headed straight for the witches' castle

[groundrules]

Welcome to the bashful event covering 17 September – 9 October, working double duty as a test drive meme (TDM).

Existing players can strut their stuff here, or make separate logs & network posts. Our TDMing guests are stranded in this playground, but can include network options among play prompts.

If you’re test driving a character, you can apply them until 8 October without a game invite. Apps stay open beyond that, but you might need an invite or please get in touch @ groundrules to figure something out..

SCALE THE TOWER

---

Cousins Macaluso and Vannozza Spina vie for the favour of the witches of Bessis, in their bid to succeed their grandfather Bonaccorso as liege of magical citadel Taravast. In exchange for their endorsement, the Bessis have asked both electoral candidates to present extraordinary sorcery at a fete commemorating the Bessis truce with fellow court witches of Attaryl.

On the day of the distasteful masque held in the upper levels of the Bessis tower, characters assigned to support Macaluso and Vannozza will split into two espionage missions — one upstairs alongside courtiers, charlatans and the Bessis, and another deep below, crossing abandoned aqueducts. Characters can participate in either effort, but should be discreet if they’re working against their patron.

It’s all fun and games if you’re enjoying Bessis hospitality upstairs — test drive characters might be rating their hotel stay a little less enthusiastically.

TDM TOURISTS | UPSTAIRS (TEAM MACALUSO) | DOWN BELOW (TEAM VANNOZZA) | COMMON TIMELINE | NOTES & MAP



TDM TOURISTS

Days ago, you woke up sequestered in an immense bird cage, chained near the ceiling of a tall, dark room that once served as a library or academic hall. Imprisoned with you are several strangers, equally warded from their supernatural powers and partly sedated — all the better to amuse the nearly two dozen (visibly) undead who roam the room, despite being loosely fettered to posts. They often swing for your cage, but fail to reach it.

■ Sorcerer sentries briefly release characters daily to feed or bathe in a repurposed nearby quarter with a large pool.

■ Characters receive basic devices that translate speech and writing, so they can understand their caretakers’ instructions. All along, the guards urge, Keep the animals distracted.

■ The undead reek of burning and wail their hurts. They are gifted in telepathy and often mentally share memories of carnage — two armies of sorcerers, one raining fire upon its enemies. At night, the undead seek to control the minds of caged characters, luring them to come down or harm others.

■ Necromancers sometimes visit to study the undead. The latest necromancer guest temporarily immobilises the creatures and throws three bundles of identical keys into the cage — he reveals he is employed by a Merchant, who wants the outsiders to travel east and return to their homes. They are currently in Taravast, captives of the witches of Bessis, who hold annual celebrations tonight. The keys will help with escaping the cage and accessing nearby tunnels.

■ The necromancer leaves behind rope, two daggers, and three potion vials that generate mist once smashed on the ground. Leave within an hour of your dinner, he says, before releasing the undead from his magic.

■ Get out. As soon as you can, running like hell from guards and the undead. If caught, the undead will rip you to bathe in your body’s waters and ease their burns.

■ The underground tower tunnels are patrolled by guards, who can be overpowered by groups. Characters will recover any supernatural powers within 40 minutes of leaving their prison. Escape tip? Steal the guards’ clothes.

■ The tunnels inevitably lead to the aqueducts, allowing you to meet Vannozza’s group.

» GET WET



UPSTAIRS

The halls of the Bessis sprawl over a pristine ivory tower, whose walls refract light in homage to the witches’ devotion to fire.

The tower receives guests today to celebrate the armistice between the sorcery schools of Bessis and Attaryl. The two groups futilely sought to slaughter each other many moons ago, with the Bessis notoriously gaining the upper hand — explaining the tense smiles of the Attaryl witches on premise.

The event is a standard Taravast masque: if there were coin to spare, someone poured it into the obscene dining displays and alcoholic fountains. Enjoy dimmed lights, the rare pickpocket or recreational narcotic — or test your luck at gambling tables, where winners can claim a forcibly extorted secret from losers over games of dice or cards.

Come masked and visibly unarmed — weapons are confiscated at the doors. Smuggle them in. Just outside the tower, take a walk through labyrinthine walled gardens surrounding a deep water moat and leading to abandoned aqueduct pipelines.

OF NOTE:

■ Magical sentries — armed with swords and fire spells — watch the banquet halls, stairs and outside grounds.

■ Bessis practitioners showcase fire, wind, water and air dances in the reception halls, along with performing token duels. Get involved, if you want.

■ Don Urbano, a respected Bessis sorcerer returned from abroad, announces his betrothal with Wen Qing, as orchestrated and financed by Beitang Moran.

■ Come sundown, Macaluso invites fete guests, Vannozza and the Bessis to join him on the balconies and behold the canal moats, where swims his recently captured white dragon. The creature is magnificent but tense, its ice power crackling.

ASSIGNMENTS:

■ Run recon of the halls. Keep track of guards, divert them from the aqueducts and alert your friends downstairs of their presence. Be obnoxious, loud and attention-grabbing when sentries get near the opened aqueduct entrance.

■ One of the night’s most profligate gamblers, Caterina Zalle, leads a coalition that produces magical weapons. She is allegedly in talks with forces abroad that fight their undead oppressors. Even tipsy, she only speaks with those who best her at the gambling table — pair up and figure out how to cheat improve your chances, then drop a line here to win donna Caterina’s answer(s).

» SMILE AND CARRY ON



DOWN BELOW

A jaded spirit, Vannozza knows Macaluso’s historical patronage of the Bessis makes them unlikely to favour her. Better to take advantage of leaked information: the Bessis hide a secret that’s required them to mysteriously invite necromancers each day. Learn what the Bessis are shrouding, so Vannozza can extort them later.

The lady offers her protegees — and anyone dragged along for the ride — a map to abandoned aqueducts accessible through the sentry-patrolled gardens that surround the tower of the Bessis. Guards will be thinner at the start of the evening festivities, but keep in touch with your counterparts upstairs, who can distract them while you infiltrate.

■ The aqueducts can be entered through a shielded gateway that will require characters to dig extensively for access. Divert the guards creatively: use magic, tricks, everyone is a hapless beggar or a drunk...

■ The intricate waterways once served Bessis sorcerers who specialise in water arts. The pipelines range from roomy and rusted to highly claustrophobic and slick with a coating of dark tar that gradually starts to follow you.

■ You find out quickly why the pipes were abandoned: the tar starts to accrue behind you, taking your shape and diplomatically doing its best to choke or drown you. Luckily, the creatures disperse after scant minutes — characters who traversed the Stairs of Sighs will recognise this is the same molten tar found in the rocky corridors.

■ Brace yourselves — for a short stretch, the canal dips into the moat surrounding the tower, home to Macaluso’s dragon. The creature is currently peaceful, but its constant chill has largely frozen the waters. Swim across the moat through ice pellets to re-enter the canals.

■ The aqueducts ease characters into pool quarters, which show signs of recent use for bathing. In the nearby corridors, guards are posted before a room that erupts in frequent howls. Get in, somehow —

■ ...and find a large study hall with an immense suspended cage, a series of freshly freed newcomers and undead witches, who use telepathy, levitation and light mind control to their advantage.

■ Now, you take your newcomer fools, choose between returning through the aqueducts or daring the heavily guarded tower corridors — and you run.

» UP WE GO



EVERYONE TOGETHER NOW

Nothing spices a party like nearly two dozen undead witches that seek to salve their burn wounds with the blood of the living. Some undead invade the banquet halls, others the gardens, while a few head into the aqueducts. They use telepathy, levitation and mind control diligently — and wear the decayed insignia of witches of Attaryl.

The chaos and the undead that enter the moat agitate the water dragon, who goes on hours of rampage, breathing sheets and walls of ice around the tower and effectively locking everyone within for two-three days.

...with the wandering undead. The witches of Bessis assist with fire magic and torches, but it’s every man for himself. Beware: the dragon starts with magical attacks, but quickly progresses to throwing itself bodily to topple the tower.

TO-DO LIST:

■ Calm or immobilise the berserk dragon to ease the ice storms
■ Capture the fire-fearing undead
■ Protect and evacuate Taravast’s useless 1%
■ Stay alive?

NOTES & MAP

■ Old timers: GO HERE to vote on the fates of the dragon and later, the undead! And ask any questions you might have.

■ TDMers: TDM events count as game canon if you app in! TDM questions here.

Comments

[funnylittleclown]

[ She was putting a brave face on it. Good show. No sense on dwelling on the terrible or giving into those psychic attacks. There wasn't much he could do to ease any of her difficulties, he hadn't even a Dramamine, but they could talk to while away the time before dinner.
Shouldn't be too much longer. Thirty minutes? Or was it only twenty now? The drugs in coursing through his system made time difficult to visualize. ]

I'm the Doctor by the way. We hadn't had much of a chance to introduce ourselves before.

[funnylittleclown]

Elder? Oh no, that'll never do.

[ Vanity stings occasionally even when one was a mere 500 something. Besides, hadn't they worked well together? His earlier suspicions about his new friend were beginning to feel entirely unjustified. ]

I'm the Doctor.

[ The water was getting a touch deep here, wasn't it? It was up to the Doctor's ankles and thoroughly soaking his socks... what there was of them. Some how he never bothered to wear a pair without a hole where the toes are. ]

And I'm afraid I can't really say how I ended up here. I was miles away from anywhere like this, expecting...

[ Expecting to be altered without his permission and exiled to Earth. Hm, might as well leave out the criminal background. Talk of the Timelords and their laws made him feel out of place anyway. What a terrible crime meddling was! He preferred to think of it as helping. ]

Well, not expecting to wake up in a cage over a pit of those poor creatures. Maybe it's the drugs they were using to keep us all partially sedated. They could be making it difficult to remember. You arrived by some other method I assume?

[sergeant_slick]

[Another push and stumbled back, gritting his teeth. This was why he'd tried to get the Seps to kill the Jedi. They had the numbers, even a few of--whatever the hells they called their not-Jedi. But he'd made Skywalker bleed. That showed it might be possible to pull this off. And he was going to keep up the offensive, cutting anywhere he could. Because if he stopped, this was all over.]

I don't care what a slavemaster thinks.

[chosenfordarkness]

[ As far as Anakin is concerned, this is over, but not the way this trooper thinks. He lets him come closer, but uses the Force to fling him into the air toward the ceiling. He puts a bit more power into it than he intended, but that anger is only growing in his chest. ]

Funny, neither do I.

[sergeant_slick]

Ten years of training comes in handy sometimes. [The disguise wasn't going to fool anybody for long, but the man had the attitude right. Sounded like some of the puffed up local officers they'd been stuck liaising with on Christophsis.

He heaved the unconscious guard up and into a shadowy little alcove, dousing the nearest lamp to make sure the body couldn't be spotted at a glance.] Guessing this isn't your first time doing this. [Because this was a surprising amount of comfort and competency with covert ops on display. Honestly, probably better than he could manage. His personal track record wasn't great.

Once the body was hidden, he reoriented. The tunnels leading back toward the entrance should be...] This way--I'm not sure how long he's going to be out. [Killing him would solve that, but this whole mess was technically a political exercise, and killing a local and looting the body was probably not going to help their cause.]

[weifinder]

They're a writing mass of limbs at some point, and Wei Wuxian bites back the impulse to apologise for it, when none of it is intentional, and there's a witch to dislodge, who yearns for the release from her own pain: there she goes, and he props his torso up as she's swallowed by the expanse of white and marring ice down below.

Lan Zhan slides himself free, Wei Wuxian all too aware of his absence and the cold stealing in when he'd been doing his best to ignore it before. Planting his heels against the dragon's scales, he reduces his points of contact: hands, rear, covered heels, and it's not worse than many a time he'd been out in the snows or cold of night. He can tell himself that much, while Lan Zhan calls for his sword, while the blade responds.

His attention pulls to the side, watches the tower loom too close again as the dragon, uncaring of passengers or their foibles, rears back to slam forward again, reverberations echoing down the length of its body.

Fabric rucks and pulls, and Wei Wuxian lifts his hands as Lan Zhan kneels, Bichen sheathed and at attention. His hands fall toward Bichen, but shy away, fingers twitching in anticipation of—movement, the dragon beneath them. Two layers of many is still two men less than properly dressed, and Wei Wuxian almost considers objecting, but he's been stripped down by circumstance to nearly nothing.

"No worse than bruises, I—"

It's cold, there's a question posed, and the remaining answer skitters away on many legs when the dragon lifts up and bears down hard again, against one outthrust room that breaks beneath its bulk, and he's tossed forward, layers clutched like veils for modesty lifted on a wedding's eve, to slam into Lan Zhan's chest, Bichen stiff between them, the dragon rising, then sinking again, reversing the direction of their tumbling positions.

[sergeant_slick]

[Suddenly he's airborne, the back of his head and neck slamming into the ceiling hard enough to knock him senseless, the knife falling from his hands.

He had one last chance. He wasn't ready to deploy the stuff Fox had been teaching him. And he'd promised the guy he wouldn't use any of it for combat. And he'd intended to keep that promise, at least as long as they were working together.

But this felt like do or die.

His vision was swimming, but he did his best to focus, drawing on the components of the magic as Fox had taught him. Concentrate it, like plasma in a blaster bolt.

He breathed out, and the air in front of him rippled oddly, pushing slowly towards the Jedi as he fumbled for something in a makeshift pouch, a pair of small objects.

There was a quiet click of metal on stone, and then suddenly there was fire.]

[soloritur]

[ Isn't it his fault? Both of them decided to jump into that portal. They didn't have any idea that this is where they'd end up, but they barely gave a second thought to what they were leaving behind.

He keeps that to himself, along with a possibility that he doesn't want to give a voice to. That the telepaths are dead, and whoever killed them somehow reanimated their corpses to use their powers. The Hound program was horrible enough.

Another breath and he refocuses on her, finally responding to her touch by leaning into it. ]

I do too. [ He wants them now, but rationally he knows they aren't in any hurry to give them. Hopefully by the time they do, the sedation will have worn off. Until then... he shakes his head and falls back on the only plan he can think of. ] We'll ask around, but stay close. If they can only hit us one at a time, that gives us a chance. We can try to pull each other out if they try something else.

[downswing]

This man means to suffocate him in silks.

Twice within heartbeats, Wei Ying has failed his attempts, and Lan Wangji blinks away stupor, when sight returns to him, when they have tumbled and rolled and he has been conquered like a siege-stormed fortress, then released to trap Wei Ying, writhing beneath again — and there's ice that trails soft and melting against his temple, marbled sheet of it in whimsy degrees of translucence.

And Wei Ying, plastered like bandage over the wound Lan Wangji grits his teeth against, to contain the high-calling sting of its pulse, battered. He bleeds long, qi migrating from where it would exert to warm the tips of his fingers and guide his balance, to instead replenish what exposure to wrenching wind and soiled waters would fester. He aches. Wei Ying close enough to be named known and safe and guarded — and murderous, for he still has cloth in hand — Lan Wangji lets himself taste the flavours of his ache, dull and bruise and spreading like ink stain. He breathes.

Then, he draws out Bichen, and unceremoniously impales her into the slanted, slim and trembled line of youthful pink between a layer of the dragon's scales, where it is less guarded. For all her might, Bichen is yet slim. The creature undulates and screams like clouds crowding to answer storm's summons, like snapped lightning — but forgets the inconvenience of this prickling thing when witches assault it once more at balconies. One of the garments becomes noble sacrifice, twisted and bound each way around the sword's hilt, one end offered to Wei Ying, the other for Lan Wangji's keeping. Cloth might rip, but this will serve them as the closest approximation to an anchor, to fasten them down so they might weather the dragon's next quake.

But they cannot linger. Not two men worn, one injured, the second prey to the elements. Both shamefully bare, against their dignities, for all Lan Wangji blankets Wei Ying like a scavenging bird.

"Look at me. Tame your tongue." No lies, not when their gazes cross, when Lan Wangji's sharpens, limpid, like the ice groaning in hard splinters that litter the moat beneath. They are too close here for falsehood, too united. "If we plunge into cold waters, will you bear it? Will you suit battle, after?"

They could, it strikes him. They well could, easily. Gravity is a friend in this hour's need, and the height off ground lessens at times, when the dragon creeps low, teasing its own descend. They could jump, then swim the distance to re-enter the tower.

[weifinder]

Tumbling and adding bruises to the bouquet across his body, under white and in the clutched hands of the robes neither of them wear, he reflects: this is a different sort of difficult than the false xuanyu, his hand wrapped around the blade filled with resentment, his mind feverish already. If he fevers following today, it'd be for similar reasons, festering warmth and chill, but with ice threading into his hair and freezing stiff his remaining layer, the cold seeps in, slow but devouring.

Their erstwhile steed shrieks and throws itself around in that moment of parting flesh and anchoring, attention pulled elsewhere to the strength of what animates the witches, who attack with the same abandon that seems to swallow them whole if ice does find them, embrace their burnt skins and encasing them in relief, sweet and shattering and lasting before their bodies break.

His grip on the sacrifice of Lan Zhan's robe bears him through the bucking protest of another attack, the dragon coiling back like the water serpent it is in truth. He leans into Lan Zhan only when the demand comes, Look, and grimaces, tame, but it isn't the time, to ask after tamed tongues and where else he wants them applied, but they need off this dragon, to handle it or any of the witches outside his control, and the question has merit.

"It'll steal breath," he says, holding gaze, reflecting depths unknown but knowable, someday. "I'll swim, and I'll still play after."

Frozen hands will warm. He knows that from earlier experience, even if the moat at that time was less ice than it is now.

Prepares, even then, for the fall, the leap, by fixing fingers around cloth and Lan Zhan's hand, a miss for his wrist. "Call when." To leap, and plunge, but not alone, and not to death.

[downswing]

A doctor.

[ He stills in his step, eyes bright and wild and uncertain, turning to take the man in for his rightful measure, the perceived weakness of his elder limbs, the fixed, inflexible regularity of his manner. A doctor, and their dead piling, their wounded queued, their people burned or bitten or ragged by undead claws, their skins bruised by tumble, when the dragon quakes.

A doctor is a commodity worth his weight in jade, in lone service or attendance beside Wen Qing. And yet he wastes himself in a mad quest to return them... where? To what end? What can possibly compare with the value this man might bring to those already succumbed to suffering? ]

We have wounded. [ Never mind the politesse of alternative conversation. Here, now, Lan Wangji's mouth slack and his grip on his sword steeling — they waste time turning back through pipelines, when there are those who bleed and beg for succour. ] You are needed.

[callamities]

[ 'I don't know.' Calla swallows those words, not willing to admit to as much with a blade to his throat. He's clearly already testing this man's patience and pushing it further in such a position... Well, it seems ill-advised.

But all the appeasing words in the world won't matter if he can't actually stop the noise—and, whether he admits it or not, the fact remains that Calla doesn't know how to do that. Doesn't the man think he would stop it if he could?

'No,' that resentful, louder-than-ever voice mutters to itself. 'It's always about them.'

Calla shoves the traitorous thought aside to answer as politely as he can. ]

I believe it's a software error, [ Calla says, careful not to reveal too much. ] Likely caused by an interrupted update. It isn't uncommon for such errors to occur from time to time. [ Liar, and slanderer of those who gave him purpose beside. ] Perhaps it will be fixed in the next patch?

[downswing]

Ice will claw at them, the wind will whip their faces, the cold will bombard their limbs, and gravity will reward them with dull convulsions of black and blue aches, when they hit ground like a battering ram. Plunging from a height, it aches to break the maiden-thin skins of spumed, cold water. Already, Lan Wangji's wound weeps, a widow knowing the truth of a sullen envoy's missive before his mouth's come unstitched to speak the words, when her husband's gone too long at war.

So be it. He nods, part statue, part an agglomeration of competent flesh deprived of purpose. Wei Ying will endure: this much, he doubts but understands. The most generous calculation of the tryst and its aftermath still positions Wei Ying squarely in the maws of discomfort, after. Yet, what are their choices?

Light seeps down, greyed, ill reflected by the beast's scales, like a silvered mirror poorly polished, its eye dulled. Head slipped aside, Lan Wangji fleetingly spies the sun, the ghost of his next breath exorcised with a long, careless hiss. Pain poisons him. Pain lives, where only Wei Ying's hand grasping his is not death-born.

His eyes shutter close. He calls Bichen free of her purchase, back to hand, even as the dragon begins a fresh set of turbulent shifts and turns, as it writhes and soars, great, white span of its majesty drawn in the breathtaking shapes of its serpent's head.

And Lan Wangji calls, "Now," and pulls in what a revisionist history might mercifully name a leap, but he knows, privately, to be a roll and awkward tumble, Wei Ying dragged close, and the waters a cunning, expected cruelty after white, mute anticipation —

The smell of fervour and sterility and clean, and cold assaulting his limbs like shrapnel. He hits surface before his spine acknowledges the sequence, in the intimate clicks of bones swallowing impact. Hard, and no wetness to thwart his body, only the teasing dangers of its of protrusions, of chilly slime and debris from the dust of a fallen balcony ledge. Spite and laughter, the heavens surely stretch above, amused by their folly.

They land on a lower coil of the dragon's body, more recently submerged and still carrying the frilly lace of fresh ice on its back. The creature's span is thicker here, courteously allowing them the fit of another man on each side of them. Stuttered madness writes itself in the wan filigree of algae that's saddled the dragon's back here, fainting over Wangji's wrist. He looks at it, glistened under sun's light, and tugs Wei Ying's hand, more to remember him close than to urgently draw his attention.

Lan Wangji aches. He aches. He prevails, metronome of quiet hurts confirming his existence.

"Apologies." A cough, deep and mean. "There is an art to the fall Wei Ying has better mastered."

Clearly, Lan Wangji has failed them.

[callamities]

[ Well, this isn't exactly Calla's idea of a good time either, but... there are all sorts of Sim-Resses that humans like, aren't there? Ones where they have to fight or escape or explore? Sure, this one has a lot of downtime, but maybe that's part of building immersion? ]

Well... forgive me for asking, sir, but if this isn't a Sim-Res, then what do you suppose it is?

Firefight

[wooden_one]

[The man Zuko bumps into is dressed all in white with long black hair. He's holding a whip...though a particularly normal looking one. It looks like a willow vine, with leaves and all that.

He frowns coldly in response.]

I can see that.

[And he's concerned because the building's structural integrity is compromised but also because you're a teenager! Probably close in age to his own disciples! He's not going to ask why you aren't being supervised but he also now doesn't feel like he could just walk away from you.

Damn it.

With a scowl he snaps the whip against the ground, right before it makes contact the entire whip is bathed in a soft, golden light.

Right after, a multitude of roots break through the ground, snaking up into the buildings walls, twisting and twining until it adds more stability and strength to the building around them so thickly that in parts of it the wall becomes completely hidden behind the plants. It adds some stability but it still trembles worryingly when the dragon throws its weight behind it again. It's obvious that while the trick as bought some time it isn't a lasting solution.

(Double damn it.)]

You. [He doesn't point but who else could he be talking to right now besides you?] If you want to escape now is the time. I'm not going to be responsible if anything happens after this.

[The words of a socially-awkward adult who doesn't actually know how to show concern.]

A

[wooden_one]

[Chu Wanning scoffs dismissively. Most of the time, his scorn and coldness is nothing more than a produce of his natural but terminal case of resting bitch face. This time, however, the scorn was all real and he's really, really good at it when he feels it earnestly even with the mask he wears.]

The man is a fool and a snake. [He stares in the direction of the moat.] And yet, should something go wrong it is not him that would suffer for it.

[The dragon, which cannot speak for its own defense will likely not come out of a disaster related to it safely.]

[funnylittleclown]

I may have impersonated a guard or two before.

[ It was a skill that did keep managing to come in handy! When you traveled to as many new and different places as he did you never really knew when you might need to escape from some grim dungeon. And it was a bit fun really, getting to use your acting skills to get out of a jam. The young guard would eventually recover himself but by then they would be well on their way out of this awful place. ]

We'd better hurry then.

[ The Doctor took a few hurried steps towards the tunnel that had just been pointed out to him as the exit before turning back and offering a set of cuffs. These had been taken from the young guard's belt when it had been... borrowed... and might yet be useful further down the line. ]

I liberated these from our friend. If we should run into any other guards you had better slip these on. It will make our cover story more convincing.

[funnylittleclown]

[ He might have thought to say 'not a medical doctor' but how ashen Wangji suddenly looked, like he was haunted by something truly terrible, and then those words... We have wounded, you are needed. Was there ever a more clear call for help than that! In the face of that how could he say anything other than! ]

Wounded? I shouldn't wonder... Naturally I'll do whatever I can to help.

[ Though currently they were up to their shin bones in fetid water with no clear sign on the proper direction to escape from this pit. Unless a better idea was offered, the Doctor carried on the way they had been going. It seemed better to proceed ahead instead of trying to fight their way back through the throng of undead they had just left. ]

Maybe you can tell me what has been going on here? Why are there so many wounded?

[downswing]

[ He speaks in tongues.

Of course. Panic. Smoke, chaos. Miasma, and fire, the rush of milling men. Sweat and blood and mildew. In the sting and chaos of it, minds will relieve their normal thoughts, will confuse themselves.

Civilian know nothing of the hardships of bloodshed. Cannot hope to withstand them without fracture. Lan Wangji, hand softened on Bichen's hilt, sweeps the blade back in a trembled arc, until she sits listless but unsheathed at his side.

His voice sheds an octave, voice the calm appeasement deployed against small, rattled animals to soothe them. ]

At ease. You will not know harm. [ Trust in the blood-drenched man with the long sword. ] You are... worn.

[downswing]

[ They walk on, drifting from pillars to rusted chains to shapeless, decaying fixtures submerged in the thick of liquid that's swallowed too much blood and filth.

If this were brother, he would know the way of it, call unto himself the wisdom and decisiveness to name their next course of action: to create a strategy and save all who require salvation. Instead, here lives and travels Lan Wangji, a ghost armed, leading a man fresh of survival to depths unknown.

This way lies water-stewed madness. He keeps the pace, flinching when sound disrupts their stillness, but only reveals itself as the passing of rats. ]

The dead advanced in the banquet halls. Most attendants are civilians.

[ Fragile, unprepared, soft of flesh. Targets, and dead claws running deep. The shudder does not traverse him, but he stills in the way of animals alert, suddenly and inexplicably attentive for the next sign of danger. ]

We were unprepared.

[consignation]

As always with Wei Wuxian, Jiang Cheng finds himself taken aback. Raised on the same docks of Yunmeng Jiang Sect, the same spiced local fare and lotus crop, the same archery practice and water games, met so young that Jiang Cheng scarcely remembers a world without Wei Wuxian in it and still every day with the man, his brother in all but blood, comes as a surprise.

He should have expected that blinding smile. How could he not? Wei Wuxian has grinned at him exactly this way in situations far worse. Knelt in his father's recieving hall, awaiting punishment for some reckless thing Jiang Cheng yet again let himself be dragged into. Or, rather, that he'd desperately wanted to do but couldn't entertain, heir and future sect leader that he was. Didn't entertain, until Wei Wuxian needled him, coaxed him, led him to his forbidden prize by hand, then smiled exactly this way as he stood between Jiang Cheng and his parents' wrath.

And yet, and always, he awkwardly looks away as his disdain softens into discomfort, scowl easing into a frown.

"You're supposed to drink soup when you're sick," he replies defensively, more a sulk than a snap now. He looks around the room, at everything but his brother's smile.

"Why are you here by yourself? Where's the esteemed Hanguang-jun? I would have thought he'd be here nursing you with boiled water— Sorry, I mean Gusu Lan's clear broth."

[scrapgege]

[... Well then.

There's quite a big splash when they hit the water, and the shock of the icy liquid is pretty impressive too, although that might be lost to spectators due to the dragon going about being pissed.

But Xie Lian makes sure to grip Lan Wangji's hand tight as he starts pulling them upwards to the surface. He's probably less affected by the fall and shock, so he feels like he has to take the lead t at least get them back to air, and then see about exiting the water.

Once both of their heads have breached the water, he turns to Lan Wangji, hair sticking to his skin.]

Are you alright?

[That was a big fall, even for a cultivator.]

[scrapgege]

[It takes... about fifteen minutes for Xie Lian to finally catch up with the tail end of the little group.

His clothing and hair are a bit disheveled, and he has what looks like a scratch on his cheek, but he appears otherwise unharmed.

His hands... are sort of covered in grime and what appears to be old blood.]

They ran away in another direction after the first two couldn't pass me by. I think we should be fine for now.

[beitangmoran]

[Moran's eyes follow Chu Wanning's towards the creature, and he takes out his fan, snapping it open.]

No, of course not. And why should he care? There are people being paid more or less handsomely to take blows for him.

They might end up working overtime today. This will not end well for anyone. And I don't know that anyone has a plan when the inevitable happens.

[He doesn't even need to see the future to know this.]

In her ladyship's service

[beitangmoran]

I'm afraid not. The exits are blocked.

[Moran is wielding a short sword - where did it come from? Let's not ask questions. He's actually wrapped his long, flowing sleeves around his arms and tied them with a bit of ribbon taken from someone's ruined gown, for more ease of movement. There's too much fire flying around for it to be safe having long bits of fabric whirling while fighting.

But quite clearly, he knows what to do with the blade, and his hand doesn't shake as he heaves and cleanly beheads an undead witch coming at him with clawed hands.]

Our only way out might be the tunnel, if they haven't been caved in by all the shaking.