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

[downswing]

( She flees him.

It should not startle Lan Wangji, when he released the girl — punished the insistent, chaotic smear of her shape with the curse of his mouth, with exorcism. When he disrupted whatever agony of loneliness had preserved her, bound to the living world, through afterthoughts of affection.

And yet, his gaze wanders, seeking her in jutting reflections on the wall, in moments gone. Anduin is young, too young to father, too young to know this ache.

Children lived here. Of course they did. The synchrony of their long-gone footsteps sings scratched notes inside Wangji's skull. )

What use are pretty words?

( What is deserved, what is righteous. The spirited, but empty proclamations of men who speak of the world as it should be, offering no solution. So often, Wangji is accused of wintered, stubborn taciturnity. And yet — and yet, they have hands. Means to an end, instruments sharper, more efficient than mere pronouncement.

When his silks drip to kiss the floors again, it's the rim of his sleeves, the lace and the longing of its stitchwork — when he crosses the lengths over his wrist, in paltry simulation of how a man of the field might bind to defend his only garments from tattering.

Then, he passes his hand, once and impatient. Again, trembling — but remembering the forms. Until air breaks soundlessly, and Wangji's zither appears, a strip of floating power he seems to as much master and serve. )

We set to work.

[chosenbylight]

[What use are pretty words, Anduin supposes, if they are not followed through with action?

He watches as the other man drops to his knees on the floor, the instrument appearing before him from thin air. Even if it had not appeared in such a way, Anduin can feel the power that flows from it. He is unfamiliar quite with how such an object might be used in such a way -- but he supposes he does not have to understand.

They simply need to see this through.

Anduin offers his companion a nod, before he moves to stand at his side. Unlike Wangji, he has no artifact, no weapon, no item to wield against the threat they face. Nothing but the Light itself. He tightens his hands into fists, before loosening them at his side.]

Together. [he agrees] The purification will be strongest if we are in harmony. On your command.

[downswing]

Unnecessary. ( But then, discourtesy ill suits the moment — rapid but ruinous. Some treat sorcery like arsenal, content to weaponise magic to full, brimming extent. ) The guqin's qi —

( No. Another correction. Ah, but he is poor at this, mouth soft, hands wandered. There is an element of foregone conclusion to his approach, an assumption of shared learning.

And what is qi? Knowledge native to his bloodstream, spreading its roots. He hesitates, then rightens his back: )

Our music speaks to the dead. ( Through compulsions, torture, appeasement. No matter. ) Language is flexible. Fluid. Better you lead.

( The zither has the better chance of filling what gaps remain in wake of Anduin's magic, of tempering or stoking it. )

[chosenbylight]

[Anduin glances aside at his companion, offering him a careful look.

But Wangji does not need to explain. Qi -- mana -- Anduin follows along enough to understand. He understands the basic principles of magic, for Azeroth at least. He himself has devoted himself to the Holy Light, and it is only through years of dedication to his studies that he has mastered its practice.

After a moment, he nods. Wangji knows what he is about. And he is familiar enough with Anduin's magic to understand what he is requesting as well. If he thinks it better that Anduin leads this -- he will not refuse. Quite the opposite, in fact. Being a priest, he is no stranger to the ritual of Purification.]

Very well.

[Anduin closes his eyes then, centering himself in the quiet of the rot around them. Seeking, reaching out amongst the mold and the decay that point where the disease is at its worst. Where it is anchored to this house, to this existence.]

The anchor is here. I can feel it, I...

[He holds it there in his mind as he begins to pray. For the children. For the child. For the Light. Drawing upon its radiance and filling himself with it, its brilliance spilling from within him and filling the room, before he channels it forth toward that point with the searing Light of Purification.]

[downswing]

( Against the rippling lakes of magic dark, Anduin's sorcery is an eruption, sharp and quick and too severe, blinding. Youth is strength is unbridled, captivating sincerity — aweing and terrible to behold, but straightforward to implement.

In the end, all Lan Wangji must do is slip the energy in the negative spaces of Anduin's efforts, fill out his incursion. Strengthen it. Layer, build. Song pleases with flexibility — so long as he calculates the spread of Anduin's onslaught, he can direct his own.

In the end, the result is plain, anticlimactic. Rupture, spillage, then peace. The elimination of the cause of distress. Corruption removed like puss from a wound.

He wishes, at times, it were a greater, more complicated thing — that he might feel more as a gardener or a grower or a nurse, less a crude surgeon of energies. Fatigued, he drifts his hands from the zither, only calmly taking note that the instrument dispelled before he thought to intentionally release the summoning spell. Ah, it's like this, then. )

...this room was always cold.

( Striking, somehow: so often, an infestation of the dead lowers local temperatures. This was not that, then. At the end of an exorcism, how frightfully mundane. )

[chosenbylight]

[The Light retreats, gone as soon as it had been summoned, only the trace remains of its warmth lingering in his bones as Anduin centers himself. Taking a deep breath in and letting it out slowly, the air around them feeling -- different. Cleansed, yes, of the disease. But where the darkness is gone, the sadness still remains. Not a haunting, exactly. Just an imprint upon the space itself, and the loss that it had suffered.]

Well.

[Anduin glances back at his companion, feeling a tiredness wash over him, of the spirit moreso than any effect the place has on him now. He flashes Wangji a wan smile.]

It is a greenhouse. These sorts of structures are not usually built with insulation in mind.

[He takes in another breath, reaching out with his mind across the space, but it feels like -- just a room. Just a room in a house that suffered too much pain and loss for one lifetime. He glances back to Wangji once more as he murmurs,] It is done.

[downswing]

( They both appear as withered as Lan Wangji feels, hollowed out, abused. As if what little they had to give has now successfully been extracted, leaving them no better than shell of themselves, bones and gristle, no marrow.

The elegance of his practised glide, step slow, turns ragged, catches at the edges. Towards the end, turning to exit the room, just as mould begins to regress from the walls, he nearly loses his footing. Recovers it, in the end, at the last moment.

His hand comes dark with spores. Dust. )

Nothing of hate changes in this world. ( There was hate in this house before the dead peopled it. They do not linger where there is warmth. ) Little is different.

( He is older, somehow, now, than his years. Than his wars. Paler. Drawn. )

Shall we consult the ledgers? ( There were books in this office, names and information. He tires of all that he should have, but never came to learn. )