ARC VI: THE SUNKEN

[groundrules]

Happy Friday! Curtains are drawing on the Dream a little dream of her... travel arc, with the conclusion one cut away — warning for spoilers, if you're still threading out the mystery

IT WAS ALL A DREAM

As the team has been piecing together, there is something amiss with good Firo, and the numerous suggestions in answer to his ransom offer push M. le Bagade to accuse the renown heroine that she might be... a living dream. The Conductor threatens her expulsion, to the anguish of her sister Lita, who takes full responsibility. Firo, she says, was unaware — Lita, also a living dream, has been secretly feeding her stolen sedative herbs to induce sleep and make Firo think herself a 'normal' person.

Seeing her spouse mired in conflict, Prassenze emerges from where she has been changing appearance in the passenger crowd. A blank slate more than a person, she confesses she is also living dream, forged as a companion to Firo. As the party suspected, she has been using a dream thief to recreate herself on each wedding day and better suit beloved Firo and her companions. Sadly, Prassenze and the dream thief ran out of dream tokens to power their efforts, and Prassenze chose to hide away. Hugo — Natasha has learned, of the Merchant's homeland Ellethia — bashfully admits he is the dream thief, who created the perfect hero (Firo), her stalwart sister (Lita) and the blushing bride (Prassenze).

While the Conductor should remove living dreams from the train, Hugo patiently reminds him of the many years when he and his team allowed dream thieves to continue their work undeterred on the Sandman, for a price. To protect the train's reputation, the Conductor calls the incident closed. The group retires to their compartments — Firo and Prassenze agreeing to talk, Lita a little shattered, and Hugo... telling the Merchant's party that, if he had known what trouble they would cause, he would not have procured their tickets.

Betting results: 40,000 coins to Wei Wuxian and Dean each, 20,000 to Beitang Moran and Lan Sizhui each, 30,000 to Five.

ARC VI

We officially enter Arc VI on 15 May, when the group arrives in sunken village Yancai during a first log event — which doubles as a test drive meme.

■ Yancai location details are now live!

■ Courtesy of the Merchant, characters are assigned false identities/occupations and dwellings while in Yancai. Unrelated to the Merchant, they might be haunted. CTRL+F your character's name to learn their fate. The haunting & atonement are entirely optional — feel free to ignore or tweak.

■ A new NPC inbox will follow shortly.

■ Characters are coming into Arc VI with varying levels of false memories of being native to Yancai. These false memories are temporary and will dispel within days of arrival. During this period, characters can still sense they have a connection with their CR (as deeply or shallowly as you want), even if they have a diffuse sense of how it was formed. Ex: character A might know they love B, even if they don't recall B is their spouse of 50 years. They would (and should) be startled by this discrepancy in their memories.

■ the first Arc VI log will cover: a few days of acclimating to the village (and fully recovering character memories, where applicable), getting optionally haunted, exploring the lakes and and searching sunken territories for clues about the time-warping decay.

■ QUESTIONS

To line up some excellent rural CR, fill out the below and spam to your hearts' content:

<b><small>PLAYER</small>:</b> <b><small>CONTACT INFO</small>:</b> <b><small>CHARACTER | CANON</small>:</b> <b>WHO IS YOUR CHARACTER IN YANCAI?</b> ...and how will they cope with it? <b><small>MEMORY STATUS</small>:</b> <b><small>GENERAL PLANS</small>:</b>

Comments

[rehandle]

PLAYER: Gee
CONTACT INFO: miscreates / sculpts#6553

CHARACTER | CANON: Stephen Strange / MCU

WHO IS YOUR CHARACTER IN YANCAI? A humble ropemaker and never-quite-executioner, mostly of this one completely average dude who somehow gets all the ladies. He won't actually ever kill anyone but he sure is going to stare into the abyss every time one of this guy's mistresses slides into his (physical, in person) dms for a hit on this one guy who has no business having this many women not quite wanting him dead.

MEMORY STATUS: Thinks he decided to stay here a long time ago!

GENERAL PLANS:

- hanging out on the pirate ship where he lives with pirates, magically making a whole bunch of rope.

- selling a whole bunch of rope.

- accepting hit requests under the cover of selling rope and fulfilling them by scaring the absolute shit out of the target through one magical means or another (after a quick background check to make sure they're deserving of their fate). PCs welcome to apply, no refunds.

- trying to find out how this man he's been asked to take out many times by many different women has managed to get himself into this situation. what dark power does he possess!! what terrifying magnetism!! surely it's something because he has literally nothing going for him!!

- becoming progressively more grouchy from his middle-of-the-night hauntings. tip for boatmates: don't ask him how he slept. I'd be interested either in having him talk through the corresponding regret or protect/nurture his way out of it (or both!) - and as an optional bonus, if anybody aboard the Dark Companion or living somewhere in the vicinity wants to overhear his haunting in the style of being woken by an unholy chorus of innumerable screams one or more times, step right up!

- also of course looking into the MAGICAL GOINGS ON, what're you up to please ladies of the lake and can you maybe stop being up to it, thank you.

- overall I'm here to foster new CR and deepen existing CR and nobody can stop me

[downswing]

Is Stephen going to try to figure out this man's appeal to imitate it and go grovel to his ex --

[rehandle]

[rumorate]

Pirate shenanigans!!

I don't know what those shenanigans will be but they should get into trouble, clearly.

[rehandle]

They absolutely MUST get up to some piratey mischief. Stephen Strange, determined to be part of the ship part of the crew, doing his best pirate support act

stabs a pin in it for when the log goes up!

[rumorate]

Excellent, I will have a look at the log tomorrow and see what strikes my interest but if you have any ideas, feel free to let me know!

[starlingroad]

What I get out of this, of course, is America should totally as Stephen how he's sleeping (even though she's not a boatmate).

Hi, did I mentioned I'm kind of a brat?

[rehandle]

PLEASE she has to, I'm thrilled. Get ready for the most withering look America

[starlingroad]

She will glare right back. She's not scared of him.

[blackscales]

Hello. I am here to suggest Wrathion and Stephen have a new encounter. Only I don't know how much you're going to have Stephen remember initially, given he Definitely Belongs here now and has for Ages!

However, regardless of how much he remembers, I can offer Wrathion to:

i) Make so many idle jokes about Stephen's interest in ropes, and jokes about ropes
ii) Investigate magical goings on
iii) Join the no-sleep club together.

[rehandle]

P l e a s e to all of the above, I've been crying since I read the notif about casually ruining his life with rope-related humour and would also love to have them team up on magical investigations... maybe depending on how things go once they've acknowledged one another as Struggling No-Sleepers they can sneak out past curfew to do some magic discussions/snoops in a weary bid to avoid their respective ghosts and get something practical done while they're at it.

re: him remembering I can work with whatever seems fun for those first few days 👀 either remembering him but not being sure why orrr remembering their desert/Alem stuff but thinking it was (vaguely long amount of) time ago, either way I beg for Wrathion to drop some jokes about ropes before his memories are restored fully so he can be appropriately aggy about it later.

[blackscales]

Would you say he might be at the



end of his rope?

[rehandle]

I think that would be app-rope-riate

[blackscales]

Well Wrathion can can assist with any investigation, as long as he isn't too... tied up.

[somebadnews]

I am extremely down with some run-ins, especially if they involve suspicions about his rope business. Former assassins pick up on these things and Strange is living with his sister and wtf is going on here on this day.

Situations must happen.

[rehandle]

He's just a rope peddler peddling ropes and living on a pirate ship with your sister the fearsome pirate, Five, he doesn't know what to tell you.

No but yes please this will be delightful. Brace for a very annoying wizard/hitman/ropemaker

[matermali]

It's criminal they haven't interacted yet. 100% needs to be remedied.

I feel like his hit job would work perfectly with Vanessa's... Doing people's laundry and fixing up their clothes, she would definitely learn people's dirty secrets and be able to direct anyone who seems to need it his way.

[rehandle]

agreed!!

Oh my god please this would be such a funny way for them to end up getting into cahoots... a casual, perfectly palatable Business Relationship... nothing to see here...

[matermali]

She's good at sensing when it's deserving or not, at least. No wild goose chases from her.

Probably lots of staring and lurking once her memories are recovered. Also, definitely, nothing to see here.

[rehandle]

Just a ropemaker and a tailoress/washer woman having a chat! Normal folk doing normal folk things!

What level of memloss is Vanessa at for the first few days? and also do you have a TL up for her 👀

[matermali]

She thinks she is a complete native, so it's gonna mess with her pretty hard after the fact. Toplevel here for both before and after! I can put up a prompt just for Stephen if nothing there vibes.