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

---

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

[binghua]

[He starts a little upon being mildly manhandled, but upon hearing that voice, he relaxes a little. He and Jiang Cheng don't know each other particularly well, but it would be difficult not to have met by this point. It is still a little unsettling when anyone knows Xingchen and he doesn't know them in turn, though. It's strange when people know him by reputation alone, but also when timelines don't add up and he's supposed to know someone. Still, he allows the other man to pull him out of the way and fret over him.

He smiles, a little tired, and shakes his head.]

I'm all right. I think one can understand why I hesitate to eat any food presented here again, though.

[That doesn't answer half the questions asked, but he doesn't make much effort to get on them, either.]

I am glad to hear you are well, Sect Leader Jiang.

[consignation]

[ Somehow, being addressed by his proper title by Xiao Xingchen causes Jiang Cheng to go red from the end of his nose to the tips of his ears. His title is of course something he stridently insists on with everyone who will listen, but when Xiao Xingchen volunteers it so freely, as someone who lives outside the influence of the sects—

He is having no trouble keeping warm with the heat now radiating off his face, that's for sure. ]

I have some, ah— Hard crackers, cured meat, and a few candies that are certainly safe to eat. I haven't eaten yet myself. Will you join me for a modest meal...?

[binghua]

[Whatever effects his words have had, Xingchen is entirely unaware. He does, however, pick up on what Jiang Cheng is trying to do. If one of them won't take care of themselves on their own, then it makes sense to try and make it a communal thing. It would be rude to refuse, after all! So he nods again, though his pleasant smile falls at the mention of candies.

Ah. Apparently, that's been ruined for him for the foreseeable future, if not forever.

He gives Jiang Cheng a little bow.]

Thank you. I would like that.

[consignation]

You honor me with your company, Xiao-daozhang.

[ JIANG CHENG WILL FIX THIS. Somehow. Aspirate on a candy so Xiao Xingchen's primary association can be Jiang Cheng's struggles to merely exist in the physical world instead of, you know, everything else. He guides Xiao Xingchen to sit, then starts unwrapping his saved rations.

He makes a cracker sandwich for the other man and gently presses it into his hands. ]

Ah, how have you been lately? I am ashamed not to have kept in better contact with you.

[binghua]

[He shakes his head but allows himself to be sat down, even if he is entirely capable of doing so himself. If it helps Jiang Cheng feel better, more in control, something, then he'll let him have that much.]

The honor is mine.

[He nibbles on the prepared ration, considering the man across from him. He can't see Jiang Cheng, of course, can't see his expression, but Xingchen can take in the care given to him. It contrasts how he's heard poorer cultivators or non-cultivators speak of the sect leader. They utter his name not with awe, exactly, but also not entirely without fear, either. But he's the sect leader who lost his entire home only to come back a short time later and rebuild it from the ground up. And, from what Xingchen has heard, he's managed to bring it back to a state of strength, if not its former glory. It's admirable, to be sure.

But there are also whispers, sometimes accompanied with dark laughter: "Don't even say the words 'demonic cultivation' around him, else you be whipped within an inch or your life, or worse." Xingchen cares not for meeting sect leaders or playing at niceties when they often ignore the needs of the people within their jurisdictions. And if Jiang Cheng cares more for hunting down demonic cultivators than lending a hand where it's needed, then Xingchen wants nothing to do with him, either.

Yet, right here, Jiang Cheng almost feels less like a sect leader and more like...like just a man.

(A man who lost everything once, who knows not the priceless gift nestled within. Maybe Xingchen's judgment has been unfair in the past.)

So he continues to eat and keeps all this inside for a few moments.]

We've all been busy with our own lives. Please do not despair.

[How he's been, though? Well. Xingchen has certainly been better, but he's already kind of lost it on Xie Lian and Wei Wuxian and he has no intention of dragging another person into his personal failings.]

I've been as well as to be expected. I hope you have been, as well.

[consignation]

Despair is an act of self-indulgence. It serves no one.

[ Jiang Cheng murmurs this quietly, remembering the worst days of the war. Remembering despair, as deep as he has ever known. He wallowed in it, let it paralyze him, so lost in self-pity that he hurt the only two people in the world he had left to protect. He failed them then, he failed himself, he failed his parents, his sect, failed every Jiang ancestor to come before him.

Despair is a habit of the selfish he will not indulge again. ]

I do not intend to despair, [ he adds, a little less quietly. ] I mean to do better, starting with this.

[ Another cracker sandwich makes its way into Xiao Xingchen's hands. ]

I am managing, but things keep finding a way of getting worse. I'm not sure I would even know what better looks like, at this point.

[binghua]

[Xingchen remains quiet, picking up on Jiang Cheng's mumbled reply. That statement isn't one for Xingchen to interact with, though he wants to tell this man that sometimes a little self-indulgence is all someone can take, to keep themselves from crumbling entirely. Xingchen knows he's not free of such feelings. But he simply nods, accepts more of the food, and takes another small bite.]

This world seems to have a knack for throwing us into hairy situations. That does make it more difficult to see any progress, personal or otherwise.

[Another small bite.]

But you're here, yes? And you're alive. You sound reasonably healthy. At the very least you're doing well when it comes to all that.

[consignation]

...I suppose there is that.

[ It's something Yanli used to say, that there was no fortune better than good health. Xiao Xingchen's words remind Jiang Cheng of her in the here and now, causing Jiang Cheng to fall briefly, quietly wistful.

He can't argue with that, as much as he feels like he might want to. To say that it's his family, it's sect politics, it's all the things they brought with them into this world and are unable to set down no matter how much it pains and grieves them.

Jiang Cheng finally takes a bite of his own food, to buy time before he has to speak again. ]

Have you, ah. [ He struggles for a topic, any topic to move on to. ] ...made any friends here?

[binghua]

[The answering quiet, the hesitance, tell Xingchen that he's touched on something, possibly as much as his sight might have at one point. He doesn't mean for his helping words to push others into some sort of existentialism or memories or whatever Jiang Cheng is experiencing right now. But then again, Xingchen does have the habit of sticking his foot too far in a door and then managing to trip over it.

He gives Jiang Cheng the time to recover himself, making no further remark on the matter and trying to keep his expression neutral. He'll just continue taking small bites of the shared rations.

The next question is obviously a fallback, but Xingchen accepts it.]

A few. Those with whom I've shared extended company have been good to me, considering...

[He trails off and lifts a hand to touch the side of his blindfold. He's blind. He's something to be avoided or an easy target. But, as far as he knows, no one here has stolen from him or treated him maliciously.

...Well. Mostly no one.]

I hope the same can be said for Sect Leader Jiang.