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

[damnable]

And here I'd thought you'd never ask.

( Red sends her friend a charming smirk of her own even as she eyes the comically large oar within Clara's hands. She's pretty small herself, but she does have the super-strength afforded to her by being Cerberus at least in bursts, and so she'll reach out to take the top of the oar from her as her smirk widens into something warm despite the danger ahead. )

You can officially consider me your buddy for this upcoming adventure.

[makemeasong]

[ Clara gives Red one of her biggest dimpled smiles, the one that's on reserve for people like the Doctor. Like Red. Essential, as he says. ]

Alright then, we're having ourselves an old-fashioned Goonies moment.

[ She isn't sure if being around teens in Purgatory all that time would clue her into pop culture references, but the context is there: adventuring, just like Red said. ]

Bonus: your hair can be used as a flotation device.

[ She smiles angelically before running to get into the boat, hopping right onto the seat. She's trying to get all her jovialness in now, while she can, before they're inevitably scrambling for their lives or something. She knows it'll happen, but Clara's decided to take the full cup and drink it down to half empty. ]

[damnable]

( Not only did Red pick up on pop culture references from her time in Purgatory High, but also when she lived in the mortal world for a couple of decades so she recognizes it and then smirks. )

And Goonies never say die, huh? So I'm sure this will go fine, more than fine.

Even if I think you're putting a little too much faith in my hair.

( But Clara's reaction makes Red laugh before she follows her into the boat, using the oar to push the boat away from the dock and more out into open water. If her friend's going to a dangerous situation, she wants to go with her - figure out what the fuck is actually out there and make sure she stays alive. She hasn't forgotten about how she nearly died in Alem. )

So if I'm doing the rowing, you think you can navigate?

[makemeasong]

[ Clara settles herself and if she's worried about her close call in Alem, she doesn't look it. In fact, she's thinking she's going to do this and be fine as a final 'fuck off' to Alem. One of these days, she isn't going to need rescuing. ]

I'm putting exactly the right amount of faith in your hair. And maybe I also deeply believe in your oar skills.

[ Which is true, and as they set out, she make sure they're pointed in the right direction, keeping her eyes peeled for anything in the water that may try to sink them. ]

Luckily, I learned a thing or two about climbing back in the desert. Vanessa and I scaled a cliff and lived to tell the tale. Running favors for ghosts is never easy.

[damnable]

( Of course Clara isn't worried about the close call, of course she's focusing on the next challenge with bravery - she's amazing like that. )

I do have pretty impressive oar skills that comes entirely from my supernatural strength so...

( Red can get them where they need to go at any rate. She saw Charun do these boat rides often enough - it's not hard even in waters that differ from the River Styx. )

...wait is climbing gonna be involved with all this? I saw you with an oar and decided to hop on for the ride without actually knowing what the fuck we're doing.

i think my crush on natasha lyonne is leaking through 😭😅

[makemeasong]

Pretty sure. Or at least reasonably sure? I've decided to never discount anything. For all I know, we'll have to make wings out of feathers and wax and fly back.

[ Clara's laughing though, because she as friends who'll just follow her, and that makes her feel like...well. She isn't sure. Elated? Protected? Maybe loved in a way that found family is very particular about. Either way, she's glad Red's with her. ]

I dunno what we're doing either. Honestly, all I know is a musician lived here, probably died here, and it's partially flooded. But if we need a hand with invisibility and getting the hell out later, unseen, I got you.

understandable!! 2 beautiful bi-ladies on a boat 😍

[damnable]

Shit. I hope not. Never liked flying even if it was in a plane, and they're fairly foolproof.

( But the very thought is... not appealing. She never has flown in a plane, but she knows how common they are in the modern world, how easily people trust their lives to those floating metal containers in the air. She smiles though at the sound of Clara's laughter - it's a good sound especially given how she nearly died last place they were at, especially given they're going into more danger now. )

...invisibility? You got skills I don't know about?

[makemeasong]

I bet I an get you in a big blue box that'll make you love flying. 'Course, it'd be through space and time, but it's definitely foolproof. [ Clara has to pause, and then adds an addendum to that. ] Foolproof doesn't mean Doctor proof, though, so your landings may vary.

[ Still, she says with a the sort of smile that's pretty much reserved for the Doctor. Now that she's broached the topic of the bouquet she was given, she tugs the makeshift necklace of dried rose petals still attached to a stem from around her neck. It's protected by something the Doctor rigged, she can't even try to begin explaining that part. ]

So, I dunno why, but someone or something left me a bouquet of roses with 24 rose petals that were edged in gold. When I pluck one, I go invisible for half an hour, give or take a few seconds. Maybe I shouldn't be using anything this place gives us, but they let me get away with a lot. Especially in Alem.