Yancai the Sunken — a stale, eerily silent fishermen’s village crossed by a web of lakes and waterways. Sea and forest-bound, the village’s key fixtures perch on ‘islands’ of formerly high ground, while several low houses sleep inundated. Humid, balmy weather keeps tempers sleepy, spirits high and food healthily spiced.
The village is served by thin, delicate piers and small rowing boats, boasting a healthy traffic of (sea) passengers, merchants and pirates. Newcomers are quickly adopted, but seldom relinquished. Peaceful, scantly defended, trade-prone and lively — Yancai yet sinks.
WATER, BEING WET
Yancai’s waters run clear, its fish fat, free and hastily replenished. Lotus, watercress, never-shuttering floating candles and braziers litter the waterways. Expect pearls, dyed silks and gossipy but helping hands.
Nothing rots, lavish vegetation seemingly unwilting — but a stubborn black mould climbs sunken constructions and clings to the careless like sickness. The seed-stream of holy waters protects the site from the living dead, but each pier pillar is scratch-marred. Buildings are steadfast and immutable, or dust and barren. Men cannot enter the dark woods that border Yancai’s outermost lakes without inviting retaliatory harm or sickness into the village. The dead go missing. Time feels at utter, syrupy standstill — or you blink once and morning’s trickled into a twin moonrise.
TIME WILL TELL
Magic is playful and welcome — but the ladies of the lake, a native witches’ cult that recruits furtively from the village, are anathema. They have cursed Yancai into their plaything, the village condemned to shift back and forth in time — perhaps to a time point where its now defunct beacon sparks alive again Residents' memories reshape to weather the flux. What is real and what is false recollection? The council of village elders, led by the newly elected Quanze Tsaymien, seeks to unmask the village witches and release Yancai from its curse.
NOTABLE LOCATIONS
■ The White Harbours: recipient grounds of the latest merchant ships, lined by inns, where travellers can briefly alight without entering Yancai's time trap.
■ Fisheries, forges, storage grounds. Schools, apothecaries, merchant squares and markets, banks and road stages. One sad postal office.
■ The Storm’s Stage: a half-sunken, half-risen former palace, now abandoned. Its twisting corridors have led many to drown.
■ The Silver Lakes: a set of three lakes and four waterways close to the sea, whose currents have pulled in and drown even some experienced sailors. Superstitious denizens now drop in silver coins to pay for their lives, as they pass. The lake floors glisten.
■ Numerous taverns serving hard sailors’ swill and delicate teahouses.
■ The Woods: thick, dark, resplendent, silent. Some say the now-vanquished dead lord Beastmaster once made them his hunting grounds, and some of his creatures came home after his passing.
ARC VI: YANCAI
Image source.
Yancai the Sunken — a stale, eerily silent fishermen’s village crossed by a web of lakes and waterways. Sea and forest-bound, the village’s key fixtures perch on ‘islands’ of formerly high ground, while several low houses sleep inundated. Humid, balmy weather keeps tempers sleepy, spirits high and food healthily spiced.
The village is served by thin, delicate piers and small rowing boats, boasting a healthy traffic of (sea) passengers, merchants and pirates. Newcomers are quickly adopted, but seldom relinquished. Peaceful, scantly defended, trade-prone and lively — Yancai yet sinks.
WATER, BEING WET
Yancai’s waters run clear, its fish fat, free and hastily replenished. Lotus, watercress, never-shuttering floating candles and braziers litter the waterways. Expect pearls, dyed silks and gossipy but helping hands.
Nothing rots, lavish vegetation seemingly unwilting — but a stubborn black mould climbs sunken constructions and clings to the careless like sickness. The seed-stream of holy waters protects the site from the living dead, but each pier pillar is scratch-marred. Buildings are steadfast and immutable, or dust and barren. Men cannot enter the dark woods that border Yancai’s outermost lakes without inviting retaliatory harm or sickness into the village. The dead go missing. Time feels at utter, syrupy standstill — or you blink once and morning’s trickled into a twin moonrise.
TIME WILL TELL
Magic is playful and welcome — but the ladies of the lake, a native witches’ cult that recruits furtively from the village, are anathema. They have cursed Yancai into their plaything, the village condemned to shift back and forth in time — perhaps to a time point where its now defunct beacon sparks alive again Residents' memories reshape to weather the flux. What is real and what is false recollection? The council of village elders, led by the newly elected Quanze Tsaymien, seeks to unmask the village witches and release Yancai from its curse.
NOTABLE LOCATIONS
■ Fisheries, forges, storage grounds. Schools, apothecaries, merchant squares and markets, banks and road stages. One sad postal office.
■ The Storm’s Stage: a half-sunken, half-risen former palace, now abandoned. Its twisting corridors have led many to drown.
■ The Silver Lakes: a set of three lakes and four waterways close to the sea, whose currents have pulled in and drown even some experienced sailors. Superstitious denizens now drop in silver coins to pay for their lives, as they pass. The lake floors glisten.
■ Numerous taverns serving hard sailors’ swill and delicate teahouses.
■ The Woods: thick, dark, resplendent, silent. Some say the now-vanquished dead lord Beastmaster once made them his hunting grounds, and some of his creatures came home after his passing.