the sunken | part i

[groundrules]

THE SUNKEN

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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 @ 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 eastbound.

LOST AT SEA | TEST DRIVE TOURISTS

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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.

Comments

(still) Drifting

[somebadnews]

[ Between getting his bearings and harassing the neighbors, Five spends the first days barely interacting with anyone in the lighthouse he's housed in. The ghosts that inhabit it are almost impossible to ignore, but he gives it an impressive effort while he scribbles equations on the walls and pours over the rumors he's been hearing around the village and confirmed again by Karsa. (Because of course she knew.) He's got a more pressing task at hand, but they're crossing into his domain. If fucking time travel is being used here, he needs to figure out how.

He's famously, obsessively determined to solve just this type of problem, and yet all it takes is a glimpse of a mannequin in the window to stop him dead in his tracks. Anything he'd been working on is immediately forgotten when he watches her study him, exactly the way he's looking at her.

Dolores?

After that, any time he's seen in the lighthouse near a window, he looks unsettled. His work suffers. Sometimes he taps back on the windowsill in morse code in an effort to bring her back when she vanishes. — 'I'm sorry, I didn't want to. Speak to me, please. I need your help.' — If caught, he seems oddly unsure of how to respond or mutters about being in the middle of something before making an excuse to leave.

He catches sight of her sometimes when walking around the village, always on the other side of a window and just out of reach. She always used to speak to him, and now it's like she can't. Because she's not really... there. There was a woman impersonating her, and it wouldn't be the first time he was tricked. He should be furious. Yet he can feel her disapproval when he slinks into a tavern, or teleports directly from their backroom to help himself.

A knock gets him to look up as she's there again, looking inward at him and tapping gently on the glass. Try as he might, she never stays. ]

[westviews]

[It's one of those times by a window in a lighthouse that Wanda decides to be social. Not her favorite thing. It doesn't come easily to her, but he looks troubled, and it's better than talking to a ghost.]

Penny for your thoughts?

[Might as well comment on the weather, Wanda.]

[somebadnews]

[ Five snaps his head up when he realizes he's not alone, and it takes several seconds to remember the logical reason she has to be here. Longer to realize she's not a ghost, to which he shakes his head. ]

It's nothing. [ He can feel his chest constrict with those words. She's not nothing. He could blink away before Wanda gets a chance to ask, but instead he moves in front of the now-empty window, blocking her view. ] ...What do you make of the lighthouse?

[westviews]

[Wanda doesn't think it's nothing, but she's careful when she chooses to pry. It's clear on her face that she doesn't quite buy the brush-off, but she lets it be.]

It's... busier than it looks. [A nice way to say haunted as hell.] You?

[somebadnews]

[ 'Haunted' he's dealt with, but a faint tapping keeps him tense as he refuses to move from his space in front of the window. He shakes his head. ]

Cursed, probably. [ He'd wish his brother were here to deal with the ghosts, if not for the fact that his brother would be a terrible excuse for an exorcist. ]

There's always a reason it was abandoned.

[westviews]

Has it given you trouble?

[The lighthouse, or its... other residents. The ghosts. Spirits. She's not sure what's PC, nor does she care to find out by pissing them off.]

[somebadnews]

[ That seems to bring him around from whatever daze he was in, and his tone hardens. ]

They’re loud. [ He frowns as he really looks at her for the first time. ] Unless you know an exorcist, I don’t have any advice. The necromancers in our group usually can’t be bothered.

[westviews]

I don't have a lot of experience with them [the ghosts], but they seem to always want something. A favor or... I don't know. Someone to listen.

[She tips her head to the side as if listening for some spirit coming up the stairs, but there's nothing. For now.]

I don't think they mean harm.

[Is this her attempt to not freak out this kid (sorry dude)?? Maybe.]

[somebadnews]

[ Five's expression sours; he's almost positive she's saying that for his sake. He opens his mouth to refute any notion that he's afraid of ghosts — but the persistent tapping behind him tries to tear his attention away. It's all he can do to ball his fists and not turn around to see if Dolores is still watching. ]

Do they? [ But his quip is cut off and he shakes his head. ] I wouldn’t assume anything. They're listening too.

[thedreamer]

[ Though the Doctor isn't idle and doesn't tend to linger at the lighthouse for very long—not when there's a mystery to solve, particularly related to time travel—he's more than aware of those he's sharing space with.

He doesn't much dwell on Five's opinion of him, though he's cognizant of the younger man's skepticism and takes it in stride, as always. As if there aren't enough mysteries, the Doctor has locked onto what it is that's been drawing Five's attention recently, something he's seeing through the glass, and something the Doctor naturally wants to know more about. By the window, he'll take it upon himself to query, of course. ]

Oh, what a coincidence! I'm in the middle of something, too, so now we both are, and of course, the law of things getting done says it works out far better with two than one. So here we are!

[somebadnews]

[ Five hasn't found many opportunities to be alone in the lighthouse. Between his roommates and the ghosts, it's a wonder how he's surprised to be interrupted from his thoughts. Especially when it comes to the Doctor, who very well could have chased Dolores away when he approached. His mind is still firmly elsewhere, and apparently playing tricks, but he has no intention of revealing any cracks in his sanity.

He swallows his devastation and tucks away the vulnerability that might have been showing the first time he tried to brush him off. They were both in the middle of something. Curiosity nags him enough that he asks. ]

What is it?

lemme know if this doesn't work

[rumorate]

[Allison's got a ghost of her own, which means most evenings she doesn't leave the boat. She sits at the table and has a drink with her husband, if only for a few minutes. It's nice just to hear his voice, and while she knows this is going to be a future problem, she doesn't want to let it go just yet.

So when her brother pops in, watching the windows for his own spectre, Ray tips his head back, with a small, sad smile. "Let me guess. Another one of your brothers?"

She laughs.]

With six of them, it's safe to say I never run out.

completely works!

[somebadnews]

[ While it was a relief that Allison came around to the fact that she's not a real pirate, there's still something very wrong here. Even aside from Dolores watching him from the window when he comes to see her.

It only distracts him for a moment before he catches sight of the man with his sister. He thought he'd met all of her shipmates. If she's so comfortable with him that he wonders if her memories got mixed up again. Then there's the question he catches with an eerie sense of familiarity. 'Another', meaning he's met the others? ]

Who's this?

[rumorate]

Oh, right. You guys never met.

[She offers a small smile, before pointing to the man next to her.]

This is Ray. Ray, this is my brother, Five.

[somebadnews]

[ That about floors him the moment he pieces it together, and his mouth hangs open as he stands in front of both of them. How... and why would it take her so long to tell him? It doesn't feel right. ]

...Ray. Ray Chestnut. [ He looks between him and Allison for confirmation, sympathetic and worried in equal measure. Carefully, he takes a step forward. ] When did you get here?

[rumorate]

[Ray winces, looking back over at his wife. "I'm not exactly here, in the way that you're here."

From the look on Allison's face, it seems as though she knew it already. He disappears after a few minutes - it's pretty obvious that he's not real. But it's not the first time she's seen Ray in a moment of stress.

She just didn't realize other people could see him too.]

He's not real. Though I guess he's slightly more real than I thought he was previously.

[somebadnews]

[ The man disappears before Five can so much as shake his hand, and once he vanishes it leaves him with an unresolved feeling in his chest. Ray Chestnut would have most likely been dead by 2019, so it's not out of the realm of possibility that his ghost followed her back. That might have been as close as he ever gets to meeting him.

Allison is taking it too well, and somehow that worries him more. He chews on the side of his cheek and his eye flit briefly to the window. ]

You thought you were hallucinating. He's been showing up since we got here?

[rumorate]

[She shakes her head.]

Just since we got our memories back. It was also happening when I was home, but it hadn't since I came back here. Wasn't really sure what to make of it, but he wasn't trying to talk me over a bridge or anything, so I figured wouldn't hurt to talk to him.

[It's clear that she misses him. Even if she doesn't get to have him for very long, a little bit is enough.]

[wooden_one]

[He hears the tapping on the window before he turns around. He had caught the sound from time to time from Five and has figured, at this point, that it probably meant something though he wasn't sure what.

He catches Five staring but Chu Wanning didn't know how to ask about these things. All he can offer is,] Whatever you're seeing is mostly likely not truly there.

[somebadnews]

[ Five has been caught enough times that he shouldn't be startled to run into one of his roommates. He's clearly distracted when he turns, and it takes him a while to be present enough to recognize concern. Maybe it's valid to worry about something that might not be there, but he's still rattled. Dolores never really felt like she left him until she appeared.

After a moment, he looks pained and shakes his head. ]

That's not entirely reassuring.

[wooden_one]

Is it not?

[What he's seeing is deeply upsetting so he assumed...]

What are you seeing?

[somebadnews]

[ He's spent a long time fending off insanity, but she's never appeared like this before. His instinct is to deny seeing anything. The lighthouse is haunted, so why assume it's anything but that?

Because no one would know to show him Dolores. It doesn't even fully look like her, it looks like... ]

Why? Did you see something?

[wooden_one]

During the day, I saw a woman. She spoke with the voice of someone I knew.

[somebadnews]

[ On the surface that really doesn't sound the same at all. ]

They couldn't have just sounded similar?

[wooden_one]

I would recognize her voice no matter what.

[There's too much regret, too much anger, too much guilt for him to not to.]

But I know it's not her. It is something using her voice. [His gaze sharpens. He is angry about this. Rong Yan was someone who saved him. He would not forgive any who would use her memory in such a way.]