audio | un: yiling patriarch

[weifinder]

We've just heard from our friend Haltham about the fighting between Unhalad and Anurr forces nearby, so here's a question for everyone, brought up originally by our companions who got themselves drugged and fight-happy against the second living: what actions do you think we should or shouldn't take?

In Haltham's encouraging words, think wisely. Whatever we're doing or not doing has an effect by merit of choice. Also, a reminder that we still need to not end up in either's hands or revealing our location, given the reason we were summoned here has not changed, and our deaths can be a benefit to either side. Our lives benefit ourselves and our rescuers and the peoples here, by keeping us out of warlord hands.

( He's not opening up with his thoughts because he doesn't want it as a discussion against his take, but as people offering their thoughts after he asks the question. )

Comments

are they going to make traveling bars a thing

[weifinder]

Ah, I was... presumed dead for sixteen years?

( Questioning statement. )

The, ah, the mermaids were under the influence of whatever working there was on the mirror on board. They died in the single minded pursuit of the mirror, and arrived here, dead-alive, still trying to retrieve it. There are forces at work that can compel a body to continue working even after perishing, and those minds, for what they were in their unfamiliarity, were still there. But obsessed, admittedly.

the world could be a brighter place

[binghua]

[...Okay, well at least he's aware of his death. That's...something?]

I don't think our years match up. Many things don't seem to match up.

[The talk of these mermaids - half-dead? - and a mirror that draws them in is, of course, confusing. But he still thinks on it, tries to make sense of what he's told.]

Do you think the mirror has something to do with the others losing their life energy? It sounds like some cursed object that feeds off of life.

or a slightly drunker one

[weifinder]

What do you mean? ( A pause. ) This fierce corpse thing you were referencing?

( He says the years don't match up, but that also doesn't... mean anything when Xiao Xingchen died before Wei Wuxian "revived." )

Ah, yes, possibly. It could be the object itself carried the means of it, whatever talisman or thralling, or it could be a medium through which something else was syphoning all these things.

( People touching that lake at night need to share the things they've seen. There are unseen links in this world, things none of them know right now, really. )

It kept those mermaids enthralled with it even after its destruction, but from how I heard it took time for the people we'd freed to recover, then I suspect something similar happened for them, even as twice-living.