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

[makemeasong]

I've told you what I don't mind you knowing. If you plan to hurt me, why bother sticking around? Why not just do it? Unless you like the extra work.

[ At this point in her life, Clara's already been the most afraid she could ever be (though there's worse to come, and she doesn't know it yet), and now, right now, he doesn't make her afraid. At least, not more afraid than the entire situation in general. ]

I'm flattered you think I could somehow get a hand on you before you killed me with that thing, but no. [ She's (badly) pantomimed using a sword. ] I don't have any interest in killing anything. In fact, if we can figure out this tea before you have to kill a brainwashed houseguest, that'd be amazing. Any luck?

[ She peers at a root that's coming from under a table, slithering and seeming to be reaching blindly for anything. When she murmurs curiously, it's to the plant. ]

What are you? Where are you from? Here, or somewhere else? Oh, the Doctor would know. Probably.

[ She misses him and thinks about what he'd do here, in this situation. Fix the tea or try to figure out the Butter Knife Murderers? Clara's focused just long enough on the root and lost in her thoughts, that she doesn't notice a different plant before it's wrapping around her wrist with surprising speed, causing her to jerk and call out in surprise. ]

[downswing]

I intend no harm.

( Unto you. Unto the wakeful world. But then, she does not require his caveats, his justifications. When the next plant drips down the gilt of its pollen dust, he wrenches his hands away from its sting, nearly — oh so nearly &dmash; tempted by the unkindness of a curse.

No such discourtesy. She is a woman still. Between the absent shakes of his head — no, lend him another few heartbeats, he turns on the next bowl of leaves, while tendrils of a potted creature slither at his feet — he hears her. A girl... fixated on questions. The doctor she wishes to consult, no doubt relying on a medic's deep acquaintance with herbs. )

We number healers. They will ask samples.

( The beam of his gaze narrows, landing on the girl with an air of sullen, stubborn expectation. Then, on the scissors on the table a handful of steps beside her. Cut. )

The doctor will assist. ( Wen Qing does not lack in the civility to refuse a patient or a scholar. )

[makemeasong]

[ Snagging her arm back once she's cut free, Clara rubs at her wrist, wondering what it is with this place and being grabbed by things. Picking up the fallen rosemary, she holds it up while exhaling and blowing her bangs up. ]

It's good there are doctors here. After the things I've seen? I wouldn't be surprised if there are people who need medical attention. [ She realizes he's misunderstood but doesn't bother to correct. What does it matter when the Doctor isn't with her anyway? Even if he was with her, she isn't ready to deal with an angry old man. ]

Any luck finding the juniper? I'm starting to feel like I'm in a bad remake of Little Shop of Horrors.

[ Clara doesn't expect him to understand that reference (she'd bet he isn't from a world that has Broadway or the film), but it's all she's got. ]

[downswing]

( No merchant trades in open horror, only in the bloodshed that follows once he has shortchanged you. Lan Wangji, who has never encountered a sliver of silver he would not rightfully waste in the first hand that beseeches it, knows this, if nothing else: there are no little shops of fright.

If anything, what hunts them would be hosted in a palatial abode. He hesitates, gaze first diluted, then gaining focus, while plant tendrils braid and slither and twine around his ankles, climbing his calves. He knows, distantly, he should chase them away, barter his limbs free.

Knows too, under the cold glide of sunken light that washes his hands, that they have no time. Whatever spurred their fellow guests to hunt them will resume shortly enough. A simple matter of personal safety cannot dally them. And besides, with the clang of the next pot lid — )

In hand. ( He holds it up and out to illustrate &mdash juniper, freshly plucked, tightly stored, a small pot's fill. Enough to brew countless infusions. The Heavens be thanked —

Just as a great, beastly vine throws itself at his waist, and forgive him, Clara, if he can't be troubled to forewarn when he tightens the lid back on the small pot and throws it over for safekeeping. Catch. )

[makemeasong]

[ It happens quickly, but in Clara's mind, it's like watching in slow motion. Her eyes widen as her mind processes two things at once - the vines and the pot going into the air. There's a gasp from her as she tracks the breakable object with her eyes to catch it. She fumbles it for a second in her hands before managing to catch it.

Just as the clock chimes. Already, Clara's putting the pot under one arm and reaching for the scissors Lan Wangji helped her with earlier. It's almost as if the plants are angrier; more tendrils are lashing out, and she has to try and avoid them. It slows her down, and she looks toward Lan Wangji again, calling out to him. ]

If it's the clock, we're outta time.

[downswing]

( And so, more tinny, threadbare screeching.

He hears the wet of vines first, the crackling of ground, the sudden, animal stampede of the guests raising themselves, storming their dining table. Chairs shriek, cast aside. Floors groan.

There is a moment when Lan Wangji considers the inevitable strategy governed by his natural resources: to bring up his blade, to punish the girl with isolation behind him, to lend himself to carnage. Bichen thrums, a quiet reassurance in his hand, watchful and waiting and thirsting. The odds do not favour him, one against countless, with a young one to defend and the plants at his back. Talismans might bide time to —

But then, the greenhouse door creaks open in slow, sinister susurrations. His gaze falls on it, tension commanding his arm taut. Behind him, a large, carnivorous plant's roots coil and turn for the entrance.

...movement, he realises, absently. These creatures lack the intelligence to know friend from foe, and so he dances a few steps back, waving the girl over, and pressing himself against the wall — breath nearly a charcoal smudge of itself, an afterthought of condensation. He signals for the girl to join him, mouths: )

Be still.

( As the plant tendrils and roots and vines swarm and assail the first dinner guest who rushes in, fire poker in hand. )

[makemeasong]

[ Clara can feel her heart slamming against her ribcage, clutching the teapot against her stomach with both hands. For a second, she thinks about the T.Rex in Jurassic Park and how she always thought it couldn't be true that if its prey didn't move it wouldn't be seen.

She thinks of the most random things when she's terrified, the silent version of the Doctor's out loud rambling, but she's at least doing what Lan Wangji told her. Her back is pressed as flat to the wall as possible, watching the plant wrap around the knife-wielder. Clara has to close her eyes tightly for a second and take a few deep breaths before regrouping, her mind having trouble processing the fact that a plant is attacking someone who's obviously not in control of their own actions.

Her eyes dart down for a quick glance at the fallen fire poker, then toward Lan Wangji again. It's a better weapon to use fighting for her life than a vase — if she can get to it. ]

[downswing]

( Sudden, wet, flesh-tearing sound. Squelching, the vines and their prey and the unmistakable conclusion of what fate has awaited the hour's intruders. He does not chance a ruinous glance over their bones, knocked down, their mannequin limbs shredded. Only spies wet of black and blood at his feet, and raises himself on the tips of his toes to neglect exposure.

Best not to sully the dead, best not to revel in their carnage. The plants embrace no such restrictions. One heartbeat, the next. He thinks the girl will take faint, crumble down thereafter. Thinks —

But she summons his gaze, lands it on the floor, where the poker's drifted like silt from lifeless fingers. What is it...?

...ah. Ah, of course. His hand goes up, palm outward, biding her stay — until a second tea party guest enters the greenhouse, the plants swarm upon them, and it's unnoticed, barely a greedy tinny sound, when Lan Wangji hastily kicks the poker towards Clara. And mouthed, mutely: )

It fees now. ( The plants entirely, unequivocally distracted. ) Run.

( No count of three, no restraint exercised. Run. )

[makemeasong]

[ This isn't Clara's first 'don't think just run' dance, and she manages to sweep up the poker by the rounded handle while cradling the teapot like a rugby ball. Are they running into worse? She's gotten sort of fond of his two-to-five-word sentences and would hate to lose him now.

Despite close calls in the past, she's only fired a weapon once and it was a laser gun on a different planet, fired at robots, so she isn't sure if it helps in this exact situation. She's from Blackpool, not afraid of a schoolyard fight growing up, but this isn't defending Aarti Alexander in 4th grade.

The poker is heavy in her hand and Clara moves after him only to have an attack launched from around the corner. She doesn't hesitate, swinging out and clocking the guest right in the chest, like being hit with a crowbar. It's enough to make it drop a butter knife and stagger back; Clara shouts ahead. ]

What else are we supposed to do? Is there more to this mystery tea?