let's set d o w n some (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
groundrules) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
westwhere2021-09-17 07:35 pm
groundrules) wrote in westwhere2021-09-17 07:35 pm
Entry tags:
- avatar: zuko,
- doctor who: the doctor,
- harry potter: lily evans,
- mo dao zu shi: xiao xingchen,
- oh! my emperor: beitang moran,
- oh! my emperor: su xunxian,
- original: emmet fox martin,
- star wars: anakin skywalker,
- taravast,
- test drive,
- tian guan ci fu: xie lian,
- umbrella academy: allison,
- watch_dogs: wrench
headed straight for the witches' castle
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..
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
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
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.
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 orchestratedand financedby 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 tocheatimprove your chances, then drop a line here to win donna Caterina’s answer(s).
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.
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
■ TDMers: TDM events count as game canon if you app in! TDM questions here.
Xie Lian (Already in game)
The tar creatures are annoying but not very strong, thankfully, and they recover the captives alright, but once they get to the moat... Well.]
Go on ahead, I'll stay behind just in case.
[The dragon seems a little agitated, and becoming more so by the minute, so he... distract it if he has to. As the big head starts to move towards the sound of people swimming, Xie Lian splashes the water where he is and calls out.]
Hello! Over here! Look, I'm making more noise!
[As soon as the dragon actually turns to him, he holds out his right hands and Ruoye, his white silk bandage, shoots out, contorting in the sky almost like a snake to grab attention.
It manages to avoid the fangs, mostly, but the dragon is massive, and in its twists and turns, Ruoye ends up tangled around one of the huge spikes on the dragon's back. And said dragon is now irritated. And Ruoye is still tied to Xie Lian's wrists...
He might be a god, and a very strong one, but this is a dragon. He barely has a second to realize what is happening, before he is airborne, dragged behind the huge beast like a very small and unfortunate kite.]
Ruoye, nooooooooooo....
[If you were following behind him, well, he's gone.]
no subject
The creature runs rampant, thrashing, thin shell of brick and mortar rattled under its frequent onslaught. It batters the walls, and though Lan Wangji for now has rescued balance beneath a storm of ice pellets and chills, it will not last. Their moments, their breaths are counted.
He sees the creature ascent, coiling around the tower, strangling it — and on its back, as if a plague, the familiar silhouette of Xie Lian, fettered. This fool, finding his place and purpose wherever disaster is bound. And Lan Wangji, compelled to follow in the wake of chaos.
First, the talismans: Wei Ying's creations, aimed as careful as the long range allows. One straddles well below Xie Lian, another inches closer. The third comes closer to the dragon's eyelid. Body-binding, more likely to prickle than cause actual impact, relative to the creature's scale. Still, Lan Wangji screams, lungs run raw — ]
Cut loose!
no subject
Not that this is very big trouble, all things considered, at least for Xie Lian. Honestly, he's had worse. But still.]
Ruoye is a spiritual weapon! I can't cut it!
[By which he means to say, he won't, because the silk band can be cut, but it is cruel.
Instead, he wills it to reel his own body in, and Xie Lian slaps against the hardened scales several times, making him a bit woozy, before he can finally grab onto some of the coarse hair along the spine and hoist himself up and call Ruoye back.]
... Oh dear, he's pretty angry. Well, this is way too small a place for such a big dragon.
no subject
No matter. As ever, with this man, reason must retreat in step from the urgency of the moment. He is quick to climb the balcony, extending himself past safety or propriety, leaning in. Distantly, he calculates the odds of the classical trick, of setting Bichen to flight and himself atop it &mdashs; but ice rains down, strikes and stabs and scratches his cheek, consumes him. If there is an option in a world greyed by empty, purposeless winter, he must seize it.
And so, another test of his throat, his strength drained: ]
Will it untangled!
[ Surely, any spiritual weapon of note will concede the battle, will wish its master safe-guarded. ]
no subject
That being said, Ruoye definitely has a mind of its own at times. Still, it definitely wants Xie Lian safe, and once Xie Lian has finally managed to grab onto one of the spikes on the creature's back, it quite agreeably wraps itself around Xie Lian's wrist.
And once that's done, he will hold out his wrist for Wangji to see. See, it's back and untangled now.
But hm. Ho< do you calm down a stressed out dragon? This is a bit out of Xie Lian's realm of expertise.]
Let's seen about getting closer to its head first, to it can't grab me... at least I guess like this it won't bother the people in the moat.
no subject
One mote of white, amid countless, cold. At his side, Bichen shimmers. And then, the silvered dragon, heading into water, the man Xie Lian barely strapped to its back, and who can blame Lan Wangji when he grits his teeth and straddles the balcony ledge between both feet for grip and balance, and extends his arm as broad as it will go?
( The strength of the Lan clasp is renown, but dragons might prove indifferent to cultivators' gossip. ) ]
At the next plunge, jump! I am here.
[ He... will either catch Xie Lian in his fall, or break his mouth and its teeth explaining that failure to Sizhui and young master Eleven. ]
no subject
It does look indeed as if the dragon intends to dive once again, and the water does look very cold, so Xie Lian makes sure he is holding onto everything, including his hat, before he lightly taps his foot against the creature's scale to shoot upwards.
He does en up grabbing Lan Wangji's hand... but he has a bit too much upward momentum here.]
.... Ha.
no subject
■ sweetly ease the knot of Lan Wangji's anchor under duress, because he's a learned hand of talismans, the sword and the guqin, but sailor's loops and fastenings and tangle still start their life in Yunmeng
■ propel him up, and stumbled past the balcony ledge, like dust motes caught in the whirling storm
■ but their hands, their hands clasp, he has Xie Lian, Xie Lian has him, at least when they stumble and fumble and groan and plunge down, they go paired, and shouldn't that be the way of every drop into the abyss, won't Wei Ying be proud —
...well, at least when gravity drags them down, the waters run clean (and dragon-rattled, and chilled) beneath.
What can go wrong?
( Breathe in. ) ]
no subject
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.]
no subject
But they scratch the ice, graze the water, traverse the long, deep sheets of frost, and somehow survive the commotion of an imperfect, friction-led landing. The dragon's retreated far enough to the outskirts of the moat that only the reflected sheen of its scales, blinding, still announces its quieting presence. It wants stillness, long moments to absorb the aches of its assault, returned through bites of recoil. ]
I yet walk.
[ And live and breathe and grasp his sword, and therefore, in all the ways that would spell out performance in the ranks of Gusu Lan infantry — he functions, even as his feet struggle with the slip of wet pebble and gravel beneath his boot. ]
We... [ He walks, but curls in, to capture breath again after a long cough. ] We must return. The... th — [ Small, how his lungs can get, shrivelled. ] Upstairs. Back. We go back.
[ The fight wages on. ]
no subject
[Lan Wangji is a cultivator, surely he knows how to do that.]
You can take some energy from me, if you need to, but we need to make sure the cold is taken care off, or it'll only hinder you. Then we can go back up.
[Xie Lian's own twisting of the fabric of his pirate get up is but a feeble attempt to get ice water out of it, and his lips do look a bit blueish, but he still doesn't seem to pay much attention to that, or the icicles in his hair, and while he's concerned about Lan Wangji, he's also not overly worried for now.]
Do you have something that can dry your robes? A talisman or a spell?
no subject
At Xie Lian's say, Lan Wangji summons the cheap trick of a talisman, light and flame and the crackle of sorcery filling out the frozen air. He aches to breathe, to be. Crisp, the air surrounding him mellows.
Obediently, he manipulates the talisman's flame to rain its kisses of fire and heat towards Xie Lian, in the customary concession earned by an elder. I have no need, he will say, or better yet, flaunt it with the indifference of a man who was never truly harassed by requirements. ]
Apologies for your concern.
[ Direct it, he need not say, to those who want still for a mother's touch. Not so, Lan Wangji, mutinously at ease with discomfort. ]
We must return. [ A pause, delicate, trailing. ] If you may be spared.
[ There is no shame in withdrawal here, now. ]
no subject
[For once, Xie Lian won't begrudge the help. He needs to save his energy, what he has of it, for fighting. His strength means the clothes being heavy with water don't bother him much, but its is quite cold, and that's annoying.]
The little group I was with managed to cross the moat while I was distracting the dragon, so I think they'll be okay. I can get us back up there.
[And he holds out a hand to Lan Wangji.]
no subject
Behind, the dragon heaves. He cannot hesitate — not with the waters rising, with action and response due, with their options slim and dwindling. With his bones heated, but his mouth dry, and what toll will trust take? He has no silver shavings here, only paltry alms to give. And yet: ]
How?
no subject
Ruoye will pull us up.
[It can carry two people with little trouble, and will save them a lot of time. As is on cue, the extremity of the silk bandage unwraps itself and perks up like a friendly snake, surprisingly expressive for something with no face.]
Which floor?
no subject
Soot rains down now as often as pellets. Absently, he trickles it off his shoulder with the wave of a tired hand. He thinks, a silk noose will not keep, will not protect them. They will drop down, bruise their bones, perish.
He thinks, spirits and a flute should not have protected him once, either. And look how fates have turned. Then, with a wary glance: ]
Top-most. Any lower end, we stand victims.
[ Worse, for how the dragon seems to target, bait. ]
no subject
[Hand still extended. you need to hold on to him tight, Lan Wangji, or else this will not work. He's not going to pull you up dangling from his arm, that would be dangerous. You're going to have to suffer a more... intimate position, even though Xie Lian doesn't seem to be bothered by that.]