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OUR STORY

Arc-based summaries of our story played out over three years.

Previously...

ARC VII: HATTHEVAR

JANUARY: on the footsteps of undead creator Matthias, the party arrived in Hatthevar, former seat of mysticism, Oracles and wish granting, now turned into a citadel of ghosts. Hatthevar has been under siege from Rathakku, conqueror of Alem and warlord of the Brotherhood, and undead wind lord Anurr, unaffiliated with the coalition. Matthias, meanwhile, has been working the five local beacons and calling upon all of his power to try to bring in and revive spirits from various points in time and space — in a bid to summon and resurrect his long lost daughter, Cosette. At times, he senses her close, but she shortly disappears from the citadel. Desperate, he offered the party all of his power over the dead, in exchange for being reunited with his daughter.

Benedict, Emilia and Wrath defeated some of Anurr’s frost wyrms and Rathakku’s demonic scorpions and sand lurkers, preventing them from entering Hatthevar. Rathakku withdrew his forces, while Anurr continued to attack with his blizzards. Vanessa took over one of the beacons, guaranteeing the party an exit point. From the Hatthevar lagoon, Red recovered a substance from a cauldron typically used to eliminate memories. Along with supplying access to some of Matthias’ recollections, the liquid also enables the party to retain their memories of Akhuras upon departure. Five and Wen Kexing learned two possible locations suspected as Matthias’ hideouts.

Several party members also investigated the whereabouts and fate of the dis- and reappearing Cosette, whom Matthias described as a young blonde child. No such girl was seen wherever he sends the party. A puppet master, who worked at the bazaar when Matthias sensed Cosette was present there, says he was possessed to put on a play of a father-daughter quarrel, at the end of which the daughter ran off and was killed.

The party learned that Matthias, formerly a technological and magical scientist of Ellethia, extracted two presumably shameful or painful memories: one was of him giving permission for his team to create a fierce magical storm and recover a power source, endangering nearby ships. The second memory was of running into a young blonde woman who disdainfully said she had not admired him since she was a child.

At one point, a woman seen where Matthias felt his daughter present traded a memory in which she was on a ship in the middle of a large storm, arguing with Matthias. River suspects Cosette may not have been a child at the time of her death. If the woman is Cosette, she does not wish to return to her father.

FEBRUARY: The party pursued Matthias at the two lair locations unearthed by Five and Wen Kexing — aboard the haunted ship, the Headless Dancer, and in the Whispering House of the foremost Wish maker of Hatthevar. Aboard the Headless Dancer, the group found out that the vessel was once used by the Ellethian court of governance, which was attempting to reach a powerful artefact sunken offshore Ellethia before the institute of technology might achieve the same. Cosette was one of the representatives on board during this venture, when Matthias obliviously authorized the summoning of a deathly magical storm that was initially intended to scare away all other rivals for the artefact (later revealed to be dark water). She and her crewmates perished, Cosette told Benedict during a ghostly encounter, stressing she wanted nothing to do with her father. Wrathion meanwhile discovered a tool that the spirit of Cosette vengefully stole from her father — the knife with which he has been cutting off his limbs to make magical anchors, and one of the few instruments that can harm him.

In Hatthevar, wind master Anurr attempted to take advantage of Matthias' distraction and launched a last-resort attack, using his blizzards to corrupt several party members onto his side of the warfare. They did not open him the gates.

Faced with the dark truth of all that Matthias has done to his family, the spirits of Hatthevar and the world of the (un)dead at large — several party members lured him out with illusions and false appearances of Cosette, before Emilia dealt a final killing blow with the knife facilitated by Wrathion. With some inheriting the remains of Matthias' magic, several party members made a last use of the dark water's overwhelming power to isolate and seal Anurr in his human body, trapping him once more and preventing him from seeking to usurp what territories the Brotherhood once held.

Free of their dead, their curses, their nightmares, their wishes and long grief — the living of Akhuras may tend to their own and heal.

As the party, finally possessing strong and stable beacons, may choose to head home with or without their memories.

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ARC IV: SERTHICA

Newcomers arrived ahead of the remaining, seaborne party, securing passport papers into Clockwork Serthica — a citadel divided in two adversarial halves: dragon and magic-loving Eidris and disciplinarian, tech-geared Minaras. Everything in Serthica feels alive, including the recently dead. Serthica was splintered by a now-gone plague, who killed all those whom it infected, the Doctor learned. Currently, Eidris emerges from the underground depths over 6:00-18:00, while Minaras surfaces nocturnally between 18:00-6:00. The two citadel halves meet overground over 6:00-7:00 and 18:00-19:00, with natives occupying spaces in the Neutral Zone bridges and Sanctuary.

The party joined a trade summit at the Sanctuary, where attendants from which side briefly... glitched for a series of moments of jarring, puppet-like behaviour. The terrorist group Remembrance attempted to kidnap Minaras' high councillor Arabella. Escorting her to safety, Wrathion, Licyn and Beitang Moran found a key pointing towards the inherited factories of Eidris dragon warlord Cain d'Ubiq and to Serthica's impoverished underground world, the Mouse House. Wrath and Emilia read out an anonymous note Arabella received, which triggered her into possessed behaviour.

Party members were assigned a stay in one of the two halves of Serthica: in Eidris, a dragon went berserk and the party helped recover her hatching eggs, following injury to her mate — at the presumed hands of a Minaras scout ship, whose reconnaissance work was decommissioned days before the incident. In Minaras, the local indoctrination centre sought to cure the rot of citizens. Meanwhile, Kaneki Ken discovered some Minaras morgue corpses have a strange, unexpected 'rot'-like sickness inside their bodies.

SEPTEMBER: More signs of strangeness surfaced in wake of the summit: dragons often go listless, while some droids do not recognise theirs masters. In Minaras, several factories and facilities abruptly ceased to function, with cogs and gears showing signs of poor maintenance and repairs at the hands of Mouse House substances. Investigating a medical facility, McCoy contracted the seemingly resurrected 'coal sick.' An Eidris flight reconnaissance mission revealed the plane that injured a dragon — suspected of Minaras allegiance — was manned by burlap mannequins and part of a decommissioned Serthica healing squad, which preceded the 'coal sick.' The Remembrance group became more public and aggressive in its recruitment, conscripting captives. Finn and Jim Kirk broke their way into a hidden room of the organisation's headquarters, recovering an animate burlap mannequin and a music box that, once fixed, referenced Arc III location Ke-Waihu and produced the noise imitated by 'glitching' citizens. Wrath, Xiao Xingchen, Magnus Bane and Zhou Fei found 'womb walls' behind which such mannequin creatures seem to gain human likeness and awareness — while bathing into dark waters.

OCTOBER: The party was drawn into the annual U n w i n d i n g — a drop into shifting planes of reality shaped by a child's mind, which bore several marks reminiscent of Arc III location Ke-Waihu. The child — a boy bearing a fox mask — introduced himself as slain undead liege Hyang-Won, the Beastmaster. Warnings scattered across the U n w i n d i n g warn children lie, while the white wanderer of the undead-savaged Ellethia resurfaced.

After the U n w i n d i n g, the party was approached by skittish dragon warlord Cain d'Ubiq, while recovering in the underground citadel of the Mouse House. D'Ubiq urged them to retrieve dragon scales and artefacts from the Sibilant Sands where he conducted Eidris' last attack against Minaras during Serthica's civil conflict. Several party members rescued scales, which signal when their holders are physically near undeath. The dragon eye in Magnus Bane's possession shows decay and dying.

Above ground, Serthica now appears renewed by the U n w i n d i n g, with natives exhibiting no further aberrant behaviour. However, local architecture has tellingly changed and Minaras has bolstered attempts to cure the 'coal sick.' Fearing much of Serthica has been corrupted, the Merchant tasked the group to infiltrate the Neutral Zone clock tower and help activate the sorceress Karsa's spell that will briefly reveal the extent of undeath present in the citadel. The party might the decide to await the beacon's yearly start-up, or exit. Within the tower, the group encountered further animated mannequins, woodland creatures and priestly robes not unlike those of Ke-Waihu — and the child again, who accused Serthica of deathly sickness.

In a final push, the party devised creative methods to simultaneously cure the magical and scientific aspects of the curse-sickness triggered by the Child, on arrival in Serthica after somehow surviving the trauma of sacrifice in Ke-Waihu. The Child's presence — and ongoing abilities — seeded the curse-sickness by perpetually decaying bodies and particles around him. The White Wanderer succeeded to contain the spread to Serthica. A pathetic Cain d'Ubiq and grudging Chrichter confirmed that upon returning from one of the final clashes between Eidris and Minaras after the sickness sparked, nearly 3/4 of the population of Serthica had been killed by the plague. Overwhelmed, they agreed to the Child's ploy to use custom-grown mannequins that copied the likeness of the dead and amnesia-triggering sedative gases to deceive survivors and the Mouse House that the city remained well. The yearly Unwinding reset this magic. Remembrance stoked conflict between Eidris and Minaras to distract the people from the uncanny proceedings.

The Child agreed to Wration restrain his powers of decay while the party worked. Using herbs retrieved from the Sibilant Sands, hijacking medical academy laboratories and taking down two magical anchors that had coagulated the curse, the group succeeded to remove the plague — and, unexpectedly, revive the population of Serthica, including its dragons.

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ARC IV: CLOCKWORK SERTHICA