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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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Ah. Wrathion frowns, gives a slight shake of his head.

"I have enough energy," he admits, "but this... curse, this anchor is unfamiliar to me. I can contain something dark in a box easily, but I don't know enough about this anchor to feel I could address it delicately. I'd trust Karsa's preparation more than my own lack of it, with this many lives at risk."

Better that, than taking the sledgehammer brunt of his magic to something and having it backfire. Unless, she is only guessing to? Should he be doing something else? He flicks his eyes around the dock uneasily, feeling out the weight of the magic here. He feels a whirl of uncertainty, more than he's ever felt before. In the past he has been judged reckless, but is he now being overly careful? Should he trust himself more?

There is ... a skittishness to the moment, a fragility not unlike a great, fattened bead swaying on a thread too thin, which now threatens rupture. Strange, to understand this fierce, stubborn creature can also be reduced to something tender, brief and small.

It is not a lessening of Wrathion. Only a shift in the light that bathes him. Young, somehow, and a decade of mourning singes Lan Wangji's bones, paints him withered. A hall of mirrors might be easier to traverse than tonight's distance between them.

He does not make the first step — waves his hand once, horizontal to the ground beneath it, until air warms and ripples and summons the callous, greedy shape of a pale, extended zither: more power than instrument, but sufficiently materialised to accept, focus and communicate Lan Wangji's intentions. His fingers hover over the strings, teasing the start of grieving, yearning, shrill sounds that never surface. The living play; the dead listen.

It is ever so.

"Seed her sorcery. Make your attempt alongside it. I shall complement you."

Imagine: to be Lan Wangji, Hanguang-Jun, and so impossibly serene and secure in your abilities, while dead hands try to slither their way up your robe skirts.

Wrathion watches as Lan Wangji conjures the instrument, feels the ripple of magic as easily as he sees the hands reaching between the planks of the rotting dock. His senses flare, more alert suddenly. Of course something would begin to try and stop them, or at the very least respond to such a display. The music stirs an ache in him, something he cannot quite name, some pain that will not be abated and Wrathion's fingers curl.

"Of course," he says, affecting confidence he doesn't truly feel.

Even if he's plagued by doubt, he cannot let it bind his feet to the ground in indecision. He has to do what he can to help. After all, when has he ever really been wholly assured of the best choice?

He draws one of the wards free of his pocket, fixes it to one of the few upright pieces of rotting wood and begins to channel a wash of draconic power into it. It's hot, strong, but focused. He can feel magic around him react in kind, but he tries to tune out the clawing sensation of the volcanic power.

...ah, this, then: condensed, brutal, unmitigated power. So many of Lan Wangji's recent companions are ever this — weapons of immense and seldom singularly directed destruction. Fearsome, glorious, but difficult to cooperate with.

Draconic energy tastes viscerally different to anything else Lan Wangji has ever coordinated with. Severe, headstrong, earthly. When his fingers dance the strings, he initiates first cleansing, then appeasement, then a simultaneously deeper and lighter inquiry — drawing out the ebbing waves of energy for Wrathion's spell to decimate.

It is, in the way of these things, too sly, too orchestrated. Unnatural to the ways of the Lan — but efficient and eradicative, when deathly hands chain his ankles and swipe at Wrathion's, when nails scratch the inside of the dock planks, when waves spume, rise and crash torrentially.

When the corrupted energy dwindles down to a stain, a shadow.

When the wood under their feet decays, dissolving, nearly crashing them into water.

"Take cautio —"

At least, when his guqin disappears and Lan Wangji holds a hand out awkwardly for Wrathion to please consider saving him from the seas, he doesn't outright scream.

Wrathion is so entirely focused on his task, on the job of making sure the wards are charged up here as far as he can, that he is not particularly focused on Wangji. The man has always seemed to be able to handle himself, after all, and he's not one to babysit people unduly. He is aware, distantly, of the undead scratching at the docks. Of the heavy waves.

He is aware of the dark, unpleasant sensation of the docks beginning to fade. As if, perhaps, they might actually be achieving their goal despite his doubts. A sense of triumph builds in its wake -- of course they did it! Why wouldn't they?

The triumph is abruptly shaken by cold water.

Wrathion feels the docks crack a little, then suddenly snap. He is rapidly made aware of the sheer number of undead there are, and how they are all indeed in the water and now quickly close on the two of them.

He hates being cold. Creatures who burn hot dislike being plunged into cold water.

Shaking like a dog he growls, throwing some of the undead back with unnatural strength for someone who does not particularly look well muscled. As fast as he moves them, however, they just keep approaching, and the risk of being pulled under looms.

"Let go..." He growls, a warning that they ignore, and then his thrashing intensifies. "Enough of this."

He's in cold water, surrounded by undead, in a miserable city and he's had enough. There's a swirl of smoke, and then the figure thrashing in the water grows -- to be a dragon now thrashing in the water. His wings kick up huge sprays as he tries to gain altitude, to lift himself high enough to begin shaking off the undead

First, the shivers and chills and bites of cold, flaying him. Then, the violence of his descent, captured by assailing hands that seek out his bones, his limbs, to grab and detain them —

And his sword, blistering, blinding, cutting through decayed flesh and bone when he swings once, then again, the friction of dull waters slowing his hand. He cannot see, dark of a long night blinding — and ruptures, finally, the long glacial sheets of water with Bichen's cut, preparing to half-swim, half-sink -

...until Wrathion erupts from the waters, and Lan Wangji is only a pale and gaunt thing, staring. He cuts a pretty sight, this wretched wraith of a bird-like snake, this masterpiece of myth and chaos.

Lan Wangji barely remembers himself, when a hand climbs up his ankle to nearly claw it off, until he kicks once to dislodge it, again to discourage the next assault — and falls prey to the wicked temptation of plunging to latch onto Wrathion's leg, as the dragon flies up and on.

Some might call this a rescue.

Others, an unilateral decision to abuse Wrathion's presence. All the same, between Lan Wangji's gritted teeth, "Apologies."

...one really should ask before trying to catch a ride on a fierce dragon monster.

Wrathion feels a hand close around one of his legs and lifts it a little, preparing to shake --

When a glance down reveals the owner of the hand to be Wangji, who likely does not want to be thrown back down into the water. Wrathion studies him, giving a few smaller flaps to maintain his limited altitude and keep steady. Is he going to climb up...? Or just hang?

He waits until Wangji seems steady, then extends his wings and beats hard again for more height. They need somewhere new to land now, and preferably nowhere excessively public. Wrathion glides down around the docks, pulls up as he spots a spit of damp land big enough to fit him. The water roils with undead following them, but at least land is solid and they cannot fall through into the water again.

"Here?"

He can land or keep moving, depending on Wangji's preference. Does he wish to leave the undead behind or handle them?

"Here," he concedes, and it's as if scratched free of him, broken and torn. His voice, waterlogged, struggles for its own fluidity. He clings to Wrathion's leg, shamefully aware that he must challenge or burden the beast in flight, that his presence afflicts more than it offers shield or sanctuary.

Then, his free hand scavenges the inside of his silks, hunting down the last scant shrapnel of his parchment paper — littered with inks, with started but unfinished calligraphy of fresh sorcery, with the insignia of new spells.

Drifting to land, the talisman he chooses rains down like fresh snow, easily discarded. He watches it fall, latch, spread the claws of its magic — and shield a modest circle of territory in a wave of mute, languid strength.

"It will not harm, to land within," he murmurs, as if Wrathion is a skittish horse facing the first thundered coughs of a summer storm.

A useful trick. Wrathion circles down, landing himself in the shielded area carefully enough that Wangji has time to... detach, as gracefully as possible.

The ground is wet, and Wrathion feels himself sink into it a little as he lands. It smells unpleasant, as much as the rotting dock that had collapsed under their feet had.

"You are unharmed?"

He lowers his enormous head to study Wangji more closely, half distracted by the undead outside the shield. He cannot smell heavy bleeding coming from the man, but he was plunged into the cold water and pawed at by the creatures. How much damage did that do? Does he require a healer? Wrathion is, admittedly, not very well versed in traditional medicines or the limits of mortals. They seem to sicken easily. Too much of one thing, not enough of another.

"Shhhhhhhhh." This, mindlessly, absently, with the learned condescension of a man accustomed to soothing war horses. Ah, but it's a negotiated slip down, a hard but yielding landing. "I persevere."

Bloodied, battered, bruised. Of no consequence. The walls of his ward barriers tremble and close in, suffocating, while he redirects the better part of his attention to taking the knee, to easing down — to settling a piece of secondary parchment on hard ground and seeding the root of further shielding.

Together, they secluded part of this curse. Alone, Lan Wangji may bring tranquility to grounds he cannot salt or decimate of their sadness.

He murmurs, after, airily, "You performed adequately."

Given Wrathion's slight... hesitations, perhaps a sliver of encouragement might cross a mountain.

Adequately?

Wrathion lets out a grumbling sound of discontent, of warning. 'Adequately' is not a compliment to Wrathion's ears, it is a judgement that he could have done better.

"Your shield falters."

Since they are trading judgements. He appears to be trying to strengthen it, but until that point:

"Would you prefer we handle our persistent followers, or remove ourselves?"

If Wangji desires violence, violence can be done. If he tires of these shores, they can make an escape. It matters not to Wrathion, he only seeks a preference in direction. Working together is easier than working at odds.

His shield falters. To their great fortune, Lan Wangji slow to flinch for all his cheek blanches, Wrathion's serpentine tongue does not. Poison, thick and slow-killing, accruing. Poison, gracelessly applied.

He had anticipated —

...no matter. Ingratitude suits the dark of Wrathion's scales, the dull and witless artistry of the escape he has led. Who is Lan Wangji to complain? Watch only the curled, coiling bow of his back, how his arms join, slithering and perfunctory once he has suitably descended. Courtesy can be learned. Take example.

"We withdraw." For his part, Lan Wangji shall be rinsed of the corruption of the region, the dark and stale spatters of decay that spread in him, from skin to core. They have finished here, their energies planted to exorcise the native misery of the land.

Anything more would be a boon they have not earned.

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