the unwinding

[groundrules]

Heya! Let loose for Serthica’s Unwinding — our event spanning 24 September-15 October that doubles as a test drive.

This round’s test drive participants do not require an invite to apply. Applications open over 8-14 October. Enjoy!

THE UNWINDING

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TEST DRIVE TOURISTS | OLD TIMERS | DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE
SPILL THE TEA | DRIP BY DRIP | ALL A DREA —

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✘ NEWCOMERS | BARRELING IN

Soaring seagulls and splintered silence. You awaken on the shoreline of steampunk citadel Clockwork Serthica, recovered by the irritable witch Karsa.

She shares translation and communication devices, scarce healing and a rapid briefing: you have reached a world where undead forces seek to weaponise you in their battle for dominion. Karsa’s employer, the Merchant leads travel to beacons meant to return you home.

Other otherworlders have already infiltrated Serthica. Karsa steers newcomers into the impoverished underworld of the Mouse House, to board a rickety coal train serving the citadel.

■ Silver tongues can win you passage.

■ ...alternatively, hide in the obscenely large whiskey barrels the train also smuggles in.

■ Mid-voyage, the train quakes, slamming you into walls and windows. Around you, the stench of bleach, the warm crackle of embers and static magic that builds thick, nearly electric.

You feel faint and fainter, when you overhear Karsa’s murmured, “It’s too early” — “find” — “find” — “it’s like a drea” — “don’t unwind” — “all child’s play.”

And then you’re U n w i n d i n g.

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✘ OLD TIMERS | INHALE-EXHALE

Eidris, Minaras, the Neutral Zone: all abuzz with residential whispers of imminent Unwinding — an annual fixture natives dread without fully remembering.

■ In the two days leading to the Unwinding, characters struggle to tell apart or remember the physical features of natives.

■ Some locals steal you into dark alleys, where they become suddenly stiff, emitting a rusty, guttural Ke-ke-ke sound. They do not recall this after.

The Unwinding kicks off at 6am, when both Eidris and Minaras are overground. Jim Kirk’s fixed music box begins to play, its chipper rural tune overtaking your thoughts: “Up the mountain, in the grove, hand in hand to Ke-ke-ke — Ke-Waihu, fresh harvest’s a treasure trove, each fall we feast anew.”

Earth shatters seismically underfoot, magic depletes, the citadel’s clock tower strikes 6:00 — and an urgent communication from the Merchant is interrupted by static, “You can we-we-we-…-stand it, the white man come — remembrrrrrrrrrrrr live, you are alive, do not be convinsssss —ssss — ssssd otherwisssssss —”

But you’re already U n w i n d i n g.

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✘ DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE

Down and down, you tumble, Alice — through a cavernous tunnel that widens and chokes arbitrarily. Sometimes you float and fly, sometimes you’re thrust sideways. Mostly, you keep falling.

■ Beware objects falling into you: from grand pianos to mystical balls of fire, stray beds, love letters and sharp-pointed weapons. Even a blood-spattered umbrella that shields against anything.

■ You’re dropped unceremoniously into an underground lair, as items keep falling down. Unclaimed, they disappear within minutes. Three jackalopes smoking opiate pipes point you indifferently towards a locked door. On its handle sit a bone dice and a note instructing, ROLL FOUR TO OPEN.

■ The dice can only be thrown every 10 minutes and feels too monstrously heavy to lift otherwise. Each roll makes the effect of the previous throw disappear. If you get:

one: gravity fades, the dice floats out of reach. ( The jackalopes enjoy the breeze. )

two: the floor, barring a few narrow steps at great jumping distance, is lava. ( The jackalopes check ‘hell’ off their vacation list.)

three: an irked dragon coils beside you. (The jackalopes prepare to tan.)

five: the thrower grows and grows and grows, until they must contort creatively to fit inside. ( The jackalopes charge rent. )

six: the room fills with water that nearly reaches the ceiling. (The jackalopes are competitive swimmers.)

seven: everything about your companion irritates you. They even breathe wrong. ( The jackalopes find this awkward. )

eight: The floor slowly expands into quicksand. ( The jackalopes hoverboard. )

■ Roll four and the door creaks merrily open. A second note slips loose, I’m sorry. Head in, your newfound possessions abandoned — and keep U n w i n d i n g.

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✘ SPILL THE TEA

You wake, dressed to the steampunk nines, at a tea party, alongside a companion and a slew of eerie guests: cog droids, faceless people and animated human-sized burlap mannequins. You only hear static and white noise when they speak.

When you leave the table, a fox butler passes you the empty kettle, asking you to, ”Make tea and finish here”.

■ You’re inevitably stuck in a decrepit dollhouse. Heavily boarded doors and windows ultimately open to show plague sickness in the streets. The fox butler closes them, reminding, ”He’ll make it go away.”

■ Travel a corridor of repeating rooms to reach the kitchens, and don’t dally. Every time the clock strikes a new hour, the partygoers grab their sharpest knife and stalk down the house to pursue you. The frenzy lasts 10 minutes before they return to their seats — barricade in deserted rooms, hide behind curtains or climb up the chimney…

■ For tea, the mannequin cook directs you to retrieve juniper and rosemary leaves from the greenhouse, where plant tendrils try to trap you, leaving marks of mould; rescue the milk container from a cat that’s running on the crumbling staircase, and sugar from a dish in the lavish nursery room, where ghostly hands might seek to drag you into walls and send you back down the rabbit hole.

■ Supplied, the huffing burlap cook prepares tea. Just as you’re about to taste the black brew at the party table, a man in white takes and spills your tea out in a plant pot. You only hear, ”You don’t need this yet” — before you’re U n w i n d i ng.

■ On exiting the Unwinding, your pockets burst with plants or leaves of juniper and rosemary. They can alleviate McCoy’s sickness.

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✘ DRIP BY DRIP

You wake up in bloodied clothes in a filled bathtub. You are hounded by urgency, as if you’re hunted. The unease never wanes, as you gather your bearings and join the bustling city streets, armed with a blood-spattered white umbrella. In your pocket, two paper notes: CHILDREN LIE and WHAT IS HIS NAME?(

Your memories are confused: half of you is certain you are a content citizen of Serthica. The other riots that you don’t belong. An excruciating migraine strikes when you try to remember how you arrived here.

Gravity’s a loose concept: you walk, or you float. The city is either perfectly still, or inundated with the screeching of hearses and criers. Locals — all faceless, or man-sized burlap mannequins — mill busily, despite the forlorn rain.

■ Hold on to your umbrella: linger uncovered in the rain, and your facial features slowly fade, while you desperately try to convince your teammate that you should stay here forever. You recover once dry.

■ The inhuman locals grow increasingly more hostile with time: carriages want to run you over, friendly burlap shopkeepers push you into a ditch. They chase if you ask their name.

■ Happily, this world is vulnerable to your desires: wish gravity undone, and you can walk on walls. Think a river into being, and it bursts ahead. Imagine buildings, and they pop up. Playing God comes at a price of bad luck: the staircase you envisage thins and breaks just as you cross it, your knife rusts after the first swing.

■ Your pursuers abandon you, when you reach a deserted marketplace and encounter a drenched, battered boy wearing a fox mask. He is playing with paper boats in the middle of a large black puddle. You feel deep and building hatred for him.

■ Seeing you, the child mentions one of you previously tried to kill him. He offers his name, in exchange for your umbrella:

a. Refuse or dally, and dark hands rise out of the puddle to pull you and your partner in, scratching you bloody. The last thing you see, before you wake up in the bathtub again (or out of the Unwinding), is a man in white who collects your umbrella. He holds it over the child, scolding, ”Did you forget again? This one never hurt you.”

b. To surrender the umbrella, step on the paper boats as you cross the puddle to the boy. Walking straight on water feels like stepping on knives. The child accepts your umbrella, whispering his name is ”Hyang-Won”, before you start to fade out of the Unwinding.

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✘ IT WAS ALL A DREA —

New or old, as the Unwinding ends, you wake up in Ma’am Mariol’s modest orphanage in the Mouse House. Mariol, the orphans and Serthica at large recall nothing about the Unwinding. Karsa, who dragged you in, is pale and exhausted, her memory patchy. She urges everyone to recuperate before heading back overground.

■ Your body shows only a fraction of any damage sustained in the Unwinding.

■ Ma’am Mariol’s labyrinthine home offers limited accommodations: share beds, floors, and household chores, while the orphans led by curious Gavroche, peer in.

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NOTES

■ You can make network posts outside of the Unwinding.

■ Feel free to mark if you're a test drive tourist or an old timer in your top level!

■ The Unwinding is a shifting of realities not a dreamscape.

■ You can opt out of the Unwinding by keeping characters in the Mouse House. Here, nothing seems amiss.

■ QUESTIONS!

Comments

[perceptive]

( he's relieved to hear that she's okay, glad that she's unharmed. she's only a kid. she shouldn't be here. she shouldn't have to be dealing with whatever the hell this is. once the girl catches up to him, charles makes sure that she's able to follow along right beside him, walking at a reasonable pace. somewhere at the back of his mind there's still that nagging, persistent thought that he's being hunted, pursued, but he ignores it for now. )

What do you mean? ( oh, he knows exactly what she means. he really hadn't been subtle with the use of his telepathy there. ) I... ( he lets out a shrug. ) I didn't do anything. I'm not sure what happened there. Struck by an invisible lightning perhaps? ( he forces out a bit of a smile as he glances over at her. )

I'm Charles Xavier. ( an introduction seems like a good way to change the subject. to take the focus away from what he'd done. he dislikes having to lie to her, but he's spent his entire life hiding what he can do. it's just easier that way. ) What's your name?

[wantshappiness]

...invisible lightning?

[She has the worst poke face so the confusion and doubt is written all over her expression. But she doesn't insist on asking more questions because she isn't that assertive but also because...she understands having secrets.] Well, if you say so.

[It still sounds a little uncertain but she's trying to play along, at least.]

I'm Kumoi Yuuri. Ah, it's in the Eastern order, so you can just call me Yuuri. [Since she knows in other places it's not like that.] It's nice to meet you.

[perceptive]

( he can tell by the expression on her face that ahe doesn't believe him at all. well, he thinks she might have a few secrets of her own because he can't seem to read her mind. it's a bit odd, but also quite impressive, considering her young age, that she's able to shield her thoughts from him. )

It's nice to meet you too, Yuuri. Despite the circumstances. ( that being this heavy rain, being pursued by the locals, and him in his stained, bloodied and drenched clothing. he should have probably looked for a change of clothes before heading outside. this is no way to blend in. )

Are you on your own? ( he's hoping she's not alone. if she has friends or family here, he'll help her get back to them. )

[wantshappiness]

[The whole circumstance around this meeting is quite terrible but, truly. She's had worse first meetings. She barely even bat the eye at all the blood, really.]

I am. [Thankfully, both because she wouldn't want anyone she cared about here but also because her father would probably have sold them all to the undead lieges at his first convenience.] Ah, but I'll be fine! I'm used to taking care of myself.

[Which isn't exactly reassuring but she's trying, at least. Besides, her being on her own is really less important than figuring what the hell is going on here.]

[perceptive]

( he's sorry to hear that she's on her own, and it's really ridiculous that whoever it is that's playing this awful game or whatever with them thinks it's funny to bring a little girl into this. he might not remember how he managed to stain his clothes with blood and how he got into that tub, but he does sort of recall being on a train, rolling that dice to unlock a door, a tea party and then... well, trying to think any further gives him a headache and so he doesn't. )

You are a very brave girl. ( he's not sure if he'd appear as calm as her if he was just a kid. ) I don't suppose either one of us really belongs here. ( he's noticing that once again people are starting to look their way and they're whispering amongst themselves. a group of men start towards them and charles motions for yuri to hurry along with him. they go through the back alley, passing through a small crowd of people gathered in front of an old bookstore who thankfully don't notice them, before reaching a deserted marketplace. )

I think we should be... ( he was about to say that they might be safe here but then he notices the young boy in the face mask. charles isn't sure why, but he gets the feeling that the child is no friend to them; that he might be trouble. )

[wantshappiness]

[She actually looks embarrassed. She's not very good with compliments from her friends let alone from strangers.]

Oh--um! That's really kind of you to say but I'm not really that brave. [Kaoru is brave , and so is Shiho and Aoi. She's not....really that at all. Not by any measure of the word.

If she had been that brave maybe things wouldn't have gotten so bad with Black Phantom.

As she thinks it, she feels a muted headache that she does her best to ignore. She follows where he leads, only throwing brief looks over her shoulder. And if some of the people trying to follow them trip over some stones that were suddenly jutting out of the ground, well. She's pretty sure it's fine to assume bad intentions from faceless people or weird mannequins chasing you.

She still breathed a little sigh of relief though, when they came to the marketplace. Finally! No more people!

Except the boy.

She feels uneasy. Not because of the boy exactly, but because of how she felt upon seeing him. She can't stop those feelings but she can identify them as not her own. She really disliked having other things in her head that were not her own.

Her hand tightened on her umbrella a little. He was the the only one besides the two of them that seemed different from the rest of the people they've seen milling about.]

...you also see him, right?

[She just wants to make sure.]

[perceptive]

Oh, I most definitely see him. ( charles can't explain the sudden anger he feels at seeing the little boy though, his own hand gripping his umbrella to the point where his knuckles turn white. he sucks in a breath though, trying to calm himself, trying to stay rational because this hatred he's feeling right now seems oddly misplaced. there's no reason for him to think that this kid could be of any danger to them. still, he keeps his arm out in in front of yuri, not allowing her to step any closer.

before he can say anything, before he can decide that they should keep moving, the boy gets up and spits an accusation out that surprises charles. something about one of them hurting him. no. he's saying that they'd tried to kill him. charles glances over at yuri, thinking of how absurd that sounds because there's no way she could've done something like that. and he knows, knows that he hadn't. but the blood. all that blood in the tub. )

I... ( he's at a loss for words, confused, unsure. had he tried to hurt the boy? but why? why would he? it makes no sense. )

[wantshappiness]

[Well, then either the boy was real or they're both hallucinating. At the very least, she's sure her powers aren't spilling over to other people.

She can't shove the anger away and lock it behind a wall like she would like to. But it's easier to think through it as long as she remembers to remind herself it wasn't hers.

She blinks at the accusations...before looking at Charles. Look, she knows she woke up in a bathtub covered in blood but if she's hurt people or even killed people, there would be no blood. That's just how it works with her powers. Also the child didn't look or act like they'd suffered severe blood loss recently?

But...Charles also seemed confused so maybe he hadn't hurt the boy either? That was when she abruptly remember the papers.

She grabs Charles' sleeve and tugs on it.]

I...there was a paper. It said, 'children lie'. [Wait. She's also a child.] I'm not lying though! I have the paper... [She looks in her pocket......and she's dropped it. Great, now she really did seem like a liar!]