groundrules: (Default)
let's set d o w n some ([personal profile] groundrules) wrote in [community profile] westwhere2023-05-15 05:49 pm

the sunken | part i



THE SUNKEN






Welcome to the first log of Arc VI: the Sunken, which covers 15 May – 2 June and doubles as a test drive meme.

Back/forward date as needed! The calendar date suggestions are indicative.

The TDM is open to everyone! If you decide to apply to the game, you can get an invite from current players or the upcoming enabling meme — or participate in the test drive meme and get in touch @ [personal profile] groundrules to chat things over. We currently have 13 slots available for new players.

Test drivers can use this post for logs and network posts — old timers, please make your network posts at [community profile] eastbound.

LOST AT SEA | TEST DRIVE TOURISTS


You wake, gasping, in a stormy sea, your thoughts slowed to a confused trickle. Skill, floating wood or a kindly stranger — who you can’t understand — help you to reach shore.

Villagers discover you collapsed on sand and provide critical (if rickety) communication and translation devices. They say you are in Sunken Yancai, a fishing village progressively overtaken by waters and cursed by the secretive ‘ladies of the lake’ to transit through time.

■ Rescuers group newcomers and supply questionable village couture, warm meals and accommodations in abandoned, half-flooded homes or spare small boats anchored in Yancai’s waterways. Huddle up, recover your strength and don’t think too hard on why your memories are hazy over the next three days.

■ Come morning, you visit village leader Quanze Tsaymien, then the sorceress Karsa — who explains you are otherworlders summoned into Akhuras by undead lords who wish to weaponise you in their battle against humans and one another. Karsa is an associate of the Merchant, who leads otherworlders towards ancient transport beacons east.

■ One such beacon rests dormant in Yancai. The group must infiltrate the village and wait a few weeks until it shifts to a point back in time when the beacon was active.

■ Newcomers are handed passport papers with their new identities in Yancai, where they may be known as a bankrupt merchant, perpetually drunk sailor, whale hunter, raft surveyor, mermaid who has just gained their legs, crab collector... feel free to invent a dutifully hilarious apt role for their seaside sojourn.


OLD TIMERS | THE DRIFTING


You dragged yourself here in a haze. You arrived long ago, as if in a dream. You were born and bred in this village. In truth, your memories of reaching lively Yancai feel nebulous and alarmingly inconsequential.

Characters are facilitated new identities and dwellings by the Merchant, or believe they have had them all along.

■ A weary Karsa warns to say nothing to party members with altered memories, until the sorcery that affects them runs its course.

■ Memory-altered characters progressively regain their memories within three to five days (by 20 May). They have their memories partially or fully back at night ( midnight to 5 a.m.). Throughout the day, memory regains can trigger migraines, eerie confusion and paranoia.

Hauntings begin once characters have fully regained their memories.

■ Once everyone is ‘back to normal,’ Karsa explains that Yancai periodically transits through time. The memory alterations are a magical solution endorsed by the village council, which ensures locals mentally weather these shifts. Villagers continue to blithely accept you as part of the community.


(DON'T) HOLD YOUR BREATH


Karsa reunites the existing party and newcomers, issuing first assignments. The Merchants’s information suggests the beacon of Yancai will be online once the village travels in time within weeks. A dubious Karsa asks the party to check on the beacon, located in the former House of Commerce of the largely inundated merchants’ district. Reach it by rowing boat.

■ Villagers say the Master of Commerce, a famous musician, took precautions against intruders.

■ All ground and lower floor entryways of the palatial House were boarded to restrict flooding. To enter, pick locks or climb the putrid stairwell towards upper balconies.

Inside, the hissing of running water — and, in the lower levels, of thin, slippery leeches whose bite numbs your limbs, while they attempt to feed. You seem to experience pronounced vertigo when entering any decaying rooms covered in black mould.

■ The beacon is located on a dais in the basement vault room, where water rises near 1 meter. Only a few scattered scrolls and golden decorations remain among decorations, while a large ceiling carving writes, greed deafens man to the cries of his conscience; music sets him free.

■ Some tiles of the marbled floor stand out as you wade — step on one, and all doors abruptly slam shut, while dozens of obscured holes in the wall start to rapidly spill water, threatening to fill the room to the ceiling within the hour. You hear the tinny, waning sound of a village song played from a hidden source.

■ To stop the pouring water and open the doors, sing the song you hear, or find the music box that produces it amid debris on the water-covered floors. Wind it, and it plays its song in reverse, revealing the voice of a laughing elderly man who says, Depressingly, Anurr was right to worry.

■ Don’t forget to check the beacon — and report back to Karsa that it looks structurally untarnished.


THEY SLEEP


After surprising revelations at previous citadels, Karsa tasks you to investigate just how… permanent death is in Yancai. Villagers share that their dead are buried in a strange rite at sea — part of which will take place within days.

■ The dead are ‘entombed’ in one-man sarcophagi ships with carved and chained lids that depict their likeness. These burial boats are set at sea on the first day of each season and return three months later.

■ Join the harbours around 22 May, when mourners gather to receive the burial boats. Characters must pretend to be greatly anguished relatives, acquaintances or debt collectors to join the grieving.

■ The boats float towards you, seemingly of their own volition. Gaze afar and spot a boat carrying a man in black — the same who haunts some characters — who observes until the last burial ship has reached the piers, before he disappears.

■ Sailors draw up the boats and unpeel the untouched chains and lids, to reveal… no corpses. Peer closer and find neither biological signs (stench, liquids) of discomposure, nor the magical chillness of spaces where cadavers have lingered long. Scratch marks litter the inside of some boat lids.

■ Mourners seem grateful that the waters have ‘accepted’ the bodies. Some say that their relatives whose boats have yet to return must have been stolen by the ‘ladies of the lake,’ a villainous witch coven. Speak to mourners or sailors for clues.

■ Linger long near opened burial boats, and you feel tempted to throw yourself into the sea, slowly losing consciousness — until someone rescues you.


AMONG US


On 25 May, village leader Quanze Tsaymien drags the chained and half feral mistress Miang-si to households and Yancai’s largest market square.

The young woman, he says, was seduced by the ladies of the lake — the furtive witch coven that condemned Yancai to time travel. Luckily, the village elders have… coaxed Miang-si back onto the righteous path.

Miang-si is brought door-to-door to point out her 'accomplices.' Ill at ease, villagers whisper of similar witch hunts leading to false accusations and blood-curdling repercussions.

■ Both men and women are suspected and brought before Miang-si. Perhaps she takes an eerie interest in you, getting especially close to catch your scent, touch or remark on (in)visible hurts, or even dotingly kiss you. If you whisper quickly while she’s near, you might be able to ask one question.

■ If you are patient and kind to Miang-si, she briefly squeezes your hand as she withdraws. Within the hour, you find blood writ on your palm that warns, Our fat moon rises red.

■ If you are agitated, or if Quanze rushes her during your visit, Miang-si erupts into sudden, side-splitting cackling — while you find yourself croaking like a toad, or transforming into one and retaining human speech. The spell dissolves after eight hours.

Quanze’s long-suffering men say this sorcery breaks faster if you kiss one of the curmudgeonly emerald toads that hide in some of Yancai’s lakes. Catch one such delightful, slime-spitting creature or barter it from merchants at a costly premium.


ILL MET BY MOONLIGHT


A full moon is set to rise within days of Miang-si’s visit, on 27 May — just as Yancai shows signs of time shifting. Villagers are prone to stilling and staring askance, seeming lost or adrift.

The village itself evolves: one moment, the same house appears freshly new, then drowned, while waterways overfill with water, then seem barren. Overall, the village deteriorates.

■ That day, the sun suffers a midday eclipse, while droves of black birds circle the woods and village outskirts, attacking those who come close.

■ The waters increasingly thicken and darken, preventing boats from entering certain waterways.

■ An exceedingly bright moon and a diffuse lunar replica rise with nightfall. Come midnight, the village is alive with the sounds of ripping, structural collapse and shrieks. Tar-covered corpses emerge from the waters, clawing on and climbing up piers. They swarm, drawing passers-by into waters to drown them. Help them — and foremost, yourself.

■ Light and fire keep the dead at bay. On some waterways, wildfire now spells, WHAT IS WET WAS WRONGED

■ Weaker alone, fresh corpses climb into your rowing boat, pretending they are innocents who seek shelter. They betray themselves by speaking very slowly, struggling to keep track of the conversation or obliviously peppering it with details of their death. They stubbornly ask questions about you, repeating your answers, and become violent if you say they are dead. Push them into the water at first opportunity.

Quanze Tsaymien and other men of the village take arms, urging villagers to barricade in the nearest home, harbour or warehouse and weather the night. They advise to be silent and beware the dead who imitate living voices, warning not to touch any black mould or water that suddenly appear in your home — which alert the dead of your presence within.

■ Some dead try to tear you apart, while others seek to feed you a disgusting, tar-like black mould. A small taste of it makes you sluggish and feeble for two-three hours, while an entire fistful can kill.

■ If the undead infiltrate your house, hold your breath, do not move and keep from screaming. The dead have weak sight and olfactory senses and might pass you by, as long as you stay silent. It can be more efficient to fool than kill the dead.

■ By 5 a.m., houses start to replenish themselves, gaining a new appearance, while water and mould retreat. The dead withdraw into waterways. Outside doors have been marked with blood: vertical lines tell how many living people remain inside; horizontal ones count how many within died overnight.

■ You step to seize a brave new day — while Yancai enters a new time period (further details due in the next plot update).


NOTES

■ The game enabling meme goes up on 25 May.

Hit up available NPCs here or in their new inbox!

QUESTIONS.

weifinder: (erkang | it's clearing the haze)

[personal profile] weifinder 2023-05-18 06:20 am (UTC)(link)
1. Who was that man in black? Out at a distance while the boats were coming in.
weifinder: (glance | yeah i follow my track)

[personal profile] weifinder 2023-05-18 06:23 am (UTC)(link)
With a slow blink and a half smile, only for her, and not the village men:

"Do the dead rest under the ladies watch?"
fiercechains: (Default)

[personal profile] fiercechains 2023-05-18 06:23 am (UTC)(link)
Luckily, Wen Ning was not one of the undead of this world. Not that anyone had to know he was a fierce corpse. Those that were close to him knew and that was it. If he could keep it that way then he would happily do so. Even if, in the end, it might be hard to hide. Unlike most around him he didn't need to eat or anything that the humans had to.

"Then the mermaid can be whatever you want it to be. Who are the people to know?"
weifinder: (glance | yeah i follow my track)

(don't) hold your breath

[personal profile] weifinder 2023-05-18 06:30 am (UTC)(link)
this is a gift, it comes with a price
"I have an idea."

Wei Wuxian smiles, eyes fixed on the boarded, locked door, one foot in the boat he just finished tying off, the other on the waterlogged wood of the decking at this particular door.

who is the lamb and who is the knife?
He indicates toward the ceiling after a surreptitious moment to send a small burst of qi into the waters, disrupting any planned intrusions of aquatic terrors for the moment.

"Warning or advice?" He hums, a speculative sound, tilting his head to regard those words. "I'm inclined to believe both. You?"
weifinder: (headache | from the cold?)

they sleep

[personal profile] weifinder 2023-05-18 06:37 am (UTC)(link)
the waters turn from blue to red
Wei Wuxian slips toward the empty coffin boats, eyes serious, mien the calculated and mostly genuine showing of awareness in what grief these people have felt, what three months at most of a loss means when... this? His fingers touch wood, and he breathes in, studying the scratch marks from the inside of the boat. This isn't peace, not by his estimation. Missing boats does not mean that the fate of those who aren't shown to be empty is better or worse than the ones who fought, who he suspects were not allowed to pass from this realm into any other, who were trapped back in flesh deprived of what had once made it living...

... ah, but is that bias by now? Or an awareness than the man in his black attire who stood so far off was not casual in his surveying, shepherding, of these empty vessels back to the living. To those who provided the contents for the next lot.

"Do you feel that?" Asked of the one who is near enough to hear him speak while his fingers are pressed still to the upended lid of this older woman's carved boat lid. The scratches are obvious, notable, but he means the creeping feeling that causes the hairs at the back of his neck to stand on end, the urge to move to the sea, to violently merge with the waters, grows slow and rising within.
weifinder: (oshi | now i'm done)

among us

[personal profile] weifinder 2023-05-18 06:55 am (UTC)(link)
and turns me to gold in the sunlight
The fact of the matter is, Wei Wuxian has both excellent luck, and poor luck, in no particular pattern. The encounter with the woman being "reformed" had been fine enough, up until the point that her chains were rattled, Quanze seeking to usher her on faster, not finding enough contrition or belief that the minstrel, of all people, is one of her conspirators. Not in this, and in part Wei Wuxian believes its more of an assumption based on convenience, for the ladies aren't given to merriment the village can swallow easily, and Wei Wuxian's work here is delivering exactly that in music.

Not the worst career, and infinitely easier to swallow than some he's had on this world, in the Merchant's machinations toward their integrations in region to region.

No, everything was as fine as the farce of it could be, until it wasn't, until Miang-si started laughing. Cackling, cracking as a vase does under immense pressure, with immense relief.

Wei Wuxian, for his part, finds his world view abruptly shrunken. For the second time in his years in this foreign world, in its foreign lands, he finds himself utterly stripped of true form, forced into the cage of a body not his own, and infinitely weaker.

Wei Wuxian, now a small, thirty-six millimeter red toad with black ridges across his back is lost in the voluminous folds of his cloak. Struggling to free himself, his voice, sounding entirely like normal despite the incredible size change, emerges first.

"Hey! Hey! What happened? This is a little too much, ah? I'm just a little guy! Something's going to try eating me!"

He is, unfortunately, speaking to no one who'd been there a moment before.
weifinder: (ask | so you're keeping all your secrets)

[personal profile] weifinder 2023-05-18 06:57 am (UTC)(link)
During the time of the undead attacking the village, how sensitive are they to Wei Wuxian attempting to curb their worst attacking urges? More looking at attempting to calm any of the dead, or redirect them away from the living, or even pied pipering them along to a less harmful part of the village etc.
weifinder: (profile | i've made my decision)

ill met by moonlight

[personal profile] weifinder 2023-05-18 06:59 am (UTC)(link)
before i make the final sacrifice
He picks his perches with care, the music of his coaxing and commanding used with a surgeon's precision to redirect, deflect, to encourage the walking dead from their destructive paths toward those rendered vulnerable for this or that reason.

His flute cuts through the night, and the dead hands clawing through the breaking door are turned, briefly, toward him. Toward his presence, magnet enough to draw them forward, feet ill coordinated, stumbling. He plays, he commands his audience of dead to watch, and it's the three of them, poorly formed and all but dripping tar from their swollen skins, their tattered garments, their milky eyes, that try to speak, form insensate words, ask that he come.

He lowers his flute, and whistles three notes, eyes flitting to the one he sees at the building's back. In a moment's pause, before his temporary sway over these few dead disippates, he says, "See those people freed and safe," and then he whistles sharp, demanding, and backs further away from the village home with its shattered, bloodied door, and the smears of mold and tar along its broken wood. Inside, two women, three children, one infant: all quiet, all terrified.
Edited 2023-05-18 20:22 (UTC)
weifinder: (smile | are dishonest men)

[personal profile] weifinder 2023-05-18 07:07 am (UTC)(link)
( Wei Wuxian glances toward the young man speaking, the terminology making sense after years of other young men and women from worlds vastly different from his own. He smiles, a small, fleeting expression, sidling closer to tap two fingers to a long gouge that only came from within this boat, the dead seeking to leave.

Magic, and curses. Curses of magic, and all of it a frustration that he at least better understands by now, having learned in part and with tempered dedication and the irreverence of the brilliant how to work with it, but no, not the depths of its permutations.
)

You work with mysteries, the dead, or both in your world?

( A cluck of his tongue, and he pulls his hand back. He keeps his voice low, his gaze tracing over the marks, then lifted, to examine the waters beyond. )

Nothing lingers in this that speaks of death. Strange, for something that's meant to have contained a body. No energies of death or anything at all left within.
weifinder: (ask | and a dream in my soul)

among us

[personal profile] weifinder 2023-05-18 07:10 am (UTC)(link)
Wei Wuxian leans over, brows quirked, eyes flicking to her hand.

"What did it say?" That magic is as meticulously present here is unsurprising; that the village is cursed felt foregone as a conclusion long before they arrived. What place have they been that has not been cursed, visibly or otherwise? The young woman taken away to the next threshold, no more or less aware of herself and nothing like contrite, has his attention for a beat more, then it comes firmly to rest on Dany alone.
weifinder: (concern | and you know)

network during among us part ii

[personal profile] weifinder 2023-05-18 07:26 am (UTC)(link)
You had a question?

( he asks, sounding perfectly normal, because he is Perfectly Normal.

for a man transformed into a toad against his will, who has tucked himself into a proper corner after escaping his own robes, and managed to drag the immensity of his pendant along with him. pray no one goes looking in this section of holy cave.
)

Sizhui, Sizhui, ask away! This old man is practically expiring waiting to know what wisdom you seek! Or what silliness, you can afford to be silly still, ah? You should be, before everyone remembers you're two and twenty and tries putting you through Lan Finishing School under your father's watchful eye.

( he mostly teases, though it is indeed approaching about that time. polishing, where no Lan disciple truly needs it, but the tradition could be here and now, too, in a renewed and revisited world. lan zhan might like it. maybe. wei wuxian was apathetic, given the debates that mattered to him had been part of his knelt reflections and joy of ants, so endlessly industrious. oh, and that cold pool, and the cave that'd swallowed him and lan zhan whole, and — ah, but he took all the lessons he did from gusu lan and none of them were in the precocious preciousness of their precepts.

because each one that mattered was already indelibly inscribed into his bones.
)
weifinder: (flute | i know your heart's telling you)

ill met by moonlight

[personal profile] weifinder 2023-05-18 07:56 am (UTC)(link)
Some men are the byproducts of collective hallucination, mass hysteria, the convenience of political designs, moral outrage and panic. Some men will never be anything but, ground down and riven by the time any objective truth might bear down on the claims and motivations ascribed; some men will rise above, or twist away, from the confines of others labels. Of presumptive thoughts, of misdirected culpability.

They are, in the end, men both played toward ends by two manipulators from the shadows. For Lan Xichen, Zewu-jun, perhaps the worst of it in close ties, in shared hearts and memories, where a sworn brother and a sworn younger brother are the masterminds of his own undermining. Were the masterminds of Wei Wuxian's destruction, and his arrival from the darkness he'd nestled within for years, stretched too long and too short in turns.

Now, Wei Wuxian is more than he ever had been in the crying fears of the clans, dancing already to deeper greed and arrogance than his own arrogance had ever boasted, in youth and sincere belief that justice, true righteousness, would be recognised in spite of its inconvenience. That a man could, or should, stand alone, to bear the weight of a world and its censure so that those he loved did not need to.

It ever was not the way things were meant to be, and here, he is a man part of this group, part of the defense of village and citadel and fortress, and he is strong in the exact ways that struck fear into every greedy, grasping soul in their vaulted righteous clans. He is the Yiling Patriarch, by their naming and their mockery, and the truth of his own path, the one that was not demonic cultivation, no matter the accusations. No matter the title, granted, the same way that Zewu-jun and Hanguang-jun were granted their own. The same way his brother was yoked with Sandu Shengshou, a man in whom grief distilled to festered hope and bitter regret.

Here, Chenqing in hand, at lips, he plays. To curb and coax and guide where Clarity has no sway against the sting of the curse, the driving pulse of the twice dead who claw out of the waters, coated in tar without yet having been formed out of it. A cleansing that might benefit, Wei Wuxian thinks, but the moons rose fat and red, and the village seethes in death and the want of blood, and so he plays.

He turns dead from their intent, redirected away from the village houses, temporary at least. They lumber back into the water, tumbling off the dock into others reaching up, for a moment reducing the load of cathartic death scything that Zewu-jun embraces, as any good Lan, any tempered Lan, should.

(Or as the Twin Jades do, for their own reasons, their own cutting purposes, their own keen edges. It no more surprises him to see it with Zewu-jun than he's surprised in the quick draw that Lan Zhan rarely spares.)
scrapgege: (Default)

Xie Lian | Old Timer

[personal profile] scrapgege 2023-05-18 08:36 am (UTC)(link)
[I. THE DRIFING]

[There is a slightly run down building, which you could honestly wonder how it still stands when it feels like a strong gust of wind or a strong wave might topple it. And not far from it there's a small shack that looks even more precarious, with the smell of food wafting from it.

It does have customers coming and going, but the ones going often have a strange look on their faces. Some are sweating, others are running as fas as they can to go empty their bowels through whichever orifice is the most convenient, and a few look completely dazed.

There's a few unconscious people in the bushes too, don't mind them.

Still, it's not like there are a thousand food options in this town, so people keep coming, even though word starts spreading.

If you approach the shack, you will be greeted by a smiling Xie Lian presiding ove a bubbling pot.]


Hello! Would you like some fish stew?


[II. The HAUNTING - For the Dancing Seagull people]

[The first time the Red Lady approaches, Xie Lian is unsuspecting and doesn't register her until the mask is suddenly pressed against his face and he wakes up with a start.

He doesn't need to see to know exactly what is on the mask. A white face, half of it smiling and half of it crying.

He tries to struggle, but the phantom is surprisingly strong and then she says in a weirdly sweet voice...]


'This is you. This is the real you. You need to put on your skin.'

[All of Xie Lian's blood runs cold and he struggles harder, in vain. When she suddenly disappears, he's left gasping and huddles on the bed, not even realizing he's clutching his bamboo hat with tears running down his face.]

... No. This is not me. I chose not to be this.


[III. THEY SLEEP]

[The 'burying' rituals don't feel completely alien to Xie Lian. He's lived long enough to know some sort of things like these is customary in a lot of coastine or island cultures.

But the opening of the burial boats is still chilling. Once again...]


This feels wrong.

[Xie Lian is trying to articulate what the problem is, but it's difficult to find words...]

There's no decaying bodies, and no sign the boxes were opened from the outside by animals to feed... and there's no remaining energy like a soul lingering, or what you'd expect when someone has been paying respect to the dead.... something's wrong. Again.

[It seems they can't escape the weird flows of time, as Karsa mentioned, but...]

This place keeps moving in time, right? I assume some people probably end up undead because of it, but also... what if some people just revert to an earlier, 'alive' stage? While trapped in those boxes? What then?
Edited 2023-05-18 08:52 (UTC)
beitangmoran: (serious)

II

[personal profile] beitangmoran 2023-05-18 08:45 am (UTC)(link)
[Moran was minding his own business (aka, trying to escape his own 'customers') when he caught Xunxian running after ... someone? He's not sure. But no sooner is he making his way forward to him that Xunxian stumbles and falls, and Moran frowns, immediately gathering his robe to go faster and lower himself by his companion's side.]

Xunxian, are you alright? What happened? Who was that?
paperbutterflies: (Default)

sotehua I was going to tag in... and this also works

[personal profile] paperbutterflies 2023-05-18 08:49 am (UTC)(link)
[ ... of course he's transformed, which is why hanguang-jun is out for toads. ]

Senior Wei! [ and perfectly normally cheerful and affectionate and excited reply. ] Hanguang-jun said you know a binding talisman, that should make catching toads easier! I am on my way to get a basket or something else to hold them in but also if you can show me how it looks, I can attempt to draw it!

... Hanguang-jun warned that it might need to be drawn in blood.

[ ... he's prepared for that, too. ]
beitangmoran: (stars)

Arrival

[personal profile] beitangmoran 2023-05-18 08:50 am (UTC)(link)
[If Wen Ning starts exploring his surrounding, he might, suddenly run into a familiar face.

The face is attached to someone dressed entirely unlike Wei Wuxian, thought. Long flowing blue and silver silks, silver and pearl hairpin holding his hair back and as his gaze falls upon Wen Ning, no recognition at all seems forthcoming. His eyes just move on, until he starts frowning as a man suddenly pulls on his sleeve asking for something.]


The shop is closed, good master. Come back tomorrow, I don't have time today.

[He doesn't have time any day to be a merchant, but what do these people care?]
paperbutterflies: (Smile)

[personal profile] paperbutterflies 2023-05-18 08:52 am (UTC)(link)
[ Sizhui brightens visibly. ]

I can find you, too! If you tell me what is around you. Umm... I am in the village, if you can recognize something you see, tell me and we can meet there.

[ Showing his surroundings with the device is also easy. ]

Hanguang-jun and senior Wei and Lady Wen and sect leader Jiang are here! Other shave been here before, too.
beitangmoran: (Default)

III || Video

[personal profile] beitangmoran 2023-05-18 08:58 am (UTC)(link)
You are still transmitting, Master... Lan?

[An educated guess, because of the clothing, the headband and the resemblance.]
paperbutterflies: (Default)

[personal profile] paperbutterflies 2023-05-18 09:33 am (UTC)(link)
... Sizhui was there when it happened, after all, he can imagine, but he cannot know how long it has been since the Temple for him. The answer is clear enough - after the time at the Guan Yin temple, and not nearly long enough after it.

He perks up anyway because Zewu-jun has that effect on everyone.

"I understand, Zewu-jun. I am just arrived ashore," which is why he isn't faintly green, "and if you need anything, I can try to get it to you!"

He can help! At least... with the local things.
fiercechains: (Default)

[personal profile] fiercechains 2023-05-18 09:37 am (UTC)(link)
[ The man before him did share a resemblance to Wei Wuxian but not enough that Wen Ning couldn't tell them apart. He also couldn't see the man who he's been loyal to for a long time wear silks like that or a pearl hairpin.

He still is not sure where there are crabs in this village but that could be worried about later. Wen Ning waits until the man leaves and watches Moran for a moment. ]

You share a resemblance to Master Wei.

[ Probably not the first time he's heard that. ]
fiercechains: (Default)

[personal profile] fiercechains 2023-05-18 09:41 am (UTC)(link)
[ He takes note of what Sizhui is showing him before giving a nod to himself. ]

I am in the village. They handed me papers.

[ Something about collecting crabs. Though he is not sure why he would collect them. Were there shops that would use them for food? He does, however, know that the warm meal he was offered was given to someone else.

That last part catches his attention though. ]

Jiejie is here?

[ How was that possible? ]

I will find you.

[ Unless Sizhui finds the new arrivals first. ]
beitangmoran: (Default)

[personal profile] beitangmoran 2023-05-18 09:59 am (UTC)(link)
[This is definitely addressed to him, and Moran turns to face whoever spoke.]

So I have been told. If it is him you are looking for, he is around somewhere here.

... I assume you know him from your home?
scrapgege: (Default)

III

[personal profile] scrapgege 2023-05-18 10:02 am (UTC)(link)
... Well, this is the last of the stew, so if you're hungry, you can have it for free!

[It's not like he hasn't done good business today, and he's rather more interested in cleaning his pots than in making another sale, and besides, such a tall young (?) man clearly needs food, so...]