westwhere | the chainings

the chainings

THE CHAININGS

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Escorted by shepherds, the party reaches most decadent Ephes — a citadel with a newly-raised, lethal army and ambitions of imperial expansion. The undead lady Messalina has approached the Senate of Ephes, asking for the citadel’s forces to liberate the unliving from the undead Brotherhood that “enslaves them.” In exchange, she pledges Ephes any territories she frees.

Ephes hides a beacon within the main temple of the world-making and world-ending chaotic Chained God, currently closed off while Senate leader Caius Justus considers Messalina’s proposal.

OBJECTIVE: Survive Ephes until the temple opens.

This first event of Arc VII lasts until 3 October. Use your character roles, pursue leads or nudge NPCs for clues!

POLITICS

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Politically-minded characters take residence with their benefactors and receive two iron chain bracelets, which represent the Chained God. These bracelets and the red-purplish trim of your white cloth identify your political standing and attract the nagging, desperate or aggressive public pleas of your petitioners.

You hear, hastening to attend Senate sessions, that long-serving leader Caius Justus is unlikely to earn a new mandate. His peaceful, sedentary governance is unsuited to Ephes’ military ambitions.

Pair up with party members and submit threads by 23:59 GMT on 27 September of bribing, cheating or outright fulfilling the needs of one of the politicians below, to secure their vote for or against Messalina.

■ War veteran-turned-politician Sextus Longinus wants to leave his mark permanently on Ephes.

■ Senator Publia Secunda has been struck with court summons on charges of tax evasion. The court claims it has proof she has been passing the precious wares on her ships as geese.

■ Senator Ovidius Petronius’s wife fled home, ruining his image as a family man, after he was caught in compromising circumstances with another woman.

■ Severus Silvanus was overcome by sickness and wishes to throw a party worth remembering as he lives out his final year.

■ Once a formidable soldier, Senator Cassia Floriana has been for years denied an audience by the priests of the temple of the Chained God because of the blood on her hands.

■ Maximilianus Tacitus wishes to eliminate his reputation for stinginess — while spending not one coin.

Note: if multiple players go for the same Senator, we’ll assume they had more than one vote to cast!

GLADIATORS | non-gladiators can spectate or patron

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Those assigned as gladiators are received by arena leader Laetio and housed in single or shared barracks cells in grounds near the largest stadiums.

Accommodations are scarce — pallets, hard stone ground — but food, healing and care are generously provided. Veteran gladiators are frequently measured and assessed. Strife is contained, and brawls are forbidden, while priestess of the Chained God visit periodically to bless warriors as ‘his children of chaos.’

At times, as you train or sleep, you sense you are watched. On other days, you wake from violent nightmares to see your wounds and bruises have vanished.

■ Newcomers are paired and taught how to throw fights, exaggerate their reactions and create slogans and outrageous personas. They are offered tattoos, haircuts and makeup.

■ You experience the first day in the arena around the OOC date of 18 September, when gladiators re-enact the Chained God’s first defeat and Chaining.

■ Characters can fight NPCs, each other, or demonic large beasts. These hefty creatures attack head first and thrash the arena, often striking spectators.

■ Injuries can happen when fighting beasts, but unlikely from other gladiators. The highest official attending a fight may choose the loser’s punishment, but must pay exorbitant fees for losses to the arena. After a noble boy orders a veteran gladiator severely beaten, you hear Laetio threatening the child’s anguished father with repercussions from Narula, leader of the Hand.

■ Submit a fight thread by 23:59 GMT on 27 September for the winner/s to address the stadium.

■ Other party members can pay or coax Laetio to receive their ‘favourite’ gladiator(s) overnight at their villas. Return by dawns.

WHITE NIGHT

One night (OOCly: 24 September), after gladiator games on the sixth of twelve Chainings, you wake up in a bleary haze, your thoughts and movements slow. Stifled screams and heavy footsteps erupt distantly. In pitch dark, you spot the slithering, deep silhouettes that are checking cells — progressing towards you.

■ If you glimpse their coarsely carved masks depicting wolves, you are overcome with a sudden, insurmountable terror and the certainty that your visitors are inhuman.

■ Stumbling, you flee your surprisingly open cell, overcome by dread that won’t abate until you find living company. Some of the emptied cells you pass by have been clearly ravaged. On the walls of three untouched cells of veteran gladiators, you see a wolf’s head coarsely painted in fresh blood. Hide with your companions, until sleep suddenly claims you.

■ The next day, you wake back in your sleeping quarters. Laetio accuses some gladiators of going mad from last night’s celebratory drink and destroying the cells. Servants have been cleaning attentively, with all blood paintings gone.

■ Your memories of the night are increasingly diffuse: at times you describe the intruders. At others, you speak of creatures or people from your own past that terrify you.

■ A veteran gladiator, the Beast of Brenne, is absent from the morning call. Laetio regretfully informs he perished from wounds incurred in yesterday’s games. He calls a toast to the Beast of Brenne and bans drink for the rest of the Chainings.

THE HAND

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Characters reach the barracks as part of a set of 100 new recruits. They are subjected to three days of intense training, ranging from running and parkour basics to weights and strength building, basic dagger combat and surviving hard (magically induced) weather conditions. The recruit batch is overseen by Hand leader Narula and members depend on each other for food or care.
Throughout this, recruits are made to heavily depend on Brother Narula, who negotiates and awards privileges and regularly visits for interviews not unlike interrogations. Recruits are largely orphans, convicts or disinherited — lone wolves, says Narula, who only find their pack in the Hand.

Every ten days of the 100 after recruitment, the worst performing five conscripts are removed from the ranks, stoking vicious competition and internal sabotage that Narula allows on the premise of soldiers needing both brawns and cunning.

Permanent injuries are banned. Beware blades left in your shoes and itchy, ground nettles powder on your uniforms.

HONEYED

Within days of receiving your assignments, you must shadow a group of Hand veterans and guard a Hive — an agricultural cluster outside of Ephes — during a grains transfer.

■ New recruits follow veteran soldiers into the eerily silent, vast farmland dominated by high rows of wheat and corn. You feel watched and something touches your legs and thighs. Within farmers’ hearing, veteran soldiers laugh it off as rabbits, snakes — but privately tell you to walk outside the line of vision of scarecrows littered in the fields.

■ The transfer proceeds peacefully until midday, when alarms blare, and a brawl starts near a defunct watering well: a dozen Hand veterans have gone berserk and attack indiscriminately. They are dark-eyed, heaving and struggle with speech and coordination. They seem less wrathful than anguished, desperately calling to ‘Make homes’ as they slaughter and sever limbs.

■ Immobilise the attackers, or take civilians to safety in warehouses.

■ The berserk soldiers are removed — allegedly taken for healing and discipline, but never seen again. At the barracks, Narula says the incident was the result of heatstroke.

MESSALINA’S INFILTRATORS

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Some party members join Messalina’s group as paid campaign aides. Stationed in the Senate’s summer villas outside of Ephes, the lady’s eclectic group comprises volatile magic users and necromancers, the undead and demonic creatures — who coexist in tenuous peace. It’s every wo/man to themselves after dark, when the villa walls and defences are drawn up and gates lock to prevent the indiscreet exit of a blood-thirsting demon.

Mid-summer

It becomes rapidly clear that Messalina does not trust the good will of Ephes and wants to cut a deal quickly by bribing, blackmailing, or interceding with Senate leader Caius Justus. She also seems unsettled by the Chained God, who she fears is a hidden undead liege controlling Ephes.

”Not every Sleeper sleeps deep.”

Messalina assigns party members to bolster the campaign of Maximus Faustus — previously a young, promising and popular politician with hopes of becoming Senate leader… who has been replaced by demonic shapeshifter Alir.

■ Infiltrate noble functions and learn what would steer patricians towards Faustus’ cause.

■ Patricians widely feel that Caius has been too sympathetic towards plebeians and neglectful of his own people. They want to see more grand gestures celebrating Ephes’ noblest class. See to it.
■ Some superstitiously associate Caius with the cult of the Chained God, whom the Senate leader brought back to forefront.

■ Alir is fiercely intelligent, quick-witted, dry — with little regard for humans, beyond their delicious hearts. Watch him while in public, as he succumbs to his hunger and lures innocents in dark corners to rip out their innards and feast on their flesh. Pay off or exterminate witnesses.

■ A derisive Alir questions Messalina’s plans for peaceful coexistence and the innocence of Ephes. He urges his caretakers to inspect Caius’s private home on the night of the full moon (OOCly: 20 September). You may take along other party members.

■ That night, Caius’ villa is well lit, bursting with song and closed from the inside. Scale the walls to enter and find a feast held by shadowy silhouettes of Caius’ ancestors. First they interact with you, then ignore you, then, increasingly inconvenienced, seem to recognise there is something wrong about you, before giving chase, daggers in hand.

■ On a high table in the great reception halls, you can find the entombment masks and personal effects of all of Caius’ ancestors who are present at the feast. Caius’ personal study contains nearly year-old letters of trade, reports on the fragility of the then-6,000-strong Hand and a broken worship tablet depicting the Chained God’s fourth Chaining.

■ In the kitchens, you find well-secured barrels of fish and wine — jump in together, or hear movement from the servants hidden within. You have time for one question.

CIVILIANS

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Characters assigned civilian roles may safely assume their Ephes posts for a handful of days, before the religious celebrations of the Chained God’s twelve Chainings start. The all-Father of the universe, the Chained God is set to birth, consume and rebirth the world, and was chained twelve times by the first heroes of humanity to contain his destruction.

■ The numerous priests of the Chained God wander the roads and mark the foreheads of civilians with salted ash — which briefly brings out your anger, greed or selfishness.

■ Priests say you feel the frustration of the bound Chained God. Some of those ash-touched experience visions of a heavily fettered, amorphous creature, struggling in agony in a cavernous room. Those with supernatural powers find their abilities are volatile for a day.

■ Those who ‘see’ the Chained God are brought and tested for holiness by Priestess Valeria, for it is known the Chained God chooses brief emissaries during the days of Chaining.

■ Newer acolytes greatly defend the religious cult: a great earthquake rattled the main temple of the Chained God last year during the Chainings, and falling debris only spared the faithful who prayed within.

Off with his —

On the sixth day of Chaining (OOCly: 23 September), the news shouter of Ephes’ main marketplace receives a pouch containing the decapitated head of Tavernus, brother of Ephes army leader Narula.

The shocked newscaster drops the head, shakily reading out the message stitched on the pouch: Animals die for men to live. Men die for gods to prosper. — a quote attributed to the Chained Gods and carved on his main temple’s outer walls.

Locals may share Tavernus was a taciturn man who previously served as Narula’s lieutenant in the Hand, before retiring five months prior and taking up agricultural trade.

Group up to investigate — and throw your hat in for a RNG pick to win the head.

NIGHT OF KNIVES | EVERYONE WELCOME

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The twelfth day of Chaining (OOCly: 29 September) ends the yearly religious festivities of the Chained God with multiple street celebrations and private dinners.

Popular political upstart Maximus Faustus holds his own night-long banquet, opening his doors to all.

The affair sprawls over multiple floors of Faustus’ enormous villa, with entertainment ranging from poetry, theatre, artistic and magical recitals on the lower floors to a gladiator performance and heavy opioids upstairs. Conveniently, the guest list includes every figurehead of Ephes and their main political and financial backers. Patricians seem amused but flattered by Faustus, who was ‘no one’ before Messalina’s support, but who has been generous in his appreciation of the city’s elite.

■ Sign up for a RNG draw for a conversation with Faustus by 23:59 GMT on 18 September.

■ No better time to publicise your feats or generosity. Why not have your character (including gladiators) perform or bring an offering?

■ Servants apologise as you smell an excess of musk and oud, hiding, they say, spillage from an accident caused by a fired manservant. You can still glimpse glinting trails of cleansed lamp oil.

■ Messalina attends the banquet for two hours, but hastily withdraws at midnight, after receiving a letter.

■ Towards the middle of the night, priestess Valeria asks to conduct a religious séance, allowing one person to channel the Chained God and speak to Ephes.

■ After 2 a.m., torch lights dim down, as twenty masked pantomimes enter the main banquet halls, shushing the rooms silent. In good spirit, they ridicule the partygoers, even poking fun at you with inside jokes they should not know about…

■ …before slashing the throats or stabbing some of the high-profile Senators present, sparking a chaotic stampede.

■ The main villa doors have been closed from the outside. Fire broke out within and spreads rapidly, after the rims of main halls curtains were drenched in lamp oil. Rescue some of the Senators, or help the crowds escape Faustus’ burning villa.

■ The assassins are exceptionally strong fighters whose combat style some might recognise from the Hand’s drills. They fluctuate between having physical bodies and merging with shadows.

■ Come morning, a list is found on the main hall floor of Faustus’ villa with an assassination contract for the murdered and targeted Senators. All had intended to support Messalina. The contract is signed with the seal of a ring showing a wolf in profile.

QUESTIONS

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

The gladiator battles are a good place to meet people. Noisy, chaotic, busy, one person meeting another somewhat blends in what the crowd.

Unfortunately, that does rather mean he has to tolerate the noise and chaos himself while being there. Interesting, though. He's read about battles like this before. Anduin's father was once captured, he knows, as a gladiator. He was the champion of the Crimson Ring, even.

Wrathion doesn't think he could tolerate the idea of being kept in chains, but there is appeal in all the... cheering. In the adrenaline of a fight, in the spectacle, in winning.

He tilts his head, watching as a group face off against a large beast. He doesn't doubt they'd happily chain a dragon and make it fight off groups of gladiators.

Maybe, in that respect, best he's safely outside the battle.

Spotting someone familiar he moves carefully through the crowd, coming to a stop near them and turning his attention back on the battle.

"You enjoy the fighting?"

The furrow between her eyes twitches and smooths out a degree, concern and anger finding a balance that almost leaves her face set in a look of persistent consternation.

"Any of this looks like true fighting to you?"

Hey brows quirk, the line of her shoulders tightening. No, it's showmanship and lies and some talent in there too, but she knows a play when she's seeing one, even if she hasn't seen plays acted on any formal stage. This pretense of fighting, the animals and creatures used as part of the performance, it sits poorly.

With a sitting army, overtures from a creature of death who refuses to simply be dead, politics and death around that, well. There are reasons she preferred the simpler political environment of Yancai to what's established here.

"About all it produces is true injuries, and I've tended to my share of those. So." Her gaze flicks to him, dark eyes settling on him as her arms cross over her chest. "What are you doing in this place? Not here," she says, one arm uncrossing to flick fingers in a short, rough gesture toward the arena, and the whole of the gladiator complex, "Here in general."

Admittedly it doesn't quite live up to a real fight, but the roar of the crowd at each strike still does offer something.

He tilts his head in acceptance of her question, eyes skimming back over the arena.

"I've a role in the senate. My patron represents widows, orphans and veterans. I help raise funding and push her interests."

Wrathion turns back to her, a flicker of amusement crossing his features.

"Politics, but at least with some greater good intended."

It could be far worse. He could be pushing for war, or fronting the interests of those who want to be taxed less on their immense wealth. Instead, this is quite reasonable as positions go.

Nynaeve breathes in, fingers twitching before she folds them into the skirts at her sides, lets them bite into the fabric there. She hates this senseless violence, the way these animals are treated as less than animals, how the humans are treated as less than human. Cruelty without purpose beyond entertainment, which yes, at least the human fighters, or the mostly human fighters, can decide on for themselves, whatever circumstances led them there.

The animals could not. She didn't expect to hold a bleeding heart over the idea, but there is practical purpose in something like hunting, in raising livestock for meat or wool or goods, and in what this is.

"I'll help." Blunt, direct, much like she always has been. "For all I doubt it's purely out of the goodness of her heart, those are all people who need help, need patronage. Need funds in this dustbowl of a city."

The curbing of her tongue for the moment from calling it a cesspit. There is, she knows, worse.

"What do you need?"

He blinks in surprise, tilts his head at her. Not that he'd been fishing for help, especially, but at an offer he of course won't say no. Delegating has always been his style.

"How good at you with children?"

A mild enough inquiry, to start.

"Funds are always important, and there's a member of the senate known for being... reluctant to part with his. He's concerned about his image and hoping for a way to repair it -- without, of course, spending a penny."

Wrathion lofts an eyebrow, darts his eyes back out to the show.

"I thought I might help him, let him host a fundraiser for the children. Perhaps make a show of celebrating every donation."

A slow application of pressure, and shame, until he might perhaps be cornered into donating too.

"With children? I make them mind and treat their ills. I don't watch over any who aren't ill."

Statement of fact, rather than declaration of lacking affinity. Nynaeve hasn't allowed herself a thought of family, being unable to have one, not to marry, not to bear children, as Wisdom. One of the sliding divisions between roles and outlining her age in another light: most women come to it later, have had children of their own. She was the adoptive foundling, and then Egwene... no, finding resonance in another who could hear the wind, who would listen, had meant enough. Long before it became an earmark of the One Power, the True Source, the whatever those Aes Sedai chose to call it.

"Aim the children toward the celebration. They're better at enthusiasm. More genuine."

And genuine in suggestion: give the children a game, an excitement, and it builds a visible reward for this pressuring of a reluctant member of the senate. Serves him right.

"Oh, the children will be there," Wrathion says, a hint of fond amusement in his voice. "They're quite smart."

Manipulative little creatures, and he appreciates them for that.

"Harder for people to say no when the faces who will suffer look them in the eye."

Wrathion is above little, and it is the children who will benefit -- so why not utilise them? Orphans most learn fast, know the world they will grow to inhabit. Better they understand quickly, and can be taught to help themselves. Or at least, that's how Wrathion knows it. He had no gentle hand to lead him, only knives at his back from the second he could walk.

"Still, they will need a presence in case they cut a finger or scrape a knee while enjoying the party. Perhaps someone who could lament how more funding would help them, and hail those who donate well."

Surely not too hard a role? Not even a lie, only a calculated truth. A pressure.

Coin exchanged would have made the spectatorship even more of a mockery. Fingers spider over the seat's rim, chasing dust motes matted with sweat and the scorching sun's melt and the perpetual, all-infusing drip of hard drink vapors. He does not come for himself, for the revelry, for the... questionable artistry of the champions below, who a trained eye may recognise for how they pull back their punches, at the last moment. How they mute and curtail themselves and soften their blows.

"Wei Ying is among them," he murmurs by way of answer, the easy, pallid platitude of a man indifferent to the bloodshed that smears a fighter's cheek like spilled ink. Beside him, a woman gasps and turns, far too vigilant in minding his words. He knows a gladiator, then? He has the honor? And is he or she a sturdy fighter of prowess? The woman has but five coins left to her name, shall she put them on Wangji's acquaintance?

This, then, is Ephes: crude onlookers, a perpetual circus, venal politicians and profligate gamblers. Lan Wangji's teeth grit hard, in a bitten line.

"How," a nod below where the fighters dally, seemingly learning how to use a spear as the same time as commanding it, "do we reach the combatants?"

...not these below, but those who wait. It is in the nature of anyone who is not Lan Wangji to possess the cunning that makes such thing simple.

He turns around as the woman interrupts, gives her his most coldly disapproving frown before turning his attention back to the fight below.

"Coin can get you most things, and into most places. You desire to see him?"

Here, Wrathion knows, coin can get you the company of a gladiator. Overnight, even, if you wish the company to be an extended thing. He's sure the reality of that would scandalise Wangji, perhaps cause him concern. After all, others might be trying to pay coin for his partner's extended, overnight company. No doubt Wei Wuxian can fend for himself, could manage to escape such things with a clever word if he truly wanted to. Reality doesn't always dispel anxiety-wrought fears, however. Wrathion would know.

...for a moment, he is gaunt, tight-lipped, a man contorted into a wet knot. Glaring with every mote and bite of his being, because, no, look at him, look at the starch despair of him, how he perpetually trails after Wei Ying like the creature-who-will-not-be-named, a paltry and unassuming dog.

No, he does not desire to see his husband.

He brittles, burns, aches, combusts and is otherwise passionately one with his incandescent urgency to do so. A subtle difference. Poets would make much of it.

Lan Wangji, fingers curling and uncurling around his decidedly thin coin purse, begs to agree on this single occasion.

"I would not decline." You know. As enthusiasm goes in Gusu Lan.

The long, angry pause makes Wrathion second guess a moment. The question was not offensive, he thought, a simple yes or no thing. What, then, did Wangji find objectionable? Perhaps being forced to ask at all? That he would sympathise with. Yet Wrathion simply wouldn't ask, he'd probably find a way to break in and see Anduin were they parted.

"I can ask the costs," he allows. "I'm not certain if entry to visit is a flat fee, or if they have different rates."

He suspects they would. With all these enthusiastic fans, why not? They will clearly pay the coin.

Pride dictates Wei Ying should command fortunes beyond the gold a fleet may care, coin without compare. Wealth and prosperity and tokens untold.

Practicality wishes him worth a penny — and discounted.

The two proverbial wolves inside him may well need to learn to coexist in a pack's peace. Different rates. And he swallows, "Messalina... is not generous with those who lack political entanglement."

Unlike Merrin, Vanessa and Yelena, who bathe each day in gold.

This man before you, Black Prince, is the most noble and sophisticated picture of pennilessness, destitution, and gently empty coin purses, fluttering in the wind.

"I can see what can be done. Do you have your own accommodations?"

He's not sure how Messalina's people are being housed. If they are in shared spaces, a makeshift barracks, or if they have all been provided their own rooms. If he could get the man out, he could bring him to Wangji. Allow them time together in a more private space than the small ones assigned for the gladiators, who are not worthy of their own villas. Caged fighters, unchained and pulled out for a performance. Hardly a... peaceful setting, let alone romantic.

The crowd roars as a beast is knocked prone, and Wrathion tilts his head in thought. Does Wei Wuxian have a... theme of his own, as a gladiator? He wonders what it would be.

"Messalina's domain."

...as inviting, hale and whole as one might suspect, and Lan Wangji feels a shivered, silent sense of foreboding, an urgency not to direct either Wei Ying towards her clutches, or Messalina's eye upon a necromancer to control.

"Wei Ying cannot trespass." For all of Messalina's peace and coveted coexistence, every mote of Lan Wangji's being and the dust that settles upon it fears her, her affinities and inclinations. For once, unbidden, he reaches a hand first, casting long shadow before settling on Wrathion's arm.

"It must be here. Or another settlement." Wrathion's own.

Just in time, he offers, for the gladiator arena to announce the day's line-up. As it so happens, Nutcracker Wei Wuxian is to perform later on. Delightful.

Wrathion glances down at the hand on his arm, the touch somehow alien, then up at the announcer.

... Nutcracker? He has a few brief, eccentric visions of what this might look like. Certainly not the most... Heroic of titles to have bestowed upon yourself.

"You could tolerate here?"

He isn't quite certain how his patron would stomach him having not only a gladiator, but someone who supposedly works for Messalina. She may not recognise him, may not know the faces of all her soldiers, but it isn't impossible.

...ah, yes. The... Nutcracker. For once, excuse Lan Wangji a moment's tremors, for where others might be tested by mortification and comedic exasperation alone, it seems this man here has a.

Knowing.

Air about him.

...truly, Wei Ying is not entirely innocent of the accusation implicit in the name and reputation attributed to him in this arena. But that is a tale for no man's telling, for Lan Wangji's private horror, and for his slow recovery, as Wrathion makes his proposition.

Generous, without a doubt. He nods, entirely too readily accepting. Desperate, in all things.

"A beggar accepts all scraps." This, included. And softened, "I cannot ask more of you."

He has troubled a man so often aggrieved by Lan Wangji's company enough already.

He studies Wangji, trying to discern the meaning of his reaction. Yet he finds he cannot. Is it shame, for the ludicrous display Wei Wuxian no doubt is being forced to put on? Anger, at his treatment? Despair? There's something to it, he's sure, but he cannot quite put his finger on it.

"Then I will see it done," he allows, and moves to carefully begin picking his way out of the stands. "Come with me, and let us hope we don't have to outbid someone for his time."

Partly a joke, but who knows how popular Wei Wuxian may be? Perhaps The Nutcracker has legions of fans all willing to pay for his time. Wrathion can only justify bidding so high.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

the chainings

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