westwhere | the sunken

the sunken | part i

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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"The tar? Dark waters? Not itself, but the things it covers or creates or gives form to do."

The sheer variety disallowing him simple clarity on this point. He leans further into the room he last opened, verifying there's no additional door within, on a wall or set into the floor. He hoped Wen Ning might have better luck finding a way down.

"You have dealt with many things here it sounds like."

It would probably take hours or days for Wei Wuxian to even tell him all that he had been through. Had his sister gone through the same thing? He hoped that she hadn't gone through too much. His sister didn't deserve to have her life turned upside down.

He heads further down the hall and opens a door but doesn't see anything there. Once that room is a bust he heads further down and opens another door," Do these places have doors in the floor?"

[ OOC: It's all good. I've been dealing with migraines these past few days. ]

"Look and find out!" he calls back, cheerfully, because he has no better or worse idea — having not been in this village for long, regardless of what he'd believed a handful of days earlier.

"Let it never be believed that the rich and paranoid won't find some creative way of hiding things for themselves!"

That said, he continues his door to door search down his side of the hall, carefully entering a room not overrun by water, mold, or black mold.

Back home they had treasure rooms. Why would the village homes not have something like that? The only difference was that the village wouldn't have magic that kept those rooms hidden. What would they find if they did stairs that led down? What treasures would they find?

"I believe I found a door."

One that was in the floor and locked. Not that locks have ever bothered him. That doesn't mean he doesn't try to open it without breaking the door. The door would stay intact, or he'd try to keep it intact.

"It was in the floor and it leads down."

He will wait until Wei Wuxian comes into the room so they can head down and investigate, as long as there isn't a ton of water below.

He hurries from the room and its faded, broken pieces of furniture when Wen Ning calls out to him. Clapping his hands once he's inside, he smiles at Wen Ning, nodding to the trapdoor.

"Well done! Time to descend into the depths, ah?"

The least he needs before they're heading down, bypassing this not particularly trapped if the leeches spotted in the waters as they go were discounted from the tallying. Mold in all its dizzying irksome ways for the rooms they find themselves half forced to enter to skirt down further, but oh, here the waters drip and he pauses, looking at the marked depths before them at these lowest levels. Below the level of the ground outside, he suspects, which says little. Much of this is below that level by now.

These stairs descend right into dark waters, but not dark water. Light glitters down here, and — there, he thinks, squinting into the dark.

"Looks like we've found the right place," he says, flashing Wen Ning a smile. He gathers himself to leap to the dias, the angle poor but manageable so he might avoid the waters here entirely. His eyes travel the curving arc of the gateway, and he nods to himself. "An intact gateway. Karsa will be overjoyed."

Such a dry, self-amused statement. Karsa will be glad if fewer of them remain after they get it activated, but the inactive beacon is hardly the only interesting part of this underground room.

As long as the water was not too deep then he would have nothing to worry about. If it was then there was a chance, unfortunately, that he would sink to the bottom and he did not wish for that. Though he also knows to do what he can to avoid the water as well.

"Are you looking for something in the water?" He does not know what Wei Wuxian has been through in this place or before they showed up to this particular village. That does not stop him from heading down with the other. He would be there to protect him if the need arose.

He watches the water and sees the light glittering below," Is that the beacon you were searching for?" However, he notes the self-amusement. "She is not to be trusted?" He doesn't know, beyond those he knows personally, who to trust and who not to trust.

"What else do you wish to find down here?"

He gestures to the structure in the dias with him, but his eyes are trained down.

"This is, but here, do you see this too?"

He crouches down, indicating to fingerprints in the dust, dirt left behind.

"Someone's been here recently, before us."

Wen Ning kneels down a bit to see exactly what the other was looking at. He could see the fingerprints clear as day. Though that didn't tell them who had been there before them. Who had come through? Had someone tried to lock this away for a reason?

"I see them. Do we need to find out who was here before?"

If they needed to find out who was there before then he would help the other find them.

"One would guess we do," he says, sounding distracted. It's sufficient enough that he looks from the fingerprints to gaze around the room, looking for anything else obviously dirt touched.

Wet, yes, but not soiled. Moulding, yes, but not dirtied.

He hums a note of consideration.

"Karsa needs to know the gateway is intact. We need to ask after what else might have changed here recently, if the people can even remember."

His eyes roam over the place a bit more to see if there were any other fingerprints around. He couldn't see any other places where there were prints in the dirt. All he saw was water and mold.

"I do not see anything else."

Unless there were more dirtied prints within the house, back up the stairs. It was possible that there was something around that they could not see. His eye sight was pretty good but he couldn't see anything else out of place.

"Has the lack of memory been something you, jiejie, and the others have been through?"

Scanning the ceiling, Wei Wuxian makes a speculative noise in the back of his throat observing at last words etched there. It leaves his response to his old friend at a slight delay, distracted.

"Lack? No, only altered, which some of us faced when we first arrived here, with true memory returning at night... Wen Ning, what do you make of this?"

Asking for input while gesturing to the ceiling. greed deafens man to the cries of his conscience; music sets him free.

There was a lot, it seemed, that was distracting his old friend. Though he likes to think he knows the other well and how distracted he can get, especially when he was trying to help someone. Or when he was making something in order to help others.

"The true memory only came at night?"

What did he make of... He tilts his head slightly to look up at the ceiling and where the words were etched into it. He studies those words for a few moments and he's not sure, really, who they were pertaining to.

"It sounds as if it is saying that someone is not doing what is right. That there is something out there that he wants more and will do anything to get it." As for the music part. "I do not believe that means literal music but if it does then what music would stop a man from being greedy?"

"It tried to come at the least. Maybe related to what causes the memory shifts for the locals... I haven't heard from Karsa if she has an idea. We'll need to tell her about this being intact, but..."

He lifts a hand to make a motion like a boat riding waves. There's not enough for them to act on, and this is not a place showing activity.

For the most part.

"Music that compels," he offers, a mild statement for a very complicated and personal attack on them both. Years ago now, longer for him than his friend.

"We should take care and head—”

As he leaps lightly from the platform to one of the raised tiles above the water line, and it slowly gives way under foot, water trickling in from each side as suddenly as he near falls.

"—back?!”

"Where would we find her?"

Though, his friend was not wrong. They did not have enough to act on. He also isn't sure what to make about the whole thing revolving around memories. It seems, too, that his friend and others dealt with the memory shift.

Did the words have to do with them? After all, it was years ago that the other could control him. That he had controlled him.

Jumping up toward the platform he moves to catch the other not wanting him to fall into the water. "We should go. Or you could play something to see if it works." After all, it mentioned music. Perhaps playing will stop what was going on.

"In the village," he begins, but what follows leaves him leaping back to the beacon's base, frowning. A glance toward where they entered tells him a tale he can't discount: it's been blocked off.

"Going back isn't an option," he says, and it's then that a tinny, tinkling melody reaches his trained ear; Wei Wuxian cocks his head, listening, fingers stroking down Chenqing as he follows what melody he can.

Meanwhile, the water continues pouring in, steady if not overwhelming, the water level rising in the slow, inevitable way of doom.

So they would need to find a way back to the village? In doing so they would find her. Though, he glances over where they entered when the other glances there. It was blocked off. Could they break it? He has broken rock walls before. Though he is not sure that would be wise in this place. Not when it would probably retaliate against them.

"There is a way out of here." It was just a matter of finding that way. Or, rather, doing as the scrawled words told them. Music. A melody.

He does not like the water that pours in. Nor does he care to be trapped in water. "If the melody it provides does not work then try something of your own?" Perhaps something that was calming to the other.

He hums a note of agreement, finally tugging Chenqing free. His friend speaks similar enough to what he was thinking himself, and when his flute is at his lips, the music he plays is first: quieting. Slowing. Places here can be influenced by his music, just as they can be immune, and he wants a sense of which he's operating under, if he can countermelody or harmonise with what's already playing.

Once he has a sense of this working at all. His playing at first feels no response, but then the water... slows. Not stops, but slows, audibly and visibly, and he closes his eyes, listening.

When he switches to the other melody, the water slows further, even more rapidly. He keeps playing, arriving at Wen Ning's side, nodding his head in the direction of the melody he isn't responsible for, but is echoing regardless. Perhaps Wen Ning can track down the music creating device in the floating debris of the room, as Wei Wuxian continues to play and hold the waters at bay from further flooding.

He was not sure if the use of Chenqing would work or not. Or if this place meant that it needed, or wanted, a different type of music. That doesn't mean he won't watch the waters to see how they react. To see if what his friend places works or not.

At first it doesn't seem to be. That? It didn't seem good, not when the waters were still coming toward them. Though the more the other plays the more there's a reaction. The water seems to slow and that was a good sign. Something they could work with.

When the other switches to the new melody he gives a nod to his friend once the other is at his side before moving toward the direction of the melody. If they could find the music creating device then they could possibly get out of there.

"We are close."

Even as he says it he moves further through the room where the floating debris is. Further in the debris he finds a box and he is sure the melody is coming from it but he could be wrong and he merely turns toward his friend to see if he thinks the same or not.

He listens attentively, inclining his head towards Wen Ning after he's discovered some type of musical box, agreeing even as he continues to play to keep the waters stilled that the source of the song is located.

A metal handle turns at it's side, slowing down. A very inviting handle.

Moving back toward Wei Wuxian's side he stops momentarily. The musical box, of the sort, seems to still be playing. Though he's also taken note of the metal handle at its side slowing. He is not sure that they want to know what will happen if the handle stops.

So he steps a little away, just in case something happens and to protect the other, before reaching out to the metal handle to start winding it until it can no longer wind before letting the handle go.

The music... changes. Not what Wei Wuxian plays, but the melody, once the box is wound up, is ... strange.

Depressingly, Anurr was right to worry.

Wei Wuxian keeps playing as the water drains low enough one of the doors creaks open again on swollen hinges. He pauses his playing, canting his head to watch the places from which water had been tumbling. For now, they remain... without new flows of water, if not dry.

He glances to the music box, then the door, leaping off the platform to carefully perch on the sidelines.

"I think we need to get talking to people," he says. "Let's head out for now, ah, Wen Ning? And I'll fill you in on what the name Anurr means in the meantime. )

The melody is different and strange, nothing like what he's heard Wei Wuxian play. He isn't entirely sure if he actively likes it either. Though, if it kept them from being trapped then he would make sure to play it.

Lack of water is a good thing. It means they wouldn't drown. There was also a door that creaks open to allow them an exit. It wasn't the same one that had come in from and he is sure that they needed to keep the music box with them, make sure it did not stop playing while they are inside.

"Someone might know what went on here." They would not know until they asked. He would, however, follow the other out toward the door and out it. To get them away from the beacon. "Is that a name to be feared?" After all, he doesn't know who Anurr is. Whatever his friend can, and is willing, to tell him he will sit and listen to. It was better to be prepared than to be left to the unknown.

And so they return, Wei Wuxian explaining Anurr as a lord of death who had first been opposed then circumstantially aligned with them in Sa-Hareth, who has stalked after them in various ways less overt and more so, and who is contactable still... and regained his power and has a strong pull over those death touched.

Thus a warning to Wen Ning that evolves into warning against all the remaining lords of death, from the Huntress to her Child to Matthias and Ratkingku or whatever his name was anyway, who wanted to remember that deathlord of claws? Not Wei Wuxian.

[ OOC: We can totally wrap it with this! ♥ ]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

the sunken | part i

allergies are eating me alive, short taggo

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if we can wrap with this so we're ready for things going forward!

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