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

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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

[reparo]

[Water is wet and cold. At least that is a constant in all worlds, even strange ones as the one she's found herself in. She promises herself hours of study, if she ever gets out of this - which she will, she must - and it's something to aim for.

Another thing to aim for: not giving this stranger the proof that despite her ability to swim, she's struggling with the icy cold waters.

So her lips are purple. Listen, that could be common of women from her world - he doesn't know.]

Can I at least know your name? I'm calling you stranger with a sword in my head and I am aware that is not nice.

[downswing]

[ I shall be a stranger, possessed of a sword, even once our names trade, he needn't cast behind him, between the wavered bargain of hard breaths, because it is obvious, and plain, and the stench of damp and mildew and rust agitates him.

Of all the landscapes Lan Wangji has crossed, this does not earn accolades. ]

Wangji, sect Lan.

[ By this point of backs shrivelled by the constricted confines of the snake belly of the pipelines, his token bow is abbreviation, aborted — performed, to salt injuries, at the inappropriate angle. No matter, he sloshes on, only stalling them for a heartbeat when the sudden tumult of water before him forces him to stab with Bichen's pointier end and test the likelihood of a submerged critter.

...ah. Only a boot, and within it... he allows it to float, dismissing rot, remains. Let her not stare. She is a woman, her fate already challenged by prejudice against her station. No need to compound it with the inconvenience of cadavers. ]

Before. How many dead in the rooms we seize? You remember?

[reparo]

[Sect - is surely just another way to say family, right? Possibly a larger family - possibly.

This train of thought prevents her from seeing the book and entrails, so small mercies.]

I didn't get to count them, they were hard to see - someone in the cage started naming them. [Which was a memorable conversation and day. Becky is probably fully dead now.]

Wangji, sect Lan - my name is Hermione, of...err. My family's name is Granger, thought I wouldn't call it a clan.

[Is this the right time for this conversation?] Might not be the right time for this conversation.

[downswing]

[ The dead, named. Another in the girl Hermione's cage, and did that captive survive? Did they escape independent of each other, did the girl leave her companion in blood or bones?

Questions, absent answer. They navigate the corridors, ice prickling and cutting their feet, waters raising to Lan Wangji's midriff, and he thinks — more fool him, knowing the aqueducts, having but come of their territory — it will be a sink and a swim into certain segments of their journey, should they traverse them. Like ships, destined for wreckage, shattered by glaciers, and the dark, tarred slick gelid like flaked skins on the tubes. ]

The dead were contained beside you? [ A pause, then, hastened: ] How many in your... cage? A handful? More?

[ Awe and startle will distort the girl's memory, past loose indication, but it will do. It must do. ]

[reparo]

The dead were contained beneath us, under the cage they held us in. [Semantics are clearly important.]

Maybe two handfuls - difficult to tell. They kept the room dark, and us sedated for most part. It could have been fewer at the end than the beginning. [She knows why - she still shudders to think it.]

Interrogate me later please, when we get out of this.

[downswing]

[ She bristles. In the grand scheme of a day of toil, trouble and misunderstandings, he must be as salt on her wounds, sooner than salve. And yet, the air that surrounds them never thaws for it, the dragon beyond doesn't cease the metronome rhythm of its brutality.

He does not improve their odds for the diplomacy she accuses lost in his hands, dispersed between his fingertips. ]

Hear me. [ Quiet every instinct of cantankerous hysteria. ] We must know what we face.

[ They cannot return to horde and bloodshed, not without shield or strategy, without rite or prayer. They cannot go blind for a stick. ]

[reparo]

[He doesn't have to be that dramatic, she's not hysterical over here (anymore).

Nevertheless: it helps. Strategy is, sometimes, her middle name. Sometimes it is the concept she waves at as she runs by on the way to liberate a dragon from the underbelly of Gringotts.]

Right. [The change on her face is gradual, but it goes from startled to solemn and she tries to remember.] They're undead, and they project their thoughts into the minds of others. The guards kept us in the dark and on a cage, possibly to taunt them, and every night we'd all get visions and hear whispers of those creatures encouraging us to throw ourselves down to them for a feast.

[A small pause, eyes narrowed.] A man - not the guards - set us free. Gave us the keys to the cage and some potions, and instructions to head East. He left before the ruckus, before this mad dash - I didn't catch his name.

[And finally, a breath.] Satisfied?

[downswing]

[ A man. An accomplice. One bereft of opportunity to complete the task collapsed before him, and these people, beads bereft their string, and the dead crawling in mad, many-legged infestation. Heat and headiness. He breathes, grip on his sword's hilt like flesh finding extension.

They go for a stick, madness mounts itself in the back of his mind, whispers and teases shrill, like night birds passing, a stick, a stick, a stick.

If satisfaction licks at him, it's to taste the blood pooling at the corner of his mouth, where his teeth flay his lip, cajole the fetid stench of stale water to turn scratches into infection. ]

We may yet re-enter a trap.

[ She knows a great deal of what came before. Precious little of the now, the after. ]