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.
escape
White noise rattles in his ears. Within, stillness, the balance imperfect. His sword arm limps beside him, blade yet drawn and pearlescent, softly called. The moment reduces itself to this: wails, a man called to slaughter, limbs consumed by the nearest dead. Absently, Lan Wangji severes — first, the hand of the offender.
Then, after an exchange of glances, the man distorted by his suffering, a casualty of euthanasia. After, Lan Wangji wears his reds, turns and intends to meet the mouth of the tubes — stalling only when he meets another man first, shaken. ]
You are in need of a weapon.
no subject
A weapon? No. I wouldn't mind a few directions. I was traveling with some others...
[ A glance down the tunnel behind him proved he was very much alone at the moment. ]
But I appear to have misplaced them. Maybe they came this way? Down the tunnel here and... which way leads outside?
no subject
He rescues it: a gentleman's dagger, short to the span of his wrist. It failed a mater's hand before. It must serve now, fang to fresh opportunity. He holds it out by the hilt — ]
Outside, to a beast's maw. [ Outside, where they do not yet venture. ] Here yet lies chance.
[ To live, he need not speak, for all the man must know, must intuit. In this chasm of smoke and detritus, they harvest better odds. ]
Take it.
no subject
[ His gaze turned down the darkened hall just as the creature outside smashed against the castle sending a rain of small stones tumbling down around them. None of these were large enough to do any serious damage but they did splash into the scummy water at their feet and coat their hair with a light plastering of dust. ]
Oh, I see. That's what all that thrashing about is. Well, we can't exactly go back the way I've come either. There is an army of...
[ He was not going to say zombies however appropriate that might have been. ]
We would never get through.
[ That dagger. Jamie would have snapped it up in a second, using it just like his dirk to get everyone free of this place. The Doctor however merely shook his head at it, refusing it once again. ]
That would be useless to me I'm afraid. I've no great skill with weapons.
no subject
Frail, an anaemia of light seeps in with sudden, violent silence. Fresh torches, a spell of sound. If there is time to waste —
It is not to recede back, like sea waters. Not to crawl forward. Trapped, like rodents in between walls, they will perish. Out, then. Before the plague of smoke exhausts them, before the crowds turn to panic, like maddened horses to wild gallop. ]
How many did you leave behind? [ No. 'No great skill.' This is a civilian, no survivor of war. He will spare no true number. ] Approximate. Enough to fill quarters? Halls?
no subject
[ He wasn't a military man, no, but he was at least observant. ]
And if you didn't see them come down this way then they must have taken the other fork back there. I was the slowest you see...
[ His feet slid along the moss which grew from the damp cracks along the floor as he practically danced back the way he had come. Far better to be moving than allow that distant torchlight to get any closer to them. ]
If we hurry we might just make it!
no subject
He looks — in war, he would be prey and easily downed, market prey. Old, if not guaranteed the stiffness of limb that kills his kind early.
But they run among civilians here, and the stream of panicked sound and angered footsteps only bolsters, like embers stoked to flame, and there comes the true fire in the wake of this, hard-breathing. Only the moment to make his choice: Lan Wangji decides, dagger fettered, sword returned to sheath, and in his hands taut, the lasso of silvered string, drawn —
Garrotte. Amplified with energy, its cut will deepen, reaching range the sword will struggle with, until they've advanced far deeper in the watery, sloshing intestine of the tube. ]
You gave no name. [ As if Lan Wangji offered one in kind. ] For a grave, should it want marking.
[ Here to comfort. ]
no subject
[ His mind still felt muddled from whatever strange concoction of drugs had been pumped into his system but slowly the tendrils of thought began to knit together. Were they speaking metaphorically or was that some sort of threat? His pace down the tunnel quickened just that little bit more. ]
Perhaps it's because I feel I'm far from needing a grave.
[ The howling from those horrors still trapped behind the last door grew ever louder as they marched closer, but the fork should have been along this route some where. Until it was found maybe it was best to ramble. ]
You never mentioned why you were down in these tunnels. So well armed... I doubt you were being held a prisoner?
no subject
No matter. Men wrench themselves in fresh gallop across the corridors ahead, and he knows whatever there is to fear has struck the banquet halls already. Smoke, flame and danger enshroud them, thick and greasy on the lungs. No time to reminiscence, with shame oiling his bones awake. ]
Not today.
[ If trust is not to bare itself between them, let it wear thickened wools, skin mantles. Let it be buried between licks of silence. ]
If there are those yet imprisoned, we return for them. [ But I was last, the man said. Perhaps for the truth of it, perhaps for his own cowardice. ] We choose now.
no subject
[ The Doctor proclaimed as the damp corridor they had been traveling along opened into the fork he had mentioned seeing earlier.
To the right was a thick wooden door from which several boards had already been shattered. It was barred by a simple length of rope which had been wrapped around the door handle and the frame of might might have once been a prison door but was now only am empty iron frame left behind to rust. Burnt arms twisted their way out of the gaps and the wailing intensified as the blood that coursed through those two men's veins just outside of the burned undead one's prison could almost be smelled by those that desired to bathe in it.
Behind them was the path they had just come from, the flames from the torches of the approaching guards were now some what more distant but once again threateningly growing brighter as that party approached.
And then there was the left route. An open tunnel that snaked on into the darkness and from which the smoke seemed to billow the most strongly. Here too was an old iron grate of the kind that were used to seal off portals during sieges. It was large, heavy, and pinioned to the ceiling by a rusted pulley and level system. ]
The others must have gone this way. If you do wish to help them it might be a wise idea to see if we can shift that grate.
no subject
And the pulley, aged, the lever thin. Heat could sustain or betray them — if
grime welded the grate, wafts of warmth could whisper it open. If enough of the metal of each latticed bar gave way to heat, and melted down, then —
Prepare for the worst. Hope for the alternative. His blade Bichen unveils, and he raises her, starting to prickle off any filth and deterrents at the grate's rim, before the mass can be shifted. ]
Wangji, sect Lan. For my grave.
[ For his family. For the illusion, flickered and dispersing, that they are human beings past creature instincts and animal inclinations. He finds himself extending the dagger, once more: ]
Stab at the ends. We tease it loose, before we pull.
no subject
His hands searched over his pockets until he discovered where he had hidden that bit of peel. It was some sort of citrus, perhaps one of the local varieties, that was the last remnants of one of their prisoner meals. There was enough of it left to squeeze some juice from the rind and allow it to dribble down over the lever's gears. The acid of the fruit nibbled away at the rust, it wasn't amazingly strong, but maybe it would give them an edge. ]
Right, I think that's all I can do here. We've got to do this together, when I give the word.
[ The wooden door holding back the horde gave a sharp crack. Not too much longer. ]
Now!
[ Splinters flew from the destroyed door and the undead charged through the gap, tumbling over each other and screaming unholy murderous thoughts. ]
no subject
One last stab of Bichen up, then the blade withdraws, and he waits, serpentine, for the word —
That comes, and Lan Wangji's shoulder lends the weight called of it, the width of his sword sheath used to bruise the grate, and the stranger's strength yielding the last push in. Iron surrenders like oil to water, repelled, once the right gears have been set, shrieking, in motion. Behind them screams the horde.
A shameful occasion, when flight serves the better than fight. He spares the crowds one last glance, then the snapped delivery of a talisman behind him, barely enough that — energy crackling — the half-formed barrier can lessen the horde's advance. They trample it, but Lan Wangji's already setting in motion, part nudging, part dragging the man to slip up, past the grate. ]
Hasten. [ And muttered, as he comes close behind the man, barely breathing: ] You know your way with... fruit.
[ Damn Wangji's eyes and his name, if he doesn't shove the grate back into its watch and position, the second they've passed. ]
no subject
[ He chirped, almost cheerily, as he half-ran and was half dragged further into the gloom of the now grate barred tunnel. The perils of having shorter legs than your companion and not recovering as quickly from the effort of freeing such an old and unused grate. Still it seemed to have worked. The undead stumbled in the hall, stunned by the electric shock that had been left in their wake and held back by this new much stronger barrier. Wood they could break, iron would give them more trouble! ]
That was an impressive trick as well. Was that some sort of electroshock weapon?
no subject
The barrier holds. They have this much rallied to their advantage. Shuffling and shivering, crossing the narrow, mould-riddled pathway like rats — they require whatever upside they can yet broker.
Distantly, he hears the claws and scratching of the dead, scents the smoke that filters through. ]
Only energy. [ Of whatever manner, quality, flavour. Dispersing, even as Lan Wangji speaks, and their steps must quiet in the water, when the waves rise up as they advance. ] Elder, how came you here?
no subject
[ 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?
no subject
[ 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.
no subject
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?
no subject
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.
no subject
[ He could imagine it. Those creatures that had spent days reaching and thrashing up at the cage he and the other prisoners had been kept in, their minds clawing at his, singing their songs of death and destruction... demanding that he should kill the others. Those beings had been let loose on an unsuspecting crowd in a banquet hall? He had been given the advantage of distance and iron bars keeping them apart, those poor people would have had nothing.
Who would do such a cruel thing! ]
We need to get up there.
[ He spoke decisively, casting each concave wall they walked between an angry glare as if they might just give way and allow them to pass. The water they waded through was up to his shins now. It seemed to be getting deeper with every step. ]
You've noticed the water? We must be going deeper into this labyrinth instead of heading out. What we need is a side passageway or maybe a pipe that would lead us back to the surface. Keep a sharp eye for one.
no subject
And if they have no time to discover a newly cut passage, then — his sword. Wangji's sword, calm and resilient and an active danger, thrums beside him. ]
You wish an entryway carved out?
[ His frown dances off Bichen's blade to the crust of the aqueduct, the iron that might yet yield to it, given time, pressure, opportunity. He can see the work done. ]
We chance to land in wall enclosure, or void.
[ Or rooms, he knows, if the belly of the pipelines were only attached to ceilings without protection or burial in. That would suit them. ]
no subject
[ The stone while old looked substantial enough to withstand anyone picking at it but the mortar, that was old and crumbly and the iron bars... well, difficult to say how strong they might have been given how densely hidden under rust they were.
The alternative was carrying on down the tunnel into the vast blackness which seemed to swallow up all light. It might have been a trick of the eyes, the way light from the dampness shimmered over the walls, but the passage ahead seemed to seethe with some kind of writhing oil. But yes, it was probably only a trick of the mind. ]
I'm up for the risk if you are.
no subject
His eyes strain, slanted, feline-like — a curious, cautious study of the skin-thin tube tempts him into an easy acknowledgement. He knows nothing of the true costs of this exertion, less of Bichen's feats against strong-standing wall. She is steel, for all the qi sorcery that borrows from the root of his life's energy to shield and strengthen itself like swathes of gossamer around her flickered light.
In a larger space, the guqin would triumph. Here, with incipient claustrophobia tightening the dim, dank tunnel, vibration would cripple the cracked thin stone plates beneath their feet and collapse the ceiling. ]
We have a third alternative. [ But his voice staggers, thin. Third, and little loved. Still, he produces the parchment, blanched and routinely folded, barely a quarter of a page's strip. ] A minor explosion.
[ With the volatile risk to their welfare, the infrastructure and to rousing the creature that watches the tower outside. ]
If we make this choice.
no subject
What do you have there?
[ Gunpowder kept dry from the elements by the paper? A stick of dynamite? Oh, maybe one of those incantations like the guards had been using to keep the undead in check?
Anyway if it could produce an explosion one had to weigh the risks of that. There was the danger of collapse, the ceiling could come down on them or the floor disappear into some hole. Or it might just make them a hole large and safe enough to wriggle through. Should they take the quick way out of the maze or the longer and perhaps safer way by following the established tunnels... hmm. ]
How strong of an explosion would it be?
no subject
Wei Ying's trick, as all things are. Father of artfully countenanced theatrical mercies. And Lan Wangji, who steals the recourse, only settles his hand near where the talisman parchment sleeps on cold, wet wall, where it affixes without paste or provocation, sustained by the damp print of tarred coagulation. He takes the width of his palm and shifts it five times each way, to quantify and qualify a diameter for the toothless mouth of disaster.
It will open, vast, it will hiss and sigh for them, and in between these fissures of fire, they might see &dmash; but he shakes his head, level, slowed. ] Unpredictable. [ His fingers dance on the starved convexity of the pipeline, come away dark. ] The grease may be oil.
[ For all it does not reek of it, if it is, oh, if it is. ]
(no subject)
(no subject)
He is patted... ROFL!!