the sunken | part ii

[groundrules]

THE SUNKEN | PART II

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Get your toes wet in Part II of The Sunken, stretching until 28 June.

THE MORNING AFTER

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Waking from Yancai’s undead attack, you find the village has gone three years back in time.

■ Yancai remains flooded, but there are fewer waterways and some dry grounds. You can safely transit by raft, alongside row boat, though the waters run more turbulent.

■ Houses are sturdier, less drenched, their paints and furniture less eroded. There are fewer piers and minimal mould. The dual moons appear less… bloodthirsty.

■ Most locals don’t recall the future. The elder council, including leader Quanze Tsaymien and Kuthuba, remember, but feel compelled to re-enact the past, like an itch they must scratch. Those dead in the undead attack are alive, feeling as if they never perished.

■ Telepaths can hear echoing screams from the undead attack over the two days that follow the time travel.

■ The House of Commerce is less sunken, its beacon offline and musical boobytrap unarmed. The Master of Commerce yet lives and may be contacted.

■ Some struggle with partial or full amnesia, or might undertake their assumed identities. These effects wane within 24 hours — but vertigo, nausea and a sense of displacement may persist.

LIVING FIRE (NEWCOMERS, OPT-IN)

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Spooked by the memory meddling, party witch Karsa rallies newcomers, who have least experienced Yancai’s magic, to assemble ingredients for an elixir that will help settle clouded minds. ( ”Minds? What minds? You learn to use them now? You’re too old. You only take your little drink to stop staring like fools.” )

■ You must locate red-eye root on the outskirts of the forests that border Yancai. The plant lives in ancient, immense trees that have been burning from the inside for decades.

■ The red-eye root grows within these endless fires.

■ Briefly stop, divert or enter the fire wall to collect the root — but beware that flames stoke, if you loiter nearby. You can also find the resident fire gnome, who’ll surrender a handful of roots — if you amuse them by fulfilling requests ranging from playful (songs, dances) to humiliating (pretending to be animals, sharing uncomfortable secrets) to cruel (asks for blood, punching a comrade… )

■ Dilute the red-eye root into a painfully bitter elixir, then distribute it and coax the reluctant to drink.

■ You can enlist anyone’s help with the quest!

HOME AT SEA

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Slowly, surely, Yancai sinks — a fresher reality for villagers who reward help to raise piers, wade through waterways to reach their families, or design new boats, infrastructure and safety mechanisms. Cash in on your good deeds here.

You overhear veteran fisherman Temiu mutter that mould dregs have knotted his nets — while newly arrived Captain Alia of the New Brigade wonders how Yancai can be so flooded, amid quiet seas. The population seems tender, weary.

FARE THEE WELL

Once more, the village observes a funerary rite — this time, setting dead bodies at sea. Hostile, sullen and silent embalmers contracted by the elder council prepare corpses for final farewells before laying them to rest in one-man casket-vessels. The ships are bound with thick, weighty chains, closed and set on water — destined to return empty after the dead are claimed.

Drifting distantly at sea, the Man in Black of hauntings awaits them on a ragged boat.

■ Some villagers murmur that many casket-ships have gone missing, leaving those dead without rest. They argue the wisdom of burying their dead at home — but superstitious family aggressively object.

■ Stay among the grieving to collect information on the dead. You can also inspect the bodies by… borrowing coarse, greyed robes, and painting your eyes and lips with wood ashes to mimic the embalmers.

■ You recognise a small minority of the bodies sent to sea as the undead who attacked in the future.

■ There are unused casket-ships, built for lovers who perished together. Partner up, descend into a casket and fake… perfect… stiffness, to experience the disappearance firsthand.

THE MOON, HOWLING

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A sight to be seen are the twin moons that steward Yancai, one true and one diffuse. In the future, they gleamed cold and waiting — here, those with a lunar or astral connection become increasingly and inexplicably convinced that these moons are… not real. No distraction, no reason, no proof convinces you. The true moon is captive.

In your moon-hunt, you are drawn to the dam-fenced, heavily flooded south-western district of Yancai — into the now deserted former seat of the elder’s council, the drowned but majestic palace-mansion of the Storm’s Stage.

■ Can’t hurt to tell other party members your suspicions and enlist help. Alternatively, they might follow you because of your strange behaviour.

■ Scale the great wooden dam, mindful of guards.

■ You find the district overwhelmingly submerged, with waters thick, unnaturally cool and darkened (but not black). Refugees have removed row boats, and remaining rafts are threadbare, forcing you to swim, leap or scale rooftops and balconies to advance. Beware deep rotting and crumbling architecture.

■ The Storm’s Stage is a flat, one-level building, where waters run 1.5-2m high. Its large, wide and labyrinthine corridors have made it a favourite hunting ground for Weepers: carnivorous 1m-long sea creatures with cruel teeth and human intelligence. They produce a sobbing, hiccupping sound — their cackle of enthusiasm, before they attack.

■ These obscene creatures spear the decaying bodies of their former human or animal prey in their teeth, propping them up and mimicking voices to lure you closer.

■ Make it far enough into the twisting building, and you may encounter a magically locked room, behind which, the sensitive are certain, lies the moon. Elders’ leader Quanze Tsaymien might have the key you require — or find a way to open the door yourself. Are you in yet?

THE LADIES & THEIR LAKE

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You hear that beautiful maid Miang-Si has come of age, and her rich merchant family now accepts marriage offers. Jubilant, modestly attired, kind and in good health — this Miang-Si is a far cry from the spiteful, sly creature you met before.

Yet, in a small village, murmurs abound: some of Miang-Si’s friends hint that her reputation won’t survive more sneaking out at night. Others say that Miang-Si appears… distracted, her appetite lessened. Others, still, say the girl has returned to her obsessive fixation with a beautiful woman glimpsed in the forest years prior.

Miang-Si could have information on her future accomplices — the allegedly ladies of the lake.

FOR RICHER OR FOR POORER

Miang-Si’s parents have exacting marital standards: you must be rich and publicly righteous, all genders welcome. An exotic gift might go far to gain you a private audience with Miang-Si.

■ Choose and present a potential suitor: dress them in the village finest, polish their manners, hire an entourage and commandeer a suitable courtship gift. Swat if they complain.

■ Raise the suitor’s odds along with their public profile by flaunting their feats and virtues in the marketplace.

■ Woo your would-be parents-in-law by capturing golden scales from a rare Mura-sirri lake fish. It spits slime on its pursuers, who instantly flee, irrationally startled.

■ To the seeming ignorance of Miang-Si’s parents, their dark, dusty, mausoleum-like house appears haunted: strange women appear in reflective surfaces, or run down corridors. Joining your hosts for tea, you feel inexplicably covetous of your ‘intended,’ certain that you must have Miang-Si at all costs and that jealous rivals oppose you. Invisible to others, a beautiful woman clings to you from behind and whispers you need only verbally or physically eviscerate everyone at this table to claim your bride. Hopefully, your wingwo/man can prevent bloodshed.

■ Sign up here for one of three RNG-drawn audiences to speak to Miang-Si or investigate her quarters.

AT NIGHT, WE DALLY

You can also trail after Miang-Si on one of the nights when she slips out of her dead silent house. She leaves when the main moon is full — while the twin moon feels disapproving. Follow Miang-Si to the outskirts of Yancai, to the Silver Lakes. Here, she tosses in a silver coin and wishes for safe passage, then takes a small boat.

■ If she discovers you following her, Miang-Si firmly tells you to go home. The twin moon seems at ease as you heed, however unwillingly.

■ If you also drop a silver coin in the Silver Lakes and wish for safe passage, your ship turns invisible for two hours.

■ Miang-Si stops her boat in the middle of the Silver Lake and touches the waters with her hand. She is answered by several skeletons, who swim to surface and gather by her boat or climbing in. The parts of their bodies that exit the water gain flesh, then skin and the likeness of beautiful women — the rest stay skeletal in the depths.

■ One such woman greets Miang-Si as queen of the night and kisses her on the mouth, about to drag her in. If you only follow, you notice she disappears for hours, then re-emerges with a look of dark conviction, before returning home.

■ If you seek to intervene, the skeletal women capsize your both then look to embrace and kiss you, also dragging you into water. The kiss allows you to breathe underwater, while your lips are locked — but steadily steals stamina. Your captor progressively decays back to bones, losing sentience, as you reach the bottom of the lake.

■ Here, you find dozens of skeletons and mismatched bones, webbed in wisps of familiar black water, along with rags of clothing — including shreds of a white shroud.

■ The waters hold no bodies, once Miang-Si leaves.

A-HUNTING WE WILL GO

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Village elder Kuthuba urges the crafty and the brave to a forest incursion after several lumberjacks are a week late returning. He fears the men lost. The village’s numerous piers, pillars and boats depend on timber, and Kuthuba seeks to retrieve both wood and any prospective casualties.

■ Two dozen people leave at dawns with daggers, bows, arrows. Some say they previously entered the forests before being driven out by vicious animals, but are not keen to speak further. The grounds are inhabited by woodland creatures, but eerily silent. Predators are scarce, thin and terrorised.

■ A thick mist drenches the forest, deepening until you struggle to see past 3 metres ahead, or to spot the waning sun in a grey sky. Network devices do not work, and torches are essential. You feel increasingly paranoid and hunted, distrusting your companions.

■ If lost in the woods, villagers say to set your dagger on hard ground and spin it. If the blade lands on you or your companion, wet it with your/their blood, until it no longer does so. If it points in a proper direction, head there. If it starts to cackle, bury it in dirt or flee — it has caught a taste for blood and will now seek out your throat.

■ The forests brim with diffuse whispers, women’s laughter, shrill growling and heavy steps — until amorphous many-bladed beasts descend from trees or burrow in soft ground. Aim between their carapace plates and run. Happily, rivulets abound and the creatures fear running water.

■ Deep in the forest, you find the resplendent vegetation thins into a small barren clearing where nothing grows. Here, even the earth has cracked, showing signs of black mould spores, while animals and birds avoid the region. You discover the belonging of the lumberjacks, but no bodies, along with a few scattered diary pages.

■ Take the belongings back to the lumberjacks’ families. The hunting party returns with sundown — only to realise three days have passed in Yancai.

NOTES

■ Feel free to investigate other regions of Yancai!

■ NPCs for this event!

■ QUESTIONS.

Comments

home at sea

[somebadnews]

[ All the death that Five has seen, an entire world of corpses, and something still draws him to the dead being prepared in their floating caskets. It's a solution that he was never really given when he was younger. Water was scarce in the apocalypse, and for the most part he didn't have the means to bury bodies. The most he could do was burn them or leave them to rot. Both of which had their drawbacks in those early months that he could have avoided if he had a fleet of funeral caskets at his disposal.

For the most part, those gathered try to push him back, and at his height it's difficult to get a good look. But he swears he recognizes the face of one they're preparing before it's closed and he's shoved away by someone deeming it too morbid for children to witness. He scowls, but makes the rare decision not to berate the mourners. ]

You never wonder what happens to them? [ They're very clearly feeding whatever forces are driving the undead. He's earned an unappreciative look from the locals, who continue to try to drive him away until he's backed up at the edge of the crowd.

He's mostly talking to himself as he watches them seal their fate. There's still an option for destroying the corpses and disrupting what happens in the future, but he's mildly uncertain how effective that will be. He's more curious what's greeting them out in the water. ]

The question is, which one is it?

[weifinder]

Which one is what?

( Wei Wuxian, dressed like one of the embalmers, speaks low from Five's side, dark eyes on the casket that'd just been chained closed. A familiar face, and that in and of itself is reaffirming that the disappearing dead are not laid to rest. That the ladies of the lake are not the ones, per an accused's word, to raise them up again. (Who does? Yes, let that be the question to know.)

The Man in Black settles himself in the distance, as he had before. Wei Wuxian stares out at him, contemplating his visage, the distance between. The deaths that lay at a person's feet. At what the Man in Black is, in and of itself. )

[somebadnews]

[ It shouldn't surprise him that Wei Wuxian managed to blend in far better than he did. He follows his gaze for a moment, then continues on his thought. ]

Which one is behind it. Everywhere we go, one of the undead lords touched. But this one... it doesn't line up with what we know of who's left.

[weifinder]

Myself, I'd suspect the Huntress first, for this or that reason. If we're sticking to the particulars of the deathlords we know, ah?

( For what it's worth. Perhaps. )

[somebadnews]

[ He hasn't heard that she's able to manipulate time, but he's listening. ]

Why? Because of the mould or because she's one of the only ones left?

[weifinder]

Both, really, but sorcery doesn't strictly need to be her doing for her to be a powersource for what could craft the conundrum we're witnessing.

[somebadnews]

[ He frowns. This is turning into a reoccurring issue with them. ]

You think that wasn't her intention?

[weifinder]

I won't presume either way, but we've seen that intention of one creature doesn't explain the ways parts of them may otherwise be used by others.

[somebadnews]

[ He's not convinced, but he's still putting the pieces together. ]

If it is, we're in luck. She's one of the ones that owe us a favor.

[starlingroad]

[ For America, there's been a lot going on, and she hasn't completely put together everything, not yet. But just Five asking some questions makes her brain spark. ]

I wonder. [ She speaks up when she hears Five. She, as well, has been ushered away from the proceedings. ] Which one is what, though?

[somebadnews]

[ He seems to only realize America is there when she speaks up, and he frowns in answer. It chafes him a little, that they're obviously pushing the kids away. His is a quiet rage. ]

The undead warlord that started it. It's usually one of them.

[starlingroad]

Oh! We'd have to get closer to be able to tell. Wouldn't they wrap him up in something special?

[ She looks at the group and frowns herself. ] They can't stay here forever. Can't we just come back a little later and see?

[somebadnews]

[ He gives her a strange look, and it's only slowly that he realizes that she thinks the warlord might be in a casket. Although he does appreciate that she wants to be thorough, so he doesn't immediately shut down her suggestion. ]

...There'd be other signs if we were that close. [ Usually. Anurr was the one that had them all fooled. ] For all we know, they're delivering the bodies straight to them.

[starlingroad]

[She doesn't have all the details, but she's more than willing to jump in.]

What signs? What...who are they delivering the bodies too? [America has so many questions now! Sure, she could just find a place higher up and observe for herself, but Five seems to know what he's talking about.]

[As for the whole telling her more than she should have when she was affected by amnesia? She'll worry about that later. Not a big thing anyway.]

[somebadnews]

[ ...Oh, she doesn't... This might be a strange thing to be discussing with a teenager. The trouble is, he doesn't know how to navigate the subject away from warlords stealing dead bodies for their armies. She must have heard about that by now. ]

Disease? Weird dreams? [ Signs. 'Preternatural cold' he doesn't mention, because he doubts it's Anurr. Frowning, he adds: ] Bodies are their largest commodity. Either they're delivering them to a warlord or they've got other plans. We know how it'll turn out either way.

[starlingroad]

[She hadn't heard, no. She's been more preoccupied with the moon and other going ons.]

[But Five mentions the warlord part and America's head perks up.] Don't corpses coming to life kind of count as disease? [Not really, but she's trying.]

[somebadnews]

[ He gives her a look, but he's still trying to curtail his usual reactions when someone is obviously wrong. ]

This is more literal. Like the plague. [ He experienced it himself back in Serthica, briefly, but enough to be an authority on how it felt. It reminds him that not everyone knows what they're up against. ] Things were more dangerous, before the train. They'll probably get bad again.

[datapoint]

[Aloy is hanging around at the outskirts of the crowd as well, but for her, it's on purpose. She's been in the thick of the returning of the coffins, seen the empty caskets with claw marks on the lids, and doesn't really think she'll find any more clues at the send-off.

But still, she can't help but hover and watch. Call it curiosity, morbid or not.

The little boy is talking to himself, it seems, which Aloy appreciates, as a fellow talk-to-herself kind of person. It's a curious comment, though.]

Which one what?

[somebadnews]

[ Five didn't realize he'd said that loud enough to be overheard, but when he turns to someone he doesn't recognize it gives him pause. There was a time he'd had everyone in the group down by name and complied detailed descriptions of their abilities, enough that he could rank their usefulness even if he'd keep that fact away from his sister. Those days are long gone, and now he finds himself having a hard time distinguishing new arrivals from the locals.

Their memory problems haven't helped. Karsa really should have given them a list. It's only after a considered silence that he decides to answer the question. ]

Usually in this situation, it boils down to which undead warlord crossed paths with them. This one just isn't obvious enough to pin down.

this is so late. feel free to drop and i'll hit you up later :melting_face:

[datapoint]

[His explanation doesn't explain much, as Aloy is still trying to wrap her head around the whole 'undead' thing, and what logical alternative to pin it on.

She raises her eyebrows and folds her arms.]

You're saying there's multiple 'undead warlords'?

never dropping when you ask five to show off how much more he knows

[somebadnews]

[ He studies her for a minute, only mildly judgmental. She really hasn't been here long. ]

Three or four, depending on how you're counting. There were more, but we killed two of them. [ Although if he gives it more than a second's thought. ] One is too far away, so I suppose it's more of a process of elimination. Unless it's the kid.

bless 🙏

[datapoint]

[That explains even less! There's a headache coming on, though she can't tell if it's because of this conversation of because of how hard she's furrowing her brow.]

Three... and a child? Is that what you're saying?

time isn't real

[somebadnews]

[ He shrugs, helpfully. ]

Depending. [ He doesn't know how to classify Matthias at the moment. ] The kid's parents are two of the warlords. My brother killed his father, so I'd imagine he'll pop up again.

Could be the mother.

[datapoint]

Do we know who the other... two... are? [Two? Three? He knows what she's asking.]

[somebadnews]

[ The story doesn’t get better with details, but if she insists. ]

Rathakku, we left in Alem. The Huntress is the mother. Then there’s Anurr, but he isn’t likely to bother us out here.

[ Names don’t mean much, but at least she has them. ]

Matthias isn’t a warlord, but it’s rumored he gave the Huntress her power. Last I saw, he’d taken guardianship over the child. That’s the one we need to take down.