lostcompass | ARC VI: THE SUNKEN

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:

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Someone who's too nice + had a really shitty business idea would work (I can't see Jimmy being like "fuck them kids" ahahahahaha), but let's see if anyone volunteers!

It could also be like...it's a mermaid (possibly with kids??? idk how does that even work) who Jimmy's a dick to because [long complicated story about a mermaid humiliating him one time].

BUT LOL JIMMY (even memory-tweaked) WILL WANT TO KNOW WHY HE'S DOING THIS SO BE PREPARED TO EXPLAIN!!

Edited 2023-05-16 03:47 (UTC)

Yeah, kids might be a bridge too far. OOOOH BUT MAYBE THEY CAN WORK TOGETHER SCAMMING RICH AHOLES *FOR* SOMEBODY WITH LIKE TEN KIDS OR W/E. That might be fun!

But also I can see Nacho being like, "Aww..." @ someone with a dumb business idea who's genuinely nice and wanting to help them out.

I like the mermaid idea, too! LMAO Nacho's just like "...aw pretty :)" at the mermaid lmao. TELL HIM THE STORY, JIMMY, INQUIRING MINDS WANNA KNOW...

.......b/c it's the right thing to do in this situation, man. Come on.

ARC VI: THE SUNKEN

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