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hale and whole

HALE AND WHOLE

BEHIND YOU | MAGICAL SERIES OF EVENTS | THE SCENIC SCIENCE ROUTE | SPREAD YOUR JOY

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Talismans burned, Serthica’s undeath reveals itself:

■ The dragon eye allows indefinite access to the undeath-sight pendant feature. Use it 15 minutes at a time, with a 45-minute cooldown.

■ Those who delivered talismans or the eye have residual immunity: they cannot be sensed by mannequins or by undead linked to the curse-sickness. This is transferrable once.

The Merchant presents the Serthica findings, recommending evacuation. Outvoted, he agrees to sponsor the group until the beacon’s annual start-up. To heal Serthica, the party must destroy the magical anchors of the curse-sickness, develop its science/herbal cure, then distribute it across the overground citadels.

BEHIND YOU

Courtesy of Five Hargreeves, the Child of the Unwinding you slayed his father, the undead lord Beastmaster. The burlap mannequins released from Remembrance actively hunt you.

■ They are constantly watching, stalking, hunting. You always hear the deep asynchrony of their footsteps. Some mannequins bear an uncanny human likeness: staring extensively chills you.

■ Most mannequins cover up in excess clothing and swarm you in crowded spaces to stab. They borrow your appearance, if they touch you. Some devolve into eldritch forms, mimicking voices or puppeteering husked corpses to lure you.

■ Each mannequin has a one-word code on its nape or right calf — once spoken, the creature glitches, letting you run.

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A MAGICAL SEQUENCE OF EVENTS

The corrosive magic that spreads throughout Serthica is anchored in two areas: a port dock and a former Mouse House shelter. Cleanse it through exorcism, purification, healing spells, or by planting wards borrowed from Karsa.

This magic feels hot, asphyxiating, aggressively proliferating, intrusive. Uncontained, it gradually feeds off your power. It might drive you to anger, bitterness, doubt or violence.

To Arc III survivors, it feels like the overwhelming power native to the Ke-Sanwon volcano (not dark water).

■ Once you’ve destroyed both magical anchors, inhuman-looking mannequins deactivate. Human-presenting ones seem sluggish and inattentive.

■ Finn’s mannequin remains alive when supplied life or magical force (think 5% of someone’s reserves) — either through weekly transfers or a rewiring of the magic that sustains her (by a party magic user, or Finn can learn the skills in later travel.)

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✘ WET OF THE DOCK'S WET

At first, locals don’t remember the putrid inactive dock exists as a distant extension of Serthica’s port, located past a familiar deserted marketplace. Here, rotten wood, a stench of perpetual moulding, torn ropes and rusted chains.

■ Thinking extensively about the dock before finding it incurs nausea, vertigo and the animal instinct to flee.

■ Persist, and you learn this dock was once used to smuggle in illegal arrivals from Ke-Waihu. Later, it loaded the bodies of the plagued that were burned at sea.

■ Rotten wood planks can break, dropping you into paralysing waters. The dead might reach out from the depths to drag you in.

■ You hear alluring, wind-born whispers of, How chilly it is, while the cold abruptly intensifies, and, It’s warm in the waters.. Won’t you… jump in?

■ Ships no longer call here — yet a small boat stops for you. You might feel compelled or curious to join the lone passenger — a man in white, whose features you forget after. As the boat drifts, attracting the swimming undead that seek to climb in, the man offers safe return, if you answer: What do you most want? Where would you stop to obtain it? Lie, and the boat capsizes, leaving you to swim back amid undead. Answer honestly to return unharmed.

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✘ (UN)SHELTERED

Visit the impoverished, underground Mouse House and avoid breathing in the thick, memory clouding sedative infusions. The grandiose shelter is familiar, its recalling the ruined mansion of the Unwinding. Locals say the house — which preceded Ma’am Mariol’s shelter as an orphanage — is haunted. The coal sickness spread overground after a child was adopted from here.

■ Spirits jump to throttle you or trip you down stairs, throw knives or lock you in claustrophobic rooms. Stair steps, window sills and roof beams readily collapse.

■ The last entries of house logs, found open on a library desk, mention seven freshly arrived children — six native to the Mouse House, including Gavroche, and one heavily burned boy from Ke-Waihu.

■ The ghosts of orphanage caretakers are enjoying a tea party. They ask if you are a servant or a guest. Answer ‘servant,’ and you must pour tea, as attendants stab you with cutlery when you’re within reach. You are dismissed once you finish pouring. Answer ‘guest’, and you must join them at the table and perform whatever they ask: slap yourself, dress up as a doll, answer inconvenient questions, etc. You can leave once someone else has poured tea.

■ Find the dark magic source in the house greenhouse that has been overrun by ruinous mould. While physically unharmed, you feel overcome by crippling fear, loneliness, abandonment or futility. Talking about it helps soothe it.

THE SCENIC SCIENCE ROUTE

The science-based cure requires retrieving resources and researching an answer. Godspeed.

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✘ THE SEED & THE STORM

The Unwinding revealed strands of juniper and rosemary that cure the sickness. Cain d’Ubiq confirms quantities of each plant remain cryogenically intact aboard the Serthica Aerial Healing Unit ships that were caught in the crossfire of the Sibilant Sands, when Eidris and Minaras fought their last battle. Find the vessels to retrieve the goods.

■ Take your transport flier or one of Cain d’Ubiq’s martial, fire-breathing dragons to traverse the Sibilant Sands, roughly one day’s flight each way of Serthica. Expect a hard ride, amid the growing howl of winds whipping your face and the accelerating pulse of a breaking storm.

■ Martial dragons challenge inexperienced riders, but fly sturdily through intermittent sandstorms and whirlwinds.

■ The ships can be found near dragon bones and human skeletons, in stages of burial or disrepair, stranded between rocks, or threatening to collapse once rattled.

■ Beware serpentine barbed wire animated by dark water, which jumps up from the sands. Just as vile are buried vermin-like creatures that send their razor-blade-ended tentacles to strike out from below ground.

■ Members of protest group Remembrance are also unearthing ships. They plan to board mannequins on the vessels, pass them as Minaraian and attack Eidris once more.

■ Their volatile leader Chrichter is personally fixing a ship.

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✘ THINK, TANK

Time to liberate a lab. Minaras’ foremost medical unit is the Conclave Healing Academy, comprising research labs, libraries, equipment rooms and sample collections, including some of the coal sickness.

■ The Academy connects to the centre that treatsZenobius and brims with healing apprentices. Bring juniper and rosemary samples, pose as a bright-eyed novice healer or a concerned relative of Zenobius, or barge in.

■ The Academy is cold, sterile, clean and swarmed by practising medics and academicians. Some even debate resurrection and immortality. Access is barred below, where you can hear occasional, sharp… growls.

■ Several basement laboratories are marked to study the coal sickness. Steal the entry codes from guards or tease them from a lowly medical intern — but don’t linger on the corridors long. Large clockwork hounds patrol and are attracted to sweat, a heightened or rapid pulse, shortness of breath or other biological signs of fear.

■ Take over a lab to concoct a cure elixir from the herbal strands. Test it against the coal sickness samples. Work safely, or the start of a blood cough might announce you’ve taken sick.

■ Hold the fort until your cure’s done, while guards and hounds try to enter your lab through air vents, windows or ram the door. Fight back, distract them or persuade the Academy protective droids they’re the enemy.

■ Anyone affected with the sickness can drink the cure without waiting to destroy the magical anchors. Symptoms fully disappear within 24-72h. Characters remain sensitive to the un/dead.

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SPREAD YOUR JOY

Mass-production time: take over the former underground Remembrance headquarters, one of Cain d’Ubiq’s factories, or make potions in your back yard. The cure can be drunk or absorbed through skin and must be spread overground.

You can pursue your own ideas, but some suggestions on the house:

■ Take your dragon or hijack a Minaras airship and a diffuser to spray down an incense mix that contains the cure. Minaras airships sleep in secured bays you’ll have to infiltrate. Careful taking a dragon into Minaras or an airship to Eidris — local authorities may perceive this as a security breach.

■ Reprogram or con hapless droids to feed the cure as ‘novel vitamins’ to their owners.

■ Commandeer the Mouse House train that ferries supplies from the Serthica ports and spray the cure on produce and grains.

■ Minaras High Councillor Arabella has been previously targeted by Remembrance and could be subtly persuaded to help by her rescuers.

■ Vanessa’s contact, crime boss Artemius Bale, might also have his people sneak the cure into waterways — if you cut a deal.

■ …lemonade stand?

NOTES:

■ We need one finished thread of breaking the anchors and supplying, making and distributing the cure to get the Very Best Ending, but there are multiple other finale options too — link your threads by 29 November!

■ Thanks to Finn and the Doctor’s efforts to help Ma’am Mariol’s orphanage, enjoy tips, information and help with legwork from her street-smart urchins.

■ You can ask for Artemius Bale & others here or at the NPC inbox!

■ BACK TO THE TOP.

QUESTIONS

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Making his way to this mansion too is unsettlingly familiar. If what the locals have said is true, then this is where it all began. Where the coal sickness spread from -- or at least where the elites who run the city are placing the blame. Haunted or not, it fills the place with a sense of sadness that tightens in Anduin's chest as he makes his way through the entryway and into the main section of the mansion --

And has to jump to the side and shield his face almost instantly as a now-empty portrait frame comes flying off of the wall, aimed purposely at his head. He manages to bring his arm up in time to counter its arc, but there is enough force behind its motion for him to understand it had not just happened to fall off on him.

"Who's there?" Anduin calls out, glancing around warily.

Trying to cure a whole citadel of a disease instead of running away is a very complicated thing, it turns out, though having spent enough time in Serthica - both sides of it - has made her warm up to its streets and its people. Plus, the blatant truth: everyone deserves a chance at peace and health.

She's sure the person up ahead is going to agree with that sentiment, once they've stopped fighting the Shelter into submission.

Wards. Wards are her thing, really. She knows wards: setting them, taking them off, inventing them, or taking instructions from a more powerful and local sorceress on how to set hers up and purify two locations. Wards are the reason she's here, in this haunted house, tense as all hell and paying attention to every movement in the corner of her eyes.

She's found Anduin, at least.

"It's me," she whisper-calls back, no further explanation for a second. "Hermione," she adds, just in case. "Splitting up is probably a terrible idea, I think we should do this together."

Anduin thinks for the briefest of moments that he has lost his mind and the house is talking back -- before Hermione calls out her name.

He brings a hand to his chest and whirls around toward the sound of her voice. It's probably a dangerous choice because the room he is in is presently out to get him, but the relief he is filled with -- and joy to see her -- is currently winning out.

"Hermione," he breathes, a smile spreading across his face, his blue eyes filling with warmth. The moment is short-lived when from the room now at his back there comes an ominous sound of wood breaking and he has to turn to make sure he's not about to be impaled. Still. "You have no idea how glad I am to see you."

She's not sure what's happening to Anduin, but she sees it and reacts quickly. Flings a hex at the creaking wood, taming whatever was haunting the room into submission before closing the distance.

"See isn't really the operative word here, is it? Shall we?" She will light up her wand properly, Lumos Maxima and all, because at this point she is no longer scared and alone. She has something better than company - a friend!

"Any injuries?"

Anduin flicks her a grateful smile at the protective spell -- and the light for that matter before offering a shake of his head.

"Just a little surprised is all. When they had said this place was haunted, I hadn't assumed there would be violence."

His smile turns rueful as he continues, "Perhaps I might have known better, considering our history in this place."

"We're making some progress," she jokes, with as light a tone as she can muster up. "We're trying to help, this time, not because it will open us a beacon but because it's the right thing to do. I think the group as a collective is developing of conscience."

Anduin can't help but smile at the thought.

"Perhaps so," he agrees. "Would that really be such a terrible thing?"

Asks the person who might as well have been born with a proverbial halo, all things considered.

"Not at all! It's about dammed time, I'd say," she admits with a grin flashed his way. Sheepish, adds: "The life of crime isn't my cuppa."

Even if she's good at it, rather.

"Anyway, shall we team up in here? Cover the ground together and keep each other safe?"

Anduin flashes her a soft smile, offering her a nod in return.

"Please," he agrees. "I cannot say how much experience I have in facing off against ghosts, but we are certainly better off together than on our own."

He glances back ahead of them, into the darkened room.

"The anchor is just ahead, I think," he says. "Though I expect that the task of actually eradicating it will be easier said than done."

She lights up the tip of her wand again, offering some form of light for the way ahead of them.

"Alright - well, on the bright side I refuse to believe this will be as bad as the Unwinding's house, but just in case let's walk close to each other. If you watch our backs, I can watch the front - does that work?"

Anduin nods in response to the offer, flicking a grateful smile in response to the light.

"Between the two of us, I'm sure we will keep ourselves well-defended," he replies. He motions down the hallway, in the direction of the dark magic he feels pulling him forward. "Shall we?" he asks.

With a nod from her, the press on, stepping into the room - which turns out to be a library, or what remains of it. The house has long since been abandoned, left with all its ghosts, but as soon as she steps inside Hermione is besieged by sorrow.

A feeling if failed duties.

"I - Anduin, we should search this room," she whispers. "Even if it might not be where we need to be."

Anduin frowns at the sensation, supposing he should not be surprised by it and yet -- it is troubling. Here in this house which had been an orphanage, before the sickness had taken the city.

He nods in response to her suggestion, uncertain why they are whispering but feeling he should keep his own voice quiet just in case.

"Of course," he says. Glancing around the room before he suggests, "You take that side and I take the other?"

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As often as the Doctor has been down here since his arrival in this world, the atmosphere in the mansion now is markedly different. Though he isn't particularly sensitive to ghosts the way he's known some of their group to be, the Doctor has a touch of extrasensory perception, which just makes everything around him feel haunted. He can sense a few things from the air around them, though he's seeking more than just an encounter with a ghost. They have a mission, tasks set before them, and he's determined to leave this place far better than when they started.

Though he's not opposed to doing things alone if needs must, he does prefer a companion at his side. So, he's hopeful upon hearing a voice call to him.

"Who, indeed." A cheeky inside joke with himself. And probably not immediately comforting. So, quickly, he adds, "The Doctor!"

He comes around the corner, hands held up, palms showing. "Here to help. And so are you, I expect?"

Anduin is a magic user, and a priest of the light. It would normally make him sensitive to spiritual energy, both the living and the dead. But this city has had a funny way of playing tricks with his magical senses. Dampening them in uncomfortable ways. He supposes that it does make sense, in retrospect. Given the revelation that half of the population of the city has passed away from this disease. Still --

He can feel something coming off of this building. Given that it was the center of where the illness had spread, it is no wonder there are spirits lingering about the place. He's never heard of a spirit answering in quite so direct a manner though, and so his brows draw together in a puzzled frown before the Doctor rounds the corner and reveals himself.

"Ah," Anduin says, his expression evening out slightly. "Yes -- I am. Trying to, at any rate. It would seem that we may need to convince the inhabitants of that, though."

"The inhabitants - yes, bit stroppy. Suppose I would be, too, if this were my fate." While it does make the task ahead for them more difficult, the Doctor can't blame the ghosts, really. They didn't ask to be trapped here, haunting this eerie mansion. He pities them more than anything else.

"Mind the walls, the portraits - well, everything really," he notes softly, glancing around to just take a long look at the path ahead of them. "I suspect the closer we get to the anchor, the more difficult this is going to be. Happens in video games, anyway."

Well, and that's just his life in general, really.

"We'll stick close together, eh?"

He has, reluctantly, been forced to admit lately that splitting up to go off on his own hasn't worked out very well. Now, if only the people around him would listen and agree and not run off.

Video games...?

Anduin decides that perhaps it is best to let that comment go, nodding instead in response to the Doctor's suggestion that they stick together.

"I think it would be best if we did," he says, flashing the Doctor a smile. "As you said, there is likely danger around every corner here. Especially the closer we get to the anchor."

He casts a wary glance around, before motioning the pair of them forward.

"I suppose at least the very air of this place has not turned against us, as it had in Ellethia," he muses aloud.

Finally. Someone agrees and doesn't immediately want to run off alone. He's relieved, for once, and that earns his companion a responding smile.

As they start to move forward, the Doctor idly runs his fingers along the walls, touching, trying to feel something. He doesn't have abilities in sensing ghosts or magic the way others do, but in situations beyond where they find themselves now, he's been able to detect the age of something through scent, taste, touch even. That all seems to be lacking here.

"Ellethia," the Doctor murmurs aloud, "I wasn't here for that. What happened?"

Anduin glances aside at the Doctor, watching him running his fingers along the walls as they walk. He isn't getting the sense of being in any immediate danger. Well. Rather, he is, but not that it's about to jump out at them around the next corner. Is that better or worse? He doesn't quite know.

"It was one of the first cities that fell to the dead," Anduin explains. "And also where the Merchant happens to be from. We... Made some decisions as a group that he didn't approve of, and so he took us there to stress what exactly was at stake here."

Anduin had made a decision that the Merchant personally had not agreed with. But that's neither here nor there.

"There was a spell upon the city, everywhere save the Institute of Technology -- where we came upon our friend Zenobius, if you have heard of him. The very air was... Inhospitable, to say the least. Without protection from it, the cycle of life and death was stuck in an endless loop. Corrosive to bare skin, on a small scale, although there were obviously grander repercussions."

Sorry, Doctor. He's nobility -- a king, in fact -- he has a tendency to monologue sometimes.

Unfortunately, perhaps, for the sake of his companion, if the Doctor likewise had any sense of imminent danger, he'd dash headlong into it. Though, he expects the young man with him might be of the same nature; after all, he's here isn't he? The possibility of danger looms all around them, but he hasn't fled.

Also, the Doctor doesn't mind a monologue in general, though he likes it less when it means he's the one saying everything and getting nothing in return. When he has information presented to him, as in this case, he's appreciative.

"Well, that's a dreary thing, isn't it? Glad you survived it, in a manner of speaking." Survival, of course, takes many forms. Also, his suspicion of the Merchant increases, though he's sure that's true of everyone in their group.

"Oh! I've forgotten to ask - what do I call you? You is a particular favorite. I've still never met anyone called that but I'm hoping I might yet."

"Yes, it was rather that," Anduin agrees. Dreary. Desolate. There are things that Anduin has not shared about their experience in Ellethia as well, in the Tower. Things they learned, experienced. It would not help to lighten the mood. Rather the opposite, at that. "When the Institute collapsed we did our best to get ourselves out of there. And Zenobius as well -- its keeper we encountered there. I am happy to say that he has finally recovered himself, after that ordeal. The medics here are taking very good care of him."

As for the other question the Doctor poses... Anduin turns to flash him a smile at that.

"Ah, my apologies! I forget myself. I have seen you on the network, and heard of your conversations with Wrathion, I forget we have not been formally introduced," he says. "I am called Anduin. Anduin Wrynn. Would that we were meeting in better circumstances, Doctor."

"You've all been here quite a long time. I'm still a bit of a newbie by most standards, I think - to borrow a word the kids are using these days. The cool ones, anyway." As if what the "kids" are saying anywhere really matters in the scheme of things.

"Well done, honestly, doing everything you can to help. It's my motto as well. Here to help!" From what little he knows of Anduin so far, he seems just the sort of person the Doctor will easily get along with. Caring about others, approaching danger without thought of himself. Yes, they'll get on splendidly.

"I'm very glad to meet you, Anduin, though honestly, these might be the best circumstances we've managed in a bit. Look at us, though, the pair of us in a haunted house, I'm sure we'll manage what's been asked of us." A pause, and then he smiles a bit brighter. "Wrathion! A very good friend indeed. I was recently trying to convince him that bunk beds are quite practical and fun, you might put in a good word in my favor on that. He ignored me, but I'm almost positive he's deeply considering it."

All said in jest, of course, but the Doctor does think highly of him. "Have you been alright, since the Tower?"

A smile spreads itself across Anduin's face as he considers the Doctor's argument.

"I shall have to ask him for his opinion on the subject and get back to you on that," he replies, diplomatically.

As for the rest of the question...

Anduin's expression softens. He appreciates the Doctor asking -- after all the Tower had been... A Lot. Ellethia itself had been A Lot, especially given that the Merchant had brought them there at least in part because of him. Because of the decisions he had made. His mistakes. Wrathion had warned him, this city is not Stormwind. He is not their king. And sadly, he learned this lesson the hard way.

"We have had our ups and downs," he replies, which is an equally diplomatic answer. Fancy that, a diplomat answering diplomatically! "The same can be said of our experiences in this city too, I suppose. Though I have hope that we will be able to make a turn for the better, here at the end. The anchor here in this mansion, for instance... If we can only find and purify it of the curse, we will be one step closer to lifting the sickness from this city entirely."

"Ups and downs - quite literally, in fact, on a few occasions. Most recently, in the Tower, I found myself going up and down several times," he notes, a bit of his strange kind of levity in times of more serious discussion.

"It's good we found each other here, then, you know. I don't like leaving anything in a terrible state, either. Try to make it better, I say. Help, if you can, and I always try," he smiles a little. That's what he does, after all. The Doctor, here to help.

"Can you feel anything as we go along here, anything at all? I'm not sensitive to it the way others are, but it seems...heavier here, darker, just around this corner."

Anduin pauses for a moment, before offering the Doctor a nod, centering himself.

"It is darker," he agrees, quietly. His companion is there with him, to protect him, and so he allows himself a moment to gather himself inward, to close his eyes and reach metaphysical fingers outward. Toward the room in question, just around the corner where the Doctor had indicated.

"I feel... A presence there," Anduin says, a frown pulling across his features as he does, before he opens his eyes again, continuing to frown at his companion. "I cannot say whether it is the anchor itself, but. It feels as though it belongs here, if that makes sense."

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