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!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

The same one.

( well, it was a relief to know that he remembered the same thing she did, that the trip to sickbay she took was the one that he sent her on. or at least una would like to believe that what they know is the same )

That conversation we had in your ready room-- Spock's here. I told him the truth.

( not entirely willingly, not with something precipitating what una believed was a need for him to know )

I suppose he'd find out eventually.

[Which was true enough, eventually it would all come to light. If he hadn't rejected her resignation it would have happened as soon as that report got filed.]

I don't know if I should be upset or happy that Ortegas is going to be in charge of things for a while.

Somehow I don't think that's how it works. I've been here months yet you're from the same point in time I am. Time moves differently here?

( she doesn't know but she honestly doubts that anyone's noticing that they're gone )

There's also other Starfleet officers here. They're not from our universe either, apparently something happened in ours that created theirs.

Apparently so.

[Though that does put some of his concern for his ship to rest.]

Did they say what it was or which universe they're from?

[He's hoping they're not Terran.]

It sounded like something in our future creates their universe. Through time travel.

( even better than terrans, right? gotta love time travel )

Though... if you hear him say he's Captain of the Enterprise... a lot's different in their universe, their history isn't the same as ours.

( they knew pike but a lot had changed )

[Ugh time travel.]

Time travel rarely causes good things in my experience.

[He listens to that and has to ask.]

Are we there?

You're an Admiral.

( she doesn't know what happened to him, his other accident or that he died since but it's a hope she can give him )

You were Captain of the Enterprise on her launch but it wasn't for long. ( pause ) They didn't know who I was.

( which could mean anything )

At least I get to do that in some timeline or other.

[Better than radiation burns and a life support chair.]

I can't imagine you not being there. I wouldn't want anyone else to be my Number One, in any universe.

[But what happened to her? He hoped she was a captain in her own right like she should have been years ago.]

Even Spock?

( she's trying to distract him from the rabbit hole of possibilities of her life that she's already been down once and won't get any answers to. not until someone knows her )

Spock is from our universe but they know him, Kirk and McCoy are from the same universe... but different times in it. Though it sounds like Kirk filled in the blanks for him.

( una still has many though considering spock's future was involved she didn't go for every detail )

Only if you weren't available, because you have your own ship.

[Because that's what he's choosing to believe happened and that's why she's not on the Enterprise with him. She got a promotion she deserves.]

That's not confusing at all. So we got lucky coming from the same point in time.

( that made her smile, heartwarmed by the sentiment. she wouldn't want another captain either, why do you think she's stuck around so long? )

Just don't be too confused when they know you.

( no, be very confused because it is confusing )

Though they're aware you're a Captain and not an Admiral.

( she sighed slightly, bringing the story back around )

Pirates. I didn't see too much, apparently they don't like women on their ships. ( gently avoiding the fact that she spent a good chunk of time in the brig ) We ended up finding some sunken ships and took one of them. Others in the group took other ships as well. There's... maybe forty of us?

[It's no secret to anyone that he thinks very highly of Una and always has.]

I'm sure I'll be able to keep my surprise to myself, but thanks for the warning.

[He's somewhat surprised that they talked about him, but he supposes it makes sense considering all of them knew a version of him.]

Oh, I'm sure 'no women on ships' went over well with you. [there was so much sarcasm there] Forty's a lot of people to bring here from different universes. Was there anything interesting in the ships?

( it also helps when he recruited kirk, which una knows, a link to talk about. and their mutual adoration of the kind of man he was )

Some treasure, a weird sickness within the crew, though it seemed to be less of a sickness and more... drugging, I believe McCoy said.

( a very weird turn of events. though una had to get all of her information second hand. it was the worst time )

I didn't get to see much, I had to stay below decks. ( or risk the consequences. though he knows her well enough to know that she probably did risk them ) Those forty didn't appear all at once, some have been here a lot longer.

[He nods along, trying to catalog everything she's telling him, hoping to make some sense out of it, until, of course, she says she 'had to stay below decks']

You were in the brig, weren't you?

[He says this with some amusement, but also like this was the expected outcome of 'no women on ships']

They're lucky I wasn't here, otherwise, we'd have a pirate ship.

[Alpha Braga IV works every time.]

Twice.

( she'll admit it, knowing it won't be judgement but is almost expected. he knows her well, knows how she'd push back a bit. the first time she'd genuinely tried to be helpful, the second was her needing to try and do something, to see. damn the consequences )

I tried to take one of the ships, talked to Kirk about it. ( she had alpha braga iv in mind too ) He got me to hold off.

( she didn't think it was the right choice, though if she'd been above deck helping that mutiny might not have gone as well. and he couldn't do it )

[A big grin. He knows just as well as she does, he would've been right there with her.]

Is he that by the book?

[Because that sounds annoying.]

I don't know.

( whilst they'd all shared a place during their venture in this city she hadn't yet figured him out. at least not professionally, personally he seemed more relaxed. it also didn't help that she'd slept with him and then avoided him for a while )

His argument was a lack of skills of being able to navigate a ship in the general majority of the group. Not that we'd need too many with that skill.

( you did also have her, a very accomplished pilot and someone that could share her skills. but she'd been overruled and had stayed below deck )

He knew a version of me, maybe I'll have a better shot at figuring him out.

[Maybe. It could be like a Michael/Phillipa situation. Knowing someone well in any universe could help you figure them out.]

If you've used a car with a wheel, you've got the basics down.

[But he's going to refrain from insulting the other Captain that's around at least for now.]

Let me know.

( it'd be interesting to compare notes, especially when she did get a better impression of him. of them all )

And I've never driven a car but I handled the ship fine.

( her strength against the waves and the kraken definitely helped. and would he doubt she would? others maybe )

We sailed far enough to hit land, then we were brought here with fake papers to get us into various jobs.

I have no doubt that you did.

[Kirk probably has no idea how much faith he has in Una.]

What do you do here?

( faith she is damn right to have. it isn't just trust from their friendship and years of service but how damn good she is at her job and roles. something that kirk saw a little of on the ship )

I'm a Vigil Officer, overseeing the ships, keeping a watch on the duties there. Not that I've reported it all.

( not to these people, not when she doesn't know all of their regulations. and not when she's done her own investigations during the time as well )

[And that kind of judgement is exactly why Kirk should've let her stage the mutiny.]

That makes sense to me. I wouldn't give up everything I learned in a position like that either.

It's a fine line. Starfleet isn't here but we still hold what we know, that mix between helping and doing more than what we understand.

( who were they to inflict their judgement off a brief read of a situation? they'd already made some mistakes recently from a similar thing that they'd resolved by luck and... chris.

here... many people weren't in a great situation but they didn't know the politics, they shouldn't enforce change, just help in small, helpful measures. apparently they wouldn't be here long )

They suffered some power and system failures recently, apparently from having a lack of components. I managed to patch some back together but it won't last without resources.

[He nods, at least the Federation sounds the same across universes.]

So are they expecting to have us help build that for them?

[He would of course, do what he could to help those that live here, if he could.]

It's a bigger job than what we can do, even if all forty of us worked the factories.

( they'd then need it installed and few seemed to possess those skills )

I think there's a bigger problem. McCoy found a disease.

( contracted it also )

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