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

[thedreamer]

Unsettling, unpredictable, potentially risky; all the ingredients for a good time in the Doctor's mind. Well, by a certain definition of "good," in any case. It's an adventure, certainly, and he does so love those. It's also, of course, an opportunity to uncover more about their present circumstances and, hopefully, this will ultimately aid their efforts in finding a cure.

If nothing else at all, the Doctor loves a haunted house, particularly one with such obvious connections to their present predicament. It's delightful, this old ruin, the promise of both further mysteries and answers that await them here. He's encountered at least one ghost thus far, one who tried to trip him down the stairs about ten minutes ago. A good effort, he can't deny that.

"Thank you for the compliment, you're right - my aim is much better," the Doctor notes, jovially, as if this is just another day at the office. In many ways, it really is. "And my preferred type of cutlery is a spoon. Very handy in a variety of situations! Though probably not here. Now I've just said it, we'll turn a corner and encounter something where a spoon would have been the exact thing we needed."

Note to self: grab a spoon while here. He's lacking.

"That was very good, by the way! That boast a moment ago - You'll find I'm accustomed to winning. Spoken with an air of authority, assured, unshaken. A good man to have around!"

[blackscales]

The Doctor always has had a... strange manner about him. Wrathion takes a moment to calculate if this latest comment is intended as a real compliment, or sarcasm. He settles on real -- the man is uncommonly earnest in most things he does, and likely this is one of those moments. The flame in his hand winks out, and he gives a slight not. A little awkward to acknowledge a comment on boasting as flattery, but he'll take what he can get. The 'air of authority' part was certainly worth holding on to.

"Thank you," he manages. "It seems this building used to belong to Ma'am Mariol. I had been hoping to find something here, something beyond the ghosts of the past. Something we might learn from, perhaps related to our young friend with the fox mask."

[thedreamer]

Wrathion wouldn't be the first to regard him as strange, though the Doctor would take it as a compliment, himself. Strange and weird; his specialty, really. In this particular instance, he did mean it earnestly, having been both amused and impressed by the command.

"Oh, same wavelength, the pair of us," he notes. "What are the odds?" Though, he's already lost in another thought, looking around and briefly swiping a finger across a corner of the stair railing, then touching his finger to his tongue, seeming to consider it for a moment before scrunching his face up a bit. "I can usually tell the age of something by taste. Everything's been off here, though."

Particularly in this house. Certain places seem to dull his senses more, with frustrating unpredictability. Before he can say anything else, a small plate flies through the air close to his head, though he's able to duck quickly enough before it hits him and shatters near the bottom of the stairs.

"Well, we've got an adventure ahead of us, haven't we? Terrible waste of a plate, though, really. You could just pull my hair or trip me down the stairs. Not that I'm asking for it, just offering alternatives. Though I suppose ghosts don't have much of a use for dinnerware," he announces to any ghosts nearby, as if they're on familiar terms already.

Is he losing the plot for a moment? Yes, it would seem so. He looks back to Wrathion, though. "Where were we? Finding something useful! Yes, let's get to it."

[blackscales]

Is a plate worse or better than forks and knives? Wrathion can't really decide.

"That's the idea," he says. "Any kind of records from when this place was active, anything that might tell us about this child."

Although where they keep the records, he couldn't say. He's not, exactly, familiar with the common layouts of orphanages. Do they have specific records rooms? Libraries, he supposes? Or just Administrative areas that the caretakers stay in?

"Have you checked all the rooms upstairs?"

If so, he supposes the rest of them downstairs would be the best bet. No use repeating themselves here, when there's potentially limited time before one of them is actually hit by a knife. Or, he supposes, before the ghosts here escalate to something else. Possession maybe? Either way, he'd really rather not find out.

[thedreamer]

"Checked all the rooms, played a fun game of blind man's bluff with a few of the ghostly children, regretfully declined an invitation to a lively tea party - really, might have been fun, almost joined them, but no one seems to make tea the way I like it around here." Strong, but with lots of sugar.

"Haven't been down this way yet," the Doctor says this with no small amount of glee in his eyes, pointing to the corridor that leads to the left, at the bottom of the stairs. With a small, quick hop, the Doctor makes it to the bottom of the stairs and then does a quick, almost excited spin around before looking back to the corridor on the left, pointing at it with his thumb and index finger. So far, he remains relatively

"To be fair, haven't gone that way, either," the Doctor points to the right, "but this seems like a go lefty sort of day, doesn't it? I'm feeling good about left. But do please weigh in, this is a partnership, equal all the way."

[blackscales]

Wrathion turns to follow, if more slowly. He's not really the quick hop sort, but with the amount of extra time the Doctor spends on his excited little spin and point it rather evens out.

"Left works for me," he allows, "I'm amenable to any direction that finds us answers."

He links his hands behind his back, eyes skimming their surroundings as he turns into the corridor in question. Best to be alert, after all, in case of more butter knives. Or sharper ones.

"I don't suppose the game taught you anything of relevance?"

Hopefully he might have mentioned if it had, but Wrathion has the slight inclination that it's entirely possible the Doctor is the kind of person who may forget to mention important things.

[thedreamer]

"Paperwork, records, books - anything we can find. Surely there's bound to be..." He doesn't finish the sentence, finding no purpose in it, really. He's already onto his next thought. This place, it's what Gavroche told him about when they'd spoken, it must be. The children running about.

Gavroche. Wrathion. Oh! And then his mind that's always moving forwards, backwards, sideways, faster than nearly anyone else's, finally pivots back to a conversation he'd had with Wrathion not long ago, about Gavroche. A few more important details that might be particularly relevant to share now, yes. He does forget these things sometimes but he always comes back to them, with a bit of prompting!

"Not the game, no, though they didn't play entirely fair. Probably should have expected that," he rambles. His point? Oh, right - "My young friend, Gavroche! I spoke with him again, after you and I talked."

He's walking along backwards as he's talking, after turning a corner to go left down the darker corridor.

"He told me there was a place before where they are now, a bigger place that closed, though he didn't explain further. He spoke of his friend who wasn't a 'big boy,' to use his words. His friend helped them, taught them how to take care of themselves, shine shoes, deliver things. He has plenty of toys, Gavroche said, and he's asked them to lie. I told him to come to me the next time his friend asks him to lie and he promised he would."

A pause. "Probably should have led with that. All these ghosts here - this must have been the place he spoke of, the bigger place that closed."

[blackscales]

Ah, Gavroche. Wrathion tilts his head with interest, watching both the Doctor and the hallway ahead -- just in case the man walks into something while he isn't looking.

"Yes, I think so. I was hoping for records to confirm they were both here, although it sounds like Gavroche already has. I'd wager our fox mask wearing child is the friend who asked them to lie."

About what, though? His best guess is, perhaps, about the sickness. That the children know people are dead, and are going along with things. Which is interesting, because he hadn't thought they did know. A difficult thing for a child to cope with, he'd imagine, knowing so many of the city are dead. Then again, perhaps their minds cannot process the weight of it? Or they don't know exactly how many, since they're down in the mouse house?

[thedreamer]

"The very same," the Doctor agrees. "If Gavroche does indeed call on me as he said he would, hopefully I'll learn a bit more. Though, troubled as he was by the act of lying, I had the sense he wasn't fully aware of the scope of it all."

Not surprising for a young mind, but far too much for a child to be expected to carry. Getting answers out of Ma'am Mariol had similarly been a bit more challenging. She'd been a strange mix of forthcoming, yet also seemingly naive and oblivious about things that seemed obvious and troubling to the Doctor.

Glancing over his shoulder now, he sees a room up ahead, wrings his hands together eagerly and finally turns so he's walking forward. As he turns, though, around the corner, a few spoons are thrown in their direction, coming to land on the ground just a few paces ahead of them.

"Oh, yes, finally something useful! Of all the things to throw at us..." A normal reaction to such things, surely. He kneels down to pick up two of the spoons from the floor, attempting to play them against the heel of his hand, all while still walking. "I used to play the spoons in my younger days. Different face. Bit rusty, you understand."

Too distracted to give it any serious attention, the Doctor sticks two of the spoons in his pocket and hands one to Wrathion, as if it's something to be revered. "You'll thank me for this one day. One day, when you least expect it, you'll need it most."

[blackscales]

... Well, he supposes a spoon is not a... completely useless tool. Wrathion looks faintly bewildered, but he accepts it anyway and slides it into his pocket.

"Thank you," he manages, and moves carefully further into the room. A picture hanging on the wall adjusts itself violently to hang at an angle, and Wrathion glowers at it as if that might somehow persuade it not push matters.

"I hadn't expected the children to be aware at all of what was happening," he admits, moving up to a small set of drawers and opening one curiously. "Yet perhaps they are, in some small way, and are helping to... maintain this deception."

As much as children can. The drawer yields nothing of interest, and he closes it with a sigh to try another.

"I find it troubling."

[thedreamer]

The Doctor, for his part, is pleased when Wrathion accepts the spoon. In his mind, it'll be useful one way or another and he pays little heed to Wrathion's expression, only because it's simply a reaction the Doctor is used to by now.

"Children are both remarkably perceptive and yet also accepting of what they're told by the people they trust. They can believe a lie to a certain point, even if they're asked to be party to it, but in my experience, they can sense when things aren't quite right, even if they don't know everything," he notes, moving to the other side of the room and looking through a cluttered cabinet for anything of note as well.

"Troubling would be the word for it, yes," the Doctor agrees idly over his shoulder, examining now a pair of broken eyeglasses before setting them back down.

"Ma'am Mariol was strangely...untroubled herself. What people accept as their version of the status quo always fascinates me. A measure of protection." Something he is also far too familiar with.

[blackscales]

"I noticed that. Her memories also seemed... unusually patchy. A side-effect of the gas, perhaps?"

Or something else. Could the child be involved too, in making sure they stay so passive? Stay dolls in his dollhouse? He closes the regretfully uninteresting drawer, turns to consider the Doctor.

"It is generally easier to accept a status quo when you cannot seem to recall anything that might make you question it."

And if you're busy enough, you may end up not focusing on the things you seemingly forget. All in all, an easy way to keep people calm.

[thedreamer]

"Likely," he nods. "I do worry about them, the way they're being...handled." Spotty memories, keep them docile and forgetful. As Wrathion said, it's troubling, to say the very least. But they have a plan to help them, a path forward, at least, and a purpose.

Another drawer that yields nothing and the Doctor is already onto the next one, though as he searches, he pauses to look over and smile briefly at Wrathion. "Bit distracted earlier, dodging the cutlery as we were, but I meant to say, that flame you conjured in your hand, that was quite something."

Of course, he's seen all manner of interesting things in his travels and certainly in his time here thus far, but it makes him no less appreciative when he's intrigued by something.

[blackscales]

Hmmm? Ah, yes. Wrathion lofts an eyebrow, curious at the response. He didn't feel it was impressive at all, not in the grand scheme of things he was capable of. More than that --

"I hadn't imagined fire magic would be impressive to a Time Lord."

The title said with the careful emphasis of someone who is still a little uncertain how to feel about it. The Doctor had mentioned harnessing technology to achieve it, but also that they regenerate and are functionally immortal in some way. He's still not sure exactly how much of it is, in fact, the man's own ability and how much is artificial. At least, artificial to Wrathion who is used to the innate abilities of the Bronze Dragonflight. He can see timelines, after all, but not... here? Nozdormu has had his vision blocked before, but usually over... specific events.

It's all fascinating, but strange at the same time.

[thedreamer]

Admittedly, the Doctor himself has been alternately both impressed and skeptical of magic. For much of his life, through multiple incarnations, he's felt there's always room for magic in an infinite universe. Contradictorily, though, in his fourth life he'd thought of magic as being superstitious rubbish. How times change.

"What do you imagine would impress me? There's always room left for being impressed in life, I believe. I dread to think of the opposite ever being true," he scrunches up his nose a little at the idea of believing he'd seen everything the universe had left to show him.

"I'm impressed by small clouds of stars and dust swirling through space and careening into one another to form a galaxy, and I'm impressed by a child learning to read. I've seen impossible things over and over again, but I've never seen that exact thing, the way you conjured the fire. Is there more you have the ability to do?"

He would imagine so, but can't assume, of course.

[blackscales]

Interesting. Wrathion tilts his head, considering that.

"Yes," he admits. "Fire conjuring is the least of my abilities. Elemental control is common enough where I am from that most people wouldn't give it a second thought."

Which is why, for him, it isn't a particularly impressive form of magic. Then again, as the Doctor says, if you haven't seen it in that exact way he supposes it is interesting. Wrathion does like to learn, he supposes he can see that he'd be at least curious about someone conjuring fire in a way different to what he knows.

[thedreamer]

"Gloriously, there remains things I don't yet know or haven't seen," he smiles with a bit of whimsy. It's why he travels, of course, because there's so much to see, do, and learn. It all goes away so fast, so he's just always running to and from, perpetually. Trapped as they all are here, though, it affords him the chance to learn...so much more about others and the worlds they call home.

"What else can you do, then?" He prods gently. "Quite a lot, I imagine." The Black Prince from... "Oh! I didn't ask you where you're from. Obviously it'll be new to me, but as we've established, I enjoy learning."

[blackscales]

"Azeroth," Wrathion says, and he flicks a small smile. "And I wouldn't want to spoil the surprise."

Perhaps, one day, the good Doctor will find out the other things Wrathion can do -- he supposes they'll have to wait and see. He turns back to begin digging through the drawers again, pausing as he picks up a book.

"There's a ledger of sorts here --"

At which point something above them creaks ominously.

[thedreamer]

"That sounds like something I'd say," the Doctor almost-but-not-quite pouts, scrunching up his nose a bit. "Fine, fine, keep a bit of mystery in life, Wrathion from Azeroth. I'll look forward to it."

He does mean that genuinely. He thinks well of him, and whatever mysteries he still holds, the Doctor is sure they'll be quite interesting. How could they not be?

"Ledger? Now there's something useful..." He trails off, though, distracted when he notices the creaking that seems to be almost directly above their heads. "I've a feeling it's not someone shuffling around a wardrobe up there. Our ghost friends-"

Before he can say anything else, that creaking turns into a loud groaning and the ceiling begins to buckle.

[blackscales]

"I think that's our cue to leave, don't you?"

Before the house begins falling down on them completely. Wrathion shoves the ledger into an inside pocket of his coat and moves over to the Doctor, trying to speed him along with him out of the room just in case he decides he wants to linger. There's another loud creak, and then a crack as dust begins to fall. A crash signifies sections of ceiling crumbling and beginning to fall as he heads for the doorway. As he reaches it, a knife goes flying past and embeds into a wall nearby.

"I see we're graduating from spoons."

The force is increasing too. He'd rather not test their aim out more than necessary.

[thedreamer]

"I suppose that would be-" It's good that Wrathion moves to hurry him along, because even given the obvious danger, he does have a tendency to linger. It's rather his siren call, the danger, the pull of it. But he supposes his companion is right and they ought to be going.

"-wise." The Doctor just barely manages to jerk back out of the way of the knife. A close call, yes, but one that still gives him a bit of a thrill. "Don't want us messing about with that ledger, perhaps. Okay, point taken!" He calls out to...whomever is messing about.

But they have the ledger, regardless, and any bit of information they can manage to find at the moment is invaluable.