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]

Clara's forehead creases in confusion; he says that as if he has the copyright on caring for others.

"You really don't get it, do you?"

Her eyes close, all of the words she meant to say before he regenerated coming to the front of her mind. Everything she knew she should have said instead of begging him not to change. Would he have been the same, if he'd known? Maybe if he'd known, somewhere in the back of his mind, he wouldn't have pushed her away.

Opening her eyes again, Clara looks at the Doctor as a tear glides down her cheek.

"People love you, Doctor."

If she says anymore, she's afraid she'll break them.

[thedreamer]

No, he doesn't. Even now, hearing the words - People love you, Doctor - he can't comprehend how or why that should ever mean that the people he loves die for him. Too many have already, too many still remain, and his hearts shatter again at the revelation.

He doesn't quite know what she's not saying, what might be hidden behind the words, but he takes them at face value, that she believes he's loved and that she includes herself in that.

"But they are so, so important. All of them. You, Clara. Why is it you before me?"

Even as he speaks, he reaches out, brushing that tear away.

[makemeasong]

His touch and his words make her choke out a sob she's attempting to hold back; her head turns, unable to look at him for fear of really crying. In that moment on Trenzelore, she'd watched Vastra in her panic over the stars going out and Jenny and Strax blinking out of existence; so many lives lost or changed forever because the Doctor never saved them. Planets and moons and entire galaxies gone from the universe.

Clara could say all of those things are why it was him before her and it would be true. But not entirely. What better declaration of love than saving him, even if she's the only one who knows?

Finally looking back at him, she wonders how long she can continue calling Serthica a second chance without doing anything about it. Is now as good a time as any to tell him her love for him outweighed any fear or doubt and made her brave?

"What do you want me to say? I don't think any answer will make this better or make you feel any differently."

And so she's a coward, again.

[thedreamer]

"No, nothing will," he agrees quietly.

Equally, he doesn't know what to say exactly because words elude him when they matter most. He only knows that he's angry at his continued existence when all around him continue to die before him. It's always been his life, though, and nothing has ever or can ever be changed about it. Perhaps somehow he might be able to stop Clara ever doing this for him. His mind turns it over even now, even understanding fate as he does.

There are no easy answers here, nothing he can even do about any of it right now, but he settles for something that feels tangible and easy, reaching out to pull her into a tight hug, a hug that would protect her from everything if he could control that.

[makemeasong]

When he pulls her close, it's a gesture that's so familiar she nearly outright cries. But instead, her arms wrap around him tightly and she breathes him in, closing her eyes. Even having been in Serthica as long as he has, he still smells like him, like the air before a storm, traces of the time vortex.

He feels like home, the circle of his arms a place where nothing can touch her. It's the only thing she needed to be the same when he changed; she doesn't care about his face (although this one is quite nice) or the way he sounds, whether or not he still likes fish fingers and custard. None of that matters, as long as he'll still hold her long enough to feel safe.

That all went away in an instant, he'd done the opposite and run away from her. She never got the chance to help him because he didn't let her. It's all going to change, and her mind needles at her to finally say it, to get it out even if he can't possibly say it in return. She's not positive he'd ever say it in return anyway, no matter the circumstances. Now, though, for him, it's only been a short while that Clara's been traveling with him. She expects nothing in return, but while she feels brave in his embrace, the words tumble out of her mouth.

"I love you, Doctor." Her words are so quiet that if he wasn't a Time Lord, he might not have even heard her. One hand comes to rest against his chest, between his hearts, staying tucked right where she is against him.

[thedreamer]

It's such a human thing, he thinks first. The words, the saying of them out loud. As old as he is, the Doctor likes to believe he's glimpsed love in all of its many forms since the dawn of time. There is no one way to love, no right way to love (though there are wrong ways, certainly, and he's seen those, too), no perfect way. Love can be friendship, romance, understanding, importance. He loves and has loved so many, many, though few deeply. He can't love anyone too deeply, he can't let himself, can't get attached, yet he's found that here in Serthica, he's been pulled towards people in ways he never anticipated, expected, even wanted perhaps. He loves so much, that will always be true.

He still doesn't know Clara very well yet, though he understands that for her, in her supposed future, they're incredibly important to one another. It hurts him all over again to think that she loves him so deeply she felt she had to die for him. While he would gladly offer the same in return to everyone he loves, it's quite another thing to be faced with it in reverse and it's happened far too much in his long life.

Words are important, he knows this very well. Humans want and need to say the words because there might not be time later. The Doctor should understand this, does understand, to a certain extent, even if he's never been very good at saying the most necessary words out loud. Maybe there's a value in it, he thinks. A purpose in saying the words, in finding the strength to confess to them out loud, to even be aware of them. If Clara can be brave enough for it, perhaps he can, too. So he can't help it if, for a moment, his thoughts drift to Vanessa, to a loose and jumbled series of thoughts and feelings that have very recently come to the forefront of his mind. It still doesn't make sense to him, not all of it, but he feels a compulsion to understand what it is, and to seek a strength to say...something to Vanessa out loud, something close to what Clara has said, but in a different way.

It's entirely different, what he feels for Vanessa. That, at least, he understands. From his own perspective, he assumes that Clara loves him in the way that he loved (loves) Amy and Rory; Donna; Martha; Ace; Tegan; Nyssa; Jo. So many, so important. And Clara, now among them.

As he's protected and loved all of them through the years, so will he also with Clara.

He's loved all of them and they've loved him, but he wishes sometimes they didn't love him quite as much as they did because then they risk themselves for his sake and they never should. He thinks of River now. River, who loves him in a different way as well, surpassing his understanding. He doesn't love her the same way, though he understands perhaps he will in his future.

But it's Clara he's holding right now, Clara he wants to protect in the way he failed to protect Amy, and that makes him tighten his hold around her for a moment, pressing closer.

"You're very important to me, Clara," he finally says. "I won't let anything happen to you, I promise. I'll take care of you."

[makemeasong]

Knowing something and hearing something are two different things, but Clara refuses to go back on her silent promise to herself to not expect anything. Not just because of the timing, but because of the other doubts she's always had that kept her from saying anything. She's too human, too mortal, and she knows it. All she'd do is hurt him with selfishness, he said it himself to the man in white. What it would take to not be alone is too terrifying. How could it not be?

"I know," she murmurs, giving herself another five seconds before pulling away and clearing her throat as she looks down at her feet for a moment. Once she's sure she won't cry, she manages to meet his gaze again.

"And sometimes, people need to take care of you, too. I know you hate it, but there are too many people here you can't run from."

[thedreamer]

He's not going to agree to that last part entirely, though he can't deny that he's unable to run here. It's been a bit maddening, to say the least. When he looks at Clara, he's filled with such a deep and abiding fierceness to protect her. He can understand how she might feel equally that way about him, but it's still hard for him to accept.

He's somehow missed that her confession of love is about...a different kind of love. It doesn't occur to him, simply because he's still getting to know her.

He does lean in to kiss her forehead tenderly, though. "We should get back. Bit of a day."

[makemeasong]

Clara smiles, and this time it's warmer, beginning at the kiss and remaining in place when her head tilts back to look at him.

"For the record, you do make other people feel just as wanted and loved and safe as you hope. Maybe even more." Clara couldn't walk away from this without saying it, and then she takes his arm in hers.

"I mean, you finally won me over with food, but then after..." she trails off, only teasing and laughing softly. She wishes his answer to her were different, she knows he didn't understand her personal confession mixed in there, but maybe that's okay. She knows what she means, and he knows she has a love for him.

She can make that be enough.