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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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The classification depends on strength and objective. Cause is —

( Chained to goal, but prospectively irrelevant. In the grand, glorious scheme of that which is their duty, when a disciple is accepted and trained and brought up and schooled, then set to task — the spirit must be appeased, quieted, released. Amends, satisfaction, dissolution. Exorcism, for want of alternative. Brutality only exists as a last, parting resort.

As with the living, the dead are shaped by the stain they weep on those who surround them. Intent does not displace consequence in the hierarchy. And so, they must —

...abandon the trodden path of Lan Wangji's philosophical and academic meanderings, as Clara summarily slips down, Wangji follows beside her, swathed and coddled like a fresh-born babe, and his head suffers no harm, though his joints deplore the landing —

As he catches himself hovering squarely over the girl, arms and knees bent to bracket each side of her body, half-hovered, before squarely rolling over, because this was all fun and games, when he was young, celibate and unbound, but mistress, he is a married man, concussed and heaving, glaring the way of the ceiling.

And muttering: )

...I breathe. ( In answer, before he crouches, feline-line, rising. ) North. The energy derangement pulses strongest there. Let us attend.

[ Clara sits up promptly, brushing herself off and relieved, at least, she didn't hear any sickening cracks of his skull. When he suggests they keep going, both of her eyebrows rise high toward her hairline, looking at Wangji like he's spoken gibberish. At least stubbornness in the face of his own peril is a familiar song to her. ]

Just a second ago, you couldn't stand up on your own. I'm pretty sure we should leave before a ghost causes more damage. You have people here I really don't wanna have to give bad news.

[ Positioning herself in front of him as tall as possible, she puts a hand on her hip. ]

If you can walk in a straight line for twenty paces, we'll go north.

[ Because despite it all, she knows they should stay if they can, and she realizes he may have some sort of healing ability she doesn't know of. But he's also hurt, and she feels responsible for him getting out in one piece. ]

( Only a heartbeat ago, his qi hadn't righted its courses, hadn't shifted to recalibrate towards healing. Now, all is correcting in a world where he can pin one step after the next, and the wailing pulse of his migraine disappears like a ripened bruise that shifts to pallor, to nothingness, gone. )

If you can stay my step, we cease progress.

( And his brow perches, meaning limpid: Can you? With respect to her dignity, her stature, in the grand scale of obstacles worth clearing, Clara ranks squarely above dust motes and beneath pebbles. And Lan Wangji — grip loose — is yet armed. )

I go north.

( Accompanied or alone.

North, then. He starts, alone — clumsy, slow, one hand on the stair's rail, but climbing. If they have time to banter, they've time to see their deed done. )

[ Her hands move up and down her face with some amount of familiar frustration. ]

Right. Fine. A roof just fell on you but no one's allowed to worry about tough Wangji. He who speaks in sentences as though writing a primary school book.

[ When she worries, she gets...mouthy, apparently. Clara can't let him go alone so she's moving with him up the stairs; behind him but not directly in case he falls backward. She can't help him with the stairs. There, he's on his own. ]

Had you managed to find or see anything before I showed up?

( Tough Wangji, tight-lipped Wangji, he who excels at endurance and disappoints at every other turn. Familiar criticism. Candid. Whip tears on his back, long bleeding. He grits his teeth against the sting, keeps walking, climbing, cutting his path. Up. Onwards. Constantly in motion. )

The roof. ( And they accuse him of frail or threadbare wit, of aridity. Ha. Keep walking, keep walking, keep crawling on. No matter.

He cannot say where he seeks to deliver himself, what waits at the end. Light, blinding. The beginning and end of dreams. Fear and discomfort. They start to itch his hands like a rash, to dampen his bones.

He feels the room like distant summons, the crass but careful construction of its appeal. When he pushes the door open with the back of his hand, he nearly topples into the grandiose, mould-saddled quiet of the greenhouse. He says nothing at all. Not yet. )

Here. ( His mouth is slack, still. ) Isn't it? Here.

You're a regular comedian. Definitely quit your day job.

[ There's an edge of a smile in her voice, but it's there and gone. Clara follows him up and up, then to the lackluster door that seems to disintegrate into sawdust. But she feels it the moment she steps in, the familiar way the magic crept into her head before, seeming to coalesce around her.

She doesn't say anything either, not for two or three seconds after he speaks before she finally nods, looking at him. ]

You can feel that too? This is it.

[ There's seriousness in her voice, no longer bantering. ]

( Gentlemen have no toil, only duty. As for the nature of comedi —

But then, they've arrived, and the greenhouse breathes deep and dark around them, primed and waiting like an animal mid-stretch, deciding if it intends harm or obedience. No green, wherever the eye lands, only withered debris and dust and wilting. Only shapes corroded, only petty explosions of gravel underfoot. Chipped tile. Cracked floors. )

Here. ( He concedes and silently walks the distance until he's a wet, white apparition of nothing, back partly bowed and hands stiff when he summons before him, in a ripple of power, the spread of his zither, from crackling air. Magic exhales with the demonstration. His fingers tickle the strings, the single, starting note shrill. )

There are songs of cleansing. If I play, it may retaliate. ( And yet he does not offer to resist. ) Fend for yourself.

Always comes down to the greenhouse with us. [ Well, two out of three isn't bad, but she doesn't even smirk at her own joke, the other feeling too all-encompassing. It feels dark and hollow, a shell of any beauty that was or could have been.

His movements are watched carefully, and Clara idly wonders if he's going to use up whatever energy he has left. Or maybe it's infinite, she has no clue. ] You realize I can't carry you out of here. [ She never knows if anything she says is appreciated or even wanted, but she has to say it anyway. ] I won't leave you.

[ Taking a deep breath of her own, she isn't sure if he means physically or mentally, so she assumes both and finds a broken pottery shard, just big and sharp enough to do damage if used. Against what, she isn't sure. Surely ghosts can't be hurt like this?

She decides the magic doesn't play by any rules anyway, so better to be prepared. ]

Be careful. I'm not very good at fighting. As you know.

[ If she needs to protect him, Clara will do everything she can which likely doesn't give Wangji much confidence. ]

( Perhaps we have an appetite for greenery. Or for menace, or graves. A strange thing, how they only ever cross paths in the face of sullen, wet danger. Even now, waters peer beneath his knees in thin rivulets and deep-dug claws, and he does not ask if it is cold, the work of chills, or cold, that of another's memories, chained to the house, assailing its visitors. )

Your presence is — ( 'Tolerated'? 'Assumed'? 'Of no dire consequence'? But then, these are ugly words, and she is a pretty, brave thing, witty before the travesty of their perpetually challenging circumstances. What is the word Wei Ying might favour? Dead on his slack lips, he thinks, he murmurs: ) Thanked.

( And he waves her down, only the once, in tepid invitation. Sit. Sit still, be cautious but unassuming. Strong.

When he plays, power trickles from him like blood leaves a wound in a bath of heated water. Seeping, then filling out, then a sudden, startling deluge. The melody is a curious arrangement, at once tender and shrill, perfect synchrony and a casualty of notes without segue or species. Limpid. Purification is this: the groans, the sudden, rapid rattling of the walls, the ghosts that start to howl and shake the floors or come out, looking to claw them, and he murmurs, absent-mindedly: )

Set down the witch's wards.

[ Clara's fondness for Wangji's habit of not wasting words grows. Despite only meeting under the direst of circumstances each time, she's always walked away believing he's a good man. She isn't sure if he thinks he is, she doesn't know his past, or if he is outside of Serthica, but her interactions with him make form the only opinion she needs.

She sits where he indicates and watches with rapt fascination, staying aware that there ~~could be~~ will be danger. Eyes widening when the haunting begins, she watches the room around them seeming to come alive with displeased, groaning rasps. The wails make her feel chilled to the bone, make her feel like she wants to run. She's never heard anything so filled with despair and genuine loathing.

Wangji's voice pulls her out of her dread-filled wonder and she scrambles up, deciding to spread the wards out a bit. Not much, but enough. Getting the task done proves challenging, the ghosts fighting back. She feels nails dig into her shoulder and drag down, making her gasp in shock. There's no sense in turning around, she knows that, so she keeps working.

There's a howl right next to her ear as she puts the last ward into place, closing her eyes, holding her breath. ]

( Purification sings, splintering walls, stabbing cloying, thickened air. Peeling off stray, slim dregs of mould, like skinning a writhing animal.

Ghosts spill out of walls, as if they're haunted to manifest a wild, manic chase. They burst from one corner of the quarters, stumbling, trashing, plunging into the next. Take each other's hands, twirl, attempt renditions of stabbing and executions.

The witch Karsa's wards light up, a beacon of crude strength Lan Wangji's song first neglects, then relies on for reinforcement.

The spirits slow. They bow. They wilt. They disappear in rains of dulled silver, in filigree.

And purification plays on.

Until, finally, the tremble of his chords corrupts his hands, until the song's done and he has lent it enough of his power that the deficit strains him. All is silent, all is bright. His lips have cracked, bloodied. He demonstrates every sign of his pale fatigue.

The zither disperses before he breaks the summon — a sign of his loosened energy and control. He drifts, nearly toppling over.

Perhaps they were too many. Perhaps he was, one man, too few. )

It is done.

[ For a few heartbeats, Clara isn't sure it's going to work. The wailing is so loud and so haunting she thinks it might never end. But then it begins to fade out and she lowers her hands from her ears (she hadn't even realized she'd done that). ]

Holy shite.

[ That's about all she gets out as her eyes focus again on Wangji. He looks like he's about to pass out so she hustles, dropping to her knees beside him in time to wrap an arm around him. She doesn't have anything to wipe his blood away with, brow creased with concern. ]

You did it, Wangji. I don't know what the hell that was or how you did it, but you did. [ Her features are soft, but her voice is firm the next she speaks. ]

Now will you let me help you out of here?

( ...he loathes touch. Deplores it. Shrinks and shrivels and is reduced to the lessened version of himself, shadow and silhouette, dust and motes in wake of it. Touch is intimacy, violence, violation. A rupture. A staining of his person, his soul.

He does not synchronise with open, physical affection. The grit of his teeth is gravel, sanding. Yet he bears it, now — leans, gently, into the support lent, so he might come to his feet and negotiate his steps.

One. Two. More. He breathes out. )

Not alone. ( Not then, rooting his magic. Not now, excusing himself away. ) Assisted.

( You have done well, young lady. )

[ Clara has somewhat learned Wangji's language; it's the same way she had to figure out the Doctor, only it's the opposite of parsing through all of the words to get to the actual point. With Wangji, she has to read between the lines, and perhaps the third time's the charm. Or maybe it's because he's literally weakened this time and she's supporting him as they steady themselves for their exit. Whatever it is, assisted makes her swallow heavily. ]

About time, yeah?

[ Maybe she isn't useless, maybe she can stand up to whatever threatens them all. She wants to help, not require rescue. ]

Once we're out of here, I'm helping you to wherever you need to go. I hope you're prepared for that.

( He is... softened, slow. Like fresh winter's snow, a sketch of himself only returned to life as Clara transports him. On a better day, in a finer existence, he would not require her leading hand, the majesty of her guidance.

But they are here, now, traversing dusts and greys and chaos. Retreating like ghosts that were, for all the land has now gone cleansed. )

You are not engaged to assist the Doctor? ( He rasps more than speaks it, lungs arid, raw. At each turn, she has made her allegiance known, her priorities plain. No harm or folly in the step. )

[ Clara can't help but smile a touch, but it's laced with concentration as she tries not to stumble. ]

I'm not his field research assistant or something, Wangi.

[ She doesn't change her answer for his hurt state, giving him the full sarcasm experience. ]

I'll give you that we're together a lot. But I want him to learn how to play with the other kids, socialize.

You speak of him as a mother.

( One confronted with the whims and poignant volatility of a particularly challenging child. Some part of him, aching, steps gruelling, pulse of his migraine brained with his confusion, cannot help but grant her point. He is ephemerally kind their doctor, a blossom of fading petals.

The prettiest flowers have thorns that grow wild and sovereign, unless (until) they are constrained. )

May he achieve this learning. ( ...and do his mother proud. )

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