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

[bravelyrunsaway]

( He has practise, he tells himself, as he snaps his jaws once in the direction of the staring, laughing hyena that is nothing close to a natural creature, not like this. He turns sharp, trotting after the man now clutching at his stomach, guarding it so fiercely he near comes into a standing fetal position.

An understandable mood, love, but not helpful.

For a heartbeat before his mouth opens again, Licyn considers leaving this man to his fate. The Scavengers won't let them into camp if he's this obviously sickened, cursed, and so what if it passes with the dawn? He growls, a low rumble as his mouth opens anyway, teeth snagging at a sleeve, or trousers, or anything that can allow him to bully this man along. Tugging, leading, practised already, that practise he's had, in a city behind them, leading those coughing up the blood of their infection to the fires that cleansed them through magic.

Magic burning of paper.

He hates it so.

The fur along his spine stands half up, his ruff larger in the moment, the hyena laughing and laughing until it sounds like a man crying through his hysteria. Licyn pulls and tugs and tries to drag the man on, ignoring how his fur stands further on end, how his ears flick forward and back and then flatten against his skull, the smells of blood and madness and dry death cloying in his nose. )

[allforthecause]

[ Pain has a funny way of being relative. Cassian is no stranger to it - the still-healing blaster wound on his arm stands proof to that. But he’s also no stranger to the wave of adrenaline that grips him through the fear, singing the pain to the side in a sort of ignorable constant agony.

As much as his body tells him that he needs to curl up into a ball and moan, his self preservation instincts are screaming at him to do otherwise. At the moment, those instincts seem to have found themselves a champion - and the overarching distress and fear is starting to recrystalize.

Whatever this being is, it his clearly trying to lead him when it could have already otherwise eaten him. He’s too used to alien species to thus question its sentience any further. He finds his hand trying to grip at the being’s fur in an effort to keep himself moving and upright even if his body is trying to murder him.

He stumbles along as best he can, trying to ignore the hyena cackling behind them, instead putting all his focus on the rough texture of his companion’s fur as if that will ground him. ]

Think it - think it must be some kind of — I only ate an couple hours ago—

[ His words are disjointed and he doesn’t expect a reply (he suspects he is talking to himself) but he needs to keep his wits somehow. ]

[bravelyrunsaway]

( Lightning strike us both. Licyn snarls quietly, gives a shiver, and lets his form shift under the grip of the other man. Fur recedes under fingers, until they're digging into skin, Licyn on hands and feet, crouched at Cassian's side. )

It's not the food, you storm-struck fool, it's the beasts.

( This is not a gentle introduction to his nature, but the man is more than a wolf can easily haul around, even a wolf Licyn's size. As a man, he looks less impressive, the same mass distributed to a shorter, more compact body, but it's irrelevant details. Nude at night is more an annoyance for his heightened awareness of the chill, and the pause it'll take to handle the hyena even now laughing, high and hysterical and near to weeping. Gooseflesh covers him, and he reaches out to steady Cassian, properly kneeling now. )

How appealing does it sound to sink teeth into flesh right now? To tear, taste hot blood on your tongue. Answer, love, how far gone are you?

[allforthecause]

[ It’s the shock, maybe, that finally gets his mind to tear away from the pain and focus on something else. There are a great deal of things he feels, but now he’s convinced he’s hallucinating. He raises his hands to his face as if looking in a mirror. ]

That’s — who are you? What are you doing?

[ All he can think of is that this being - for clearly it was the same one, the dog twisting out of his view and returning as a man - this being could shapeshift and was deliberately trying to mock or intimidate him by taking his own face.

He’d never met a species that could do that, and it was making his skin crawl. ]

I don’t want any blood on my tongue - [ the idea was turning his already tortured stomach] - get away from me!

[ He twisted then, overcome by a sense of panic and urgency. He was in way over his head. Someone knew his face well enough to mimic it—- ]

[bravelyrunsaway]

( Licyn, known only for selective patience, gives the struggling man a look... and shrugs his shoulders. )

Just remember later, you asked me to go.

( Because he does not, in the end, care enough to argue someone into doing what they should if they're willing to fight for it. He stands, frowning, brow furrowing. When he smiles, it's all teeth. )

Thanks for the compliment, by the by. It's about time there was two of my handsome face around!

( And he turns, still buck naked, the scars on his back visible now in their ragged diagonals, and starts... walking... toward camp. Keeping an ear on if the fool saying he doesn't want to taste blood decides to ask for help, before that hyena closes in.

He vaguely hopes he's enjoying the look as Licyn walks away. It's a nice view, if he says so himself. )