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

[faceblocker]

[ She rolls her eyes at being called 'pudding brain'. It's probably one of the kindest things she's been called, to be honest. The worst it does is leave her disgruntled, folding her arms while looking him over. It's not like she's about to hit an old man for something like that, but she does resist the urge to flip him the bird.

He's probably just acting out, like she is. Vi knows that everyone else here is just as stuck as her...and Caitlyn. She needs to keep her cool if she wants to find Caitlyn again.

Easier said than done. Her foot taps. ]

Fuck if I know. I was in this creepy nursery looking for a sugar dish when something came out of nowhere and threw me back down here. Maybe an hour ago? Five minutes? Time doesn't feel right here. Nothing feels right.

[twelfthsong]

Language. [ But the red haired pink, foul mouthed child is right about one thing – time doesn't feel right here. There's a sluggishness and rapidness to it that don't quite make sense. His watch at the very least seems to be keeping time – except for the smallest stutter of the second hand. ]

Let's say it's been five minutes then for the sake of it. We check back every minute and if not then – [ His hand reaches to run a hand through his hair and stops mid-sentence when he finally notices the fez. ] Why didn't you tell me I'm wearing this stupid fez?

[faceblocker]

[ Vi blinks, properly stumped at having her 'language' called out. If not for the situation at hand, she might have the decency to look sheepish, before indignance twists her mouth in another scowl. Who cares about language when the world is falling down around them? ]

Are you serious?

[ No longer about her foul mouth, but his choice in outfit is the problem? He must be crazy to be worrying about such mundane things at a time like this. Great. She has to babysit some old guy now and make sure he doesn't get himself killed while lecturing one of the knife-wielding psychos beyond about improper knife grip or something.

She'll be kicking at the dice every thirty seconds. Good thing her boots are sturdy. ]

A fashion faux pas is gonna be the least of your worries once we get through the door, old man. It's like a drug trip on the other side.

[ It kind of is out here, too, but less homicidal in nature. Whatever 'drug' they're all tripping on, it's not shimmer, but there are other possible culprits. ]

[twelfthsong]

You still could have mentioned it. It's like when someone is walking around with spinach in their teeth or a big tattoo on their face. Wouldn't you want them to mention it?

[ But why not talk about fashion faux pas' before the chaos ensues Vi? ]

What sort of drug trip? You mentioned hands and sugar. Are you sure you aren't inhaling second hand smoke from the jackalopes?

[faceblocker]

[ As someone with a tattoo on her face (even if it's small, right under her eye), Vi takes that as an intentional dig. Of course, she's covered in tattoos, so she doesn't see the problem. Where she comes from, people are inked all over. ]

No! That's nothing like spinach in the teeth. What's wrong with tattoos? And, I am not high. You— [ She glares, fists clenching like she's preparing to clock him. She resists. It wouldn't be a fair fight. ] You're working my last nerve. You can find out what's on the other side your own damn self. I'm gone as soon as we get that door open.

[ What a lie. Angry as she is, she's not about to let someone become a victim just because he's annoying. She's dealt with much worse insults, but she's in a panic about finding Caitlyn and it's too hard to keep her cool. ]

[twelfthsong]

[ It isn’t — we promise. It’s more of a “what’s right in front of him that he could use as an example” scenario. Not that he bothers to explain himself. ]

Nothing! Nothing is wrong with tattoos — I just don’t have any myself because I can’t make up my mind and would get bored within five minutes of having one.

[ He can’t help but scoff, the young woman’s threat not landing as well as she might hope. ] Right, because that clearly worked so well for you last time. But fine since you’re so eager, Grouchy — [ He gives the dice nudge with his own boot to mimic her only to have it roll. His eyes widen as it bounces across the room a short ways before landing on an 8. ]

…Just for future reference that was about 10 minutes.

[faceblocker]

[ Vi's irritation has far more to do with her worry for Caitlyn and the shock and grief over recent events that she still hasn't come to term with, but that makes it easier for the little things to get under her skin. She wouldn't normally care what anyone has to say about fashion, tattoos, or 'Grouchy' nicknames, but she's absolutely discombobulated and frantic, to put it lightly. She isn't used to being so outside of her comfort zone, not even finding the wealth of Piltover as unnerving as this place. This is nothing she's ever dealt with before.

Magic, that is. That's what it has to be, right? She's heard about it, but aside from the gauntlets she can't find, Vi has no experience with it and she's left reacting more harshly than she ought to.

Any returning insults are forgotten when she sees the dice move, and Vi hunches over, carefully trotting after them to see what numbers come up. With her hands on her knees, her broad shoulders visibly wilt at the number 8. ]

Great, so we have to wait another ten minutes? I'm not─

[ Wait, her boots are starting to sink. Her reaction is swift, though the pull of the sand is already cutting into her usual speed as she tries to hop away and scramble onto something big. A carriage door, bent and brittle, is better than nothing. Without thinking, she grabs the back of the man's jacket to haul him up with her.

It's a very temporary solution. ]

Okay, maybe a five wouldn't have been so bad!

[twelfthsong]

[ Surprisingly the Doctor would have agreed. Waiting ten minutes of linear time was awful especially if it meant waiting to see what would happen the next time they rolled the dice.

But he doesn't have much of an opportunity to say so because he's still being pulled upwards by the scruff of his neck. ]

Quicksand! [ He sounds far too delighted that that's the case once he's gained his bearing and is able to get a proper look over the carriage door. ] This isn't going to hold. [ Remembering the jackalopes he casts a glance over to them - only to see that they're hoverboarding. Well that looks much sturdier than what they're currently sinking on. ] Any chance you think they'd let us borrow one of those?

[faceblocker]

[ No time to ask. Vi's already acting on it before he can even finish his suggestion. With barely enough time to map out her surroundings, she's jumping from the slowly sinking door to tap her boot against a grandfather clock, using the momentum to flip up even higher. The jackalope lifts its hoverboard at the last minute, leaving Vi to slam into it as opposed to right on it, but she grits her teeth and wraps her arms around the board.

The jackalope is poking at her with its pipe, and she risks letting go of the board just long enough to grab it's arm to yank with a force that sends the jackalope tumbling, though gravity seems to favor it, with the creature falling sideways to land beside its friend on another hoverboard.

Vi's still left hanging onto the board with her legs kicking as she tries to pull herself up, but she's never used one of these things. How did Ekko control these things?! She knows that the old man doesn't have time to let her figure it out, so she stops kicking and lets herself dangle so that her boots are just within his reach, hoping her panic isn't too visible. ]

Just grab on!

[ There's something that looks like a statue off to the side that looks like it may take a long time to sink. Maybe she can swing him over to that. ]