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

[downswing]

No.

( This, certain, slant of his gaze sharpening further when it lands on the scarecrow again, when he glimpses wood and twigs and twine. When the creature's false mouth seems to broaden, while the chanting stokes.

It will erupt soon, this tension, this rite. Whatever it is they summon will come, and Lan Wangji's hand is yet too soft on his sword, he should know better than to lie in wait. Unless he kills. Unless he heeds his nature, his duty, cold sweat parading down his nape.

He knows, intrinsically, the true options set before them. Sleep of the dead or slaughter. He travels with a woman-wraith already. Might as well. )

I believe... ( And uncertainty settles and stretches here, like a marine current absorbing all the space available to it. ) My own mother. It makes weapon of memories.

[matermali]

[ A strange weapon. Not enough to paralyze her, not like that, but enough to muddle and slow her. She worries at her lip to see the amount of monstrous fanatics that circle the scarecrow. Her knife, still sticky with grime, would do little against that number. Neither can she risk abusing the same curse again so soon.

Her worry is the effect such an illusion may have on him. How much will it slow him? He doesn't sound very convinced by what he sees. ]

So long as you remain wary, it should be a weapon too dull to cut at your heart. We are being tested.

[downswing]

( She is beautiful, was, persists in memory. Perhaps he has deified his mother in the way of the young dead, those whose absence translates as the inability to wrong their survivors.

The mouth of the ugly truth, his private hurt, looms toothless and open over him, thunderously wide. It threatens to swallow. He holds himself straight, solid. )

To what end? ( Empty of himself, of purpose. This is only the clinical investigation of something that defies reason. His fingers curl to fist, to the treason of a shallow clasp. It tightens. He tightens, wrinkles, becomes small. ) Most name their mother beloved. This is no hardship.

(...to them. To most men. But then, they are the two spectators of the room, but not its only occupants. Someone created this, for their pleasure. )

Unless it does not call to our hurt.

[matermali]

[ It would be better to suspect another's hurt, because hers is still great. Not enough to kill Vanessa on the spot, but that alone has its own shame. Tears should pour. Forgiveness should be begged. Vanessa was being named beloved by another when her mother fell dead for the sake of it.

How is it her hands aren't dripping red? The smudges now are so faint in the dark. ]

Whose, then?

[ Whose hurt? Still better to wonder. Any but her own. Not his? ]

The revelers'? [ She tries to see if there's anything beyond the makeshift sacrifice. ] Their master's?

[downswing]

( He considers, thoughts at once predatory and academic, circling without answer. Too much absents, narrowly refraining him from a conclusion. )

Perhaps. ( Soft, tentative, a sound like a smear of watercolours against inks. The pigment of his conviction insufficient. ) Often, spirits torture themselves as they torture others.

( And yet, there is little to suggest the culprit of their circumstances is dead, a phantom or elsewise gone. Still, this every exorcist learns: )

They cannot grasp the living world that no longer binds them. They summon old memories and emotion. ( Hurt, affection, wonder. )

[matermali]

[ The ease with how he talks about spirits. She seems to be surrounded by professionals in this company of outsiders. It should often be useful in a realm like this, but how is it to matter on this cursed floor when the number of dancing fanatics is so much greater? Surely they won't take kindly to one attempting to exorcise the looming scarecrow. ]

Can we change the memory?

[ Whatever memory this currently represents isn't going to lead to anything good. Her back aches for thinking on what comes next. More and more, the dark seems to swallow the music. ]

[downswing]

( Professional knowledge dictates the harder truth, wrenched bloody from his mouth like nails scratching iron plates: )

Unlikely. ( They lack the time, the knowledge, the means, the supplies. If there is a spirit, they have nothing of the time to waste to dig out the root of its hurts or to capture it.

He does not offer, but radiates the silent, stubborn certainty of a man who has never faced plainer truths than this, before him. )

Come. The lever. ( His hand on his sword, Bichen's gleam hardened. His back righteously stiff, readied for the run. ) One of us must divert. The other seek out the lever. Choose.

( They're for hardship, regardless. )

[matermali]

[ It ought to be a simple decision, if the sight of his sword is any indication; he can provide quite an elaborate distraction and actually survive it. However, he also can probably run faster than Vanessa, even on her best day. This is far from her best day.

The fright of nerves spike with her heartbeat, and she cautiously creeps a step closer to get a better look at the number. There are too many for only one of them to successfully provide a distraction and have a decent chance of surviving, especially if she's the one to limp her way to the lever. Better if she diverts attention, then. If she should fall anywhere, why not with her mother watching from above? ]

My speed is hampered. You will be swifter in finding the lever.

[ Perhaps it won't even matter. Perhaps the revelers (mourners?) will continue with their ritual and pay no mind to the two wanderers only wanting to continue on their way.

She knows better. ]

Perhaps I can keep them at bay. I have my way.

[downswing]

( A moment's pause, deftly earned, weight of it distributed across the room like condensation. He does not rescind the offer, only stills like a cat waiting the prowl of prey that thinks itself discreet and sophisticated.

He turns, face soft, mouth embittered and curled in an ill-sculpted combination between strain and a scowl. The woman appears his half in resilience: shadow and wisps of clothing and bone. How will she bear the hard run, or avoid the skid of her footing?

Perhaps better not to underestimate. Parchment is thicker, more enduring than its skin. He nods, tentatively. )

You require a second weapon? ( Daggers scattered across the floors, the head of a small axe. Rope for such slim hands, her bird-bone wrists. )

[matermali]

[ With her own knife folded and hidden back in her pocket, Vanessa will cede to taking a sturdier dagger nearby, but there's just something so strange about the same weapons lying about wherever she goes. Why? Would solving that mystery help anything at the moment? Can't know which ones matter any more. She'll take a rope. Can they make snares? She might not have the time to tie any.

Vanessa had expected more refusal from him, as people often do like to protest, and his acceptance is appreciated. It also leaves her nerve-racked while weighing her options. Why had she offered? She doesn't know if she can do anything that matters with all of these people-who-are-not. There may be cause for a further catalyst, but she has no shortage of blood.

Didn't learn your lesson, girl? Vanessa can feel the slap of an angry woman's ghost, a different mother, for offering herself up without any real plan. She shudders, but it's strangely warm here.

She ought to say 'God be with you'. Something for comradery. ]

Be well.

[ Now Vanessa just needs to figure out how to divert all of their attentions, or at least enough of them to make a difference. She'll creep around to distance herself from Lan Wangji, wondering if her intrusion on the ritual will be enough to trigger their attentions. Can't she hope that they'll never look over at either of them? ]

[downswing]

( And then, she is flickered, withdrawn, gone. Faster than he had anticipated, and perhaps this is fear, then, the knowing of his calculation unkind. A woman, but hardly crippled by her gender.

Once, Allison Hargreeves chattered with a harpy, held back the masses of riotous Taravast. Emilia spat fire, propelled to the skies. Hermione's sorcery stitched together miracles. And Wen Qing defies any understanding of quietude, of standing down.

And yet, he is the descendant of a sect that at once allowed and questioned a woman's leadership. He did not expect.

And yet, even now, as she dismisses him with paltry words and a seeming notion of what needs done, he lingers, waiting for her to call him back.

And yet, Lan Wangji is slow, to turn, to pivot, to blitz ahead and attract, inevitably, droves of the puppets that loiter besides the scarecrow, brush strokes of colour in a room's world gone dim. He dances around them, efficiency dictating it swifter to run and lose them, than to engage. Flinches, when the scarecrow appears intent to give him chase —

But withdraws, at the last moment. And then the woman Vanessa is stranded to handle the heft of its attention, Lan Wangji swerves and cuts in, pulls the lever — )

Run.

( ...and must now make his way back to the elevator. Ah. )

[matermali]

[ Although she had planned to give chase (of course, run), the scarecrow isn't the only one with attentions on Vanessa. More than the remembrance of her mother, it's the puppets grasping at her sleeves that slow her down until she's suspended, and her knife is only good for fending off one of them.

One of them is trying to get her to mouth out the spell that's been written down, but she snaps and bites at their fingers and hisses out a spell of her own. It's different before, she knows she can stay conscious. ]

Emi nebratronak nüllaan. [ I am your master now. ...Nothing, not from the scarecrow. That monstrosity resists the oldest magics, but maybe its followers can't. ] Emi nebratronak! Maa’. [ Die. ] Khedekareb! [ Kill! ]

[ They let her go almost too slowly, and she barely scrambles out of the way as the looming scarecrow reaches her. The puppets do little to slow it down as she'd hoped when they attack it, but she continues shouting at any that she passes when she flees to the elevator. At least a few throw themselves at each other or at the scarecrow in the frenzy, in pitiful efforts, as she only hopes to make it in time. ]