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

[makemeasong]

She's been down too long, and Clara is frantic, eyes scanning the water until she sees the faintest of movement that's not like the others: bubbles breaking the surface. There's a moment of being terrified, but she grits her teeth and grabs onto a wooden plank that isn't attached to anything. It's not too heavy, and so she wields it with one hand while trying to swim away from her perch of safety.

Batting hands away, she kicks at wrists that snap easily, until she feels fingertips that don't grab at her, but rather brush against her ankle as they sink. Vanessa. There's enough of a path that it's taking time for dead bodies to fill the space again, and Clara dives under the water, swimming down, down, until she reaches blindly and feels skin that doesn't disintegrate to the touch.

Getting Vanessa up would've been so much harder if the skirts hadn't been cut away, and Clara gets her arms under Vanessa's arms to begin kicking upward. Just before her head breaks above the water, she sees a body coming closer and she could swear its the face of the Doctor, and then her head breaks the surface, gasping.

By the time Clara manages to drag them to the bank, she's so exhausted that her arms are shaking. But she still looks at Vanessa, to see if she's breathing.

[matermali]

The journey to the bank is a haze. She could be floating, she doesn't know, but when the soft drifting leads her back to the ground, the pressure underneath her seems to sweep up, over her, down and down, pressing until her insides twist and pitch-dark water spews out after a violent retch.

It's all Vanessa can do in the moment while hiccupping and gasping for sweet, painful air to reach and push aside the dripping hair clinging to skin where the faint hint of blue still fades. The shock leaves her trembling, but it will fade.

"I suspect," she rasps out with a groan, "that I am due to trade skirts for trousers on my next shopping excursion."

Twice now her skirts have nearly damned her to a watery grave since coming to Serthica. How can she not find some sort of humor in that, even as nausea continues to roil in her gut?

[makemeasong]

Clara falls down on the ground beside Vanessa, unable to move now that she knows they're both alive. Her body has never felt so completely exhausted, all of her limbs heavy.

"Your fashion, it's amazing. But the skirts, yeah." She can't make more coherent sentences for a few seconds and she lays there with her eyes closed.

"The Doctor's gonna kill me and then bring me back so he can yell at me." Not the first time she's said that, and probably not the last.

[matermali]

Though it had been a partial jest, it might behoove her to invest in an outfit that's better for these types of excursions. As it is now, she's left feeling and looking as the ragdoll she's been named for. Lucky to still have her head. Enough to cough for the sake of precious breaths.

"Are you hurt?"

After tugging hair from her eyes and spitting out any lingering slime, Vanessa forces herself upward just enough to drop back onto her knees beside Clara. She looms pale and wide-eyed, the shredded ribbons and lace dripping. If she isn't hurt, then the Doctor hardly needs to find out.

The cut on her own hand can easily be excused. She's done as much with her own knife. Of course, she'll need a new knife now.

[makemeasong]

Opening her eyes again, Clara finally manages to look up at Vanessa.

"I haven't used those particular muscles in a very long time. They're protesting, might be on strike." Her limbs feel like gelatin, but slowly she manages to sit up. When she spots the blood on Vanessa's hand she frowns and reaches out to gently take her hand, trying to see how bad it is if she'll let her.

"I'd worry about an open wound in that water, but if swallowing a ton of it doesn't do anything to us, I think it might be fine." She can't think about what might have gone down her throat because if she does, she's pretty sure she'll retch.

[matermali]

Vanessa is quick to tug her hand away the moment Clara reaches for her. It's a small cut, and perhaps she can thank the silk gloves she'd been wearing for that, before they had torn or been pulled off. Whatever meager protection they had offered in the beginning is gone. Realizing that she's lost her gloves leaves her more anxious about the harmless little day-old scratches along the backs of her hands than any splintered cut on her palm. Fortunately, it may be too dark for Clara to see anything.

"...Thank you."

Even if she's shied from her touch, Vanessa is grateful for Clara's care. She would have drowned if not for Clara's bravery. The other woman had her chance to get away free and clear, and Vanessa wouldn't have blamed her. She isn't like to forget such an act, but it only reminds her that any danger Vanessa finds herself in will extend to Clara.

At this point, it might be wise for her to reconsider her options. Vanessa isn't one to easily give up, but she'll need to find a way to reach the anchor without further endangering Clara. Perhaps they ought to lick their wounds, and Vanessa can make another attempt once Clara's safely elsewhere. Should something happen to Clara, Vanessa doesn't want it on her conscience. She couldn't face the Doctor.

She struggles to stand, the shredded skirts barely reaching her knees now, and one of her stockings has dropped to bunch at the ankle of her boot. She looks and feels quite like a drowned and discarded doll, indeed.

[makemeasong]

It doesn't faze her when Vanessa pulls back; she doesn't know her. "I couldn't leave you out there, had to try. You're welcome, though." Clara's clothes have fared better, but she was merely in jeans and a long-sleeved shirt. There is a rip in the jeans, though, right down the left leg. She'll turn them into shorts, maybe.

Eventually, she's able to sit up and take a few deep breaths, pushing her hair back from her face.

"I can cross that experience off the list. I think maybe we should regroup. There's dead people's skin in my hair." She refuses to run her fingers through her hair any more than she already has.

[matermali]

She very well could have left Vanessa out there, and many people would have, but Clara has already given strong impressions about her own sense of morality to a scale that's fitting for someone who chooses to travel with the Doctor, so Vanessa shouldn't be surprised by her courage. It doesn't make her any less grateful.

Her chest still burns, and her footfalls feel unsteady, and with the chill in the air only worsening against sopping clothes and bare skin, Vanessa does little to argue against Clara's suggestion. For the moment, at least, she'll back down. It doesn't mean she's given up.

"If your wish is to avoid the Doctor's chagrin, then you are welcome to rinse your hair and find some dry clothes at my residence."

Clara is a bit shorter than Vanessa, but that's an easy fix when one has a droid at the ready.

[makemeasong]

"Thank you, he can be relentless." He's going to be anyway, but that's a problem for future Clara. She smiles just a little but it fades quickly and she slowly manages to push herself up, then stands with her hands on her knees.

"Instead of rugby, should've been on the swim team. My legs are mostly okay now, but my arms feel like they're vibrating." Her muscles are protesting, but she can walk alright now that she's caught her breath.

"And I know it didn't go the way you were planning, but I know you were trying to save me, too, so thanks. You put yourself in danger for me."

Clara remembers Vanessa's face from under the water, murky and just barely visible. But she'd definitely looked fierce, and before the dock failed them both, the hands had been letting go.

[matermali]

Vanessa scarcely remembers any of it, save for the sight of Clara dropping away so suddenly that she seemed to completely vanish. She doesn't think she did much of anything, save fall in with her, but the returned gratitude is acknowledged with the barest of smiles.

Despite her own lack of stability at the moment, Vanessa remains near in case Clara should need someone to lean on when they set off. For some reason, despite everything they've encountered that evening, she finds herself focusing on such a small thing like rugby. It's a connection to Clara's life, certainly, but also something possibly mundane (in the most interesting fashion). A perfect distraction.

"Are women more welcome to the sport in your time?"