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

We were are sea for two months.

( roughly, though it definitely felt longer, especially when you were banned from daylight )

I've been in the city for about the same amount of time. From others' experience you stay somewhere a few months before travelling east, always the same.

And always East?

[And that was weird, wouldn't they eventually end up where they started?]

I don't know if I can handle being stuck in a children's book for two months.

Hopefully we won't fall down any more holes.

( ... that didn't sound as good as it had in her head. or before )

Though it's the first one I've seen. It's only been the past few weeks that the power outages have happened. ( pause. wait ) How many books about dragons do you know?

Not that many, but if we get stuck in the old west, you're with the right captain.

[Hang on...]

Were there dragons?

I've seen them. There are dragons here.

( and the ships purposely avoided them. though it was the contrast between dragons and technology that probably meant more to people that weren't her. dragons meant little to her anyway )

You'd love being stuck in the old west.

Yes, I would. I already have useful skills for that.

[Horseback riding, cooking, fire building.]

I'm not the best at poker, but I can hold my own.

You should teach me.

( she'd be terrifying at poker, don't teach her )

I've never played.

[That is exactly why he would teach her!]

You'd be good at it. No one can unnerve you.

What are the chances this place has cards?

( unlikely. but hey, maybe she can learn by figuring it out ask they go. be that terrifying beginner who smashes the hands on 'luck' alone )

What else would you visit if you could? As if it were a training sim?

It's possible, or we can find something similar.

[He sort of looks around to see if he can find anything.]

Where would I visit? I'd like to see Earth back in Jon Archer's time.

The original Enterprise.

( though she imagines there are other reasons he'd want to see that )

He met some Illyrians. ( starfleet and illyrian meetings are so few that the few are documented, especially the responses. especially to una who'd sesrched the history to get her expectations ready as she planned to leave ) It was a very different time.

I think it would be fun to spend some time on that ship, watch how they worked.

[It sounded like fun to him at least.]

That mission wasn't one that Archer liked to remember, he did some things he wasn't proud of.

I remember reading about it.

( it was a different time and an unfortunate situation. could there have been a different answer? well, that's a question that they could ask at many things )

I don't know if I'd want to visit the past. Not because of the histories I've read just... we have enough already to explore, more than we ever will get chance to.

[You can only work with the information you have at the time, but it doesn't mean you can't wish for it to have been different. Pike knows that probably better than a lot of others.]

Where would you like to go?

Wherever the stars take us.

( there's a slight laugh after it )

I've enjoyed the discovery, the adventure of it, whether it's been planets or phenomena. We've had a good crew to see it with.

[He's amused too.]

We do have a good crew. But there's no where else you've dreamed of seeing, other than the stars? It's a hypothetical program, where would you program it to take you?

( there's a long pause, a good measure of thought in it, some hesitation )

There are a lot of things I'd like to see, scientific curiosities and phenomenon. ( those were often more exciting than planets, something to study rather than someone and the simple beauty of what nature created.

but there was one place that she would like to see. again )

I'd see Illyria, my colony. ( she'd almost said home but that was what enterprise now was for her. this was a very different kind of home. the place, the stars that she'd grown up with that gave her this dream. the family she missed )

Those are always fun. It's one of the parts of being on a ship that I like the most, learning about all of those new things.

[The next part isn't really surprising, but he can't think of another way to describe it.]

If we ever get the chance, I'd like to go with you.

[And he means it, whether they get the chance, here, in a simulator, or to see it in their universe, he wants to go with her. Maybe to provide moral support, maybe because she's heard all about where he's from, maybe some other reason he's not really sure why exactly, just that he'd like to.]

( there's a minute before una nods because even with all of the little admissions and conversations that she's had recently opening up about home, about anything illyrian is hard. she's unused to it and even with someone she dearly trusts is afraid of some consequence of it.

but una can appreciate the gesture even if she doubts that it would ever be possible, that she would go home )

That would be nice. ( she takes another moment, debating whether to change the topic or give him something. they're here, far away from starfleet, and there are others here that have gently probed her for information, that she's spoken to with. starfleet isn't here, the consequences that una fears aren't here. it might be the only time she could tell him anything )

There are certain hills I used to climb that had the clearest views of the stars. I hope they haven't changed.

[Pike's honestly not sure if it would be possible either, or at least possible in anyway that lets her come back to Starfleet. Who knows what can happen if Command ever finds out about her alien status, they could send her back.]

I hope they haven't either. I'd love to see the stars that made you decide to become the best first officer in the fleet.

I remember them still, memorised really.

( a piece of home that she would always carry with her, etched forever in her mind that she could draw up when she closed her eyes )

If we had a sim I could show you them... the best representation you'd get.

( but it was a wishful dream and not a reality, a dream privy only to him )

Besides, you haven't given me enough of your 'best bits of Earth' yet. Nothing's yet convinced me to stay for a proper shore leave there.

I've invited you. You've never accepted.

[For almost a decade. Every time he's headed to Earth he invites her and every time she doesn't join him.]

Three months might be a little long, I'll give you that. But you can always stop by for a week or two.

[Not that this last shore leave would have been a good one to accompany him on. He was working through a lot, most of which he doesn't even think he got to address.]

You need more to offer than just your company.

( which is the biggest bullshit ever. una would go anywhere for him, go with him but she doesn't want something to feel awkward, not with him. she likes a plan, she likes something to do and not knowing the area or what his plans might be she's always found something else to do.

besides, spending a couple of weeks with him off duty for the entire time? it felt a little dangerous. they were domestic enough on the ship. even if thay did feel nice and comfortable )

Keep selling it, maybe it'll change.

[See this face? This face means he does not believe that it will ever change.]

Being stuck in that alien prison was the most downtime you've had in nine years, wasn't it?

I've taken some shore leave.

( in small pieces, smaller than the time they're ever given. but he's not wrong and they both know it )

Besides, Montana's too cold for me. I don't want to hike in the snow.

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