westwhere | the unwinding

the unwinding

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

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.

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!

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[ She has a point, but it's one he hates on principle. Whatever started it, they're clearly playing games and attempting to force them to comply. Mocking them by asking them to complete some menial task. Completing it guarantees them nothing, except that they're able to manipulate them to do anything they wish.

As far as what's outside, that's the other part of the problem. If Five could just teleport out of here, it would have been so much easier. ]

It didn't look good. [ A plague. Although there's no guarantee they're safe from that inside. ] If it's even real. I don't know if it's a curse or some other magic, but it's keeping us here. We need to find a way to break it.

[ It's good that he's suspicious, but Vanessa is cautious about brute-forcing her way through this, especially when the party-goers and staff seem to turn homicidal at the chime of a clock. At least, Vanessa hopes it isn't more often than that. She can't stop listening for a scurry of frantic steps─of maniacal giggles that are intermingled with the tek-tek of robotic mechanisms.

He looks young, but he doesn't act it. Not that she hasn't met intelligent youths, but he should be far more shaken by the recent chase. And chased he was, by the looks of it. Is her hair so disheveled? Vanessa resists the urge to reach up and check. Vanity has no place here where death lurks about every corner. ]

You are familiar with curses?

Edited (hair, not heart! what are words.) 2022-09-26 03:18 (UTC)

[ There's a reason he asked for ideas. Their options aren't great, and he doesn't know how to get out of this. Everything around them feels like they were either drugged or cursed, and he's far too lucid to shrug it off as a dream.

His frown sets when she asks a fair question. When he said they need to find a way to break it, one would assume he's successfully done that in the past. The one he was freed from was mostly by accident. ]

Not in the most helpful way. [ Technically, he's still cursed twice over. It's not the best track record. ] I can barely remember what happened before showing up here. If we were cursed, I don't know how or who did it. I'm guessing you don't either?

[ With a furrowed brow, the reminder of just how lost she really is draws her hands up to press to either elbow, hugging herself in a pathetic attempt to give herself comfort. She may not normally be so quick to divulge such things about herself, but they have been stranded to the mercy of a madhouse. She's had quite enough of those, as well as solitary confinement. ]

I have always been cursed.

[ A dramatic statement, but shared matter-of-factly. It feels different this time, though. Clearly, others are affected. Or...perhaps not so clearly. Perhaps she has truly lost herself to one of her visions, though why she would imagine a near-stranger is confusing enough. ]

My memories leading up to this point are...unclear. I had hoped that solving the puzzle would lead me to answers, but...as someone else has said to me, such answers often lead to more questions.

[ Vanessa knows that isn't a very helpful response. She doesn't know how to help any more than he does, it seems, even if she is slightly better at hiding her frustration. ]

What is the most recent memory you have? Before arriving here?

[ Five tilts his head and observes her closer when she mentions being cursed. Before she came here, presumably. He's curious, but that experience doesn't sound helpful to their current situation if she hasn't broken it. She's at least being logical, even if that logic would have her solving the 'puzzle' they've given them. Maybe there isn't a better option, but he'd be more comfortable if he was armed with something.

He frowns when she asks what he can remember. The last few days were strange, and he's still operating on the assumption that he was drugged at some point. ]

Nothing that useful. [ He'd been out looking for his brother again, but he remembers everyone acting off. More than usual. ] Someone pulled me into a dark alley. There was a clock that went off. Something happened around then, but I don't know what set it off.

[ She observes right back. Something about him keeps pulling her gaze upward, as if he ought to be a little taller, but then she looks back down before too long passes. Not even aware she's doing this, or why, Vanessa mulls over her own memories leading up to this house of horror. ]

I was...in my room. Someone said something, or...no, it was─ I was thinking of a song. But, I don't remember hearing it before.

[ She leans against the doorframe fully now, lost in her thoughts. They aren't clear enough for her to decipher, as worried as she is about a hallucination having taken her from reality. This feels real, but then so have the most intense of her visions. ]

"...Fresh harvest’s a treasure trove...?" That isn't helpful. Apologies, I am not myself. My memory is not normally so...clouded.

[ Five notices the way she keeps glancing above him, like he has something on his head. It's distracting, but he ignores it when she mentions the song. From the way his expression hardens, he heard it too, and he's quiet as he tries to call up the lyrics.

A harvest... He should have thought of it before. ]

It mentioned Ke-Waihu, didn't it? [ Five doesn't remember hearing the song there either, but he still has some strong opinions about that place. ] We came from that village before setting sail here. Everyone there was cursed as a point of entry.

[ He frowns and looks around them again. ]

But not like this.

[ The mention of his own past curses piques her interest all the more, and she abandons the doorway to step closer to him with a sharpness to her gaze. Cursed, were they? She knows something of this... Perhaps a little too intimately. ]

Curses can follow. Hunt. Grow into something you would never have before recognized. Perhaps our curses have found a way to truly trap us and shape our reality, then. How are we to fight something like that?

Edited 2022-10-09 00:46 (UTC)

[ He can tell that strikes a nerve, but who knows how long she's had to live with a curse. It's unsettling, if only because she manages to say in a few words what he tries to keep out of his mind. He can manage a curse if he knows what to expect from it, and this... would be a very inconvenient time to lose his mind.

Unfortunately, being familiar with them while not knowing how to break them doesn't help here. Besides, the curses from Ke-Waihu were lifted, so they shouldn't still be affecting them. ]

I don't know. [ As he takes a look around, not one thing here reminds him of that cursed village, except: ] Foxes are the only thing that connects them. Nothing else is familiar.

[ He huffs a frustrated sigh as his gaze settles back on her. ]

Unless it's you. Has this ever happened before?

[ Vanessa can't think of any connection to foxes in her past. She only knows they are meant to be crafty, which seems apt.

Despite not recognizing anything here, Vanessa is not so quick to dismiss her possible involvement. Perhaps it's self-absorbed, but when things go wrong, it is so often because of her specifically. Rarely does she understand it, so on that front, this is...par for the course.

Her shoulders hunch, her thumb worrying at her sleeve. ]

Not like this, no. My visions are...different.

[ She would have been a convenient scapegoat, but even Five thought it wasn't that likely. Aside from being vaguely familiar and being one of the only people he's seen with a face, he can't even be totally sure that she's real.

Since the alternative is a dead end, he presses on, for lack of another option. ]

Different how? Have you had any recently?

They are usually more...intimate. Personal in nature. They can be all-encompassing, but not quite so...exotic.

[ It's remarkable, actually, how long she's gone without a true vision. She's had slight moments when interacting with others, but those have only been glimpses─feelings─and they haven't taken over her sense of self as they once did. ]

I have felt things quite often, recently, [ as she does right now with him, though she is wary to share such. ] but nothing that would steal away my own reality.

[ She turns, looking down the hallway that she had just come from. The staircase seems to have re-assembled. ]

It seems we have no control here, beyond seeking the puzzle pieces and discovering what picture they form.

Edited 2022-10-10 17:11 (UTC)

[ Five stares at her for a long moment, trying to get a sense of what she means, before ultimately getting annoyed and turning to the staircase. Whatever magic is at work here is so childishly simple. Mocking them because they have no power against it.

Whatever visions she's had, they haven't given her any better ideas. He scrubs his face with his hand and looks miserable when he finally gives in. ]

Milk from a cat. [ Whatever. He has experience with catching cats. A couple of blinks and he can grab it. ] I can handle that. What was next?

[ She's aware that she isn't being very helpful, but despite being so connected to the supernatural, Vanessa often feels stranded in the unknowing. Her desire to keep from appearing weak is all that keeps her going at the moment. That and, perhaps, vengeance.

Her anger is quiet beneath the need to problem solve, but it brews. Whoever has done this must surely pay. ]

Sugar. I must seek a nursery.

[ She is wary of splitting up, but it may prove the most beneficial path. Her pocket watch doesn't seem to work in the sense of communication within this realm, but she can still check it for the time. ]

We must find success before our dinner companions again turn to bloodlust.

[ It isn't only her, but Five does nothing to hide how much he resents being in this position. He's already sure that if they do all these tasks, they'll still be set up for something worse. It's hard to get ahead of the game when he can't pinpoint how he got here to begin with.

He's reluctantly agreeable to splitting up, but he still rolls his eyes when she talks about their companions chasing them again. Next time they try it, he'll be ready. ]

Let's get going then. [ He turns from the staircase to look her up and down one more time. Chances are, all the rooms are rigged somehow, and he's not confident after how she limped over. ]

If I don't see you in ten minutes, I'll assume something stupid happened and meet you there.

[ Despite the offensive implication that she might somehow do something 'stupid', the remark pulls a half-hearted chuckle out of her. She really isn't at her best, and she can't blame someone, no less someone that appears as a child, to think her incompetent. All the more reason to prove herself. ]

Likewise.

[ If one can't find humor at the oddest moments, is life even worth living?

She's off, limp and all, not having had the chance to check the southern rooms just yet. ...She can't teleport, so it will probably take more than ten minutes before she even locates the nursery. ]

Edited 2022-10-11 01:36 (UTC)

[ Five doesn't know what triggered her amusement; except maybe that this entire situation is ridiculous, and the idea that they're going to get out of it by solving riddles to make tea is just... so juvenile that he'll be more annoyed if it works. He gives her some credit for following directions, even if this is really the very last thing he wants to be doing.

He frowns as he watches her limp away, then turns back to the staircase and the first ingredient.

Ten minutes should have been nine minutes more than Five needs to teleport to the cat and snatch the milk away before the stair collapses. But it's another fifteen when he appears again, milk in hand and more than a few scratches on his neck. Fully expecting her to have finished with the nursery when he spots her, he gives her an expectant look. ]

...Did you find it?

[ Vanessa at least has the grace to shrug her shoulders in a most sheepish manner from where she stands just beside the door. There's a momentary double-take when she sees the scratches, a frown of concern, before she glances back into the room and nods over to the bed. ]

Beneath the bed. Yet, any time I am near to reaching it, those shadows once more stretch out to drag me back to infinity. I can't find an angle that does not draw them in.

[ He raises an eyebrow and turns from her to the bed. So it's rigged, like the milk was. And probably every other ingredient on their list. Why is he entertaining them again?

Because he has no other ideas. He sighs and looks for the nearest table to set the milk down, leaving plenty of space between him and the bed. Rubbing at the scratches, he considers it. ]

Shadows of what?

[ Squatting down, he tries to get a better look. If something under there was grabbing her, he has to give her credit for not hearing her scream. But he was pretty involved getting that first cursed item, so maybe he just wasn't paying attention. ]

...The sugar is under there?

[ She nods to his question, her step so light she could be walking on glass. A certain distance is kept. ]

Hands. I was nearly swept away.

[ Her heart is still leaping, but there's little to do for standing around. ]

Perhaps if one of us holds onto the other, then we stand a better chance. We can find an anchor to grasp.

[ Five's mouth hangs open, just trying to decide if he should dignify that with a response. She wants to form a human chain just to cross a room. How did this seem like the best option he could come up with? He shakes his head and temporarily ignores that suggestion while he tries to spot the sugar dish. Compared to the other dilapidated rooms, this one is gaudy, with too many baubles to figure out which container they're after.

Distantly, he can hear a clock chiming. ]

...If they're that fast, I can just blink there and back. [ There's a couple options that should only take a few seconds to grab. He looks back up at her, still unimpressed at her previous idea. ] Keep an eye on the milk.

[ She had been thinking of simply using one of the bed posts to hold onto, but his confidence means she's unlikely to push it. One idea's just as good as the other in such an impossible scenario, but she does look at him as though he's started speaking another language.

Not the kind of blinking she would know of, but she can deduce by what she witnessed before in the book store. To appear wherever he likes... ]

I think it should be safer to keep an eye on you, so much as I'm able.

[ No matter what skills he boasts, Vanessa feels doubt. The shadowy hands aren't mortal constructs, either. ]

[ He turns to give her a brief tightlipped smile. She can watch all she wants. It might not be the greatest idea to use up all his energy blinking across a small room, but he's out of patience for this game they're playing.

He blinks. One flash to the dresser to grab the nearest bowl. Almost immediately he sees what she's talking about. Shadowy hands reach out from the wall, and he's back to her side in a flash of light just before they can reach him, nearly spilling it in the process.

He watches with wide eyes as hands wave in the air where he was seconds ago. He backs up a step, transfixed by the sight, and nearly bumps into the wall before he sees fingers starting to poke through the wallpaper and he takes a healthy step away. ]

So you were being literal.

[ No time to admire such a special gift as moving anywhere at will. It seems it only barely keeps him out of the shadow's grasp. When he crosses the room, perhaps to test the measure of the hands' reach, Vanessa's indignance surfaces.

Whatever he holds, it isn't sugar. He thought she was lying about the hands, and the sugar as well? ]

I am not feeling poetic at the moment.

[ Quite literal. ]

Am I to attempt crawling beneath again, then?

[ He doesn't understand her reaction at first, and he looks down at the container in his hands. It looked like it could hold sugar when he grabbed it, but lifting the lid he finds only an old bottle of perfume. Son of a bitch.

It wasn't the only thing on the dresser, but she seems convinced she knows where it is. He dismissed the comment about the bed before. Which makes absolutely no sense, unless someone dropped it and it rolled beneath the bed. If that 'someone' was her, he's going to be very put out. ]

You're sure you saw it under there?

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