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.
no subject
[ This was not the most well thought out of distractions but the Doctor figured it would work anyway as the fellow guarding the door was looking out in the direction some of the others had run and wasn't paying much attention at all to anyone who might have been in the shadows. Maybe he was new to the job or a rookie but he seemed to think anyone left behind would have been a member of his party and not a straggler from the escapees. His mistake.
The Doctor tottered forward, swaying ever so slightly from the effects of the drugs still in his system, and boldly walked right up to the guard... then around to the front to gain his full attention and turn the guard's back toward the shadows. ]
Pardon me but I seem to have taken a wrong turn. Perhaps you would be good enough to tell me where the way out is?
[ The young guard startled like he was just about to leap out of his shoes, blinked in his shock, and then began to recite the first few phrases of a spell... ]
no subject
Yeah. Both seemed likely.
He started moving, keeping low and light on his feet. If there was one good thing about his armor, it was the boots. Silent as you like, so long as he kept his plates from clacking against each other.
But stealth literally only got you so far--when the guard started chanting some sort of gibberish, that meant it was time to run. He closed the last few meters, only slowing just enough to make he didn't send the guard cannoning into his new friend. He yanked the man off at an angle instead, getting an arm around the poor bugger's neck and locking him in a sleeper hold before he had a chance to fight back. He'd never done this outside of exercises before, but training said all you needed on a human was ten to twenty seconds on average.
Nine seconds later, and the guard was out cold. Decidedly below average performance from the guy all around.]
Right, [He declared, lowering the unconscious man to the floor. Stars, people were always damn heavy when they went limp like this.] Let's get you looking official.
no subject
[ The howls and hunting calls from the passages beyond would have masked any small startled noise the inexperienced guard might have made before he succumbed into the unconscious world anyway. It was a textbook takedown and the only downside was that the guard's trousers had grown slightly damp when he had slid to the floor. But no matter, this did not prevent their being stolen and swapped for his own. Soon he was looking as fit and trim as... a very out of shape guard wearing a uniform that was too big for him... but whatever he lacked in imposing stature he made up for with attitude as he adopted a swagger and a fine military command tone. ]
Right, you there prisoner, lets get this lot hidden away and you back behind bars.
no subject
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.]
no subject
[ 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.
no subject
[He starts walking, keeping his voice low.] I'm not a guard, but soldier's probably close enough. [He gives the man a cheeky smirk.] I can give you pointers for your next performance. [Because if this guy's escaped the cells, he's probably part of the newest batch of off-worlders. They'll need to stick together.
Which means they should probably get introduced.] My name's Slick. What's yours?
no subject
If after this you think I need pointers. I'm the Doctor.
[ It was a soft noise, just like the scuff of a boots against stone but the Doctor held up a hand and paused in his tracks listening. A jingle of keys or something metallic... voices... It seemed they had run across their first patrol.
He mustered up his finest command tone, filled with feigned annoyance and slightly veiled threat. ]
Enough dawdling! Move on! I'm not going to spend all day escorting you back to your cell!
[ The guards approached the Doctor nodded at them like they were all part of one big happy military. ]
Caught one of the prisoners. The rest have holed up back at the end of the tunnel. You lot best get down there.
[ The guards looked to each other but didn't move, prompting the Doctor to bark an order as if he actually had the rank to do so. ]
Go on then! Don't keep the Commander waiting!
[ At this they hurried past the pair, never sparing the 'prisoner' so much as a glance. ]
That went well enough but I wonder if all of them will be so easily fooled. I say, do you know where this tunnel ends up?
no subject
And his new friend's good at his part too, it seems. He keeps quiet until the guards have moved on.]
Nice work. Felt tempted to spit on someone's shoes to make it more convincing, but I don't think that would've been a popular move. [It would've been satisfying, though.]
[He takes the cuffs back off, nodding towards their destination. It's easy to tell which way it is now--just follow the chill.] There's an aqueduct that leads down to the moat. It's cold as space, but the big critter in it seems to be pretty well-behaved. [Or at least it was, when they'd gone by it the first time.] No danger as long as you get some fresh socks once it's all done.
[About that introduction they'd been making, before the interruption--]
Never met somebody who's got a "The" in their name. Is that common where you're from? ['Doctor', though? That's normal. Really normal. Most clone medics that hadn't picked a name for themselves ended up as Doctor or Doc. The only odd part is running into a non-clone with a name like that.]
no subject
[ Their captors had been reasonably gentle with them thus far, setting aside the whole hanging them from the ceiling over a room full of murderous undead... At least they hadn't given anyone a beating.
Hm, an aqueduct which leads to a moat. Maybe that meant they were inside some sort of castle or fortress... or was it too fanciful to think so? He pondered over this as they trudged on down the tunnel system, only partly paying attention to 'THE' question. Not to be rude really but he didn't care to talk about himself too much and he especially didn't like to talk about where he came from. For all he knew the Timelords were still searching for him. He had some how managed to escape their courtroom and with the same face! Moreover this definitely wasn't the Earth he had been meant to be exiled on. It was all very curious. ]
Common? I try never to do anything too common.
[ Cheeky non-answer. ]
What about you? Are you a native to this world or were you brought here like the rest of us?
no subject
Alright, I can respect that. [If the Doctor didn't feel like talking about it, that was fine. The galaxy could be an absolute mess, so it was understandable.]
No. I'm not even sure where this planet is, apart from "a long way from home". I've tried the basic astrogation stuff when we've had a clear sky--looking for companion galaxies, that sort of thing. [The sort of skills the army taught so they could could do nighttime navigation anywhere in the galaxy.] Hasn't worked--I can't get a clear fix on where we are.
[He held up a wrist, showing the out-of-place quartz bracelet that he was wearing.] The locals don't speak any Basic dialects, and neither do most of the offworlders. So you'll probably be stuck using translators for most things. Once we're out, it'll be worth swapping some basic vocabulary, so we can communicate if there's an emergency. I can help with that. [He'd been the first one to raise that issue. Sure, the local words were fine, but the average civilian wasn't going to remember their language lessons if they were terrified out of their skulls. Basic vocabulary in their home language was the most reliable way to get people out of danger.]
no subject
He was pulled from these thoughts as the bracelet was shown off. Pretty little thing and a translator? Hm! ]
That's actually quite clever. I can't recall the last time I was in need of a translator.
[ Humble brag, it was a benefit of traveling in the TARDIS. Your mind was ever so slightly altered to make understanding those from other worlds possible. It would be difficult to travel to other planets if you couldn't speak to the people who lived there. ]
So you are compiling an emergency vocabulary list? I'd be interesting in seeing something like that.
no subject
Yeah. At least enough so we can keep everybody's limbs screwed on the right way. I've got basic lists for 古文, 中文, 한국어, English, and Erdrear mál. [None of those sound like a native speaker, but he's obviously trying.]
Any of those sound familiar? Apart from my awful pronunciation.
no subject
That's really quite good you know. Being able to recall all those words like that, I mean. Maybe I could help you with your pronunciation? I'm something of a student of dialects. Once we get free of this place of course.
[ They had a choice to make. The corridor in front of them branched off to the right and to the left. Both tunnels looked exactly the same to him, with that thick sludgy water running along the floor and the moss covered walls. ]
Now... which way lead to this moat? Do you recall or should we find a coin to flip?
no subject
[Well, having somebody around who knew about this 'Earth' was going to help. Especially somebody who didn't seem native--some of the Earthers seemed to have a hard time accepting that space travel was even possible.] Please. I know I don't have any of it right yet, but it's hard to get people to sit still long enough to get the words out of them.
[He stopped, trying to remember.] Uh. Should be...
[There.] To the right. There's a bit of a chill down that way. [That was a lucky break.] Glad for once I don't have my helmet--never would've noticed it otherwise.
no subject
[ Which didn't explain his being here unless they had been confused. Just by looking it was impossible to tell he wasn't as human as he looked. ]
Why sit still we can work on your pronunciation as we go.
[ This said he quite happily turned to the right and carried on down the indicated tunnel. ]
Let's see... Erdrear mál. Erdrear mál. Erdrear mál. You see, you were rolling your R's too much.