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

Kim Wexler | Better Call Saul

[saintclaire]

PLAYER: Jenn
CONTACT INFO: discord victoryfanfare#4736

CHARACTER | CANON: Kim Wexler | Better Call Saul

WHO IS YOUR CHARACTER IN YANCAI? Kim is the weather watcher; she controls who gets to sail and when. I'm imagining this as a lil bit of a shaman-y communes-with-nature vibes, you know, like spiderwebby shawls beaded with seashells, hand-worked mother of pearl jewelry, thinks the water has memory, yadda yadda, but it's not totally woowoo. She's a sharp person, and she really can tell from the shape of the waves and the swells and the clouds and the winds and the animal behaviour and the smell of the air what weather is coming.

That said, she is a little petty about this power. Cross her and you might as well just swim. And because of all these comings and goings, she's quite connected, socially, and she keeps tabs on just about everyone.

MEMORY STATUS: Believes she's lived here 4ever, but lowkey wondering why she doesn't really connect with nature like she used to :\

GENERAL PLANS:
- If she's ever seen you be rude or dismissive or even remotely critical of Jimmy McGill, you'll find your sailings getting denied regularly. No relation, just a coincidence, you know how it is.
- Lmao Kim almost certainly does not know how to swim, I feel like this would be an extremely funny thing to keep if someone wants to fish her out of an overturned boat or knock her off a pier...
- SHE AND JIMMY SCHEME TOGETHER... maybe your character owed money to Jimmy and she delayed your merchant ship coming in so you got slapped with interest fees? lmao. Dat's love baybey.
- Going to eat a lot of crab.
- She lives with Jinx, Xiao Xingchen, Beitang Moran, and Su Xunxian, and 10,000 crabs, and they bully Beitang Moran because he doesn't have an X in his name may or may not eat the crab. Kim is now a seafood kinda gal.
- Very fond of the White Woman actually :( She is so scary but like... same, girl..........

[downswing]

.............................WANGJI'S GOT YOU, KIM, HE CAN SWIM

This is the most excited I've been about a completely inane character ability in my life.

[saintclaire]

HAHAHA ISN'T IT FUN TO BE EXCITED ABOUT INANE SHIT THO!! It's always "my character can magically procure money" or "my character can lift freight trains" and never "my character grew up by a body of water and/or a community pool!"

Re: Kim Wexler | Better Call Saul

[beitangmoran]

The house is likely to be overrun with people coming to buy perfume from Moran, and also he and his husband su xunxian will be obnoxious juts by existing together in the same space because this place has kept them apart a lot so they will be all over each other in a very proper Chinese noble way.

Moran is likely to give really obnoxious advice about sky readings and such, too, he's like that.

[slippin]

🐸 KIM IT'S ME!!!

BUT REALLY...would you like to do something once memories return (and hauntings start) with Jimmy either: wanting to move in with her in crabsville bc he thinks he won't get haunted there (he can go by Saul X. Goodman) and then...still being haunted, or being reluctant for her to move into his place despite having an extremely nice ex-brothel at his disposal and her wondering what is going on

[saintclaire]

EXTRA SLIPPIN'

yes I would indeed. I think either sounds fun but him being reluctant to have her move in is maybe more interesting because she's normally the one who has to be coaxed into living together? she would think it's v. weird that he's not like "C'MON IN" especially after 6+ months of Horror-Adventure Honeymoon...

[slippin]

HOBNOBBING WITH THE GOLDFISH

excellent...I'm going to toplevel (I swear), do you want a ~personalized~ starter or do you just want to work it into whatever prompt looks good?

[saintclaire]

PERSONALIZE MEEEEEE but I’m down for whichever moves you if you feel short on time

[nachocheese]

I know I just hit you up with Tess too lol but I'd love for Nacho and Kim to interact again, too! I don't have super specific ideas, but... something!!!