let's set d o w n some (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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westwhere2022-11-13 04:42 pm
groundrules) wrote in westwhere2022-11-13 04:42 pm
Entry tags:
- arc iv,
- arcane: caitlyn,
- arcane: viktor,
- better call saul: jimmy mcgill,
- doctor who: clara oswald,
- doctor who: the doctor,
- harry potter: hermione granger,
- kingdom of the wicked: emilia,
- kingdom of the wicked: wrath,
- legend of fei: xie yun,
- mcu: kamala khan,
- mcu: yelena,
- oh! my emperor: beitang moran,
- penny dreadful: vanessa ives,
- shadowhunters: magnus bane,
- star trek: leonard mccoy (aos),
- star trek: una,
- tian guan ci fu: xie lian,
- touken ranbu: kanesada,
- untamed: wen qing,
- warcraft: anduin wrynn,
- warcraft: wrathion,
- warframe: kahl 175,
- wheel of time: moiraine,
- word of honor: zhou zishu,
- x-men: charles xavier
hale and whole
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.
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.)
✘ 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.
✘ (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.
✘ 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.
✘ 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.
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.
no subject
I know I told you this once already, but you were the very first person who ever talked to me when we got on that train. And I was very sad that day before I ever arrived. Then you sat next to me. How could I be sad after that? I learned a lot from you, like what your Earth is like, and the Grineer and how tall the women are. You made me smile for the first time in Serthica.
[ Kahl's value isn't just in being what he's made to do. He's more than that. As they round a corner, she glances at him. ]
I also feel very safe with you. Are there people my size on your version of Earth?
no subject
He still has to be careful, though. Keep watch, check around corners. This place is still dangerous. Mostly bad thoughts and tea-drinking ghosts with dull knives, but he isn't going to let anything hurt his brother here.]
Mm. Lots. Some like Clara. Most on Earth, like brother Horrek--Ostron. Clara's Earth have Ostron?
no subject
No, I've never heard of them. But at least I'd be in good company. [ She hears a noise and stops, straining to listen. Before she can hear or say anything to Kahl, a hand yanks her hair back so hard she stumbles backward, falling on her arse. The sound of mischievous laughter trickles down the hallway and Clara grunts. ]
That's better than throwing things, I guess.
no subject
It's a long moment before he sighs, reaching down to offer Clara a hand up.] Ghosts remind Kahl of Manics. Kahl wish they were. [He'd explain what those were if Clara wanted, but first--] Clara okay?
no subject
[ Are they? Can they? Taking a deep breath, she finally realizes the door ahead is the library. ] Is a manic something that's invisible? I think that word doesn't mean the same thing for me as it does for you.
no subject
Mmhm. Manic is small Grineer. Clara's size. Very fast. Very sneaky. Laugh lots. Kahl not see many. Queens' science captain make them. Special gene mould. [He'd heard that a lot of them went to elite units like the Nightwatch Corps, but he'd only seen Manics a few times.]
Manics like when hear good job. One follow Kahl once. [Which had startled him badly, because it was so sneaky. The Manic had laughed at that too.] Maybe ghosts like too? [He sounds skeptical of his own idea. The ghosts aren't on their side, the way that Manic had been. He didn't have any other ideas. But he had ideas now. He was starting to feel better.]
no subject
I do like to pride myself on being fast, though, sneaky only when required.
[ Clara feels a tug on her pant leg which is creepier than flat out violence. At this point, she's willing to try anything. ] It can't hurt to try, right? So let's try it. [ Clearing her throat, she shouts out, completely unsure. ]
Hey, you...ghosts! We think you do a good job. A great job, in fact. Keep up the wonderful work. [ She pauses, and then adds, as an afterthought: ] Cheers, mates.
[ She pauses, waiting in the stillness for something to happen. ]
D'you think it worked?
no subject
Maybe her training will help with these ghosts. He goes quiet, on alert. Maybe it's working? But if they go after Clara again...]
no subject
I think this means we're in the right place. Would you like to do the honors? And so you know, I'm always happy to teach you things if I know anything about them.
[ Where the ghosts seem to be the strongest makes the most sense to Clara as far as where to put the wards. ]
no subject
For now, deploying the ward. He follows the instructions from Karsa, invisibly written down in Grineer text that floats in his peripheral vision, kneeling down to carefully set the little thing in a good-looking spot--beneath a creepy, sagging painting.] Ward set.
no subject
Damn. ]
Kahl, I think we have to go back to where those feelings felt the strongest, the worst.
[ She looks so apologetic when her gaze meets his again. ]
I hoped it would be different, but it doesn't seem like our luck is that great today.
no subject
Clara right. [He hands back the magic thing.] Kahl not like that place. But... we got job to do. [He tries to put on a smile, though the scarred side of his face pulls half of it down before it can even start.]
We make creepy plant place sorry.