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westwhere2022-09-24 07:00 pm
groundrules) wrote in westwhere2022-09-24 07:00 pm
Entry tags:
- 2ha: chu wanning,
- 2ha: mo ran,
- arc iv,
- arcane: caitlyn,
- arcane: vi,
- arcane: viktor,
- doctor who: river song,
- doctor who: the doctor,
- harry potter: hermione granger,
- kingdom of the wicked: emilia,
- kingdom of the wicked: wrath,
- legend of fei: xie yun,
- legend of fei: zhou fei,
- mcu: kamala khan,
- mcu: yelena,
- oh! my emperor: su xunxian,
- original: red,
- penny dreadful: vanessa ives,
- shadowhunters: alec lightwood,
- shadowhunters: magnus bane,
- star trek: christopher pike,
- star trek: jim kirk (aos),
- star trek: leonard mccoy (aos),
- star trek: spock,
- star wars: finn,
- the unwinding,
- umbrella academy: allison,
- umbrella academy: five,
- untamed: lan sizhui,
- untamed: wen qing,
- warcraft: anduin wrynn,
- warcraft: wrathion,
- warframe: kahl 175,
- x-men: charles xavier
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!
SPILL THE TEA | DRIP BY DRIP | ALL A DREA —
✘ 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.”
✘ 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 —”
✘ 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. - one: gravity fades, the dice floats out of reach. ( The jackalopes enjoy the breeze. )
✘ 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.
✘ 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.
✘ 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!
no subject
They all joke that Five seems to live for the apocalypse, that he gets a thrill from it. And maybe he does a little bit. That adrenaline rush of never stopping, having to keep going, and the idea of actually finally getting to stop. But Lila knows the truth of his retirement. A box in the basement where a machine breathes for him - that's where he's headed. Unless he changes things again.
The two of them saw that together, they partied with the Sparrows, they danced at Luther's wedding, are facing down the end of the universe. And if... they somehow survive that, he will be uncle to the little nugget that's growing inside her.
She doesn't have to like him, but Diego would be upset if she let him die. Probably still accept her if it was an accident, or if there was nothing she could do. But if she could and just stood by doing nothing? Lila's afraid of what would come next.
So working together again, it is. She will put out her offer to help and leave it where it lies until he takes her up on it. A working briefcase gets them all back where they want to be. ]
We made tea and played tag with the guests.
no subject
He needs to check in with Allison. They don't really... talk about things. Diego would have been better, but he's the sibling she's left with. Although with the way she's acting, he wonders if Lila would perk up to that too.
A lot can happen in three months. ]
Guests with knives? [ That was actually one of the better visions, all things considered. He sighs. ] There's something wrong with the people in the city. I've got a feeling they're the ones who didn't make it out of that in time.
no subject
Chances are good that Five may see Lila circling Allison in a somewhat sisterly manner. Watching how she spins and trying to put focus into it. She hasn't had a sister before, but they had a moment from Liam's point of view. Though, maybe it's a cause for concern when the assassin hangs out with the nice Hargreeves.
A lot can happen in a week with this group around. ]
Those are the ones. [ She saw some people on the way to the train, the sort the pair of them would hang out with. ] Noticed some of that on the way in. If the people in that rainy city are anything like the people here, we should probably get the help out of here.
no subject
I'm considering it. [ But he hasn't given up the search for Diego yet. Not that he's completely ruled out Lila having something to do with that, but she's managed to make him doubt. Despite her report that they all make it out of here, he can't assume they'll be fine if he does nothing.
He gives her another long stare before he goes on. ]
...We haven't seen something like this before. The Merchant wanted to know if they'd succumbed to the dead, but it's more like they're people who were wiped clean. Puppets that keep their city running.
It might be a lost cause. I don't know if another faulty beacon is worth the risk.
no subject
But haven't done it yet. [ Which meant something important was keeping him here. Anyone who knows a damn thing about Five can guess it. He might have left Diego in the asylum, but he wasn't going to leave the sixties without him.
If there's one thing Lila is certain of, it's that the Hargreeves can change their own history. ]
Bet you get along great with the rest of the group. Some of them seem the sort to play the hero, even in a situation like this one.
[ Whereas Five could leave all this behind if he just knew his brother was safe. ]
Still, might be better to try to do something about this situation than let it grow worse. Could bite us in the arse later. If the beacons are breaking, then we may need all of them we can get. Coming back here in the future for one that was left untouched will be a lot more difficult.
[ A sigh and a shrug of her shoulders. ] Then again, maybe it won't be needed, and the losses will outweigh the gains.
no subject
Five readjusts his stance when she mentions getting along with the group. Not counting Allison, there's only about four he trusts to any degree. Which is four more than he had before getting stuck here, but it leaves a lot more who he expects to betray him. Some who already turned on him, so it's not just his paranoia, thanks very much. He doesn't look forward to adding Lila to the mix.
Because they're sure talking like he's already decided to.
First she says she'll help with the briefcase, then she's ready to make this mess her problem. Which, again, he could blame on Diego if he believes she didn't have anything to do with whatever happened. That's a lot more comfortable than trying to imagine what changed in the future.
And if they did take his brother, it doesn't make him feel any more inclined to solve their problems and a lot more interested in seeing the city burned to the ground. ]
Right. [ He has other plans to undo his mistakes, but it's clear now that he really should have been paying more attention. ] Well, if all else fails, it wouldn't be the first place we left in ruins. You've been missing out.
[ Frowning, he works back to the one thing that stood out to him. As suspicious as her timing is, Lila might have noticed something he missed. ]
Did you see the kid asking for the umbrella?
no subject
The shifting gives away everything his silence doesn't say, he really hasn't made friends with the majority of the group. It's hard for people like them to open up and let others get that close. Waiting for the eventual stab in the back. She doesn't bother saying that if she did turn on Five, Lila would do it right in front of his face. No more need for subterfuge between them.
Even then, it wouldn't be a huge one, not when he's Diego's brother. It's an irritation that she has to get along with her parent's killer, but she might have to give up on the past for a future.
So he can blame it on Diego, for making her want something that resembles a family. Even if that means Five is part of it. One day, Lila will tell Five what the Commission has become - and who is the Founder was. That information might make him more paranoid or give him some sense of ease.
When Five speaks about leaving a place in ruins, she lets out a short laugh. ] Sure, sounds like a blast.
[ One day he'll understand the meaning of her words on that matter. ]
Oh, I saw him. Never seen him before, but I hated him. Fox mask, looked a little rough, black paper boats, hanging out in an empty market that didn't quite suit the rest of the place. Hurt like a bitch walking over those boats. Gave him my umbrella and got the name Hyang-Won. Didn't do me too much good with the information I had.
no subject
Sometime soon he's going to break and ask her exactly what happens, so he can prepare for something so catastrophic that it caused the briefcases to fail, but that requires him to trust that she won't bend any facts. She knows she's his only source of information, so she could take full advantage. Lila technically being family just makes that more likely.
So he stays stubbornly focused on what they both experienced. He nods, thinking it's a good thing she saw him so he doesn't have to describe the entire encounter. For whatever reason, he doesn't have as many reservations about discussing it with Lila. It seems like the logical thing to do. Get an outside perspective and watch for any tells that her timing is anything other than a coincidence. ]
Right. Hyang-Won. [ He debates with himself for a moment, but goes ahead with the story. ]
I don't think he was a child, but that's besides the point. That was the name of one of the warlords, before he was turned undead. The one Diego killed. [ And why give his name, unless they wanted them to know that? ] The man in white who was with him is supposedly the one who changed him into what he later became.
Whatever happened to us, they're the ones behind it.
no subject
While she would take advantage of the knowledge she has (and already has done so), there doesn't seem much point in outright lying about it. Working with him produces much better outcomes than working against him, especially since they have similar interest in keeping one Hargreeves sibling alive. Lila knows they all kind of come as a set - can't get one without the others.
He stays focused on current events, rather than go digging for information about their world, and Lila does the same. When Five drops that tidbit of information, an eyebrow arches in interest. It's hard not to start getting out her own red string of conspiracies that Five has probably already thought of. ]
The kid said one of us had tried to kill him, so you think that was Diego. A kid who asked for our umbrella. Did you give him yours or get all Classic Paranoid Five on him to see what happened?
no subject
Unfortunately, her perception is what he needs right now. Lila guesses what he thinks without him having to say it, and even she can't deny how it looks. Not that she can resist calling him paranoid, but this time he only makes a face and continues. ]
The second time. It was a time loop, if you refused you just ended up back in the bathtub. [ That entire experience hasn't left him. The rain and his confusion that almost stranded him there. ]
Trouble is, if it was all caused by the two of them, I have no idea how to track them down. I'm not looking to experience that again.
[ But he doesn't have many other leads on what happened to his brother. ]