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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[Room after room of unfamiliar faces, people resting from their ordeals - and if those ordeals were anything like Caitlyn's, the rest is well-deserved. But Caitlyn can't stop, can't even think of resting until she knows Vi is safe. The only indication that she's on the verge of panicking is the deep furrow between her brows and the way her fingers are fidgeting as she hurries through the house.

Her eyes slip over the interior of yet another room, almost ready to move on until her conscious thoughts catch up to the subconcious realization that there's someone here she recognizes.]

Viktor!

[She's so overwhelmed at seeing a familiar face that her arms are flung around his shoulders almost before he's finished saying her name. She hugs him without any thought to his physical state or the fact that, while she's seen him in the lab plenty of times, she doesn't actually know him all that well.

Of course, it's awful that Viktor's here. He ought to be at home, not suffering through this bizarre nightmare. But since he is, she'll have to look out for him, to make sure he gets home with her and Vi.]

Please. It's Caitlyn. ['Miss Kiramman' is more of a weight she'd like to escape than a name. And it's far too formal, and far too deferential, for her liking.]

[Viktor is, predictably, not a hugger. He realizes what's about to happen a second too late to stop it, leaving him entirely at her mercy when it comes to the sudden embrace. He freezes, tensing up, arms hovering at waist-level, like he doesn't know whether to return the gesture or push her away.

Because they don't know each other very well, not really, as evidenced by Viktor's immediate deference to her, calling her Miss Kiramman out of some sort of reflex, like he hasn't heard Jayce talk about Caitlyn hundreds of times. Still, she's the first familiar person he's seen in a long time, so he tries to swallow down his surprise and attempt to form words.

It's only marginally effective. Viktor looks bewildered.]

When did you--how long?

[How much time has this Unwinding been?]

[The hug lasts until Caitlyn realizes how tense Viktor is, at which point she finally drops her arms from around his shoulders and steps back, once again bringing her hands up to fidget restlessly in front of her.]

I arrived just before... everything. Falling into the pit with the smoking rabbits and that awful tea party. [She has no idea how long any of that actually was. Which is frustrating, certainly. Upsetting, even. She hates the feeling of not knowing. Hates that anything could have happened, for any amount of time, while she was rolling dice and trying to make tea.

She wants to ask how long Viktor's been here, how much he knows about this place, everything he's learned about the beacons - as Jayce's partner, he must have some idea how they work, if they're like hexgates and how best they can find one and return home. She has a hundred questions all urgently clamouring to the forefront of her mind. But Viktor's wellbeing, and figuring out whether Vi is alive, have to come first. She won't be able to concentrate on getting home until she knows everyone's okay.]

Were you hurt at all during any of that? Are you well?

[He swallows hard and nods, seemingly piecing it together himself. Given the disorienting events of the Unwinding, he’s not even sure how long it’s been, himself. But if that’s the first thing she remembers, he certainly has her beat. That might be difficult news to break, if she’s newly arrived, so for now he he decides to answer the basic question.

Viktor is not well, of course, but he’s still adverse to saying that much outright. The last thing he needs is for someone to look at him and see only his illness.]

I’m okay. [The more pressing matter, of course, is how they’ve come to be here.] Catching my breath. After…all of that.

[Which he seems to do, at least for another beat, before he remembers why she was checking the room in the first place.]

You said you were looking for someone?

[Genuine relief crosses her face when he says he's okay. Yes, she knows that he has some sort of condition that makes it difficult for him to walk. Yes, she's worried about him and will continue to worry about him. But as long as he wasn't hurt, as long as he doesn't need medical attention or even just someone to lean on, she'll help him if he needs it but otherwise won't pry.

She nods, moving immediately on to the next goal.]

Yes.

[She repeats the description, having given it so many times to so many people that she can't remember how much of it she gave him.]

A woman. About my age, a little shorter. Red hair, shaven on one side, a tattoo on her face of the letters V I. Have you seen her? I need to know she's alright.

[It's such a long story. She'll have to sit down with Viktor and tell him the whole thing. Eventually. Perhaps once they're home. After she's located Vi and they figure out how and why they ended up here and ascertain the way back. All of the important things. For the moment, she simply says,] She's a friend. [There's a definite pause before the word 'friend.']

[Caitlyn starts to describe this person and Viktor simply furrows his brow. A friend? Someone from home, or someone she's met here? Either way, she doesn't sound familiar, and Viktor thinks he would remember someone with red hair and face tattoos. He shakes his head.]

No, I'm sorry. I haven't seen anyone like that.

[That said, he's been. Distracted. This is something that he could have easily missed, given his own preoccupations.]

Someone from...home?

[If he sounds skeptical, that's because he is. He hadn't known Caitlyn Kiramman (or any Kiramman, really) to consort with anyone of that description.]

Edited 2022-10-15 14:03 (UTC)

[She visibly deflates when Viktor says he hasn't seen anyone matching Vi's description, and if her expression was worried before, it's only moreso now. Vi's got to be somewhere here, but no one's seen her. And Vi doesn't exactly blend into a crowd - if she were here, someone would surely have noticed.]

I met her a few days ago. In Stillwater Hold. I haven't got time to explain everything until I know she's safe, but suffice to say, she's... [Sigh. How to explain Vi?] I care for her a great deal.

[The look on his face probably says it all--what was Caitlyn Kiramman doing in Stillwater? A prisoner? Someone important to her, regardless. Viktor is willing to take that at face value, even if this is not at all what he expected her to say.

He knows that he misses a lot, staying in the lab most of the time, and that probably this is none of his business, but this is, perhaps, the first time he feels like he's behind the curve on something he shouldn't be. Home, which once seemed so far away, is now uncomfortably close again.]

You can tell me while we look for her. [Because he's decided he should do something. Viktor reaches for his crutch where it leans against the wall.] Where were you separated?

[Caitlyn gives him a nod of gratitude that he's willing to help her look.] Thank you.

[She strides out of the room as fast as her injured leg will allow, eager to return to searching.]

We were on the train together, we were separated almost as soon as we arrived. [She looks back to Viktor, about to launch into the full story of how she met Vi, eager to tell him all about the amazing, strong, brave woman that she met. She'll have to introduce them, they'll need to work together to get home.

But before she begins to speak again, a thought occurs to her. If Viktor's here, who's to say others from home aren't as well? If Viktor's here... is Jayce?]

Is there anyone else here? From our world?

[A tiny strain of hope creeps into her voice, hope that maybe Jayce is here, that she'll get to speak with him and he can explain everything that's gone on the past week, why he's been acting unlike himself. Very unlike himself, according to Vi. She misses him. She's angry at him. She doesn't want him to be trapped here going through all of this madness but she badly wishes she could see him again.

And if Jayce isn't here, if no one else from their world is here, how long has Viktor been trapped here, alone? It couldn't have been that long, surely. She hasn't been to visit Jayce in the lab in a little while but she would have heard if Viktor had disappeared.

She looks over at him, hope turning to concern as she asks,] How long have you been here?

[Caitlyn's speed, even with an injured leg, is likely faster than Viktor even on a good day, but he recognizes the urgency of the situation and does his best to keep up. He lets her lead, still a little dazed that this is happening at all.]

I'm-- [Alone, though that's not something he's unaccustomed to.] No, it's only me.

[He realizes that sounds kind of depressing, and he hears the concern in her voice. Viktor knows that he looks rough, and it isn't helped by the way he exerts himself trying to keep pace with her, but the last thing he wants is to have someone think he needs looking after.]

Some months. It's easy to lose track of time.

[Her expression falls when she learns he's been here on his own. In a strange world, without friends, without any sort of support from people who know him. In truth, she's not sure he has friends at home, other than Jayce. She has distinct memories of him hunched over in the lab, hard at work no matter the hour at which she visited. And she's never seen him outside the lab, never heard Jayce mention any other friends.

Her hands fidget awkwardly in front of her as she considers reaching out to him again, hugging him, offering him some sort of comfort. Being all alone like that... how awful it must have been.

And then Viktor tells her how long he's been here.]

Months? That can't be right. [Yes, it's been a little while, but she's sure she's seen him more recently than that.] If you'd disappeared that long ago, I'd know. Jayce would have said something, he'd have been looking for you, not-- [A frustrated scowl crosses her face.] Not concerning himself with Council business.

Edited 2022-10-20 03:33 (UTC)

[This might be more surprising to him if he hadn't already considered exactly this--hard not to, when you're a theoretical physicist. If an inter-dimensional kidnapping is possible, why not parallel universes? Alternate timelines? If what she's saying is true, there's some version of himself that continued along his proper timeline, with all of the people he knows. The real question, then, is how long he's been separated from that counterpart.]

It's possible that, from your perspective, everything is as it should be. Branching timelines.

[It's probably a lot to wrap one's head around, if they don't often think of such things, and he can't blame her for trying to rationalize it in the way that she knows.

The more uncharitable side of himself thinks of how, just prior to his arrival here, he'd made a trip to the Undercity that had apparently gone so unnoticed by Jayce that he erected a blockade in Viktor's absence, and berated him on the bridge when he tried to return to Piltover. The more uncharitable side of him thinks that maybe, if he had vanished fully, as Caitlyn describes, Jayce wouldn't be looking for him, because of Council business.]

How long has it been since they made him a Councilor?

[It's been less than a week--probably the longest week of his life, but an insubstantial amount of time nonetheless. If he can count days, he might get a better sense of where they might align.]

Edited 2022-10-20 21:00 (UTC)

[This is indeed a lot for her to wrap her head around. She's not a physicist, she's not a scientist of any sort, and the idea of 'branching timelines' is not easy to process.

She tries to work through it logically. If Viktor is suggesting that time... splits at different points, creating near-identical versions of Piltover, then that means there are different Piltovers, populated by people who look and behave an awful lot like the people she knows, but aren't. But that would mean that the person she's speaking to now isn't really Viktor. Not the Viktor she knows.

No, that can't be right. That would mean...

She's not certain what that would mean.

She shakes her head, frowning.] About a week, I'd say. [It's not easy to count the days down in the fissures.]

[He nods along, and perhaps is a bit relieved to find that they may not be so far apart, if at all. Spending all of his time in the lab, though necessary, now seems like a hindrance, when it comes to puzzling all this out. Who knows what he missed, holed up with his work?]

That's good. We're lined up, give or take a day or two.

[That said, a great deal can happen in a day or two. Like a trip to prison, apparently.]

What were you doing at Stillwater?

[As they pass by another room, Caitlyn repeats her description of Vi to its occupants, but receives only blank stares and shrugs. Her expression grows more determined, her posture stiffer, her hands clenching, all to cover up just how nervous she is that there's been no sign of Vi anywhere. She can't have lost Vi. Not again.

She answers Viktor's question eagerly, more than happy to discuss her investigation and Vi. The complexities of branching timelines are not without interest, but she can circle back around to that once she's had a little more time to come to terms with the concept.]

After the attack at the hexgates, and the bombing at the fairgrounds, I was certain the two incidents were connected. One of the smugglers had been injured during the fighting at the hexgates and incarcerated, and I knew he must have information that could help me track down the culprit. I went to Stillwater to speak with him, but by the time I arrived...

[She pauses, her frown etching itself deeper into her face. There's so much context to why Vi beat the man within an inch of his life, context Caitlyn's sure she doesn't fully understand. It's enough for her to know that Silco hurt Vi as badly as he did. But Vi's history with Silco, even the little she knows of it, is not her story to tell.]

He was unavailable for questioning. Vi offered to help me track down the man I was after, so I arranged for her release.

[Another room, another group of people who haven't seen Vi. But Caitlyn keeps going despite how badly her injured leg has started to throb, and she's going to keep going until she finds Vi or until she physically can't continue.

Of course the pain in her leg must be nothing compared to what Viktor is contending with, so she slows her pace a little for his sake.]

She saved my life. More than once. She can be a bit prickly, but she's a good person, with a good heart.

[Viktor is more than content to let Caitlyn do all of the searching and talking, simply focusing his energy on following along. To her credit, she doesn't let him fall too far behind, even as she recounts the frankly distressing list of events that seem to have transpired while he was holed up in the lab. The attack on the Hexgates and the subsequent bombing and raid of the lab he's well aware of, but Caitlyn's activities in the aftermath are new to him.

There are still missing pieces, it seems, most notably how Caitlyn arranged this release, and what she and Vi did afterward. What does seem apparent is that they must have been through a lot.]

I'll take your word for it. [He doesn't exactly have a choice.] Did you find the answers you were looking for?

[Doing...whatever it is the two of them were doing.]

[Caitlyn goes quiet for a moment before answering.]

Yes. [She's glad, of course, to have the truth, but it was not an easy road getting there. Especially for Vi. And she still doesn't know what the fallout will be once they return home.

There are quite a few things she's not comfortable telling Viktor. Not because she wants to keep secrets from him, but because they're so personal to Vi. It should be up to her how much Viktor hears about Jinx. So she gives him a rather pared-down account.]

Have you heard of Silco? He's responsible for the manufacture of shimmer, and the smuggling that's been going on. His people were behind the attacks. [She scowls.] Marcus was working for him. Likely for years.

The Chem-Baron? Yes.

[The Council might call him an industrialist. Viktor, detached as he is from Zaun, knows better. It helps, maybe, to have a personal connection to the man developing new Shimmer variants for Silco, but that’s not something he’s going to disclose. Caitlyn is an ally, in this situation, so Viktor doesn’t need to give her any reason to distrust him.

Suffice to say, Marcus’ apparent allegiance does not come as a shock to him. The sister cities are a delicate ecosystem, one that requires some manner of cooperation on both sides.]

I’m…unfortunately not surprised. [Marcus was the Sheriff, which means that Viktor did not necessarily hold him in very high regard. What’s more important is assertion of who was behind the attacks.] You’re saying his people took the gemstone, as well?

I...

[Caitlyn is not a practiced liar. She's never learned all the social graces and ways of delicately finessing her words that her mother would have liked her to, the skills a politician's daughter ought to have. She's never really regretted that – the truth is usually better than even the most well-intentioned lie, and she loathes the sorts of manipulations her mother would call 'diplomacy' – but every once in a while an odd situation such as this comes along, and she finds herself distressingly outside the range of her abilities.

Since she can't tell him about Jinx, all she's left with are half-truths, told with the noticeable stammer of someone who isn't saying everything there is to be said and doesn't feel comfortable about it.]

Y-yes. Someone working for him.

[He nods, apparently finding this a more logical progression of events than anything Marcus tried to pitch, given his apparent affiliation. It’s clear that Caitlyn is struggling with something, but since he can easily chart the course, he decides not to pry any further. Perhaps it’s not hers to say.]

Jayce brought me a bomb, made by the alleged thief. He was unable to disarm it.

[So he’d asked Viktor to, and then they’d fought. He reminds himself that’s not what’s important right now.]

The device was childish, almost, at least aesthetically, but brilliantly engineered. [And, of course, full of that scrappy ingenuity so unique to the Undercity. He almost misses it.] However, the idea that this person could unlock Hextech, even with our stolen notes, seemed…unlikely, to me.

That must be the bomb he was showing off at the Council meeting. It was built by the person who stole the gemstone.

[How had Jayce gotten one of the bombs? It seems unlikely that Jinx would leave a live bomb at the fairgrounds that failed to explode. It wasn't left in the lab if Jayce brought it to Viktor. He must have gotten it from somewhere else. Marcus? Perhaps as part of the efforts to frame the Firelights. Would Jinx have given it to Marcus, or would Silco? Does Jinx care about framing the Firelights for her actions? She's certainly not shy about leaving that monkey everywhere.

Caitlyn pauses her train of thought to ask another room of people whether they've seen Vi, with no luck. She's starting to get properly worried.]

I wouldn't underestimate them. [Jinx may be mad, but from what Caitlyn's seen, she's got a sharp mind for building weapons. The wound in her leg is a testament to Jinx's brilliant engineering.]

[He understands the concern (he shares them, of course), but all Viktor can really do is tell himself that the thief wouldn't have been able to replicate their technology, because the alternative is almost unthinkable. He keeps talking, even as Caitlyn continues to check the rooms.]

Hextech has components. It's not as simple as inserting the power source into any given object. The gemstone is a conduit for arcane energies, and those energies require instructions--runes. Without an understanding of that, and how the runes work, and which ones to use, that conduit is useless.

[It doesn't occur to him that Caitlyn might know something he doesn't, because his thoughts are on the fact that all of this is moot, given their current situation.]

Anyway, it doesn't matter now, not as long as we're here.

Edited 2022-11-16 17:54 (UTC)

[He's right that it doesn't matter for them, here, right now. But it may well be mattering back home.

She sighs.]

They've still got the gemstone. I. Failed to retrieve it. [And Ekko may have been killed in the process. Another loss.] If they're working on it right now, while we're stuck here, they could figure it out, Viktor. I've seen what they're capable of. We could return home to find... [Jinx with a functional hextech weapon.] Catastrophe.

[Which just means they've got quite the task ahead of them.]

We've got to get home and prevent that happening.

[That gets his attention, because she'd danced around the who just moments before. There's a lot he could say here, about how there's no real guarantee that time is passing back home, or that they're even missing (he has some theories about alternate universes), but none of that seems important when Caitlyn hints further about her activities.]

You've seen it? [The missing gemstone.] Who are they? Silco's person?

Yes. [To both.] Vi and I managed to get it back, but...

[Does he know about the bombing on the bridge? That was about twenty-four hours ago for her, had he found himself here before then? Even if he was still in Piltover at the time, would he have heard about it? Jayce had, clearly, and so had the rest of the Council, but would Viktor have been informed?]

The thief attacked us. I was injured, [A gesture to her leg.] and the gemstone was taken from us again.

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techmaturgy - 2022-11-26 16:50 (UTC) - Expand

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clavesregni - 2022-12-09 01:01 (UTC) - Expand

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the unwinding

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ugh sorry I lost this one

no worries!

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