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]

[ ...dragged behind, like a stray dog, or a child, or a rag. Drifted, and perhaps now due his rinse, after the long soak. Were he not still blinking away the stupor of fall and ice and his bones, nigh breaking, he might consider a correction of their bodies' geometries, of their position.

But they scratch the ice, graze the water, traverse the long, deep sheets of frost, and somehow survive the commotion of an imperfect, friction-led landing. The dragon's retreated far enough to the outskirts of the moat that only the reflected sheen of its scales, blinding, still announces its quieting presence. It wants stillness, long moments to absorb the aches of its assault, returned through bites of recoil. ]

I yet walk.

[ And live and breathe and grasp his sword, and therefore, in all the ways that would spell out performance in the ranks of Gusu Lan infantry — he functions, even as his feet struggle with the slip of wet pebble and gravel beneath his boot. ]

We... [ He walks, but curls in, to capture breath again after a long cough. ] We must return. The... th — [ Small, how his lungs can get, shrivelled. ] Upstairs. Back. We go back.

[ The fight wages on. ]

[scrapgege]

Warm yourself first.

[Lan Wangji is a cultivator, surely he knows how to do that.]

You can take some energy from me, if you need to, but we need to make sure the cold is taken care off, or it'll only hinder you. Then we can go back up.

[Xie Lian's own twisting of the fabric of his pirate get up is but a feeble attempt to get ice water out of it, and his lips do look a bit blueish, but he still doesn't seem to pay much attention to that, or the icicles in his hair, and while he's concerned about Lan Wangji, he's also not overly worried for now.]

Do you have something that can dry your robes? A talisman or a spell?

[downswing]

[ A moment, and a compromise: qi redirects itself, to the best of its efficiency, its regular circuit interrupted. No wound, but weakness. It feeds, saturates, caters to.

At Xie Lian's say, Lan Wangji summons the cheap trick of a talisman, light and flame and the crackle of sorcery filling out the frozen air. He aches to breathe, to be. Crisp, the air surrounding him mellows.

Obediently, he manipulates the talisman's flame to rain its kisses of fire and heat towards Xie Lian, in the customary concession earned by an elder. I have no need, he will say, or better yet, flaunt it with the indifference of a man who was never truly harassed by requirements. ]

Apologies for your concern.

[ Direct it, he need not say, to those who want still for a mother's touch. Not so, Lan Wangji, mutinously at ease with discomfort. ]

We must return. [ A pause, delicate, trailing. ] If you may be spared.

[ There is no shame in withdrawal here, now. ]

[scrapgege]

Ah... thank you.

[For once, Xie Lian won't begrudge the help. He needs to save his energy, what he has of it, for fighting. His strength means the clothes being heavy with water don't bother him much, but its is quite cold, and that's annoying.]

The little group I was with managed to cross the moat while I was distracting the dragon, so I think they'll be okay. I can get us back up there.

[And he holds out a hand to Lan Wangji.]

[downswing]

[ There is a game in it, a play, an art. Xie Lian offers his hand, and whatever beat Lan Wangji's heart carries staggers, and his feline eyes open, gaze slant. He watches, considering, the fine point of his attention like a spear of nestled, pale sun bereft its target. Drifting from each soft pad of Xie Lian's fingers, assessing their ground for weakness, finding it bare more than barren. A picture, poorly painted.

Behind, the dragon heaves. He cannot hesitate — not with the waters rising, with action and response due, with their options slim and dwindling. With his bones heated, but his mouth dry, and what toll will trust take? He has no silver shavings here, only paltry alms to give. And yet: ]

How?

[scrapgege]

[Xie Lian holds up his right arm around which the bandage insecurely wrapped for now, looking as inert as any piece of fabric.]

Ruoye will pull us up.

[It can carry two people with little trouble, and will save them a lot of time. As is on cue, the extremity of the silk bandage unwraps itself and perks up like a friendly snake, surprisingly expressive for something with no face.]

Which floor?

[downswing]

[ The great, narrow height of the tower sieged — fleetingly, Lan Wangji's trapped in the exercise of a futile count, spoiled by guesswork. Smoke makes precision an impossibility. His gaze climbs, and the tally wanders. One and two and three and an eruption of spark and heat, of exhausted sound.

Soot rains down now as often as pellets. Absently, he trickles it off his shoulder with the wave of a tired hand. He thinks, a silk noose will not keep, will not protect them. They will drop down, bruise their bones, perish.

He thinks, spirits and a flute should not have protected him once, either. And look how fates have turned. Then, with a wary glance: ]

Top-most. Any lower end, we stand victims.

[ Worse, for how the dragon seems to target, bait. ]

[scrapgege]

Alright. Come here, then.

[Hand still extended. you need to hold on to him tight, Lan Wangji, or else this will not work. He's not going to pull you up dangling from his arm, that would be dangerous. You're going to have to suffer a more... intimate position, even though Xie Lian doesn't seem to be bothered by that.]