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

most ganky elegant ability

[lanclan]

[ Look at that, it really is a cave. Xichen dismounts, sword once more sheathed, and looks upon the humble abode without judgement (albeit surprise, somehow, even after everything else so far). He enters and looks around, casting an inquiring look at Wangji for further explanation. ]

[downswing]

( It... is not altogether lacking, as caves go. Lan Wangji, for his part, would presume to say it holds a great deal of promise: here, a scratched wall, where past occupants appear to have carved their cries of help. There, fresh, moulding moss. Beyond, corners and jutting sharp edges.

And everywhere, blood-curdling cold, sparse but for the handful of belongings each of the four dwellers had laired in.

Truly, an empire of hospitality. )

Our assigned home in transit. ( Lan Wangji, the spirit of grace, beckons his brother towards the nearest mat of tufted, woven straw, covered by a wilted blanket. His own domain. ) Be seated. Rest.

[lanclan]

[ There are cries for help etched into a wall, oh. Okay. And mould. Xichen is making a list of things he will never be commenting on. He wants to take Wangji back home with such keenness of heart that his chest aches.

But Xichen sits without quarrel, looking back to Wangji. ]

I spoke with a girl named Hermione. She gave me a notebook to read.

[downswing]

( ...ah. The notebook. His turn to heft his brow northbound now, expression pinched, if conciliatory. And what, pray tell, has Hermione had to share of their circumstances? )

Edifying?

( No matter. His brother will speak on his own time, will ask his plethora of questions, while Lan Wangji sinks to both knees on stone cold-hardened, stink of lamp oil stinging his nose when he unlids a small jar to wake a brazier. Old kindling, already gaining humidity. In Yancai, waters live deep.

He brings it back, flame growing, to sit it by Xichen's knee and brighten the cave's quarter blind. )

[lanclan]

[ He moves over on the mat and nods to it in invitation, not about to take away the only respite from that cold floor if Wangji's knees are to mirror his. His eyes blink faster briefly at the unexpectedly strong smell of the cheap oil, anger at the undead lords who supposedly brought them all here (brought his brother here) to live in poverty brimming in the cage of his ribs. ]

She wrote of seven other lands before this one. Do you remember them?

[ He waits to see if Wangji encounters the same memory problems, a headache or somesuch. ]

[downswing]

( He pauses, yet knelt, before filling the negative space between them like water, sidling at his brother's side. First, with the very tips of his knees, then gaining ground with two fingers' widths of his thighs. The shock, the horror of his invasion.

Head bowed, hands rupturing on his lap, fingers knotting and unfolding as he tries and fails to remember with absolute clarity. A strange thing, these lands. Curious and alarming, and his head a deaf wound of wonder, of selective amnesia.

He hesitates — )

More. ( Rasped, strained. ) The count depends. She arrived after Sa-Hareth. ( This, he knows. Hermione. Lily. The witches of a kind. ) Disrupted lands, broken. All death-touched.

[lanclan]

Easy. Do not think too hard on it, these memories hurt. She was in pain.

[ He doesn't want that for Wangji, resting the tips of his fingers on a sleeve as is to steady the ploughing force of his thoughts. Sa-Hareth. ]

That's good, that you can remember if you try. Be wary of making the attempt in the future, Wangji, I would not know how to ease your mind if Clarity failed.

[downswing]

Exorcise your worries.

( He feels... steady, anchored, well situated in this stretch of reality. Alive. Certain of himself — of his identity, his whereabouts. Recent memory is muddled, but — his hand reaches out, pallor transformed to flesh.

His brother is known, from likeness to sword calluses, to the tremors of his qi nearby, to the gargantuan, world-ending cuts of his music. His brother will serve him pillar. )

Your memory is unscathed? ( Or perhaps also ruined, eroded, barely holding on by silk thread. A spider's web of facts, contorted. )

[lanclan]

[ His hand covers Wangji's, patting it on a knee. ]

Hazy, and I strongly suspect it will also worsen as time wears on.

[ He has the benefit of only recently having arrived, after all, and has a mildly clearer view than others. How long that will last, he doesn't like to guess. ]

As far as I can tell, minds erode from land to land. The girl was not mistaken in keeping a journal of her wanderings, I should like to do the same in case I forget myself.

[downswing]

I have not oft found memories to dwindle.

( Here, now, appears to be the exception — one that preys on Wangji's own uncertainties, his private doubts that perhaps this land is an otherworld, and he has over the span of two years only deepened the hold of hell upon his heart.

He feels less than himself, clumsy and all sharp angles, juvenile near the perfect picture of poise and posture that his elder brother represents. The lesser man, the spare, a silhouette. A shadow.

As he should be. )

We... hail of Cloud Recesses. ( But he says it dubiously, as if it is information that wants the authority of a better, more certain man to verify. He thinks, he is nearly confident —

But he cannot say. ) With Uncle.

[lanclan]

[ The sinking of his heart like a stone in the ocean is the only way to describe the feeling of watching Wangji forget the very roots of himself, and Xichen tightens his hold on his brother's hand as if to solidify his focus. ]

We are of Gusu Lan sect, yes. Cloud Recesses, in the mountains. No lakes nearby save at the foot of the slopes in Caiyi Town. Shushu raised us after mother passed, father is gone too.

[ Gutting as it is, he presses on with what he wants him to always remember. ]

I am your xiongzhang. Lan Huan. Xichen. Zewu-Jun. You live in the jingshi, higher up the slopes, and I take the hanshi lower down. It snows thickly over both during winter when we close the mountain passes, but white flowers still bloom.

[ Xichen would rather be dead than forget these things. ]

[downswing]

( He remembers: Cloud Recesses, spartan and pale and bare, and the crackling coil of a whip coming round-down, and Uncle's recitations of the legend of Bai Suzhen, and how a home nearby, barren and cold, housed an unhappier ending —

He remembers: Nightless City, Wei Ying a hovered ghost, the shrill snap and thunderous turning of swords, and how metal, meeting metal, is less shrill than soothing —

He remembers: warmth and sandalwood and Caiyi's silks soft and soothing like river waters —

And he teeters, he folds, he comes down on Xichen, forehead to his brother's shoulder, little more than a child seeking a door to kneel by. )

You speak it. ( The pause drags like an ink stain, spreading. ) Then, it must be so.

i was lured here solely to be hurt

[lanclan]

[ His posture doesn't falter as he wraps an arm around his little brother's shoulders, giving him his outer robe to hold onto if he wants something to grip. He keeps him there, as he did when they were boys and Wangji tired faster, and though he keeps his breathing regulated so as not to alarm him, Xichen's eyes burn with heat that stings. It must be those undead lords doing this, bringing Wangji so low as to forget his home. All that talk of beacons to transport them: transport them where? Further from home to fight a war not theirs? He turns his chin to rest on Wangji's hair, acceptance and reassurance in every move and breath that is Xichen's to give as he works the lump from his throat in order to reply. ]

There are many rabbits. You found and released them; Wei Wuxian likes them a great deal.

[ Perhaps some other hook to those memories will help. Perhaps. ]

quiet, quiet :''''''''''''''' )

[downswing]

There are rabbits here, also.

( He does not say, breath hiccuped, I have them. Remembers in marrow and part and particle of himself that the possession of animals is a fault of discipline and character, that the precepts bar such a path fiendishly.

But he listens. Better than hearing, Zewu-Jun's arm defining reality through weight and warmth and the heavy signature of its presence. It emboldens him to take air in his lungs, to steal it, to exist in a world that seems perpetually starved to drown him. )

It is not... amnesia. ( No cloudiness, no wonder. No doubt, grazing at him, that he is a man different than the one he knows, honoured and true. ) Only an ache of... belonging. Here. Where you are not — where you were not.

muffled screaming

[lanclan]

I am here now.

[ Here in this cave, in the semi-dark of a flickering oil lamp, Xichen refuses to let anyone take away his family. He has already lost too much in a-Yao, broken, but to lose Wangji? He would shatter completely. ]

I cannot make up two years to you, Wangji. I am sorry for that.

This Is Fine

[downswing]

( He looks at his brother, and he looks, and he looks, and he sees this, with inevitability: a man dwarfed by duty, for all he stands young — not so much more aged than Lan Wangji himself, but armored in every responsibility of his ancestral land.

And now this bent back wishes to take on more. )

Your shoulders come too narrow to bear also this burden. ( He wonders what it must have been like, to grieve as the First Jade of Lan, unseen and unheard, the heir who cannot scream. Lan Wangji's tantrums of mourning were accepted, because his brother walked the halls to take every temple offering from strangers, to inform elders of their mother's regrettable passing. )

No apologies required.

[lanclan]

[ His posture shifts, fondly letting his weight sink sideways against Wangji. No one else is around to see this minor break in decorum, and he gives him a pat on the back too as if to steady them both. Sadness lingers between them like smoke, able to see each other through it but never disperse the reasons for that grieving completely, guilt a heavy passenger in his chest: Wangji is kind and forgiving. ]

You have Wei Wuxian here with you, [ what an innocuous comment, ] that must have been ...

[ Nice, right? Bro??? Time to be nosy in lieu of sad. ]

[downswing]

...unkind towards him.

( He finishes carefully, like beads trickling off a cut string. It is a cruelty to wrench a man free from his home and deliver him here, unhoused and unpurposed, adrift, the dead wandered long and aimless beside. Worse still, and Lan Wangji's tongue feels thickened and slack, lead-weighted — )

The dead hound and persecute him. ( Relentlessly, without cause or reason past the one thing he cannot freely remove: his nature, his learned ability, the touch of death that crawled upon his skin, with resurrection.

Wei Ying is as much the captive of this world, as he is its summoned. )

[lanclan]

[ His inner sighs could move mountains. ]

I am sure he is very glad to have you with him, hounded or not. He is likely used to that.

[ Realistically, there is a lot worse than the rampaging undead that have gone after the man before. Xichen trusts in his abilities as much as Wangji's, different though they are as night and day. ]

[downswing]

He does not begrudge company. ( Some might say, at times, he seeks it, like a frozen, timid animal hunting down fragments of warmth. It seems to him a known thing, relearned, dug from the depths of clouded memory: that once, Wei Ying's smile shone incandescent.

At Nightless City, his sun downed. They watched the skies for bleeding. )

As before. When he — ( It sickens him, vertigo gutting him, roiling his stomach. A hard breath, gaze diffuse, before he regains focus. ) He was with us? Before? Young. I believe...

( But cannot say with utmost certainty, if once Wei Ying stood among their disciples. )

[lanclan]

[ His own memories will frost at the edges too, he fears, but before then he can tell Wangji what he knows. ]

He came to Cloud Recesses to study with the other summer disciples, yes. [ Xichen's hand runs gently over Wangji's back, smiling softly as he imparts pieces of a history his brother would never forget; did not, and spent sixteen years grieving. ] Wei Wuxian was one of the brightest students, he vied for your attention a great deal. You were the only one who was his match, in this or that, and he very clearly wanted to be your friend.

[ He snorts under his breath. ]

It annoyed you, at first.

[downswing]

...I remember the irritation. ( Another pause, spanning, sinking. ) I was irritated too readily.

( Fault was his, juvenile. He has ripened since to accept that the world turns and voyages round to its own order. His wants, his whims, his weeping are immaterial. They did not move a sea of swords facing Wei Ying, gleam of their steel blinding. How does he recall this, and not —

He does not sway, against the strain on his mind, against the ludicrous, obscene exercise of staying upright. He knows, as his brother must know, that they are not right. All is amiss here, riotous. )

Yesterday. ( No, think. ) Today. Today's sunrise. I recalled less than now. The spell wanes.

[lanclan]

[ A frown too readily takes over from his smile. ]

Others said that memories were affected by this place. If I hadn't seen the agony Miss Hermione went through, I would be beside myself with you right now.

[ Xichen might have done something less than sensible. ]

We will return home and all will be well, this is not a night hunt gone wrong. It is all wrong and must eventually come to rights.

[downswing]

...brother. ( A heartbeat, another. He dare not pick at a wound until its scabs bleed, but Xichen must know, surely knows already. The possibility of return is not the probability, not the truth. Two years speak against the performance.

He does not grieve time lost, distance gained. That he cannot recall if Uncle's beard is barely peppered, or long silvered, if Jingyi reached his shoulder or his chin. There are losses, and there is practicality: they can be men who mourn the shape of themselves and still retain its core. )

Do not be afraid. ( Of this land. Of hard impotence. )

[lanclan]

Wangji ...

[ How does he explain he has been afraid of so much since his murder of Jin Guangyao? His own weakness, mostly.

His entire purpose is to keep his family safe, and he failed spectacularly at that for years, manipulated in ways that could have spelled his own demise as well as his brother's and uncle's had a-Yao not cared for him, specifically, in his own twisted way. Xichen does not want their safety to be at the hands of his poor decisions again. ]

I will ensure you see the snow fall in Cloud Recesses again.