let's set d o w n some (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
groundrules) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
westwhere2022-11-13 04:42 pm
groundrules) wrote in westwhere2022-11-13 04:42 pm
Entry tags:
- arc iv,
- arcane: caitlyn,
- arcane: viktor,
- better call saul: jimmy mcgill,
- doctor who: clara oswald,
- doctor who: the doctor,
- harry potter: hermione granger,
- kingdom of the wicked: emilia,
- kingdom of the wicked: wrath,
- legend of fei: xie yun,
- mcu: kamala khan,
- mcu: yelena,
- oh! my emperor: beitang moran,
- penny dreadful: vanessa ives,
- shadowhunters: magnus bane,
- star trek: leonard mccoy (aos),
- star trek: una,
- tian guan ci fu: xie lian,
- touken ranbu: kanesada,
- untamed: wen qing,
- warcraft: anduin wrynn,
- warcraft: wrathion,
- warframe: kahl 175,
- wheel of time: moiraine,
- word of honor: zhou zishu,
- x-men: charles xavier
hale and whole
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.
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.)
✘ 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.
✘ (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.
✘ 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.
✘ 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.
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.
no subject
The title is an unfamiliar form. I only wondered your relationship with him.
[ Given he's a 'Time Lord' and all. ]
no subject
I haven't met many people who know what a Time Lord is off the top of their head. The Universe is infinite and never stops. I'm sure there's a lot more you haven't heard of out there.
[ Her tone is gentle, and she did not, in fact, elaborate on their relationship. She's going to just skip over that. ]
no subject
I said the title is in an unfamiliar form, not that the concept itself is unfamiliar.
[ People looking after timelines isn't unusual to him. ]
no subject
He's my best friend. I'd do anything for him, and I know he'd do the same not just for me, but for anyone.
[ She's watched him accept the end of his own life as a means to save others more than once. ]
no subject
I don't get the impression you share his role. Do correct me if I'm wrong here.
[ She hasn't mentioned it at all, only spoken about it with regard to him. Still worth clarifying, he thinks. ]
no subject
[ She smiles a little. ] I guess technically now I'm a time traveller? But only because the Doctor asked me to.
no subject
He's an interesting figure. Makes friends easily, I would assume. Enthusiastic to learn about the world around him. The regeneration aspect is unusual, I've not known someone to change their entire personality along with their appearance when recovering.
no subject
All of those things are true about him. And you're not wrong about regeneration. The closest concept we have on Earth is reincarnation, which is true or not, based on personal beliefs originating in various cultures and religions.
[ She's talking too fast and clears her throat. ]
Anyway. He told you about it?
no subject
Yes. We were discussing his status as a Time Lord.
[ Something that Wrathion was trying to unpack, to compare to the things he knew. So far as he can tell, after all, The Doctor is decidedly not a dragon. ]
You've seen it happen.
[ He wondered. It was part of why he mentioned it. Selfishly, he wanted to know if it was indeed as dramatic as it sounded. An immortal creature with a mortal companion, after all, stirred something in him. The fear is usually the mortal dying, leaving people to mourn. Here, though, there's another layer. The longer lived companion... changing. Becoming someone else. Moving on, yet not moving on. He considers her a moment, then turns away and opens a small cabinet. There's limited space in the buildings of Minaras, but he draws out a very small tin and sets it down. Prying off the lid, it has ginger biscuits inside. Something to fidget with, and with some sugar to take the edge off. ]
no subject
I have.
[ Her eyes are focused on the tin, all of it blurring together until she blinks quickly to clear her vision. ]
It sounded like he was being torn apart from the inside. [ Clara has to put her cup down, taking a biscuit and biting into it. ]
This is good.
[ She mumbles the words around her bite, not looking at Wrathion at all. ]
no subject
Still, that would not be a comfort to say. He's at least cognizant of that, small blessings. A few years ago, he might not have had this filter. Be grateful he has it now. Instead, ginger biscuits. They're good, let us think about that. ]
I try not to buy things that aren't.
[ A light sort of joke, to break up the tension.
Then, a little awkwardly but still genuine: ]
My apologies if this is upsetting for you.
[ He won't apologise for prying, though, because that would be a lie. He's not, in fact, sorry he pried. This is all very interesting. ]
no subject
If you were sorry, you wouldn't've done it to start with. Something my nan used to say.
[ She remembers vividly, herself at age eight, caught finishing the last bite of a sweetie she wasn't supposed to have. She wasn't sorry, she'd known she'd get in trouble but what could they do? The candy was already enjoyed and gone. Whatever punishment was worth it, at least she thought so before she was grounded. ]
It's fine, I don't know very much about it. He never told me anything at all. What I know is only what I've seen. New face. New attitude, new accent. New preferences.
[ She doesn't seem to be included on the new list of 'likes', at least not yet. It scares her, even though she tries to believe he's still the Doctor. He still wouldn't let anything happen to her. She thinks. She's pretty sure. ]
no subject
[ An admission, something to offer her in exchange. Better honesty, here, she's more likely to respect that. He picks up his tea again, takes a slow sip as he thinks. ]
We have something called the Timewalkers where I am from. They protect the Timeways from interference. There are mortals among them, arcanists who specialize in chronomancy, but also the Timekeepers themselves. Similar to your Doctor, but different in several ways.
[ A reason why he was curious, he thinks, is more valuable than any other platitude. ]
no subject
[ She means it, she just can't give him much more. He knows about as much as she does now. Grabbing another biscuit, she takes a sip of tea as she listens to him. ]
I have to admit, on my planet, it was all sort of treated as fiction. Made up stories. I didn't believe any of it was real. Time travel, I mean. One of my favorite films is about a kid who goes back in time.
[ Michael J. Fox was a big deal to her as a pre-teen. So was Lea Thompson for that matter. ]
no subject
I can imagine you'd be a good teacher.
[ His fingers rub at the sides of his cup, thoughtful. ]
But you aren't alone in that. The worlds people are from here differ broadly. At least one other person, I know, is from a world where magic and magical creatures are kept... secret. She's an adept user, but her experience is all with having to conceal the ability she has.
[ He lofts an eyebrow. ]
Magic is less hidden where I am from.
[ Obviously. ]
no subject
I do wonder often if there are people with magic on Earth but they hide because they have to. There were witch trials, and if you were a woman, you were always found guilty. It's been a few centuries but I'd be afraid to flaunt magic in a world that doesn't believe it exists.
[ She imagines Earth isn't the only planet to have awful moments like that in its history. In fact, she knows it. ]
I've seen some pretty amazing things by now, traveling with the Doctor, so I like to think I have a pretty open mind. Is magic taught in your world, or are people born with it?
no subject
[ He sets down his cup of tea carefully, reaches to fish one of the ginger biscuits out of the tin himself. ]
Some people might naturally be able to perfectly sing in pitch, and only require lessons to be sure they don't strain themselves and ruin their voice through poor technique. Others may require years of training to achieve what they want. It is so with magic. Some are born with an innate ability, something they do not have to think about. Perhaps an affinity for something specific, while other styles they train. Perhaps a broader range. Others, they learn and study, pick a style that suits them, an area of interest. To heal, to protect, to wield the elements -- whatever they prefer. Everyone is capable of something at least small.
no subject
If I could learn magic, I'd want to wield elements. That sounds pretty incredible, highly useful, although being able to heal people would be high up there.
[ If she's imagining it right; conjuring fire and controlling water, different things in that realm. ]
no subject
[ There's so many different styles, after all. Even if she's tried before, she imply may not have tried a style that worked. Or not had a teacher who could quite explain it the right way.
She may be incapable, he couldn't say, but Wrathion isn't sure he's ever met anyone unable to even use an enchanted item. Not, he supposes, the same as drawing fire straight into your hand unaided -- but on balance, being able to use a trinket that does that for you isn't useless. It's still working magic. ]
no subject
[ Learning forward, Clara puts her elbows on her knees. ]
How do you learn? Or how do you even find out if a person even can?
no subject
[ He makes a vague, sweeping gesture. ]
Learning to sense things is the first step, you will struggle to manipulate things you cannot feel properly.
holiday slowness, forgive me!
Well, then. I have more food for thought than I realized. It'd be helpful trying to navigate a world like this if I had a way to protect myself other than running. I'd probably break a bone trying to punch someone or something, and everything's bigger than me. Usually.
[ She smirks just a little; her size is useful too, for being sneaky and making herself small and stealthy. ]
If I were serious about this, about figuring it out, where would I start?
[ First step: sensing things. She isn't sure what that entails, yet, or what that should feel like. Spider-sense? That's the only thing that comes to mind. ]