sand in your eyes

[groundrules]

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

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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

Comments

okay that's enough

[rehandle]

Thanks, I'll get right on that.

[ brb, plotting an immediate weave right past this one guy and back into camp, blobacious little friend bringing up the rear. Blob out. ]

:' )

[downswing]

( The child is young, barely a few moonrises, and snared. Shape amorphous, coagulating. Lan Wangji can tell, trickle and tumble of the little creature brazen when it saunters after its custodian, shimmy-shimmy-shake. A spirit, perhaps. Babes lost or aborted often resurrect to assume shapes uncoordinated. Wangji senses nothing beyond the slow-tempo convalescence of his power after Serthica's toll.

And sand, granules grazing, catching hard-harsh on his soles. The man retreats. Lan Wangji, who has never witnessed a desperate cause without blithely offering it his sword, traipses after him.

White shadows suit their location. There is only one encampment. To stalk is to breathe, molten, certain, corrosive. )

How did you encounter each other? ( A blob is not a common life partner. )

[rehandle]

[ Oh, good. He's being followed.

Stephen closes his eyes for the space of a step or two, squeezes them shut against frustration as the day just keeps getting longer. But alright. Fine. There's nowhere to go that this man can't follow short of putting up a tent and warding it against intrusion, and even if he were inclined to bother with that it's going to take longer to get away from him than it will take him to answer his question.

So, without slowing, he relents. ]

I uncovered it in the dunes.

[ Having given the most basic answer he can muster, he says no more. If he insists on following, he can enjoy the conversational approximation of trying to draw water from a stone. Or siphon it from desert sands. ]

[downswing]

( They keep pace.

It is in the way of things for an imposition and its artist to beg no succour. Not from the sun that wilts the wintered trinket of Lan Wangji's form from prosperity.

Their path sleeps long, syrupy and purposeless, sand already grazing the marks of their footsteps once they've passed. Only the shapeless creature leaves lingered trial, in the shimmering, winking slip of its slobber. It is as joyous as its master is indifferent.

Both conscript Lan Wangji to break silence, no quicker than muslin falling to the ground. )

Curses crawl out from these deserts. ( Rattled chains, rusted. The sing-song of red-pressed steps. Plaques of commemoration, script writ with drawling, grinned insinuation. Learn our secrets, but at what cost. )

May I consult the creature?

( Search it, soothe it, learn the secrets of its skins. Wade the waters of its energies, cloying. Riddle it for the simmered exuberance of dark things in slowed wait. There is much that a glance coaxes in silent expectation.

The common fare of introductions. And then, with remembered grace: )

Your child.

[rehandle]

[ This guy really has a way with words (thinks the man of such belters as 'What master do you serve?' and 'hitherto undreamt of'.) But he doesn't seem to be leaving them alone any time soon, and for all Stephen's lingering frustration with the circumstances that led to him walking back to camp with sand in his shoes and no assistance from a certain flying friend persists, the fact remains that this creature from the desert warrants further investigation.

So he slows, less reluctantly than he might have done moments ago, to a stop. ]

Creature is fine. [ His child? Nevermind that it's demonstrably child-like, who wants to be the person who even briefly considered abandoning a child in the desert? ] If it'll let you, be my guest.

[ As it happens, the thing doesn't seem at all opposed to sussing out new company now Stephen's no longer being openly hostile. It totters to one side, curious, 'hand' tapped against his leg for support and angling itself to peer up at the stranger.

Chastened just a bit by the humanisation of his little charge, Stephen offers an insight. ]

I think more blessing than curse.

[ He wasn't eaten even once on his way back. Given the closeness of the call, he suspects that might count for something. ]

[downswing]

( Shivered with midday light, his back a hot, callous stain of warm hurt that spreads like claws, tightening. When he bends the knee to a crouch, the sun's gaze ribbons him to shreds. He does not wilt, precisely, but negotiates fresh balance, one hand catching sand, palm pressed tight to the ground.

The — creation approaches with timidity, as if uncertain if it is meant to offer him consolation or compound his grievance. It peers, the slow, feline tip of its head a learned insinuation of human confusion.

He nods, in greeting. It mimics in gentle simulation.

And the first steps of their dance are played. Then, silent, ugly work: parchment paper recaptured from his sleeves, wet of his tongue glistened on fingertips, then the sand — and the thick paste born, repurposed to write, absent cinnabar. A few talismans, no more. Blood might strengthen sorcery, but its invasion so often riles demonic presence in ways they need not invite evermore. And is this a demon?

The first talismans, spread like a parasol to entomb the creature yield no clumsy, garish, blinding declaration of supernatural force. Parchment bends, crinkles dry. The creature touches it without triggering alerts, to make itself a window between two talisman pieces.

...cute. Wangji works on. )

What have you named this child? ( Creature no more. Decided. )

[rehandle]

[ It's not the consultation he's expecting. The man crouches to meet the tottering blobthing and Stephen watches on, expecting an assessment of texture or of behaviour - not one of magic. A faint crease of his brow when paper emerges, soon covered with symbols outside of his own sphere of familiarity. Though not so far removed that he can't recognise the groundwork for sorcery.

Whatever assessment is being made here, it doesn't seem to bother his small charge. Stephen's too busy being fascinated by the display to take offense to the direct and immediate decision to ignore his preference for creature when the question is presented. ]

Nothing yet.

[ Oh, the creeping inevitability of that one little three-letter word, slipped out without his notice. ]

What kind of spellwork is this?