westwhere | the sunken

the sunken | part ii

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.

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"...oh." In the perfect, unwatched solitude of her chambers, young Miang-Si might be forgiven a moment's indiscretion and an extended, drawing silence. It's not that she's at a loss for words, precisely — so much so that the absence of immediate flattery is rather... new.

"Well, that's very... kind? Of you." Of anyone. Really. But then, this moment's awkwardness has yet to hit its final form, and so Miang-Si delivers it there. "Most suitors bring me... a gift?"

Notably, rare, extravagant or memorable. "I'm not requiring one, but... well. It is the done thing. If you're serious."

"Y-yes. Of course. A gift."

Another quick glance around to make sure they truly are alone, and Caitlyn sighs softly.

"May I be honest with you?" She's going to be honest, whether Miang-Si is looking for honesty or not, because the pretense is too galling to continue.

Her thumb taps awkwardly against the side of her hand before she blurts out, "I apologize for the pretense but. I'm not truly here to court you. There's someone else that I..." Can she tell this stranger that she's in love with Vi before she's said those words to Vi herself? Can she offer honesty that's anything less than complete? "My heart belongs to someone else. Her name is Violet. She's brave, and kind, and beautiful, and I would do anything for her. But we've been separated, and I need your help to find her again. Please."

"...oh." She feels as if she has perhaps visited this reaction before, eyes bright and violently blinking, head tipping to search the woman before her, as if prospective lies might sit on her like visible imperfections. They don't. She is — tame and lovely and clearly, far too clearly, out of her depth.

"I don't know what I can..." But then her incipient sympathy seems to morph into something cooler, less serene. Stormed. "Am I... insufficient? Is she more beautiful than me?"

She must know. "Since you are honest with me."

"No, no," Caitlyn says quickly. "You're very beautiful. But it's..." She frowns, trying to think how to put this.

"Where I come from, I'm an aristocrat." She really hates admitting to her social status, but she needs to explain all of the context to ensure that her point gets across. "My parents expected me to marry well, and they continually tried to arrange matches for me. They would never have forced me into a marriage I didn't want, but I felt more like an auction house bidder choosing my favorite piece of art than someone looking for a person that I could share my life with. Someone whose company I enjoyed, whose opinions I respected, who... who I really liked. When I met Vi..."

She leans forward, practically pleading with Miang-Si to understand. "When you feel about someone the way that I feel about Vi, no one in the world can compare. Vi isn't beautiful to me because of the shape of her face, or her eye color, or her lips, or her skin." Yes, Caitlyn has lain awake at night thinking about all those things, but none of them are the reason her heart speeds up and her stomach fills with butterflies. "She's beautiful because of her strength, and her gentleness, and her good heart. We've been through a lot together, she and I. We trust each other. We don't have to hide any part of ourselves from each other."

That may be a bit overly optimistic. Vi is still very closed off. But she hopes that one day Vi will feel comfortable enough to let down those walls of hers, and Caitlyn will wait for that day as patiently as she has to.

"You're very beautiful, Miang-Si, but you deserve someone who will love you for more than your looks. You deserve someone who truly knows you, with whom you can be yourself. Someone who will love you the way that I... The way that I love her."

She pauses, just for a moment, before continuing. "Please, help me find her."

"That sounds..." Distressing, perhaps? Certainly unpleasant. Regrettable. She looks away, taking a moment to metabolise the excess of information, only to find herself unable to not let it sour her mouth. "...awfully like your concern."

Perhaps that is callous, indifferent. But are they not strangers? Indeed they are. And all this chatter...? "I'm not sure what you think I can do for you. Or why you're here, telling me all this."

She's barely a woman, looking for a match. This is all quite... something to be burdened with, and it chills her to find that what she had hoped would be the answer to her troubles is instead... a deviation into another's qualms.

"I think you should leave. I need my mind trained on my match."

Caitlyn, having thought she'd found something of a kindred spirit and eager to make the sort of appeal that would move herself, has clearly failed to read the situation. Perhaps Miang-Si is less like her and more like the girls her mother kept trying to pair her off with.

"I understand. I only need a few moments of your time. Can you tell me what you know of the ladies of the lake?"

"I... why me?" She seems for a moment faintly confused, as if the specificity of the question awes her — as if she has never dallied with the ladies of the lake, and to find herself the keeper of their truths is both strange and contrived. A stretch of the imagination.

"I just know what everyone can tell you. They're... cursed. And they call innocent people to them, and they draw them in the waters." Here, her placid smile seems to gain a trickle of heat, as if some part of her enjoys the scary stories of the village. "They lure poor, helpless men into their clutches, and they never let them go. They're wicked, they're wrong, they're why we're stuck and the dead assault us."

More wistfully, "And they're free. Free from every convention. And demand and expectation. Just... free."

Caitlyn feels far more comfortable asking questions and analyzing answers than she does playing out some silly courtship ritual. So she sits quietly, listening to Miang-Si speak, watching the way her expression turns and starting to put pieces together.

Quietly, with a certain amount of understanding in her voice, she asks, "Is that something you'd like? To be free?"

She's silent longer than a fine lie might allow. Longer than she might have intended. Then, carefully. "I'm... Miang-Si. First daughter of a rich man and a beautiful woman."

As merits go, perhaps she is showing elements of unkindness towards her mother. "What should I wish to be free from?" The smile here is glass-cold, practised. "I've lived well and shall marry better. My life is perfect."

"Of course. Yes."

Caitlyn recognizes an unanswered question when she hears one. But she can also recognize when a line of questioning isn't going to yield the information she wants without more prying than she's prepared to do. So she files this away for the future, and for now changes tacks.

"Do you know anything about where the ladies of the lake can be found? Or how to contact them?"

But Miang-Si, she is no sweet, innocent, doe-eyed thing. She hears, she listens, and some parts of her — take note. Then, her arms fold tenderly over the table, rising up to cup her chin.

"Why do they interest you so much? These... ladies of the lake? What do you want with them?" There must be some root to the obsession of this woman, who asked an audience to court her but does no such thing. At least if Miang-Si will not be wooed, she may be entertained.

Once again, Caitlyn chooses honesty over deception. She has no reason to lie, really, and no reason to conceal her motives. "This village travels through time. They say the ladies of the lake have something to do with that. There's an artifact here, a beacon, that can take me where I need to go, but it won't work in this time. If I can contact the ladies of the lake, or discover how their magic works or even what they want..."

She pauses with a soft huff, considering. Would it be a terrible idea to warn Miang-Si of her fate? Could she save Miang-Si from the villagers' witch-hunt? Or would telling someone their future have awful unforeseen consequences? The Doctor would know.

But the Doctor isn't here.

And in the absence of anyone warning her away, Caitlyn blindly follows the path that her conscience leads her down.

"In the future, they'll say you're one of them. They'll capture you, and chain you up, and try to force you to tell them who the others are. I'd like to stop that happening, as well."

"...what?" It's ripped from her, voice shivered, distress staining her gaze. She flinches, briefly recoining back before seeming to force herself to listen and lean into Caitlyn's space.

"I'm..." A witch. "A lady. I'm... they were saying, but I didn't think I had the — power to... I'm a lady? In the future. I'm beautiful and powerful above all?"

Perhaps the edge of her voice teeters too closely on the edge of madness. Her fingers on the table's rim tighten their grip.

Caitlyn retains her rigid posture, but as Miang-Si leans towards her, voice becoming less stable, Caitlyn tenses.

"They brought you to me in chains. They were taking you around the village to name your accomplices. I asked you whether you needed help, and you told me, 'Little girls weep, but women help themselves.'" Not the position of someone who could be called powerful above all.

She refrains from remarking on Miang-Si's beauty in the future. Beauty isn't particularly important to her, and it wasn't anything she'd noticed.

"You took my hand, and later a phrase appeared written on my palm in blood: Our fat moon rises red. Do you know what that means?"

The moment shifts, bolstering electric. Miang-Si's hand reaches again, to take her suitor's, just as she is described she did, once upon a future time. Tirelessly, carelessly. "You've asked enough questions, with your arrogance about other women and their merits."

Sentimental, hollow, disgustingly insulting. Not what one should say during the courtship of another, but who is Miang-Si to say?

"Now it's my turn to ask. And you will answer. In this future, was I beautiful?"

Caitlyn's understanding of Miang-Si has shifted from concern and sympathy, thinking she'd found a kindred spirit, to frustration at realizing that she hasn't, and now to annoyance.

"I've answered your questions." She frowns at Miang-Si, doing her best to seem serious and in control and not intimidated by the sudden grabbing of her hand.

The comment about her arrogance stings, if only because it reminds her of what Vi once told her. You expect everyone to give you what you want. It galled her, hearing that at the time. But eventually she recognized the merit of what Vi had said next, You have to let them think you have what they want. And so, rather than simply demand an answer, she offers a trade.

"Tell me everything you know about the ladies of the lake, and I'll tell you how beautiful you were."

Well, well. Her smile stretches, thin and tight, and she looks at Caitlyn as one might at an infuriated child who seems prone to tantrums: at once unimpressed and determined not to concede control of the situation.

Her hand withdraws, all the passion of before carefully dissipating. If this woman, who came to a courtship audience empty-handed, still can't even be bothered to make Miang-Si this one allowance... well then. She hardly needs to answer with kindness.

"...no," she counters, with sickening sweetness and forced pleasantness. "No, I don't think so."

Caitlyn huffs softly. She's not used to being refused. But she has no power or authority here. Miang-Si seems unimpressed by her desire to reunite with the woman with whom her affections lie, asking questions resulted mostly in non-answers, and demanding answers has now yielded... this.

So she does the only thing she can think to: she continues to follow Vi's advice.

"What would you like then? In exchange for that information?"

"We can start with what I've already asked." And what has gone summarily ignored, in her suitor's grandstanding. Not that Miang-Si, smile thinning, is counting sins. Oh, no. That's for lesser creatures. "And I'll see if I'm satisfied."

Though she suspects it will take... something more than that.

"You've been nothing but ignorant and insulting since you've come here, before me." Bringing her no compliments, offering Miang-Si no gains. Wasting time better suited to her matchmaking. "You only have yourself to blame."

Caitlyn bristles. She has not been ignorant or insulting. Yes, she used deception to get this audience, but once alone with Miang-Si, she's been nothing but honest! She's answered every question that she has an answer for!

"You looked as beautiful as you do now." It's all she can think to say, really. The Miang-Si of the future had been a bit more disheveled, but not any more or less attractive. Though Caitlyn is beginning to suspect she and Miang-Si may have entirely different ideas of what 'attractive' means. To Caitlyn, no amount of dishevelment could make a beautiful woman less beautiful, and no amount of make-up and styling could make her moreso.

"Your beauty remains untouched in the future."

"Not harmed," she murmurs, seemingly entranced, fixated on this revelation. Then, a frown bends her brows minute. "...but not improved."

Ah. The catch, then.

It seems to embitter her, but not enough that, fingers drumming the table's edge, she withdraws from her part of the bargain. The ladies of the lake. She hums.

"They're witches. They have power. They live in the lake, or they live in the village, or they live where they want. Not in the forest, despite what you hear. They don't like it there. They're women, but they're free. They look after the sick and the weak and those of their kind." She pauses, seeming to think her words over, then shrugs indelibly. "Some say they're working against the village, but how could they? Why would they? If they're from the village."

What kind of resentment would prompt them to relinquish every last shred of their allegiance? "I don't know what more you want to hear. I'm supposed to be marrying. You're not helping me, but you don't care, you've said not one kind word to me. You only care about the little bitch you long for. Go to her, then."

"Her name is Vi." The insults that have been directed at her so far have been bad enough, but she's not going to let an insult to Vi pass without saying something.

This is... something. It's not everything she wanted. But it gives her a bit of an insight into the ladies of the lake, and an insight into Miang-Si, as well.

Free. A familiar yearning. How often did Caitlyn stare at the ships passing through the canal, or the airships flying overhead, and wish that she could be aboard one, making her way across the world to far-off places, free of her name and the chains it came with?

"How do I find the ladies of the lake? How do speak with them?"

"How would I know?" This, as if she has not already betrayed her hand, an excess of knowledge of the creatures. No matter. Nothing here was written, nothing can be accused with proof after. Miang-Si is... safe.

"Have you considered going to a lake?" The very notion should be laughable, for how simplistic it is, and yet so few remember. The lakes call, the lakes are homes.

"You're here in the name of another woman, asking me about other women. Can't you at least pretend to have any interest in me? Any at all?"

She is so close, after all, to having the servants called and this suitor dismissed.

Caitlyn watches carefully, weighing how much she's been told against how much she thinks Miang-Si actually knows. More than she's telling, most likely.

Going to a lake seems so obvious that she'd thought herself out of trying. Which lake? Choose one at random and then... what? Sit and wait and hope that a lady of the lake shows up? How would Caitlyn recognize her if she did? But maybe she is overthinking it. She's been known to do that, once or twice.

"Why would you want me to pretend to court you?" Maybe she's misunderstanding. But it's not as though she's shown no consideration for Miang-Si. She warned her about her future, after all. So does Miang-Si expect Caitlyn to pretend to court her? To what end?

"Because you've embarrassed me," she hisses, and seems for the first time reduced her age: a girl, barely of formal maturity, mouth quivering.

"It's my matchmaking day, the first of the happiest days of my life, presumably, and you're... you're here asking me about... for another woman." Mentioned not once, but times again, and with more warmth than any directed towards Miang-Si.

"You haven't even... this is... I'm supposed to matter today. I won't on any other day after, and I didn't before. I was someone's daughter, and I'll be someone's wife, and I'll never be rid of this place, but today, everyone has to pretend what I say and who I am matter. All of you have to care about me. Just one day."

They must pretend to understand she has opinions and skills and great beauty, and they must all be flattered. For once, until she gives herself away.

"And you ruined this for me, by making it all about yourself. Why do I want you to pretend to court me? Because that's what today is about."

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clavesregni - 2023-06-24 20:36 (UTC) - Expand

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