westwhere | 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

I know what it said.

[ There were two notes, both clues in their own way. She sees no point in asking the name of every bloke, because who she needs to ask is a male child. Otherwise, why give the other clue that say "children lie"?

So no, she won't be asking every bloke their name, because none of them matter. Out there is one specific target in a world of faceless and mannequins, it has her training kick in. To find the one that is different from all the others, to track down the target and acquire his name.

Lila still moves with the flow of the crowd, clutching her umbrella tight. It feels like a lifeline to her, hanging on to such a thing that should have no meaning and yet does. ]

Is it? Hadn't noticed. Feels like a regular day to me.

[ Then he's tumbling into her and her first instinct is to push him off. ] Oi, watch it.

[ Is Lila going to be checking that he didn't still anything important? Yes. Trust issues. ]

I'm watchi —

( The fumble of his limbs, his spidery, clumsy hands. Wind teases its way between his fingers, clutches and claims the umbrella that slips him, cascading away. He rushes after it, less man than menace, stumbling into passers-by who greet him with further shoves, trips of their feet, with failed attempts to ease the contents of his pockets.

...really, all in the ten steps it takes to retrieve it, hastily, before it slips inside one of the many rain canals, while water drips and stains his back, his collar, the soft edge of his nape. He remembers this much: Don't let the umbrella escape you.

Remembers, somehow, that failure in this is more than he can afford. Muttering, he comes back near the woman, umbrella retrieved, and yet — ...somehow, not over his head. Good job, Alice. Well done. )

You can tell me, really. Just how many bears raised these people? Were they a happy family? Did they even share a lair? Give a good example? What a pain...

[ He's not watching, or else he'd have dodged that elbow, and that umbrella wouldn't be flying down the street. Lila only partially follows in his wake, more intent on listening and watching those pushed aside in his haste. Watches the way they attempt to push him down to the ground and swipe his belongings.

She stops walking when he has a hand on his umbrella, as he comes back towards her. Gaze taking in everything from how he's drenched, armed with an umbrella, still doesn't use it, to his odd questions. ]

Umbrellas are better when they're put to use, mate. It only takes one bear, could be happy - could be fake happy, could be not at all happy. I'd imagine you could ask them all this, but they don't appear to be a friendly lot.

( ...right. Right. He's slow, for all she's mentioned it — less indisposed to putting the umbrella to its righteous use, than purposefully indifferent. Carefully, he opens its fat, happily thick span, ran batting off the spread like thick, cruel beads.

It seems, mouth caught in a round gasp, to surprise him, when he is subjected to precisely zero attacks within the first three seconds after. (The fourth, and past, might prove a different conversation. ) )

I thought maybe this is what annoyed them. ( A shake of his umbrella, to indicate its glorious domestic visage. All hail base technology that hasn't required significant updates since times of ancient old. ) It's a little...

( Here, he holds his umbrella fleetingly to the side, twirling it to show off the white spread of its thick cottoned, spotted with dried, blackened drips of blood. )

...incriminating, isn't it?

[ The fact that's bloodstained certainly makes the umbrella very noticeable, something she'd normally ditch to not be so obvious that blood was spilled. But there's something else lingering there, telling her to hold on to everything she can.

Lila shrugs her shoulders at his words. Scanning the crowd around them and moving to push through them. If they can be rude, so can she. ]

Sod them if they don't like it. Also, hate to point it out, but our clothes are incriminating too. You planning to walk around in your britches?

[ They stand out already, she refuses to be sopping wet on top of it. ]

...already asking that kind of thing?

( But he's grinning, mouth cleaved and teeth pearl-glistened. Like a dog, gums half-bloodied. Because he knows this game of diversions. If they're doomed with their umbrellas, they're doomed without, doomed for their clothes and their natures and their birth names and their faces. )

Who raised you to be so forward?

( Surely, Alice would like to point out, between deftly eluding one man's jutting elbow and another's strategic trip — surely, she must have been educated with or by shameless goats! Nothing else explains i —

...quite possibly, dear Alice might wish to philosophise the nature of his five-minute acquaintances less, and mind the carriage that purposefully dives into a nearby puddle to send all its cold waters spraying on his shirt, his chin. Charming. )

Watch it. ( This time, when he opens his umbrella with a mutter, he might well be wetter than the skies that rain down. ) Let's just agree they're the worst.

Might as well be entertained by someone around here.

[ While she has no interest in him that way, Lila is glad he can take this sort of joking. It'd be terrible to be stuck with a stiff. She'll start pushing her way through the crowd, only returning whatever hostile elbows and shoves that given to her first. ]

A woman who knew how to get what she wanted.

[ There's something tense in her shoulders as she says it, her grip on the umbrella handle tightening slightly as she tears her thoughts away from The Handler and back into the now. It isn't really a topic Lila wants to bring up with that feeling prickling at the back of her neck.

She's too busy trying not to think about it, that she misses the sight of the puddle and the carriage drawing through it, not prepared to dodge the spray. It may not be as much water as he ends up wearing, but it's more than she'd like. ]

Shite. [ Her gaze is drawn over to her companion, who is much worse off. ] Agreed. Though, I am starting to wonder if you're a magnet for bad luck.

the unwinding

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