westwhere | the clock tower

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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!

THE CLOCK TOWER

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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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✘ 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)

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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

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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

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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

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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

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

( The first wakening from his long sleep is torture, the second a disaster. The third, an accident. By the fourth, once he's abandoned violence, Zenobius blitzes through shock, anger, denial, distrust. Finally, wickedly, his mouth ever thirsting and his bed cold, he lands knees-deep in resignation.

This is a fine, private healing room he has been afforded, finer guards stationed before its door. For his safety, his nursemaids mutter, when they restrain him — man of sixty and some, and his back brittle and his joints rickety and mean — and wrestle him back abed. He's not to be toyed with, not to be held like an animal, down.

In the Neutral Zone, they tell him, they don't deploy the malicious droids of Minaras. They don't make his head a haze with the cloying wretchedness of Eidris spells. Here, they expect a certain conduct of their patients.

He does not mutter or mumble or curse, does not tell him these words are as nothing to him, and he is of the lighthouse, the lighthouse is gone, and he paints it for them, in inks and in charcoals, again and again and again. They say it will clear the waters of his head, stir back his memories, though recollections ache him like fine needles biting the soft of his nape, the soft of his temples. He was someone, he supposes. With coarse, worked hands, and a broad back, and his skin leathered by sun. He toiled.

And he dreams of waves crashing, and wakes with ghost-tastes of sand under his tongue, grits his teeth against invisible granules. He remembers friends he cannot name, horrors he cannot untangle. Blood and nothingness. They put him, then, on the milk of the poppy. Watered, first. Then strong. Until his temper's evened, and on a fine afternoon he asks to receive guests — the people, he says, who've paid his board.

It's a rare request the smiling faces of the facility honour. And so he stays, sat abed, yet meddling with his pencils and his charcoals and fresh paper, when a stranger is sat before him, in the visitor's seat. He peers long, wet-eyed, frowning. )

...I don't know you, do I? Not like I don't know everything else, but you. I don't know you.

Edited 2022-10-24 23:50 (UTC)

( Wei Wuxian sits at the chair placed bedside, head inclined in a nod to the elder who sat on the bed. There are papers, charcoal, there are the sprawling works of a man whose mind is not at ease, and he recognises that, to whatever degree. )

No, not more than a few weeks, and you were mostly not sensible for it. Though I have had the care of you for the last half year and more. I'm Wei Wuxian. Do you know your name? Your homeland? They don't tell me much, and the guards... are as guards ever are.

( A frown, a glance toward closed doors, and he looks back to Zenobius. The relief is there, that the man wakes, that he's aware, unlike the small, fever-like stutters of his gasping to not-quite consciousness on the ship, those near two months at sea. )

( He seems, all at once, overcome: the care of him for the last half year. He has slept that long, then. He has been... adrift. And before that? There are lines on his hands, wrinkles he does not remember. Old age has found his mind young. How long now, has he not owned himself? )

I... I was born in... Halleopia. Northern Ellethia. My name... ( This part is easy, rehearsed with the nurses. ) I am Zenobius of the Panagos. My father... was...

( A moment to lick his lips, to — what was it, the name, the — he motions stiffly, exasperatedly, to the cup on his nightstand. ) Give me water. I'll remember soo — ...Asclepios.

( He nods, listening, moves for the water when Zenobius asks, and hands it to him with fingers pressed below the cup, and a hand around it. Waits for steady grip before he removes all of his support, and nods. )

Glad to meet you formally, Zenobius of the Panagos, son of Asclepios. Aside from the water, is there anything you'd have from me? There's much I don't know, but I can describe some of what I do, as relates to you, the Tower, and...

Zenobius. Do you know of what came to Ellethia?

( A twist in his stomach. A man who knows himself, at struggle, but who does not seem to know... well, what does Wei Wuxian know? He blocks out what he doesn't want to remember, and he wasn't comatose or suffering from magical ill effects for years on years. )

Edited 2022-10-26 05:09 (UTC)

( If his voice trembles, his hands are iron.

And he drinks. This much he remembers, slow and easy, measured. As if, if death hasn't found him in all the nooks and corners it's rightfully sought, it will do so now, with water to fell him. )

...they, didn't they? All of them. Ripped apart. Trampled. Eaten.

( The emptiness of his voice suggests distance, as if he only spectates the life of another man, who lived it. )

( Wei Wuxian listens, breathing in, breathing out. He knows needing distance. He knows witnessing things too terrible to contemplate. He knows being of their machinations. )

It is likely. Most all happened before I ever was close to your home citadel, or what was left of it. The land was... changed. Corrosive at large, and life-bound around the Tower. The waters... the waters were plagued by mermaids who mostly hadn't survived contact.

( Consuming, consuming, consuming for ages on end. )

I'm sorry. That much loss... nothing changes its pain.

( Time simply demands of them forward movement, and that's all. )

( He's silent longer than he should be. It betrays him, and he's already at disadvantage, knows that — knows strangers can't be trusted, it's always the way.

Could be a man of Taravast, this one. Could be anyone. Could be a dream, and if Zenobius blinks, then he's in the tower again, running, and — )

...that so? Must have been gotten good, our Ellethia. Robbed blind. Raided.

( By... what, exactly? He can't say. ) Anyone from the institute standing?

( he pauses, considers for a moment. )

There's you. Possibly Matthias? Some name like that, but I don't know if he's... alive or second living. As far as Ellethia goes, the... Institute. Do you not remember any of what your colleagues and you did there? What the cost was?

( they all got the broken pieces, both from him, and from other memories, other terrors, from the broken mirror... from the pamphlets rotting across the strange landscape of what once lived. now what could live and die within a day, endlessly, or could destroy within hours. ellethia is a place more badly cursed than even the yiling burial grounds had been, continued to be, back home. a different kind of steeping in death. )

Ah, I brought this for you.

( he holds up a pink stone, on necklace. )

One of the survivors was a man out of Ellethia, a merchant, who knew you and many of the Institute persons. He won't give us his true name, only uses the one of Master Raven on the thralled communication devices. He wanted to know when you woke. I'll be telling him, as I gave my word—but if you wish to speak with him yourself, this will allow it.

( when wei wuxian packratted those communication crystals well over a year ago. RELEVANCE? )

ZENOBIUS

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