when you try to remember how you arrived here.

Gravity’s a loose concept: you walk, or you float. The city is either perfectly still, or inundated with the screeching of hearses and criers. Locals — all faceless, or man-sized burlap mannequins — mill busily, despite the forlorn rain.

■ Hold on to your umbrella: linger uncovered in the rain, and your facial features slowly fade, while you desperately try to convince your teammate that you should stay here forever. You recover once dry.

■ The inhuman locals grow increasingly more hostile with time: carriages want to run you over, friendly burlap shopkeepers push you into a ditch. They chase if you ask their name.

■ Happily, this world is vulnerable to your desires: wish gravity undone, and you can walk on walls. Think a river into being, and it bursts ahead. Imagine buildings, and they pop up. Playing God comes at a price of bad luck: the staircase you envisage thins and breaks just as you cross it, your knife rusts after the first swing.

■ Your pursuers abandon you, when you reach a deserted marketplace and encounter a drenched, battered boy wearing a fox mask. He is playing with paper boats in the middle of a large black puddle. You feel deep and building hatred for him.

■ Seeing you, the child mentions one of you previously tried to kill him. He offers his name, in exchange for your umbrella:

a. Refuse or dally, and dark hands rise out of the puddle to pull you and your partner in, scratching you bloody. The last thing you see, before you wake up in the bathtub again (or out of the Unwinding), is a man in white who collects your umbrella. He holds it over the child, scolding, ”Did you forget again? This one never hurt you.”

b. To surrender the umbrella, step on the paper boats as you cross the puddle to the boy. Walking straight on water feels like stepping on knives. The child accepts your umbrella, whispering his name is ”Hyang-Won”, before you start to fade out of the Unwinding.

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✘ IT WAS ALL A DREA —

New or old, as the Unwinding ends, you wake up in Ma’am Mariol’s modest orphanage in the Mouse House. Mariol, the orphans and Serthica at large recall nothing about the Unwinding. Karsa, who dragged you in, is pale and exhausted, her memory patchy. She urges everyone to recuperate before heading back overground.

■ Your body shows only a fraction of any damage sustained in the Unwinding.

■ Ma’am Mariol’s labyrinthine home offers limited accommodations: share beds, floors, and household chores, while the orphans led by curious Gavroche, peer in.

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NOTES

■ You can make network posts outside of the Unwinding.

■ Feel free to mark if you're a test drive tourist or an old timer in your top level!

■ The Unwinding is a shifting of realities not a dreamscape.

■ You can opt out of the Unwinding by keeping characters in the Mouse House. Here, nothing seems amiss.

■ QUESTIONS!

Comments

Mikazuki Munechika || Touken Ranbu || Newcomer

[tsukijiji]

A. [BARRELING IN]

[Well, it's not like ending up in an unfamiliar place and time is a rare occurrence for Mikazuki Munechika. He kinds of stands out, though, with his outfit.

And he very confidently says with a straight face to the train attendant...]

Oya, I am an old man. You wouldn't make me sit with cargo, would you? not that I haven't done that before, but I would appreciate something to lean my back on, if you'd be so kind, hahahahaha!

[And wouldn't you know, it actually works and he gets a seat.]

B. [DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE]

Oya, a game, is it?

[Dice, huh? they look different from the ones he's used to, and he suspects they don't really have the same function either. And you need four to be able to go along?]

That sounds ominous, doesn't it? Not an auspicious number at all.

Well then, shall we try?

C. [SPILL THE TEA]

[Whoever's idea it was to ask Mikazuki Munechika himself to make tea, they're probably going to regret it. This old sword is very, very particular about tea, and once escorted to the greenhouse, well, he looks around and shakes his head.]

This will not do. This will not do at all.

[All of a sudden, the tachi that's hanging at his waist gets unsheathed and wielded in a wide arc, cutting all the vegetal tendrils that were creeping up.

But the main concern is...]

You don't even have a single tea bush in here. How do you expect to make tea?

D. [IT WAS ALL A DREA —]

Oya oya...

[This feels a bit like waking up in repairs, except the warm glow of the saniwa's power is totally absent. As is any inkling of how to demanifest from this time period and return to the citadel. Well, well...]

Aruji, I know I often cause trouble, but I am quite certain it isn't my fault this time.

B!

[fushichou]

[Aaaaand he's falling.

This sucks.

Why does this world suck.

Like, Kanesada has been through some crazy shit, but at least the ground stays solid when everything gets bad. This? This is just stupid.

And then he hits the ground pretty hard, though he does his best to roll out of it. Thankfully he's more than an actual human or else he's pretty sure half his bones would be obliterated by this point.

That doesn't mean getting up is any easier.

He groans and dusts himself off, checking to make sure the sword at his hip is still undamaged -thank goodness, it is - and gathers up his hair to throw behind his shoulders.

That's going to be a nightmare to brush out. Fuck this place, for real.

He ambles past the antlered rabbits and follows where they sort of direct, only to then see something - someone - he hadn't expected.

Anyone at the honmaru would recognize those rich blues and golds in an instant and Kanesada is no different. For a moment he thinks he's saved. Maybe Aruji has managed to find him and sent a team to get him out of here!

His steps grow more sure and he rushes toward that familiar figure.]

...Mikazuki Munechika!

[tsukijiji]

[Well, well, well, if this isn't a familiar figure and voice.]

Izuminokami Kanesada.

[As usual, the Tenka Goken looks undisturbed by everything around. his face bears the same benign smile it usually does, but he does give the other sword a quick once over.

Not damaged, it seems. Good. That doesn't answer any of the other questions, though.]

I haven't been able to find Konnosuke. Or contact anyone.

[fushichou]

[Oh. Well, any hope Kanesada might have had for a way out of this world is very quickly dashed.]

Ah, yeah. I'm the only other touken danshi here. I don't know how I got pulled into this place, but we're cut off from...everything. Seeing you here, I was hoping Aruji somehow got through, but...I guess not.

[tsukijiji]

The only other one? Hmmm....

[Well, he can work with that. There is worse company to be in when in trouble than Izuminokami Kanesada. A bit hotheaded, but he's useful in a fight, and he has a good head on his shoulders when he's not being impulsive.]

I was on my way to somewhere else when I ended up here, and... I don't remember you going missing.

[fushichou]

Yeah, it sucks. I mean, most people are pretty chill, but they're not us, so it's just not the same.

[Hearing that Kanesada hasn't been considered missing is...kind of upsetting. He's sure it's not intentional, but...]

...Oh. Well...time isn't a straight line. I've been here for, like...shit, I dunno. A few months? Maybe longer.

[tsukijiji]

I had tea with you yesterday.

[But yes, time isn't a straight line, they know that, and things can and do go wrong.... more or less frequently.]

Has this been happening around you for those last few months, too?