westwhere | the clock tower

Entry tags:

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

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

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

We've all the time in the world, mate, and this ain't play. It's work.

[John runs his fingers over the card before he turns it over, revealing the three of disks.] See?

[He's hoping for some reaction, something the giant can see, to add a little mystery, wonder or excitement. Time is of the essence, Wangji is right about that. But if they don't use it well, it's wasted all the same.]

[And when John has a plan, he won't let himself be moved.]

( A triangle. Three wheels. Perhaps... a malformed cart? Peasants often lack the resourcing to build the infrastructure their duties truly require. It may well be a chariot, and men who have made do.

...and what is Lan Wangji expected to make of it? He thinks to say, No need, I am possessed of a horse. In the empire of Gusu Lan, once called home. But this is not the game of the hour, and Constantine gazes at him as if Lan Wangji should pick up needle and help him stitch back the world. Forgive his brute, sword master's hands, he has never served an adept seamstress. And what had Constantine said before?

Too much. Too little. He chatters like river mills run water, to excess, wastefulness and no immediate gain. Lan Wangji thinks, and he thinks, and he thinks — and lands, with finality, on speculation.

Interest. Make the skeletal creature resent their intimacy. And how? It lingers so very far, indifferent to their plight, their actions. The card in Lan Wangji's hands.

...ah. As with children, then. His nod's trembled, slow. Paltry. Again, and again, and a fourth-fifth time, and he nearly summons the dregs of enthusiasm, broad heat of the skeleton's gouged eyes on his back. )

I see. This is... unfathomable. ( Certainly, Lan Wangji never fathomed he'd be here, bound to these circumstances. ) I see. Only now, this one sees.

( His eyes, in fact, are performing. )

[It's something of a delight, to see the recognition, the effort, fall across Wangji's face. John likes to feel his influence, and to see it especially. Something of pride lights in him, brighter than the feeling of a con run together, the sense of a trigger pulled.]

Right, think I've got it. You well enough to stand? To run?

( What... has come to pass here? The world remains turning, on the same axis, the card is no different than Lan Wangji reconstructed it from a hundred misunderstandings —

And yet John Constantine is pleased with him, or with the flimsy window of opportunity Lan Wangji has somehow, unwittingly created. He blinks, tips his head cat-like and slow, like treacle. Tries, bitterly, to comprehend, and decides at the last moment that trust is a matter of leaping, sooner than a babe's steps fresh out of the cradle.

He clutches his sword's hilt tight, steeled. Nods once. )

You wish me by the lever?

( ...what's another swatting, needs must? )

Maybe. Just be ready to move.

[To strike, to defend-- Wangji's a fighter. Instinct's gotta count for something, right?]

[So John stands, and saunters confidently toward the giant, who looks on with something like expectation. John bows.] You've got me, squire. Holding back the good stuff, I was.

[The water John produces is not that different-- not at all different-- from the bilge he fed the giant last time. But John's stance is more confident, his back straighter, his eyes brighter. The water is presented with care, as though it's a marvelous vintage.]

[The giant takes it, drinking, considering. It is not so quick to judge this time, and John, over his shoulder, nods to Wangji.]

( What is it that changes base metals to gold, motes of errant joy to laughter, or the listless, unseeing interest of a long-deadened creature to greedy appetite?

Lan Wangji, playing sentry to John Constantine, does not ask. Does not pretend to understand. Only readies himself in minute ways, practised and controlled, line of his back taut and thin, spine stiffened by anticipation, and the catch of his hands into tight-knuckled fists, one clasping his sword hungrily.

These halls are like an old, decayed mouth, stale stench of damp and lichen. He breathes in, and as the creature drinks from a bowl far too small to every satisfy it, giddily tickling its throat with its emptied hand, Lan Wangji, repulsed, rushes in. He's fast, at least, for all he nearly fumbles with his footing, when there's poorly dried red wet on the floor, close to the lever. Past carnage, he supposes — then pulls the mechanism and flees, fearing the skeleton's fist will come down.

He needn't have. Breathlessly watching from a distance, cautioning John Constantine out of the creature's radius, he can enjoy the careful, coarse clicks of the skeleton's throat, as if it it takes ongoing gulps of absent wine.

It feels blasphemous not to whisper: )

What did you do?

[It feels like finally getting out of the cold after a long winter, like returning home after years abroad, like getting your sea legs. Something clicks into place. In that moment, John is at home-- in London, in another world, in his own head, it doesn't matter. He's in his element.]

[He walks to the lever with a slow, confident saunter, letting the moment linger. A certain smugness radiates off him, for those with eyes to see it.]

Y'know what it's called, when folk believe without knowing?

[It's called lying. A confidence trick. An illusion-]

Magic, mate.

( 'Magic,' but for the absence of tangible power, for how nothing shifted, yet everything changed. What is the difference between reality forced, reality believed, reality coaxed — and 'sorcery'?

In Lan Wangji's hand, his sword might have been an instrument of death to the primitive, fire-fearing and wheel-deprived ancestors who preceded him. Qi, bound to nature and its tremulous course within the body's pathways, is yet feared by superstitious villagers, down cornfields and up mountains.

Magic is myth, is make-believe, is monstrous. Magic is whatever is required of a moment that cannot be. Wine in a cup. A lever drawn. He understands, tip of his head submissive — but for one thing. )

You attempted it before, to failure.

( ...to Lan Wangji, peeling and dripping off the jutting corners of the Ancestor's stone wall. How is it the man who failed before prevails now?

This is not a truth to demand, only to gently beg, as they consider withdrawing to the elevator. )

[How to explain the difference between a bad con born of panic, and something more sophisticated, with an intelligent audience? John has always done best when something more than himself was on the line, when there was an audience, when there was curiosity. Playing to the whims of the dead has never suited him.]

[How do you explain that?]

[Well, he'd rather not.]

Told you. [He holds up that card again, the same as before, three wheels to a triangle cart.] Takes three.

( It.. takes three.

Forgive Lan Wangji, slowing in his step but somehow persevering despite the — ...howling, crushing, slamming behind them, once the Ancestor realises the folly of Constantine's trickery and starts to throw what projectiles it can reach at the walls.

First, there was no sorcery. Then, cards before him. Then, by sheer chance, a broken cart &dmash; or a triangle possessed of wheels. Or the scrawling of an artistic child, having a spell of creativity.

All the same, 'lo, stupor: ) Will you require me for each feat of sorcery?

( It is not that he is unwilling, precisely, more that the logistics of this collaboration might require a time commitment that any man with a healthy fear of what his spouse does with their communal coin purse would want avoided. )

[John, sensitive to any perceived slight, quirks an eye brow.]

Trying to be rid of me, aye? [It's a joke. His voice is light. He's curious, is all.]

( To his lone and unexpected merit, he does not stay his step. Hardly flinches, voice steel and even with barely a fraction of the earlier tremble. A hit to the head wins a man an allowance of dithering in his conversation. )

I would abandon you to the creature's whims. ( A beat. ) Coax you down the shaft. ( And another. ) Allow the wyverns reach of your body.

( ...he is either a natural or thinking this through. )

[Not really sure how to interpret this, John opts to find refuge in audacity.]

Getting a bit excited about the details, mate. Where I'm from, we just stick to snuff films...

( ...and more chatter. Painless, easy, breezy. An afterthought. He thinks, this is how some men dress their wounds at war, in between paltry distractions. That John Constantine, now spared the petty troubles of outwitting a creature of terror that sought them both undone, can either speak or allow the depths of his fright to take root in him.

Perhaps so. Perhaps, too, Lan Wangji could afford more patience than the inevitable: )

John Constantine. ( And would he retain the name, if he intended to sever ties? ) Speaking to excess is prohibited.

[John continues to saunter breezily, eyes crinkled above a smug smile he doesn't truly feel. He lights a cigarette, and it hangs crooked from his mouth.]

[He'll ignore everything he can.]

How you planning on enforcing that, then?

( Craftily, carefully, with impunity. By trembling the line of his shoulders once, in what lesser men might name a shrug, but only translates as a choicely measured interruption of Lan Wangji's composure.

There is something in the air here, mould and stench of mildew, like the aftermath of drunkenness in a soiled, crass tavern. Only water, he supposes. )

Your dignity and discipline will enforce it.

( A man reminded of his failures will surely seek to remedy them. Surely. )

Mm, dignity's important. Discipline's a con. Ain't never been a fan of 'em.

[A man familiar with his failures uses them like bricks to build a house and hide in it.]

And yet you swindled.

( Only now, through magic and guise Lan Wangji still struggles to decipher. Perhaps there is no high ground for him to climb, no vantage for a man complicit. The sword arm bears the weight of the blade — the kill, or that which is produced through the defence it offers.

He staggers, but forces the elevator's doors open, the carriage rattling like shoes shaking off fresh snow. )

Habit or duress?

If you gotta ask... [John murmurs, wheedling yet further from the truth. John takes a step into the elevator, more to escape the conversation than find safe ground, and accomplishes neither.] S'both. Always is, mate.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

the clock tower

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject