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)
westwhere2022-10-22 07:42 pm
groundrules) wrote in westwhere2022-10-22 07:42 pm
Entry tags:
- 2ha: chu wanning,
- arc iv,
- arc iv: serthica,
- arcane: caitlyn,
- arcane: vi,
- better call saul: jimmy mcgill,
- better call saul: kim wexler,
- doctor who: clara oswald,
- doctor who: river song,
- doctor who: the doctor,
- hellblazer: john constantine,
- kingdom of the wicked: emilia,
- kingdom of the wicked: wrath,
- legend of fei: xie yun,
- legend of fei: zhou fei,
- mcu: yelena,
- mo dao zu shi: xiao xingchen,
- noragami: yato,
- oh! my emperor: beitang moran,
- oh! my emperor: su xunxian,
- original: licyn mansbane,
- original: red,
- owl house: eda clawthorne,
- penny dreadful: vanessa ives,
- shadowhunters: alec lightwood,
- shadowhunters: magnus bane,
- star trek: christopher pike,
- star wars: finn,
- the clock tower,
- the gifted: lorna dane,
- the gifted: marcos diaz,
- tian guan ci fu: xie lian,
- touken ranbu: kanesada,
- umbrella academy: five,
- umbrella academy: lila pitts,
- untamed: lan wangji,
- untamed: wei wuxian,
- warcraft: anduin wrynn,
- warcraft: wrathion,
- warframe: kahl 175
the clock tower
Happy Hallow-elevator! The clock tower event lasts between 22 October and 8 November. ICly, the tower incursion stretches around a week, and you’re welcome to have your character investigate something else, if they finish early!
ALL IS AS ALL WAS
Play it cool, as Serthica’s customs officers pore over your passport papers, before grudgingly allowing you overground. Minaras, you hear, is hunting a delinquent.
Both it and Eidris fare well, with no sign of the damage that preceded the Unwinding. Locals no longer behave eerily, dragons and clockwork droids roam freely, and everyone hates taxes.
Yet perfect strangers insist they know you. Your assigned address leads to a different house. The roads, buildings and architecture look ‘lived in,’ but changed.
No one remembers the Unwinding.
- ■ Burlap mannequins sometimes watch from mirrors, windows and reflecting surfaces.
■ You might hear shifting and scratching in Eidris walls.
■ Minaras has doubled its bounty for a man not unlike Leonard McCoy.
■ Black fungal spores are found on the increasingly voluminous experiment vials, specimens and supplies thrown out by Minaras medical facilities.
■ Frail and confused, Ellethia survivor Zenobius finally awakens. A short thread is up for RNG grabs.
TRIALS & NO ERRORS
The guard troops that Eidris and Minaras assign to the Neutral Zone now protect King Thivar and High Councillor Arabella during the annual Sanctuary Reckoning trials. Both adjudicate cases that violate the ceasefire.
Prolonging the trials buys time for your companions in the clock tower.
- ■ Create a distraction — flood the judgement hall rooms? Fire? Illusions?
■ Pose as trial participants: perhaps you are of Eidris, and you caught this wicked Minaraian raiding your home? Mayhap this wretched man of Eidris stole your girlfriend? Wait, you’re a Minaraian who wants to kill King Thivar?
■ …organise breakouts, if Thivar or Arabella have your jailed. You are first imprisoned in makeshift Sanctuary cells — all but poorly locked, glorified closets. Get a trial sentence!
■ Thivar and Arabella treat the trials as a box-ticking exercise.
THE TOWER
As Eidris and Minaras play court, you can infiltrate the Neutral Zone clock tower of Vassarizhia.
- ■ Only token security remains. The door is unlocked.
■ Karsa supplies paper talismans that must be burned in the watch fire at the tower’s top level.
■ Each burned talisman amplifies the reveal spell that Karsa activates. Link a finished burning thread by 8 November to help the cause.
■ A November mod post will describe how much of Serthica’s ‘undeath’ characters can see.
■ Placing Magnus’ dragon eye before the tower’s telescope will allow characters to always see Serthica’s undeath, moving forward.
✘ ELEVATOR ETIQUETTE
Imperfect stillness dominates Vassarizhia: your footsteps do not click, words die in your mouth. The tower’s rickety gear slither silently. Your heartbeat aligns with the clock’s tick… tock.
You have the growing, gnarly certainty that you have invaded something ancient and alive.
The tower’s entryway level is large, deserted, stacked with gears. At its core is a dilapidated open elevator shaft.
A large sign says to find and pull the floor lever, if elevators stop.
- ■ There are two elevators. Each narrow lift can hold up to four people, crammed. The upper half of the carriage is chain-link fence, while the floors contain hatches that sometimes open mid-travel for 30 seconds. Hold on to ceiling-bound leather straps.
■ The ropes holding the elevators are thick, but tattered.
■ The elevator’s creaking squeals can awaken swarms of 1m-tall bats and bat wyverns. They rattle the lift, but ultimately withdraw.
■ The elevator can stop at as many levels as you want (or none!).
■ Beyond the second level, you feel intensely paranoid and see your companions as the persons you most hate/fear for five to 10 minutes. Reaching the top, you are tempted to cut the lift ropes of those who follow. (The ropes and elevators recover, after crashing to the bottom. )
■ On each floor, as you exit the elevator, a nearby wall shows a different scratched instruction, signed by DAVID.
LEVEL IV: THE ROOM WHERE NOTHING HAPPENS | LEVEL V: IT’S RAINING (AGAIN)
LEVEL I: THE LABYRINTH
CONTENT WARNING: MINOTAUR, BODY HORROR
Step into a jail maze, flooded to knee level. Confusing corridors narrow, widen and contort, while wall torches dim.
Intermittent howling reveals you’re not alone. Hiding, you see child-like chalk drawings of forest animals on walls — and a great minotaur. Keep silent.
- ■ David S P’s wall scrawl says, IT RUNS IN THE FAMILY.
■ Collect some of the many discarded daggers or axes. Rope bundles float in water — use them to paralyse your captive or briefly force them under your control.
■ Don’t linger in one place: rotting, bodiless hands surface to restrain you.
■ Bad news, if you swallow water when the minotaur or dead hands try to drown you: your skin stretches and bursts, while your bones pop and extend. You mutate into a half human, half woodland creature, all bloodlust. ( Inspiration, anyone? ) Your companions should still recognise you; between hazy memories and constant pain, you might struggle to remember them and even attack.
■ Morphed characters can (painfully) return to normal within minutes of re-entering the elevator.
■ A smaller and distressed three-headed minotaur also roams the labyrinth. Two of its heads sob, while the third urges you to hide with it when brother approaches. It tries to throttle you with a noose to make brother happy, if you follow. David did say.
■ The minotaur and its sibling have poor sight. They cannot enter a corridor where you’ve drawn or laid down a line.
■ Pull the lever, and a straight corridor leads you to the elevator.
LEVEL II: THE ANCESTOR
CONTENT WARNING: GIANT SKELETON, BLOOD DRINKING
Here, only barren stone and thin rivulets of fresh water pouring from wall fountains with sharp-tipped ornaments — your spilled blood quickly infects the basins. Knives, pins and bowls have been abandoned nearby.
High pressure and vertigo overwhelm you. Follow a rhythmic heaving to where the upper half of an enormous skeleton — the Ancestor — has broken through a wall. White, silk thread fetters it. Dried blood rims its cracked mouth. Before it, the stone floor has been tarnished, up to a 5m radius.
The Ancestor appears dormant, a crown of iron thorns on its head. It clutches the lever tightly in its right hand. Above it, an engraving urges, SPILL WINE FOR YOUR ANCESTOR.
- ■ David S P’s elevator scrawl says, WATER TO WINE.
■ Dally staring and you feel dizzy, nauseous, depressed and compelled to share your close-death encounters. Before you know it, you are stepping into the Ancestor’s radius…
■ …where it plunges for you, if you don’t bear a filled cup. The silk ropes keep the Ancestor from reaching beyond 5m.
■ Two carvings under his fists read HONOUR THY FATHER and DISHONOUR THY MOTHER.
■ Quickly distract the Ancestor from crumbling his captives, tearing their arms or attempting to eat them.
■ The Ancestor is instinct-driven, consumed by thirst. It cannot see or smell, and only remembers taste. Sounds divert it.
■ Improvise: there is no actual wine here. Infuse water, spill blood, or vocally pretend you are delivering wine, and the Ancestor might spare you.
■ If sated, the Ancestor releases the lever.
LEVEL III: TAG! YOU’RE IT
CONTENT WARNING: SCARECROW, SKINNED CREATURES
Enjoy pitch dark, dread and bile spreading in your gut. Take a candle from near the elevator and roam through small, unlocked rooms that feature tattered beds, strips of tanning leather and blood or wax spilled on the floor.
- ■ David S P’s wall scrawl says, O CATCHES IT.
■ Ahead, you see candle-bearing mannequins that dance a hora to the same song played by Jim Kirk’s music box: “Up the mountain, in the grove, hand in hand to Ke-Waihu, fresh harvest’s a treasure trove, each fall we feast anew.”
■ The creatures are patched abominations of wax, skinned flesh and burlap. In the middle of the hora is a wiry scarecrow, eyes blazing with candle fire as it points a large cleaver. In certain lights, the scarecrow’s face briefly contorts into that of your mother. It wears priestly robes that Arc III survivors may recognise from the House of Ravens.
■ As the dance finishes, you notice the lever in the middle of the circle, where flame spells out TAKE THEM, NOT ME. The game begins.
■ The abominations run, gleefully manic and screaming TAAAA~AAAAAG. YOU’RE IT! The scarecrow unflinchingly cuts them down while pursuing you. Hide in the abandoned rooms, or risk snuffing your candle to avoid detection.
■ Some abominations slap you, hold you, or alert the scarecrow. Others offer shelter. A few peel off wax skins from their limbs — showing black fungi beneath. They murmur, IT NEVER GOES AWAY.
■ Parchment strips fall from the scarecrow’s sleeves, reading, HAPPY NAME DAY, MOTHER KNOWS BEST, THE SIN RAN DEEPER THAN SKIN, IF YOU CAN BEAR IT, IT’S A GAME.
■ Bless David: draw the scarecrow into a drawn or makeshift circle to trap it.
■ Intense, paralysing fear arrests you, if the scarecrow catches you. The wax abominations chant, TAKE THEM, NOT ME. One might even take pity and move your numbed mouth to utter the words. Say them — and the scarecrow lands deep cuts on your arms, then pursues your companion.
■ If you betray someone, the abominations take the appearance of your worst version: whether physically mutated, with a temper that amplifies your worst features, or both.
LEVEL IV: THE ROOM WHERE NOTHING HAPPENS
CONTENT WARNING: MANIPULATION, MENTAL COERCION
You enter a quiet room. The lever sits on a table, beside rope and a dagger. As you approach, your surroundings transform: perhaps your dearest dead appear to warmly welcome you. Crowds of your doubters celebrate your success. Or you are in a calm oasis, where nothing hurts.
- ■ David S P’s wall scrawl says, THIS DREAM IS A NIGHTMARE.
■ Whatever your deepest wishes, the room’s vivid illusions provide. With time, your beautiful dreams deteriorate into horror. Sometimes, you hear whispers of, Make a wish.
■ The room increasingly drains your life force. Within half an hour, you have gaunt flesh, brittle bones and a hunched back. Or you might feel compelled to harm yourself, clawing your arms and face, or pulling your hair out.
■ The damage comes undone minutes after reaching the elevator.
■ The room focuses on one person: if someone joins you, they see fainter echoes of what the room shows you, but they are not enthralled. They must coax or drag you away.
■ If you are under the room’s influence, it forces you to make any later intruders stay.
LEVEL V: IT’S RAINING (AGAIN)
CONTENT WARNING: PLAGUE, THE CHILD
At the tower’s open-sky top, fire crackles from a small stone pit, shielded by a familiar, immovable blood-spattered white umbrella. Nearby, discover an immense rusted telescope and other discarded astronomy tools.
You trip on rain-battered yellowed bones at every step. One skeletal hand holds a watch piece, engraved for Mr. David Sebastian Pumpkins.
- ■ David S P’s has only scrawled his signature.
■ You might reach the flame easily, or be overwhelmed by sickness, black fungal spores blooming on your fingers, while you cough blood and experience intense fever. The symptoms wane once you reach the fire.
■ Burn paper talismans and link finished threads to help Karsa’s spell.
■ The child with a fox mask from the Unwinding could appear. Sign up for one of three short threads, which must finalise by 3 November.
NOTES
- ■ Some of the bigger plot clues have been emphasised, to help navigate through the horror details.
■ You can hit up some NPCs during the trials.
■ Check out plotting posts for last-minute team-ups.
■ Back to the top.
Level IV
Hah! Piece of cake.
[ But as she approaches, she's suddenly not in the tower anymore.
She's in the Owl House, in her living room. Luz is lying on the couch, practicing glyph combos and King is on the floor arranging his plushies in what is no doubt another of his tyrannical schemes. Hooty is talking at King incessantly and King occasionally tells him to shut up. Lilith is practicing calligraphy and having fun watching the ink dry. Faint conversation must be taking place, but Eda can't hear it.
Brow furrowing in confusion, she reaches out a hand toward the illusion. ]
Oh -- hey. Hey, kids? Hooty? Lily? I'm... I'm home.
[ But alas, it doesn't stay so idyllic. They can't seem to hear or see her, and as time goes on, Luz starts poring over ways to open the portal door. Eda can see her screaming and tearing at her own hair in frustration.
Meanwhile, King stomps up to her angrily, suddenly focusing on her exclusively. He stomps his foot and says I'm leaving! I'm going to my real family! ]
No. No no no no no.
[ As the room starts eating at her, Eda falls to her knees, tearing at her own clothes and hair and shaking her head in desperation. She's caught in the vision, pain both physical and emotional coursing through her, filling her senses as uncontrollable tears splash down her face. ]
no subject
( And the world shifts again, borrowing loaned inks: he sees at once the cold debris of the room he has entered and the colours of reality deformed, children squabbling, creatures exasperated. Desaturated echoes of beings a mind has summoned, part remembered, part imagined. He hesitates — there are times when breath and heartbeat in unasked company are intrusion, when a man violates through infiltration.
He walks between the children, cautious — fearing, not to distort their summoned visages, but to upset the precarious balance of Eda's composure. He recalls her, as she is during the multitude of their encounters: witty, bright, irreverent. Lacking in heaving grief that tames her now to her knees.
Touch repulses him, eerie, lone and superfluous. His palm lands on Eda's shoulder, weight warm. )
Breathe. ( A slow start, guarded. His other hand chases the filigree of Bichen's hilt, blade teasing his side. ) Your family do not desert you.
no subject
Who -- ?
[ But the face she is greeted with is... familiar at least. ]
Oh. It's you.
[ It's only then that his words register. Eda hugs herself and looks away. ]
I-I mean, it's okay, they've got their real families...
[ But then she remembers. The last time these fears overcame her. When Raine told her it's okay, the kids still need her. When King actually handed her adoption papers.
She wipes her tears. ]
No, you're right.
[ But the room seems reluctant to let go of her -- the image morphs, and suddenly, a threatening figure looms, Eda's family in the grasp of some meaty tendrils, clearly at the looming figure's mercy and suffering.
Eda stands frozen, face awash in grief. ]
no subject
( A strange distortion, at once to participate in a story not his own and know he spectates, know the play is distorted. Antler-crowned, the creature seems at once a spectre of menace and ridicule, its deformity caricatural — so set in the way of its tendril-searching hunt that Lan Wangji, sword clasped hard in hand, does not know whether engaging it now would serve them or its dance.
He hesitates. Says nothing, at first, only sees the creature in expansion, sees Eda coil into herself, sees his hand stiff. Sees an absence, overwhelming, of scope for reaction.
Then he steps forward, Bichen's blade fully drawn. )
Turn back. ( Eda. The creature. Either, both. ) We should leave.
no subject
Luz and Eda once narrowly escaped his grasp, but his plans have not been foiled. This, then, is Eda's fear: losing her family to him. Failing them. Because she won't have been strong enough to protect them.
For a moment, it paralyses her again, this fear -- but then there's Wangji again, ready to draw his sword, and it's enough to tell her that what she's seeing is an illusion.
This is not the Boiling Isles. Belos isn't here. Isn't he? A seed of doubt. After all, if Eda came here, why not he?
But it's been months without anyone from home showing up here. For all of them to be here together... it's hardly likely. And all of these rooms where the elevator stopped have been messing with them.
She's got to take the chance.
She shakes her head, trying to clear her mind. ]
Get... out of... my head!
no subject
( ...no time for exorcism, for the battling of demons. He sees Eda recollect herself, struggle against dazed senses. What is it she perceives, if Lan Wangji so closely glimpses her ghosts?
There is spellwork here, sorcery ancient, a game old. It exceeds the power of base talismans, calls for more resistance than even Lan Wangji, untargeted, can summon. He feels himself slowed, tempted to rest — and hisses out: )
Eda. ( Her name, a rushed and unearned intimacy. And yet, he assumes it. ) Shall I carry you?
( Somehow, the lesser of the two evils against courtesy that he has just committed. They should leave, before Eda falls back entrapped again. They should leave — )
no subject
I'm fine.
[ She nods at Wangji, concentrating on him to make it easier to ignore the pained voices still echoing in her mind. ]
Let's get outta here.
no subject
( Fine, yet shattered, to watch the pain traverse her face and colour her manners. Fine, yet she intends to withdraw at pace with him, leaving their backs open. Fine, but Lan Wangji — blade firmly inserted between them and the familiar spectres of Eda's past — has suffered quite enough interruptions on this day.
His clothes've dragged, bloodied, torn. He can hardly breathe, cold of the labyrinth's waters alive in his bones. Wax from the tag game's poured and dripped on his arms, false wine has stained his sleeves.
He is, above all, drained and prone to eyeing the table with sustained, unerring dissatisfaction. And he keeps the ghosts at sword's point. )
Eda. The lever.
( ...pull it, on the table. He has so many illusions to threaten, after all. )
no subject
[ It takes a moment for Eda to remember while the illusion is still trying to pull her under, showing her Luz's face going pale and melting, King's skull cracking. Eda steels herself against it with a sharp intake of breath.
She knows this, knows what it's like to be trapped in her own mind with the worst it could possibly show her.
With a grunt, she dashes toward the lever and pulls it hard. ]
no subject
( And nothing changes.
He thought, foolishly, the world might reshape itself. That the room might be reborn, wearing skins new. The sorcery broken, some hidden enemy revealed.
Instead, only the trickling, slow creaking of shedding rust and the elevator chains returning to motion. He catches Eda's arm, and nudges her loose. )
Come. ( No, he has negotiated too long. Part of their losses of time have their root in Lan Wangji's compassion. ) Bid your farewells. We flee.
no subject
Yeah, let's bounce.
no subject
[ Finn runs over to Eda, falling to his knees beside her but doesn't know how to help, doesn't know what's even going on. This whole room must making some sort of a illusion, and Finn can barely even see or hear what it is. But he gets the gist of it.
Taking the risk, he gently puts his hands on Eda's shoulders. ]
Hey, it's okay. It's all right. This isn't real. We're in the clock tower, remember?
no subject
Hm?
[ Ah, there -- she's making out words. ]
The clock tower. Right.
[ But then the image morphs, and she sees Luz standing in front of a mangled portal, about to go in.
This has happened before. But when it did, Eda, King and Hooty were there to watch over her, holding her by a rope wound around her waist. This Luz has no such security measures as she steps foot into the door. A dark sense of foreboding grabs Eda, and she reaches out a hand. ]
Luz, no -- !
no subject
No, look at me! It's not real. Luz isn't here. [ Whoever that is. ] This room is messing with your mind. This isn't real. We need to leave.
Nothing's happening to Luz. They're safe. [ Probably, hopefully. ]
no subject
It feels real.
For a moment, Eda just stares, forlorn. It doesn't help that she hears Luz's voice crying out for her.
But she remembers.
She's in Serthica, in the tower. Luz can't be here, right? She grits her teeth and looks at Finn. ]
You. I've met you.
no subject
Just-... Let's go find the elevator. Okay?
[ Trying to stay calm seems like the best option here. Whatever she's seeing has to feel real, he knows, so getting her to trust him is a miracle in itself.
Either that or he may have to physically remove her and no one wants to do that. ]
no subject
Yeah, I remember. We gotta pull the lever, right?
no subject
[ And he totally didn't forget that... Okay, maybe he did, but he's still smiling because Eda remembers. That's more important. ]
We'll find it together and leave together. Okay?
no subject
You're dang right, we will! Let's go!
[ And off she goes toward that lever. ]