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

so fast, much wow!

[weifinder]

Have a little faith.

( He says, as they curve in close, pressed against each other in the discomfort of their limited space and the lulling lapping water at the shores. He reaches up, coaxing the lid almost closed, but imperfectly so. Leaves a talisman tucked up within that lip, and concentrates on making sure his barrier breaking talismans are at the front of his chest.

A thousand pardons to his husband for enduring the shifting this merits, and then a thump on their top, and the rocking of their boat, tugged and pulled and chained (hear those, they rattle, hear them as they slap with water against the sides, and the thumping of feet beyond, dulled and dimmed, and their own dark and the peering lines of dark because crude lines have failed to make perfect seals, and he's never been so grateful. He breathes, eyes open, refusing to close. Breathes and listens to Lan Zhan, unease crawling up his spine, heart picking up speed in small increments, every dozen of breaths or so.

He is not, it turns out, okay with this. He misses the moment they're sent drifting with the dead, some more honest than others, fingers of his free hand creeping and curling into Lan Zhan. Breathe, he tells himself. Listen to Lan Zhan. Breathe as he breathes.

His heart rate is unhappy with slowing, but his start to too shallow breathes evens out as he matches, breath for breath, his husband's inhalations and exhalations. )

[downswing]

( A drip of faith, a drop of fear.

Wei Ying settles beside him, and the great, looming carapace of the casket's lid eclipses the skies, and it is dark, far too dark, a chasm. Only they two and a tomb, quaking, the rattling of its chains ferocious and rusted and dull when they're braided and crossed on top of the lid, and Lan Wangji begs forgiveness for adding to the burden of whatever men test their backs by setting them to sea.

He feels-hears water, the implication if never the reality of wet. Some part of him, incredulous and untamed, imagines he senses water itching his arms, feels the sea seeping. Thinks, he will drown here, they will drown here, and has he strength enough to break the lid? Will his guqin, abruptly summoned, dispel the confines of their casket without also ripping apart their flesh, their blood?

The swish and flick and crashing of sea waves is a lullaby, sweet and dawning. His breathing tenses, eases, simmers, lies low. When he sleeps, it's a foregone conclusion — restless, jittery and undefended — and seems to hear, at some turn, as if from a distant ether the calls of women pronouncing these ones live, and the starless dark gaze of a man like night, and then the song of the sea once more, cruelly indolent after.

In the end, he wakes to seagulls, to the sun burning strokes on his cheek, his nape. Clutches, instantly, the lapels of Wei Ying's silks to feel out with clumsy hands his pulse, his heartbeat, and a mind sleep-hazed does not think of implications, of complications, of consequences. It only knows, rasped — )

Wei Ying. ( — and that they were not claimed, for all something, someone with certainty found them, unleashing them back to shore. They float within an hour's sail of Yancai. No doubt, they will have to paddle to the pier. )

[weifinder]

( Whatever had lulled him, lulled him deep, to the passing murmur of their living proof positive that he remains not isolated and alone in the dark that creeps behind his eyes: a man as dark as many exhaling long and slow, or not at all. He is nothing but the eyes and face that Wei Wuxian has met with a long stare at the entrance to a cave, nights unending, not for the names he would claim, but for the ones he would not.

Regrets and acknowledgements. He wakes, the rasp of Lan Zhan's voice in his ears almost as pressing as the heat he feels, or the pressure of... hands at his lapels, his throat, and he lurches forward to catch wrists with only one hand responding as it should, the other sleep numbed and caught between them. Alert from adrenaline, but not sensible for it, he stares wide eyed at Lan Zhan, sun touched and gull called and the certainty of... what?

Life. Thrumming through him, and he huffs a laugh, the singular exhalation, before shifting awkwardly forward to press a clumsy, inadequate kiss to his husband's lips. Missing, part through the slap of a wave sideways, part through cramped muscles complaining at his moves, instead kissing the point of his husband's chin. )

We slept through, ( he says, and his head flops back down, regarding Lan Zhan, considering his scattered, fractured memory of recent hours. If it's even been so long. ) Whoever found us, we slept through.

( No discussion, only certainty, and the urge to laugh in his cradle rocking trap of a coffin sized boat, of course they did. )