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

[downswing]

A doctor.

[ 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.

[funnylittleclown]

[ He might have thought to say 'not a medical doctor' but how ashen Wangji suddenly looked, like he was haunted by something truly terrible, and then those words... We have wounded, you are needed. Was there ever a more clear call for help than that! In the face of that how could he say anything other than! ]

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?

[downswing]

[ They walk on, drifting from pillars to rusted chains to shapeless, decaying fixtures submerged in the thick of liquid that's swallowed too much blood and filth.

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.

[funnylittleclown]

Oh dear...

[ 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.

[downswing]

[ A side passageway. A step aside. Should the path truncate and splinter, should new corridors announce themselves — watch, and he does, where the waters thin, where his boot runs into dirt thickened for want of fresh wet to dilute it. There, the flow has parted, and his hand trails the walls, like hollowed sea shells, knocking his fingers, rapping his knuckles, tasting the empty vibration, lost cat's purr.

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. ]

[funnylittleclown]

Can you do that?

[ 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.

[downswing]

[ And can Lan Wangji achieve this?

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.

[funnylittleclown]

[ A parchment? Gifted with an ever curious nature he stepped closer, squinting at the offered third option to better make it out in the gloomy darkness. ]

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?

[downswing]

Substantial. [ Enough to tatter a wall, to ribbon wood and blind the long-peering eye of quartz stone, if need be (and the need lived there, once, the need ate of his bones, his skin, urgency ruled them). A petty trick, the snapping maw of flame waking, air wailing and roaring, expulsed into heat.

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. ]

[funnylittleclown]

I'm not sure we could survive substantial.

[ Oil, hm... could be. Though it seemed a bit too sticky for oil. As he pondered the possibility that the tunnel ahead might be covered in oil the dark liquid began to move and coalesce, forming into some dark reaching creature that oozed towards them in the gloom. ]

Or tar...

[ Lan Wangji's shoulder was given several quick and supportive pats. ]

You'd better do it before that gets any nearer! We can run back the way we came, try to shield ourselves around that bend. Better hurry before that gets any nearer!

[downswing]

[ ...touch. He is... patted, like the neck of a goat, or a donkey's hide, and there is prickling here, hair bristling, each fine line of his back crisping sharper. He all but rescinds himself in minute increments of chaotic movement, oil spill wrenching away from water.

He is not for patting, it would seem — only for the gentle positioning of the talisman on the tube's wall, bound with wet and a final shove, before touch ignites its sorcery, and Lan Wangji throws himself at distance — ]

Take shelter —

[ — just as the parchment piece heats and sizzle with a surge of transformed energy that warms air first, cycles and burns it until flame sparks, stokes, consumes — and erodes metal, melting, in a minor, bright white and scratch scarring explosion.

In better news, once the dust settles, all is well: the fresh, dust-bleeding hole feeds into room quarters. A bathing hall, by any other name. ]

He is patted... ROFL!!

[funnylittleclown]

[ Barely were the words spoken before he had to throw himself away from the force of the explosion. He landed hard on the tunnel floor with his nose partially buried in the sludgy runoff water while his back ended up with a thick blanket of powdered stone. Once the force and flames began to fade the Doctor sat up, sputtering and coughing to rid his mouth of the foul water and dust.

It had worked though! The parchment had blasted it's way through the wall and right into... well, he wasn't exactly happy to see that room again. It can't have been the same bathing hall they had been ushered into each day but my didn't they all look fairly similar. ]

Oh, oh my word! You've done it! And look at those doors along the wall. One of them has to lead out of these catacombs.