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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A SANDING OVATION
[There's the loud crack of a gunshot, and then nothing at all. Emptiness and blankness and nothingness are as impossible to truly describe as they are to truly experience. After all, if you were conscious to experience anything at all, then by definition you can't be experiencing nothingness, can you?

Nacho's experience of nothingness comes as abrupt and sudden an end as it began with. The first thing he experiences isn't light or sound but the gritty texture and bland, dry taste of sand filling up the inside of his mouth. If someone had told him this was one of the nine circles of Hell, he would have believed them. Then the rest of it comes only milliseconds later: the rustling sound of being buried up to at least his ears and eyes in constantly shifting little sand pebbles, the blurry gray emptiness of having your vision clouded that is nothing whatsoever like real emptiness...

Nacho doesn't remember if he's eventually pulled out or if he's able to free himself from his sand prison, but he does remember he's coughing when he finally feels the warm, dry air of the desert against his skin. At least it's not more sand. Fuck.

He takes the pendant without comment and he listens to the explanation he's given without really processing it. He's usually pretty on the ball with that stuff, but thinking you're supposed to be dead has a way of fucking with your head and making everything around you sound like background noise. It's not until he's left alone with another newcomer, someone who seems just a tiny bit more keyed in to what's happening than he does, that he seems to shake himself out of his confused stupor. He turns to them. He sounds like somebody who has just woken up from a long nap.]

You get that?

ONE SAND WASHES THE OTHER
[When they meet up with the rest of the otherworlders there's food and water and cooling suits. But when Nacho is offered something, he hesitates, then doesn't take it. At least not yet. Is it out of some misplaced suspiciousness? Maybe surprisingly, probably not, if the way he looks around at the more vulnerable members of the party, the ones who ride in the snail-chariots, is anything to go by.]

Have they all got—?

[He cuts himself off on purpose, letting his faint but clearly concerned expression speak for him. He doesn't want to take anything for himself yet until he knows the people least able to provide for themselves have been taken care of first.]

COULD DIE LAUGHING
[Nacho is running from something. He doesn't know what. He doesn't want to know what. It begs for help and calls out for "Ignacio" in a raspy, inhuman voice that jars him from how strange and wrong it sounds.

It's lucky for Nacho that he's a fast runner! It's unlucky for him that you're in the way. He does manage not to crash directly into you, just barely. If you're eating, he'll try to grab for it and flinging it all out behind him.]

WILDCARD
[Don't like any of these options? Feel free to pick something else!]

(ooc; I am sorry! I'm very, very late. But hopefully not too late? Also, I don't mind switching to prose for people who prefer it.)

...as much sense left in'em as a wet hen?

( Blandly, unassuming, mean in the blithe way of a man who has seen far too much in his life and who observes the gentle incursion of giant snails with gentle, committed resignation. Sure, bring out the cavalry. It's gastropods? Well, ain't they a treat. Jim be damned, one's winking.

Then there's this sad soul, beholding the beasts, and they're both stranded, beholden to the whims of 'custodians' that seem ill at ease to spare them guidance. The flask Jim's somehow... liberated from a departed wave of Scavenger's going neat and pretty dry. He takes another half of a swig. Toasts the snail parade. )

Think we're supposed to wave when they crawl by?

( You know, like locals, when tourists pass by on garrish boats or buses. )

Yeah, that's not what I meant, man.

[He rubs the back of his head. But Nacho doesn't sound all that bothered by the response he gets. His voice is, if anything, matter-of-fact and maybe just slightly resigned. The truth is, he'll take the weary meanness of someone who's simply seen too much over gleeful, intentional sadism and cruelty any day of the week.

The suggestion to wave does get a tiny, slightly rueful smile.]

Who knows. [Nacho lifts a hand and gives a small, slow, low-effort wave to the nearest snail.

The snail doesn't seem to acknowledge him. Jim gets some intentional eye contact and a little half-shrug from Nacho in response.]

Guess not.

( ...right. The creature's serving attitude. Jim devotes all of five seconds to glaring back in a failed attempt of asserting dominance, before making his peace with scratching the back of his head instead. )

Listen, man. Last I dealt with something like one o'these big boys, I learned real quick: they got their druthers, you leave'em to it.

( Like women and children. Ain't no point fighting a war you'll lose. )

Big ole thing wants to sloth its way down the road? Sure. It's stopping now? Fine. Grazing? Just make sure it ain't your hat on the line.

( The nearest snail, purposefully large and sprawling, take this time to peer meanly at the skies and... sunbathe, while its driver curses. See? Case in point. )

They're too big to wrestle into discipline, and they damn well know it.

( If not for being the architects of Jim's will to live in a state of escalating combustion, he'd nearly applaud them. No one gives fewer fucks in this life than an ugly, large animal. God bless. May they all climb similar picks of indifference. )

[That's still not what he meant —

You know what? Whatever. Sure, man. They can follow this thread of conversation instead. It's not like he knows anyone here, and this guy seems to know how things work.

He decides to let go of his concern for the people traveling inside the caravans for the time being, and focus on the snails pulling them instead.

Nacho watches the snail Jim pointed out with a blank expression. Yup! It sure is committed to not going anywhere! The driver is still cursing and ranting, but nothing happens. The snail doesn't budge.

Nacho's blank expression slowly shifts, becoming a little curious. Maybe a little thoughtful too. He glances back at Jim.]

What do they eat?

Hopes, dreams. ( The shrug's a convoluted thing, like every negotiation of movement from a man defined by the ability to hold the line. He doesn't stare away from the snail, an impressive peak of animal stubbornness, pride and a mean gamble that whatever the man — now, with helpers, three men — trying to stir him back to obedience wants, the creature doesn't have to deliver.

Jim dreams to be this snail, in his next life. Headstrong, reliably able to give every one of its oppressors the slimy finger. There's a metaphor in there, somewhere. He squints, just as the sun stabs his gaze. )

Not us. That's about when I stopped listening. ( You only ever need the basics in life, after all. Except — and now he's turning to the man, sparing him the once-over. ) ...you hurt, man? You need in one o'them? I can flag one over.

( Like a dropship, but... unwieldy. )

[ Jimmy's been scarce. He's made himself scarce, holing up in one of the snail's shells for day one of the cross-desert trudge. Even once the caravan stops for the night he's reluctant to leave. If he thinks about it, there's no reason to want to stay—it smells like microwaved swamp water, and whenever his hand brushes the snail's skin it comes away slimy—but not thinking about things is the name of the game right now. They have to kick him out.

So he's late to the party, retreating from the fire with a helping of questionable food in each hand. (It smells better than the snail, which is...something.) When someone snatches the food from his hand and hurls it into the night, he reacts instinctively. Which is to say: he opens his big mouth. ] Hey! Asshole! [ Jimmy spreads his hands and glares after the guy, drops of stew(?) flinging from the remaining plate. ]

[It's important to stay alert to your surroundings, even when you're running for your life (?) second life (??) afterlife (???) from whatever-the-hell-it-is out there. So the ring of a familiar insult in his ears makes Nacho come skidding to a sudden stop. He realizes he can't hear those things anymore, so either he's close enough to camp to be safe, or the food did the trick.

At least he hopes so, anyway.

So that means he just needs to deal with the ungrateful idiot who's yelling at him. He didn't get a good look at the guy, but he's still pretty sure he could take him if it comes to that!]

Shut up, dumbass! You can get more! I probably just saved your useless a—

[A belated realization occurs to him as he turns to look directly at the person whose food he so rudely tossed into the dark abyss of night. He didn't recognize the voice immediately but even in the semi-dark of nighttime, seeing the person face-to-face, something clicks.

Nacho stares. He's breathing a little harder than usual, from all the running. Mostly though, he looks surprised.]

...Hey. What the hell? [What are you doing here?]

[ Oh. Oh shit. Oh possibly-life-ending-mistake. Guess who forgot—for half a second—he was surrounded by people who could snap his neck as easily as snapping their fingers, or hell, conjure a lawyer-gutting knife out of thin air. Suddenly, acutely aware of his racing heart, Jimmy shuffles backwards, makes a half-assed attempt at extending the remaining food to whoever this is.

And then—

A series of expressions plays over his face, rapid-fire—slack-mouthed surprise, incredulity, fear—before he brightens, lets out a couple shaky laughs. ] I get it. [ Jimmy wags a finger. ] You're a mirage.

[ It's a beautiful thought! That doesn't hold up for more than five seconds. Even if Nacho hadn't announced himself with a pretty definitive display of corporeality, it'd still be a little thin. Jimmy's gaze flicks past the other man to—mostly black, though there's a green spot that winks out as soon as he turns his attention to it. It doesn't soothe his unease. ] Okay, maybe not. How long have you been here?

[who needs blockbuster when you have a desert

Kim meets the desert with a grim determination that has her posture rigid and her mouth set into a hard line, and she does not hesitate to take a cooling suit for even a second. She knows where she is on the hierarchy, so to speak, as far from the corporate world as it is: there are people who can sling magic out of their hands, people who look normal but can karate-chop others unconscious with their bare hands, and people who are normal. The bottom rung makes for the worst liabilities in a place where even puzzles seem to demand some sort of skill in avoiding getting stabbed.

So she'll take any advantage she can get, even if it means shimmying into something that looks far too Dune for her tastes. Her crisp blue button-up disappears under it. Fitting in has been a process she has not always managed, but she'll do what she was to.

This guy looking around, however, looks new. Figuring it out.]

Most people here are pretty good at taking care of themselves.

[Less reassurance and more fact. People who need accommodations will get them.]

[d'awwww!🥺😂

The straightforwardness of her demeanor is appreciated. It means she's not just saying what she thinks he wants to hear to placate him.

Probably.

It's disorienting, being somewhere so strange, with so many other people and not knowing who is trustworthy and who isn't. Nacho hasn't decided yet if being unsure who to trust is better or worse than knowing you can trust no one.

He stops refusing the cooling suit at her assurance, though. What incentive would she have to lie about that just to get a total stranger to accept this weird... suit... thing...

He does hesitate putting it on, stepping into it halfway and stopping, but for a different reason now.

The reason is that he feels like an idiot.]

Feels like I should be getting my head shoved into a toilet right about now. [It's been a long time since he's joked like that with anyone. Or even wanted to. It feels weird, like using an atrophied muscle.]

[Her attention falls back on suiting up –– buckles here, superfluous linen sashes there. But when hears him joke, she looks up and finds him standing there, mid-way dressed. She has to drop her chin down to hide the vaguest smile.]

You didn't strike me as someone who ever got shoved in a locker.

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sand in your eyes

Nacho Varga | Better Call Saul | Tourist | BCS spoilers

one sand washes the other

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HA HA HA YES...could die laughing

EEEEEEE!!! <3

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love him

i love kim!

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