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
What they're offering you isn't really freedom. The minute you've done what they need, they'll kill you without hesitation. Do you think you're anything to them?
[ He's ready for the feint, but doesn't anticipate the knife in time and gets rewarded with a slice across the forearm. Anakin hisses in pain, drawing back. He touches the wound gingerly to see how bad it is. It's deep, but not life-threatening. ]
Did you ever stop to consider what it would cost your brothers?
no subject
You think I'm loyal to them? [Like they'd stolen him or something? Fuck that. Fuck Skywalker for thinking like that. He presses the attack, trying to land another hit.]
You didn't get it on Christophsis, and you're still not getting it now.
no subject
I don't think you're loyal to them, I just think you're foolish.
no subject
I don't care what a slavemaster thinks.
no subject
Funny, neither do I.
no subject
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.]
no subject
With a startled yelp, he relinquishes his hold on the suspended trooper, moving quickly away. He pats frantically over himself to extinguish the part of his robe that caught fire, and the side of his face and neck throbs in agony. He doesn't dare touch, but he knows there's going to be an angry burn there.
He can't rationalize how he did it, but he'd created fire out of basically nothing. Anakin stays speechless, staring at Slick from a respectable distance away in disbelief. ]
no subject
He hit the floor in a heap, rolling onto his back so he could breathe. And cough. Did he have burns in there too? He couldn't tell yet. His head was still ringing, almost too loud to think.
But he saw the look on the Jedi's face. He'd better survive this, because he wanted to remember that.]
You--[Fuck, that hurt.]--All of you kept this from us. [But Jedi weren't the only ones with fancy tricks anymore.]
You're nothing special.
no subject
You think you're the only ones the Jedi have lied to? You're a day late and a few credits short. Being 'special' isn't all it's cracked up to be.
no subject
[He picked up the flint and steel from where he'd dropped them, stowing them away. Not doing that again. He'd have better luck with the knife. He wasn't in any state to keep fighting, but it wasn't like that was going to stop him. He started to haul himself up, gritting his teeth--
And then a creaky voice started chanting from somewhere down the hallway. Apparently the witch was back.
There wasn't much to say beyond a wordless growl of frustration.]
Both of you can get fucked.
[And that. That too.]
no subject
[ With everything that's happened recently, Anakin feels trapped. Pulled between what the Jedi Order expects of him while not trusting him, and the nightmares of Padmé's death and the lingering thoughts of what the Chancellor spoke to him about in the darkness of the opera house.
If it were possible to save her from dying, could the Sith actually have the answer? Not for the first time, he regrets killing Dooku. He still doesn't fully understand why he'd done it. That wasn't the Jedi way.. his anger had just gotten the better of him again. The same anger he can feel building in his chest reaches its peak and darkens into rage.
Anakin's glare shifts from the clone trooper crumpled on the ground and to the witch down the hall. He needs to do something. As furious as he is with the trooper, he doesn't want to seriously hurt him. Sith hells, he hadn't wanted to fight him in the first place. Closing the distance between himself and Slick, he points an angry, accusatory finger at him as he stalks past. ]
Stay down!
[ As he starts to close the distance between himself and the witch, he unclips the saber from his belt with practiced ease, igniting the blade. His speed picks up and he cleaves the witch's arms off with one over-arching swing of the blade. Her head follows with another twist of his wrist and he watches it roll across the floor impassively. It didn't help as much as he'd wanted it to. ]
no subject
[He spits at Skywalker's feet as he passes, then hauls himself up enough to go for the knife. Sword's next, forcing him to follow after the Jedi to retrieve it from where it fell. Not that it's going to do much against a lightsaber. The whole fight seems fucking pointless now.
But he got the sword from Lily, a friend who just turned a length of shitty wrought iron into a blade with a couple words and a magic fucking wand. His face hurts like hell because Fox has been teaching him to use the Force. He's not alone here. He has to remember that. There's people he's warned about the Jedi. And if all else fails, El's been working on resisting mind control. They've got skills he hasn't. They can help.
...El isn't going to be happy when he sees the burns, though.
He's standing upright by the time the witch is hacked apart, jaw set. He can't finish the job here. But maybe others can.]
no subject
His face throbs dully, and his arm is still bleeding sluggishly, staining the dark material of his robes. Anakin releases some of that pain into the Force, tries to focus on the task at hand instead of the way his skin feels like it's on fire.
He stares at Slick and disengages the lightsaber before turning his back to him again. ]
I'm done fighting with you. There are other people to worry about right now. Or were the Jedi keeping that from you, too?
no subject
But he did. That was what he'd done before he'd been dumped on his planet. Suck it up and wait for a better moment.]
I can't beat you. That doesn't make you right about us. [And it doesn't mean this is over.]