the clock tower

[groundrules]

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!

THE CLOCK TOWER

---

ALL IS AS ALL WAS| TRIAL & NO ERRORS | THE TOWER

Image source.

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.

Image source.

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.

Image source.

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.

Image source.

✘ 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 I: THE LABYRINTH| LEVEL II: THE ANCESTOR | LEVEL III: TAG! YOU’RE IT
LEVEL IV: THE ROOM WHERE NOTHING HAPPENS | LEVEL V: IT’S RAINING (AGAIN)

Image source.

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.

TOP | LEVEL II | LEVEL III | LEVEL IV | LEVEL V

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.

TOP | LEVEL I | LEVEL III | LEVEL IV | LEVEL V

Image source.

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.

TOP | LEVEL I | LEVEL II | LEVEL IV | LEVEL V

Image source.

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.

TOP | LEVEL I | LEVEL II | LEVEL III | LEVEL V

Image source.

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.

QUESTIONS

Comments

[sansdoute]

( ...oh. Oh, it's one of them, is it? No doubt, searching herself for opportunity to cross on over. It's how it's done, everyone wants out of the Mouse House, and the depth of Elizabeth's faint scowl thins further, fragile.

Her hands meet and cross over her belly's fill, legs dangling out, cat-like, to graze at the illusion of comfort. )

It's not for everyone. ( To start the lady diplomatically. No sense in peddling to her achievements the average man won't enjoy. ) If you must know, I was training up in letters and law, underground, when my Mr. Fairley found me. He was on assignment, they sent him to help with the censor's toil. He hired me to keep their records, and — I was brought up for my work, of course, but... one thing to another, and... he's a good man, Mr. Fairley.

( In other words, they were wed. ) Of course, some only came with a ring on their finger, or sold themselves off for special skills. Especially fighters and chemists and... young women. I'm certain you know what I'm talking about, but there's no good sense in gracious women having us that chatter.

( ...but there's a twist to her mouth that wishes to suggest, by the by, whores are evil. )

[saintclaire]

[Kim's smile drifts off as she listens; nothing replaces it, leaving her blank and studious. This is business. Inside, she's grateful she's not wearing a ring, and grateful for her ludicrous temporary job –– the idea of relating to this judgmental woman with anything as precious as the law and her marriage feels like an indignity.

But it is still business. She nods curtly.]

Right. That's very fortunate, to find a job and a relationship in one go. [As if one had nothing to do with the other. There's the slightest tilt of her head, curious.] Has it been difficult? I know people here have some... [a tenseness:] opinions on people immigrating here.

[sansdoute]

Riiiiiiiight. ( But she keeps the drawl saccharine, measured. Mr. Fairley has no appetite for crass women, and she won't show her colours on any of that end. ) You can say it: they reckon we from downstairs are madmen, beggars, thieves and... women of certain professions.

( Really, what unpleasantness of conversation. Thank everything her baby won't need to hear a word of this. Won't ever have the wrong papers. )

We're not. But it didn't help anyone, when they found the coal sick came through the Mouse House. Or so they say. How's it there were not that many deaths downstairs? I don't know myself that, you ask the good censors, you ask the men of science, how does sickness come from a place that hardly had it?

( The smile that cleaves her mouth's too many shades embittered. ) They say our dirt kept us safe. Like a shield. Can you imagine? But they had no protection against our filth here. Well, it doesn't matter. That's... eased, with that. The feeling. Should be only a few years more before the last of the tempers quiet, and they open the free passage from downstairs to upstairs again.

[saintclaire]

[It doesn't take any particular stretch of the imagination to picture growing up in a place like this, but it does feel like a version on steroids. Judgment you can't ignore, hurdles that can't be overcome.

At least, she thinks, you'd never have to question whether it was just in your head. You'd know exactly who was behind that kind of rhetoric.

Her eyebrows knit in concern.]

If the people downstairs haven't gotten as sick or had as many fatal cases, then quarantining the Mouse House off sounds like it's protected them, in the short run. People living down there are overcrowded, have fewer resources –– that makes for people more vulnerable, not less.

[And that's not how almost any government or city official would think of it, she's sure, but... hmm.]

Do the city's censors and scientists often agree, whenever the sicknesses come around?

[sansdoute]

( She hears the woman, her reason. It makes a certain manner of sense that any technocrat would agree with, and yet she hesitates to nod along, only humming amiably. Quite. Quite. )

We don't have many sicknesses. Nothing widely spread. Between magic and Minaras, what do you expect? Wasn't much before that, either. I'm telling you, the coal sick came, and of course no one knew what to do with it. It wasn't like anything we'd battled before. There were no protocols in place.

( She's scoffing, if anything, at the very thought. ) You know, funny business this... Remembrance group, and all their sorts who keep theorising some conspiracies about how Minaras and Eidris could possibly have splintered so badly? And how it's all some wretched plan of the rich. It was none of that. Just... they're like my little one will be, politicians, they're like children. They squabbled, because they couldn't solve the sick, so they took out their frustration on each other.

[saintclaire]

[Kim pauses, caught briefly on the idea that she could expect anything –– a shade too young to remember polio, the rest that followed little more than news articles, cut-off from her own life. Her childhood in a trailer park didn't feel quite as fraught as the conditions here, even without magic or clockwork droids. How many people could possibly know what to do with a plague?

Still, though, her concern holds fast. Kim doesn't budge.]

Maybe they were petty, maybe they took it out on each other, but even kids don't compromise on something as big as... this. [Half a city. Half of the sky. Half the resources. She's glad she can keep the absurdity of it out of her voice.] Someone had to have come out on top with this arrangement, benefited from things being split the way they were.

[She pauses, lips momentarily pursed. Her gaze flicks down to the woman's belly. With some sympathy:]

It's tough enough to be pregnant when things are stable, let alone with all of this going on.

[sansdoute]

Oh, it'll be fine.

( Her hand's rounding her belly again, half patting, half drifting for something to hold. It seems a simple thing, to anchor herself. )

What's any of this, to me? Only thing it changes is, I wish my mother were here to meet the little one. She was here for the first one, the boy. Now, you know, Mr. Fairley's a loving sort, but I've a feeling she's a girl this one, and. You know what they say, don't you? A son's for the father's, a girl's for the mother.

( Her smile's crooked, tense. Thin. All teeth. ) If you've got business downstairs, you tell my mother, she's Mary Lincoln. And she's welcome to come keep my company in the birthing chamber. Never too many friendly faces thereabout, when the time comes.

[saintclaire]

[Kim vows, right then and there, that when and if she and Jimmy have kids, she is not going to start talking like this. There will never be a Kim Wexler, round and waddling, caressing her belly in public and talking about loving sorts.

Her own smile has no teeth.]

They'll let people come up for the birth?

[sansdoute]

( But then, they are two women of the world, and good Mrs Fairley's gaze sharpens on her visitor, knowing, learning. )

If they've got sense, they will. And my Mr. Fairley, he'll make coin sing in the right pockets.

( Anything can happen, for the right price. The way of any world. )

[saintclaire]

[Her eyes narrow slightly for a beat, scrutinizing, but something softens. She nods.]

Carrot and stick.

I'm following up with a number of relations of children in the Mouse House, so if I get the opportunity, I'll let your mother know.