westwhere | sand in your eyes

sand in your eyes

And onwards, through the cursed desert. The mini-journey Arc covers 6-21 January and doubles as a test drive meme. Participants do not need an invite to apply this round. Have fun!

SAND IN YOUR EYES

TEST DRIVE TOURISTS | ONE SAND WASHES THE OTHER
A HOUSE UNITED WILL SAND | SOILMATES | A PYRAMID SCHEME

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A SANDING OVATION

Sand in your eyes, down your throat, stifling. You wake half-buried in high dunes, crawling towards helping hands. Thirst vanquishes you.

You are quickly offered a translation and communication pendant and introduced to the leader of the caravan that saved you — good Mazyar, who thanks the stars for your most incredible luck to be rescued by his generous and humble self. For he is not a man for idle praise, but he has sold salt to salt makers, he was courted by seven of the five great trade guilds and brought peace to the Stairs of Sighs…

Mazyar reveals you are in Akhuras, where undead lieges seek to weaponise you in their war for dominion. Mazyar’s good but less successful friend, the elusive Merchant ferries otherworlders east, where ancient beacons can transport them home.

Retire for now and regain your strength. Come morning, further otherworlders will arrive from Serthica — and your journey may begin.

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ONE SAND WASHES THE OTHER

The veteran party reunites with newcomers in the desert, and with the merchant Mazyar — who once guided them through the Stairs of Sighs. His caravan is protected by the Scavengers —deathly a tribe of hardened desert raiders. They bring water flasks, supplies, cooling suits and tents to share. Their snail-like carriage mounts can transport the weak.

You are bound for the seized citadel of Alem, swarmed on each side by undead battalions. To access it, you must obtain one of the enormous sand worms that trawl the deserts, which can be deployed to create underground passageways.

The Scavengers will lead the caravan through haunted dunes, the worms’ traditional hunting grounds and temple-fortress Uruksithar.

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A HOUSE UNITED WILL SAND

The group first reaches the Valley of Unchaining, bordered by high cliffs and fang-like stones. Here and there, discover bloodied footprints, half-buried shackles and red chains. You might even stumble upon an eroded tombstone inscribed, H R SL EP THE UNCH IN D. At its feet are dulled dagger blades and rough calcar stone.

COULD DIE FROM LAUGHTER

You fool, never eat alone. Happen by the camp’s outskirts with your dinner, and you might glimpse the silhouettes of starved desert hyenas, their eyes glistening green. They will come close if you bear raw meat or bleeding wounds.

■ Scavengers say, if you see the hyenas, throw them food or a cloth drenched in fresh blood, then run without looking back until you no longer hear their cruel cries.

■ Some hyenas mimic rasped human voices, begging help or calling your name. One feeble hyena wears a chain of red shackles around its neck.

■ If you look back while chased, you find the green stare of the hyenas fixed upon you. You are gradually overcome by starvation, violence and the urge to dismember prey and feast on raw flesh. Player’s choice on whether characters can resist this compulsion, which disappears at dawns, or if they taste blood.

■ Scavengers will deny you entrance into the camp if you appear possessed in this way.

SANDIMENTAL VALUE

You walk the Valley, Scavengers say, and Mother Death walks with you. A once handsome crone might appear beside you, bare-footed and dressed in clean linens. She remains silent unless spoken to and flinches if you move suddenly, as if she fears being struck.

■ Treat the Crone kindly, and she entrusts you with a small pouch holding a fraction of her ashes, which she wants scattered from the hills.

■ Use rope and climbing hooks and take cover behind stone formations. Beware the violent sand whirlwinds that batter the cliffs, threatening to plunge you down or choke you with sand.

■ If you succeed, the Crone appears to watch her scattering ashes and bless you with good luck for the rest of your journey. Your kindness, she says, reminds her of her daughter.

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SOILMATES

The three-day walk to Uruksithar traverses the sand worms’ hunting grounds, where dunes shift periodically in sharp, tectonic waves. Watch your step and don’t be surprised if your tent sinks at night.

■ The Scavengers organise daily reconnaissance parties in the desert hills. Stay with them to unbury dune treasures.

■ The brave & brazen can try to catch sand worms. The massive creatures erupt overground periodically, catching prey in their large mouths, or crushing it beneath their heft as they plunge in the depths — creating large sinkholes in the process.

■ On its back, each sand worm has a few darker scales that draw the shape of a rune. To tame a sand worm, you must find its rune, then write the symbol on the worm’s back using blood from your hands. Report your catch by 23:59 on 17 January!

■ The sand worm bonds with you for three weeks until the next full moonrise, or until you draw the same rune on your cut hand.

■ Those who secure a sand worm find it grudgingly follows them underground for the rest of the journey. The creature can only be steered or ridden.

■ Some sand worms are vicious, old and sufficiently magical to retaliate by taking the link over and forcing their bonded humans to experience their lives — briefly sensitive to light and strong sounds, or unable to speak. Some might experience mild fevers. All symptoms disappear when the bond breaks.

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A PYRAMID SCHEME

At last, welcome to Uruksithar, former jewel of the desert — now reduced to rusted gates and tattered walls of wind-lashed stone.

The abandoned palace-fortress features a row of minor temples and barren gardens that surround a great, ruinous pit. The state of residential furnishings suggests the grounds were lived mere years prior. Walk north to find a a large pool of thickened black water that exudes a cold, unsettling presence. Veteran party members know what to expect.

Nail scratches on some temple walls read, we, who did not sleep or i ask the wind to grieve our chains. By the pit, a stone plate helpfully says, drop by drop, even base water turns to poison.

The Scavengers disperse to raid the temples, advising you to carry water everywhere. One raider mentions that the local Temple of Ra’esh stores silver waters that can woo sand worms.

OCTOPUS PRIME

Uruksithar’s great gong strikes every two hours, to groans and shudders from the abyssal pit. Scavengers immediately take cover behind walls, bind themselves to columns or rush into crumbling residences.

■ For five minutes, as the gong sounds a pathetic dirge, a bouquet of tentacles erupts from the pit, sweeping nearby streets to capture living things.

■ Throwing water on the tentacles forces them to retreat, while black liquid from the northern pool burns them down. Further tendrils emerge until the gong quiets.

■ Should you fall into the pit, use your climbing hooks to latch onto the walls and don’t look down. A grotesque, sharp-toothed mouth awaits below to devour you, amid the squelching sounds of the tissue and material it has been masticating for decades. It won’t give up its lunch easily.

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TOMB AND GLOOM

Ra’esh the Bright-maker, he who saw but peace beneath the skies. His humble temple is anonymous among numerous worship grounds. Scavengers say, four years ago, a wanderer sculpted an eye with a sun for a pupil on the entrance door. Take a torch and head in.

■ Long-stripped of its glory, the maze-like Temple of Ra’esh is now cold stone, stale window-less corridors and heavy doors that snap down from the ceiling.

■ Distant susurrations of water point you towards your destination.

■ As you walk in, pay attention to the engravings near the entryway of each temple room. Some depict arrows, forecasting spikes will burst up from floors tiles. Sculpted drops hint pouring water in this spot will open a door. Open a door with an engraving of large serpents, and… well. The engravings can help characters navigate the maze and completely avoid its traps. Feel free to make up your own engravings & traps, if you want!

■ The altar room contains a pool with pearlescent waters that surround a woman fully bandaged in gauze, her sight obscured. She is bound to a column with chains and shackles akin to those found in the desert. Rare peeks of her skin show it rotting or sickly pale.

■ She asks either if you are her mother, come for her at last. Do you engage?

■ Take water from the pool, and you can lure a sand worm to you once you have exited Uruksithar. Hazed, but sweet-tempered, it will follow you underground and allow you to ride it for the three weeks until the next full moonrise. These sand worms won’t give you a hard time during the bond period. Report your worm too by 23:59 on 17 January!

NOTES

■ Test driving & in-game characters can top level logs here — test driving characters can also put up network posts in this space c:

■ Feel free to investigate the mystery of the chains and shackles, but no pressure — it’s not critical to Arc V.

■ Hit up NPCs!

■ Navigation top.

QUESTIONS

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The answer is a telling one, and he can't help but smile at Wangji's reply, imagining a galaxy where Coruscant would be considered no more than a village. He's still under Wangji's careful touch, and even without looking he can tell that the man is giving incredible care and time to his work. He appreciates it.

"Ah - Me? I'm not from Coruscant, no, and it's quite a little more than a village. Coruscant is the centre of the Galaxy, according to many." He turned his head a little so he could catch a glimpse of white from the corner of his eye as Wangji worked.

"I take it you don't know it, then. Where are you from? Not here, clearly."

"Not here." Limpid confirmation, near-sullen. Under the great stretch of the tent's thinned hides, he feels secluded from his manners. Unseen by the precepts.

The centre... of a galaxy. Perhaps code, or words of law or science for the earth they stand on. A citadel, a nation. A continent? No more.

He appears, for want of alternative, intrigued, fingers stumbling next they lace up the last of the man's first layers; the work wants freshly done. He starts anew, loosening what he'd only just completed, binding with care to keep the belts parallel, their tugs firm but discreet, loose nooses that do not tighten as chokeholds.

"What comprises a galaxy?" Softened, contemplative. Lan Wangji knows — they both know — his mouth spills honeyed distractions to avoid his own answers.

The Jin way of things, gilded filigree. Poison. He has learned far too much from Jinlintai, where brother walked tall steps to bow his back before men no greater than the dirt that lined his boots.

He knows an avoided answer when he hears one, but he doesn't press. This isn't an interrogation - Cassian needs allies here more than he needs enemies, and the answer to his question isn't worth enmity.

He remembers when he didn't know what a galaxy was. Despite the question being (almost) a stupid one, he knows better than most how some peoples are raised with no knowledge of life beyond the horizon, let alone across the stars. So he answers, regardless, even if the question doesn't fully warrant a true answer.

"Nearly every star you see above you, when night falls," he replied easily. "The worlds that roam around them - like this one, around that bright star there." He nods in the direction of the sun. "Enough worlds to get oneself easily lost in, clearly." He gave a disarming smile.

...ah. The horizon. The heavens, the skies above. Then —

"You believe your Coruscant at the centre of divinity."

Arrogance has worn less more cleanly shaven faces. If Lan Wangji only directs the better part of his righteous indignation towards the new arrival who cannot see his face, well, what of it? Death claimed his lover once, and no god stepped in to intercede for him.

Perhaps too much is asked for Lan Wangji to bear the burden of sword and shield to Guanyin, who only ever rewarded his people with the cadaver of Jin Guangyao, rattled, rolling, tumbled down.

Performative anger, misplaced outrage. He is not his Uncle, either. Only feline curious, words honey-drawled. "You have travelled multiple such — galaxies?"

To hear the stranger speak so freely of roads walked and stars ignored — it must be so.

He can't help it - the half amused scoff errupts from his lips unbidden. Coruscant the centre of divinity? Sure, the Jedi might have thought so, once. But where were they?

"At the centre of corruption, maybe," he mumbles, half to himself. He's never been good with hiding his distaste for the empire, but the Empire wasn't great at hiding itself, either. There were no storm troopers here, no grey suits and hair buns pulled so tight they made the faces of the officers turn sour. So letting a little of his true thoughts about coruscant out poses little threat - yet.

"Just one. One galaxy is more than enough." Whatever the Empire might think. "But yes, I've travelled plenty. This place, though, is new. Can't say I've ever been anywhere that claimed to raise the dead."

The centre of the heavens, too, may prove to be corruption. It was so in Jinlintai, rot at the core of glistened gold. Why assume —

But then, disregard, negligence, righteous condemnation of that which the world upholds in blind, rote effort — these are the weapons in the bountiful arsenal of the Lan sect leadership's spare, styled Wangji. Not blasphemy. Not pointless, unattractive, inexpensive unkindness.

He binds the last of the belts, laces and buttons in raspy tugs, scratchy pulls.

"They succeed." This, with the heartfelt resignation of every man who has confronted a walking corpse and found himself uncharitably indisposed to its companionship, but logistically unable to cross the street.

"We have seen their dead wakeful, risen." A jagged pause, then, "We have put them to rest."

He shifts his shoulders as the bindings pull at him, working muscle to ease the clasps closer together. He doesn't say anything for a long moment, trying to put together Wangji's words. The dead risen, then put to rest.

"I know a lot of men who would kill to know how to make legions of the dead," he murmured quietly, "Which means they should never, ever know."

A pause.

"How long have you been here?"

"Time has slipped between injuries." His fairest, kindest, most generous concession. Now, the truth: granules of time truckled down, watery, lost. He thinks, eyes limpid, there was a time when he might have surprised himself with tolls and tallies, with accountability.

Now, he tells time for the leathering of his skin, the fattening of his husband's silhouette, the trickling of hair on his son's chin, the shadow of corpses behind him. And he barely gives count.

"Wangji, clan Lan." By way of tardive greeting, courtesy like oil in the water of their brimming troubles. A name to every hardship, every harbringer.

Even this msn, watched hawkishly as if a mouse on the field, must bear one. And is it not their privilege, still, to pretend civilisation before fresh hell befalls them? The etiquettes dress even slaughter in silks.

“Brasso,” he offers back, the lie coming easily enough. But then he follows it with a truth, because Wangji’s delicate touch and stern concern and quiet contained fury have disarmed him, this much.

“Andor. Ah- clan of Andor, if you want to put it that way.” He doesn’t remember what his wayward childhood band called itself, and he wouldn’t use it if he did. His adoptive parents, though - he has a hard time right now claiming he comes from anyone other than them.

He stretched out one tightly gloved arm, pressing each of his fingers together in turn, testing the sensitivity. The suit is very thin at his finger tips, which is good - it means he won’t have to take it off to do anything with his hands. It makes sense, of course, the natives clearly half live in these suits, but it’s still a relief to find they need their manual dexterity as much as he does. He turns a little so that he can actually see Wangji.

“It works as advertised,” he offers. “Skin feels cooler already. And not as dry, though I don’t feel sweaty. It must circulate the moisture somehow.”

He arches an eyebrow.

“You want me to test it? If you had concerns, I can act as the test droid for you.”

"Andor Brasso." He tries it on a stiffened tongue, the cadence wrongfulness rounded and coiled into itself, until the shape of the name becomes a pale silhouette of itself, known and unknowable. Too musical, the lilt fragile. He must flatten the crescendo. Again. "Andor. Brasso."

Improved, if not entirely passing. He hesitates, but drips steps back, so the man might play the game of testing the strains and pulls and strangeness of his new attire. Like armour, Lan Wangji supposes, warmed and softened pliant before excursions.

His hands settle bound behind his back, wet knot of his locked jaw tightened with misplaced tension. And he observes, quieted, "You speak in tongues."

Ah, but then, perhaps there is in injustice in this. Expelled from the comfort of his people, he but makes attempt. They are all victims and casualties of their upbringing.

"The tongues of your people." There. Much improved. A painting, vivid and in thin brushstrokes, of high diplomacy. "My own wear our whites in allegiance."

Colours of the clan, fidelity to the cause. Blues of the heavens that watch faithfully above them. Whites of the tomb.

He paused, then gives Lan Wangji a sheepish grin, despite the gears grinding away behind his eyes.

“Sorry. I work salvage, back home. I’m used to tech more advanced than this, and I’m getting the feeling you don’t.”

He tilts his head a little as he takes in Wangji’s meaning.

“So, your clan wears a uniform? That explains the—“ he gestured up and down to Lan Wangji’s everything. “Would it dishonour them to wear something else?”

He doesn’t quite give time for Wangji to answer before saying: “You could probably wear at least the bodysuit under your robes. Then you’d be cool and showing your allegiance, right?”

He pauses to fiddle with the tension of one of the straps at his hip, intentionally letting a moment pass in the expectation of his companion’s awkward silence.

“Must be something worth being worthy of, then?” He asked lightly. “What are you telling the world when you wear those whites?”

"Unnecessary."

The man speaks to excess, joy of him blind, brazen, incandescent. The sort of unflinching, resolute vitality that Wei Ying presents, cheek immaculate, to the world — before the slaps come down.

Arc of his hand's wave trembled, fingers syrupy-slow when they sketch out, palm outwards, Halt. And, Breathe. Perhaps, Speak no further.

He hears, and as is the way of his people, he heeds. What does he honour, whom? Cut of his gaze dark, landing past the man's shoulder, to where the tent groans fat-bellied, straining against its posts. Like most of them, spread too thin, against its natural inclinations.

"We speak the inevitability of death. Modesty. Gravity." Dignity. To think of his uncle, pride. "Clan Gusu Lan speaks for the dead."

It does make him pause - that slow, deliberate gesture - and he settles his weight on his back foot, slowing himself. If nothing else, he knew how to adjust to the room he was in. Act like he belonged there. Belonging right now was a step too far - and insult rather than anything else - but he could heed the request and listen.

A good few seconds after Wangji’s reply, Cassian nods slowly.

“A grave purpose then. And a noble one.” Another pause. “You can tell a lot about a people by how they treat their dead.”

And the living. But this man is not the audience for such a thought. Instead, after a moment’s deliberate consideration, he says:

“This place must be troubling to you, then. I’ve heard the stories of the undead already. I can’t claim that sounds modest or respectful.”

His numbness, his empty consternation lie soft in his mouth like a second, tangled tongue. The slow ache of futility licks at his bones, corrosive. An exorcist here is no better than a blind man painting, rain joining stormed seas — unnatural, precocious but strange.

He adds nothing to Akhuras in conversation. Delivers no peace to its death-stirred, no vengeance or appeasement to their spirits. Gaze thunderous, he is yet nothing. Waits and waits the mercy of the moment when he may serve.

"The dead are the living, changed of clothes." For what are skins if not fetters, seams gleaming? What is death if not a passage from the bodily known to the ether, waiting? "We disrespect memory."

Perhaps this is what so many neglect, still. The dead are not divorced of the living: a man's brother might recall him. His children will weep. His spouse will want coin of compensation from the Heavens.

No matter, here. His interest shifts, minute but steadfast. "You dallied in what trade?"

They were all men of better purpose, once. All served.

The dead are the living, changed of clothes. He could not claim that he truly believed that. He’d seen so much death, and most of it pointless. From anywhere, with no remorse. He knew too well what it looked like to see the light fade from someone’s eyes, and he’d never then seen something else take it’s place.

He was not religious, had no faith to speak of. He his only hope was the Force was real, was something that they belonged to and would return to. And that in the meantime, memory would take its place.

Memory for the living remained.

A sudden wave of grief gripped him, rolling up his throat like choking bile, and he bit it back down. What was the point of mourning here? Now? Who was here that he could let his grief fuel into vengeance, and find satisfaction? He was alone, the empire was nowhere to be found.

He realised he had missed the question after several several seconds pause, and had to quickly roll back his thoughts to remember what was being asked.

“Ah - salvage. We take old, abandoned ships, take them apart, and find what could still be used. People throw away so much that’s still useful - and will pay you happily when you clean it up, ensure it works and sell it back to them.” It was, of course, the truth - or part of it. He would not mention the thefts, the heists. Walking into a place like he belonged there, and walking out with parts and pieces of tech to sell off to their enemies.

If the empire wasn’t here, then who was there to even steal from?

He offered a shrug and a rueful glance.

“Most of my whole planet is dedicated to it, or to taking care of the people who are. We get a lot of really big contracts that way. It’s honest work.”

Depending on the work and your definition of honest.

Ships. Then, a mariner. One accustomed to hardship, leathered and weathered and steadfast and true. To hear him speak, so carefully reduced by the modesty of his toil — Lan Wangji remembers the dirt-spattered faces of villagers, who've only just survived a day's toil on the field. The doctors, hands raw and skins red with the disaster they've abated — worse, that which they could not prevent. Forgers, fingertips hot and molten, tips dark with the steel's edge of their sword. All stained and tattered by their professions.

All fairer and better and preferred to the looming majesty of Jin Guangshan and the Jinlintai, a cohort of gilded beasts collared by their courtesies, shielding incest, torture and corruption behind the etiquettes. What use were their lily-snowed hands, the fine weave of their silks, the tear-touched limpid reflection of the stones that lit up their jewellery?

Better a hundred times over the company of the dregs of the worlds, the beggars, the workers. The men plain, the women whose feet would never know the callous destitution of wood strips and tight binds.

He does not inflict the calumny of his touch. False intimacy, brokered without true affection, is worse than its absence. And yet:

"You do not stand accused of dishonesty." It chokes him, dims his words. Gives the death to formality, before sincerity. "Not among us. We only ask no appetite for slaughter."

...and yet, Five still scatters echoes of bloodbath in his footsteps.

No appetite for slaughter.

“If anything, it turns my stomach,” he admits with weak and weary smile. He’s done enough of it to know he doesn’t enjoy it, and has seen enough to know that those who do make his blood boil with a rage that can’t be tempered. He’s only killed by accident, or necessity. Survival, first and paramount.

Not that he hasn’t tried to kill for revenge, when he was younger. Stupider. But even then, it was the injustice that burned and boiled. Not bloodlust.

But none of these are the thoughts of Brasso. Dear, even-keeled, ever trustworthy Brasso. And he will do right by his friend’s name.

“I’ve no desire to see it done, either - is that a worry? Have you had others with that kind of - ah - appetite?”

And now, the truth:

"Men come of each path." Walk and crawl and set it to abandon. Drag themselves until they're tattered dregs. He cannot describe Five, but for his lackings of moral inclination. Cannot glean Wrath. Has seen red-stained hands — shivered, his own — and trembled mouths and the start of empty darkness.

Men contort themselves into weapons, forged, their natural steel molten. They lose core, concede shape. And in the twisting, become unknown to themselves.

"We yet..." But his tongue slackens, bite weakens. What is it men are, when all that binds them is convenience? When strategy allows forgiveness of absent mores? "We prevail."

They decide, collectively, that their survival best serves the grounds they bleed.

Cassian watches Wangji for a long few seconds, feeling the weight of the unsaid much more heavily than the words spoken.

After a moment he nods, turning his gaze to look away as if bobbing on an ocean, and fixes his look on the horizon.

“I don’t want any trouble,” he says finally, warily.

“Is there anyone I should be careful of? I’ll never begrudge a man of the path he’s had to walk - we all are forced on ones we didn’t choose - but if there’s someone who would stab me over gruel rather than share it with me, I’d rather know.”

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sand in your eyes

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