hale and whole

[groundrules]

HALE AND WHOLE

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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

Comments

[vdovy]

Well yeah, that's why I said endangerment, not murder. [ Personally, Yelena is not fundamentally opposed to him and his little group. Serthica clearly has some problems that aren't being addressed. But she has to question their methods, especially when they seem to be planning yet another attack while her own group toils to cure the sickness. ] I thought your purpose was to restore the freedom and dignity of the people, ra ra ra! You're talking like you exist just to be a thorn in the sides of the powerful.

[sansdoute]

...freedom? ( More coughing, to the side. Instinct still drives him to cover the lower half of his mask with his elbow, as if there's any danger of spittle dripping out. ) What's free? Free was when they sent to kill, brother from Minaras, brother from Eidris? Wassit free then, the blood for spillin'? Like... like'ere.

( Like this, when he takes a flat screwdriver and stabs indecorously at the thickened knots of wire, and oil gushes out. )

Like that. Could lick'it off your feathers, couldn't you, birdie-bird? Well, don't. This isn't the good stuff, it's the lame shit they bring from the Mouse House, because Minaras hasn't been producing in five years. Is what happens, see? Come'ere. Come here, put your hand on it, feel this thin filth. Won't lubricate for nothing, you come'ere.

[vdovy]

Thanks for the demo but I have seen blood spilled. I get the picture. [ Part of Yelena sympathizes: during training, the Red Room would often pit sister against sister, forced to fight to the death. An effective method for culling the weak. The girl she was then would have laughed at her suggestion of freedom too.

She wavers momentarily, wary of what may happen if she gets closer. Ultimately she does approach to swipe her index finger through the oil. ] Do you have a point with this?

[sansdoute]

It's bad lubricant, is the point! Because they shut the faaaaaactories, birdie? You see? You understand? I worked...

( Look, he is purposefully spreading out the lubricant in a thin smear, showing off its translucence. ) Years with good, honest, proper oil, and what's it get when you pit — pit —

( Excuse him, more coughing to the side. ) When you divide an honest place in two. You don't get workers. You don't get work. Your fingers are idle. Bet there's an itch in them. Bet that. Heh... eh? You've got pretty hands with pretty nails.

( Then blandly: ) Like a forge worker.

[vdovy]

[ Yelena sighs as her hopes of gleaning any useful information out of this interaction dwindle. He seems caught up on the division of Serthica, like a skipping record, unable to reason past his gripes. She has one last thing to try and then she's cutting her losses. ]

You haven't said one thing about the sickness, you know. Your people aren't just divided, they're dying. If you're serious about helping, I have a proposition. Abandon your plans and help us cure Serthica.

[sansdoute]

( He stops, for a moment, eyes sharp when they stay on the girl, when they follow the loose lines of her shape and know it. Sickness, she says. Then, she must know.

No one else speaks of the plague, after all.

With another cough, drifts down to pick up a rag and start the slow, pained process of cleansing his hands of oil. )

No one's dying, birdie-boo. Stop crying at your graves, with wreath of posies. Them's already dead. That... he? Imagine? Hahahahhaa... a laaaaaaaand of dead things, is our Serthica, wonder o'the woooooooorlds! We got them dragons, we got them droids, we got them dead!

[vdovy]

How do you know that they're already dead? [ Yelena asks, her curiosity piqued now. It took enormous effort for her group to rip away the veil and reveal the extent of Serthica's sickness. Even now, they can only see the truth through their devices. How is Remembrance that far ahead of them? ]

[sansdoute]

Heh...? He... he... hehheheheheee... hah... hah...

( Coughing, spluttering, a madness of laughter. He seems unable or unwilling to cease, consumed by a manic disposition, his engine entirely abandoned. Then, finally, he recovers enough to set his broad, wide hand on hers, snake-fast, if she doesn't remove it. All he wants is to squeeze, to let her feel the metal beneath.

To nod at the downed Aerial Healing Unit vessel in the distance. )

When it got bad, bad, bad, girlie-birdie, pretty-feathered thing, when it was bad, and you was all sad... and sick... the likes of me, we went in these, vrooom, vroom, with the pilots, with the medics, delivering... whatever was! Bones! Bags. Goodies. Wretched cures, and them's so sour, birdie, what's that? What's thaaaaaaat? Don't spit'em out. We was out on an expedition, all while Serthica had it rough, got caught in the war here, in the Sands and... ( His hands come together in a strong, sharp clap. ) Boom......... when we got back. All them dead! And then? All them waking... like nothing happened. Nothing! Nooooooooot a lick, up so quick. Like toys.

( But now, there's the edge. ) Toys that want entertaining. Need busying! Together. Or they realise... they're toys. So you give'em something! A little war. A little protest. What's the harm? What's the harm? They look mean at each other... least they're not looking in the mirror too long at themselves! Cause they're not pretty like you, birdie-bird.

[vdovy]

[ Yelena isn't scared enough to startle when he grabs for her hand. She lets him take it and squeeze if only to avoid offense. It seems she finally has him in a sharing mood and she would hate to disrupt that. ]

So you are just, what, a part of the show? You said you were keeping them busy. But wouldn't you want them to know?

[sansdoute]

( It's a hard laugh, ugly. Mean. A little bit torn of him, like the next cough. )

What's the good to'em? The crying? The wailing? Got tears of blood in every eye, you want to tell a mother the child's done-dusted? You want to say, most the city's gone? Let'em squabble like turkeys, instead. Let'em. Keeps'em busy.

( Few things more distracting and productive of busy work than a war. )

And it's trouble, birdie, the minding. The mending. Nothing so — sophisticated in your nest. The dollies are bad make, so bad, like this shit lubricant. The worst. Need changing and breeding and swapping. Good to keep'em busy, when it's all to be done.

[vdovy]

They are not alive, but they are not dead either. You're doing all that work just to keep them busy. Why not help us make them better? You could actually improve things instead of just— [ Yelena gestures around them with her free arm. ] —doing the same thing you always do, to the same end.

[sansdoute]

He... hehehehheee... heh..? ( But he's raising his engine, its entrails dragging down, rattling it as if it might whisper its secrets. ) You hear the birdie? Do you? You? Hear'er? Asking like we've not tried yet, us, like there's anything to be done, like us and that other unlucky fool d'Ubiq ain't tried it, shhhhh, whassat? Whassat, she's a fool of a bird? Got tar on her feathers? No, she ain't fat, won't do, bread for'er, she's fancy. Got crumbs? Got -

( ...and now, kindly brace for the rounded engine part, sent flying for Yelena's head, while Chrichter reaches for the blade he's been deploying to cut through wire. Run, while he screams for all his followers to hear: )

Got crumbs for your cursed tongue, birdie! Come talk more to me?

[vdovy]

[ Yelena ducks to avoid the thrown part and bounces back up just as quickly, wearing an expression of exaggerated shock. Of course Chrichter's betrayal was inevitable, but she had hoped they were building a rapport, perhaps the gateway to some temporary truce. So much for that. ]

You are so disappointing! Oh, poor me, I failed a few times so now I've stopped trying. [ She brings balled fists under her eyes as if wiping away tears— the universal hand gesture for calling someone a cry baby, although perhaps not as universal here. Then she grabs the nearest object (some sort of ratchet) and hurls it back in his direction. This she does mostly for the distraction, allowing her to take cover behind the landing gear and begin firing up her tasers. ]