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

( she's worried! she's eaten many things here! )

Chris.

( the serious i'm not a fan of this tone. the tone he doesn't hear often, usually only ensigns that disappoint her. or the rare time he's disappointed her )

If this is real, if that story is real and is here, even though we got out of-- what the rabbit hole? I need to know everything, we need to be prepared for each outcome. If it's not... then we work on what this place is, get a way out.

Before this was pirates, right? There weren't pirates in this story. You should be fine.

But getting out of here, I need to try to figure that out, or we need to find Spock. He probably remembers more about this book than I do.

[Because really he doesn't. He liked western adventure stories more than Alice in Wonderland.]

( she holds up her communicator, the one that this place gave her )

We find Spock.

( easy as pie )

But... I want something so that no matter what happens I know you are you.

( a word, a phase. it was dumb, they knew each other well, but she never wanted to have to doubt that )

Okay, that works.

[At least that was doable, they won't be stuck here with only Pike's shoddy memory of a children's book to rely on.]

Fair's fair. You have to do the same thing.

[Then he takes a deep breath and reveals what might be his most embarrassing secret, but he's told no one about it. It was a good code word.]

My first pony's name was Sir Neighs-a-Lot.

( she's just going to look at him.

and look a little more.

then squint like you're shitting me )

You've gotten better at naming your horses.

( she still hopes he's kidding because that's terrible, chris, who let you name this horse )

And that face is exactly why I don't tell people.

[He is not explaining it any further than that. He was a kid. He was allowed to have a silly name for his horse.]

You're not leaving that there.

( come on, chris, she knows way more embarrassing things about you. including things he doesn't know she knows.

it's una chin-riley, of course she does.

also that expression is gone, she really wants the story )

Please?

I was seven. Sir Neighs-a-Lot broke his leg in a rainstorm. My parents had to put him down. When I found out I cried for a week.

[That's it. That's the story. Don't judge him.]

( that is definitely not the story that una was expecting, thinking it would be something cute and you give her a sad emotion. shame on you, christopher pike.

she will at least rest a sympathetic hand on his arm even if it was years ago )

I once sang with Spock in a turbolift. He won't confirm it.

( unless una lets him and she will never let him. she may also not entirely be looking at him about this. it might not be anything to be embarrassed about (that she can sing and that she has good music taste but her turbolift experience is) )

[He has to ask, he can't help it. Besides she wanted to hear the rest of his story.]

What did you sing with Spock in a turbolift?

( she looks at hime with an expression very much nope on her face, a small shake of her head )

You don't get this story.

( sorry chris, but she's too embarrassed at this one )

Una, my horse's name was Sir Neighs-a-Lot. I have nothing to judge you for.

[Then he tries the same thing she did to him before.]

Please?

( chris you cannot please at her, that's cheating. she's weak to your politeness (and general self)

it doesn't mean she's going to give him it quickly, pausing, weakening )

Modern Major General.

Like [and he's not good when he sings it] 'I am the very model of a modern major general? [Be thankful that's all he sings.]

I didn't know you liked to sing.

[And he's taking absolute delight in knowing something about her that almost no one else does.]

( she nods slowly, still not really looking at him )

I don't do it often. Or around people.

That's okay. I'm not going to make you sing it.

[Though he would like to hear some of it someday.]

And I promise, I'll keep it to myself. Secret's safe with me.

[He puts his hand on hers, it's a reassuring gesture.]

( her expression is relief, expressing the thanks that she doesn't say well enough. una knows that he's safe, that she could be herself around him (especially with him knowing everything now) but some things are just for her, are embarrassing even if they're likely not that. she's been so privately wrapped up that she can't let anyone see who she is )

Even when you doubt who I am?

( kidding. though maybe that would be the only time she'd sing -- if it was that desperate )

I probably still wouldn't ask you to actually sing the song. Knowing that you sang it in a turbolift with Spock is probably enough.

But I wouldn't mind hearing it someday.

[But he wasn't going to push her.]

( raised eyebrow. you wipe that memory from your mind, sir, she already got spock to black hole it from his mind and it's spock )

I'd say something stupid like 'you'd have to sing the entire thing first before I'd consider it' except you probably would.

( she's no fool, chris )

I've gone through with a lot of other crazy ideas but not this one.

Oh, I wouldn't subject you to that much noise pollution. It's not fair to your ears.

[He prefers to keep his artistry in the kitchen.]

( bullshit. she doesn't believe that )

Between the jokes and accents? Come on Chris.

( was that pirate accent he has yet to do really the first time? )

If something got you to you would.

I can't carry a tune if it was handed to me in a box.

[It's going to be So. Bad. Una. So. So. Bad.]

If you sing it, I'll sing it.

I already wish I'd picked a different secret.

( she doesn't want to know what it'd take to get her to sing it in front of him... because it probably wouldn't be much at all )

I've got no chance of you ever forgetting, have I?

[He just laughs, and then that smile stays on his face when he answers.]

None at all.

( there's something muttered under her breath, not a curse but a phrase he won't understand. she hates him right now (she doesn't) )

We should take a walk, see more of this place. Distract you.

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