the chainings

[groundrules]

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

Comments

[downswing]

( False battles, the absence of bloodshed. Wei Ying, coaxed into false obedience, the creature of another man's design — sold, when he has ever fought for freedom.

It rankles, stings. He cannot pretend indifference, mouth vinegared and his whole being riotous against the infamy of the arena, the stubborn claim it places on Wei Ying. There is a strain to Wei Ying's playfulness, a carefully shrouded exertion. The undertaking to present a face of resignation and balance Lan Wangji never wishes to glimpse again.

Too often, in Yiling. Never again. He steps in, mouth a seal of tepid warmth dragged over Wei Ying's, and kisses away the look of him, between blinks. Greeting. Then, pulling away, Goodbye. )

Messalina's people are locusts. Parasites. They feast upon the living, corrupt and plague. ( Altogether, it is Lan Wangji, now, who reeks of death. It chills him. ) Apologies. I come to my husband wearing another dead man's scent.

( ...at long last, he may joke over Wei Ying's revival. Truly, the tides have turned. )

[weifinder]

( Led by affection so easily through the fields he'd otherwise spend too much time thinking he should caretake, he who has not been a farmer, but has made of himself one who could defend them. One who can disguise and downplay, who does, to whom it is first nature, all disrupted in the wake of Lan Zhan's touch. There's a silly pleasure that comes along with the heat it stokes, where his smile turns from the creature it was to some interested, curious, happier... cautious consideration, and he finds himself making wordless protest when Lan Zhan once more settles back, away.

He's tired of goodbyes, too. )

Oh? ( Slyness, then, that of any playful person and creature that turns into action, Wei Wuxian turning and sliding himself into his husband's lap without invitation or request. Drapes and presses his own kisses to forehead, lingering over the metal of clouds, wishing for clarity. ) Are you asking for me to leave my scent all over you? Why not! I'm happy to try! Smother you with living husband scent. Wife scent. Wei Ying scent!

( Leaning his head back with a grin born genuinely for the increasing silliness of what he's saying, in and of itself as deliberate as the rest, he asks, head canting to the side: )

The grandchildren are with Xichen tonight?

[downswing]

( Living scent. Wei Ying, self-describing as a stirred spark, impossibly, beautifully present. Lan Wangji's to long for, even when he sits near, the press of his warmth against Wangji's forehead.

Then, the question startles. Their grandchildren. Ah. )

With me. ( If barely. A house of hounds and madness is no home for the little ones, but the qiankun safeguards, and Wangji bears it on his person, in perpetuity. Even now, it hangs fat and waiting on his person, and it strikes him — here, amid thick incense and dubious ornaments in a tight enclosure might prove to be the safest space the rabbits have suffered for some time.

With a sigh, taking the knee, he sets the pouch on the ground, unspooling its mouth and allowing the swarm of two rabbits and their sweet, docile young to hop out shyly. From a second, wrapped and roped bundle come a neat configuration of hey and pressed cabbage leaves that he displays for the rabbits to attack.

Whatever dignity and grace they might possess in regular times, a pleasure house seems to have drained from them. )

I intend to take them with me. ( And softer: ) You, beside them. ( Despite their assignments and Wei Ying's own desires. )

[weifinder]

( Ah, set aside again, and he doesn't bother pretending not to look momentarily disgruntled, knowing he'd asked the question to prompt the change. Nor can he regret the familiar furry faces that spill forth and stretch and nibble at themselves or itches he has no fathoming of, or the swiftness of the baby rabbits now furred and hopping around, nosing up to their mothers and twitching ears and noses at the unfamiliar sights and sounds. They stay clustered, and Wei Wuxian observes them from where he sits, sliding down to the floor not long after. )

Need a different kind of pouch for that.

( Mildly stated, lips quirked, and he waggles fingers for Astrov or Volkov or whatever they are, the names still as liquid in his mind as their fur is soft under his questing fingers. Their daughter-rabbits find him, nose fingers for food, and he reaches to drag part of the bundled collection over so they can tear at it from his hand, both sweet and surprisingly vicious to the leaf's expected detriment. All beings who live consume on some level. Rabbits no more or less than others. )

Letting them explore, ah? Might want to keep the sheets from draping.

( Not for the sake of the little ones, but for their mothers, who have a tendency to find fabric worth exploring with their teeth. Cabbage leaf devoured, he proves no longer interesting, and thus he stands with a grunt and heads for the bed, twitching up the blanket and sheets and scenting that, all floral fragrance and heavy scents aside, they are clean. Without much thought, he sits down with the blanket now gathered up on top, taking off his shoes, one at a time. That each finds perch on the gilded, shaky side table is a matter of self preservation of his boots and no true care for the proper use of tables.

This room hardly caters to propriety. Settling his hands back on the bed, leaning onto them, he cants his head to watch Lan Zhan, lips pulling into a slow, small smile. )

You can take me anytime, you know.

( And he winks, giving small kicks with his feet as if he perched on a dock or from the lip of a roof and dangled them over the air and water beneath, careless and free once more. )

[downswing]

( The sheets, he rights. The rabbits, he collars in a loose noose, drawn in pieces of chalk with thanks to the frigid, stone grounds, secluded beneath frayed dregs of woolen weaves. The husband, he attends, calmly assuming the bent knee before Wei Ying, dragging his hands to whisper qi while massaging slow, deep circles with his thumb, in his ankle bone.

Throughout, pleasantly docile, he only interjects: ) And face the Nutracker? I am but one man.

( ...and he, born to Cloud Recesses, where the virtue of virginity is a costly commodity, and he surely cannot sacrifice it to mean hands and wicked teeth and whatever other configuration of instruments Wei Ying next devises to maim him.

Some part of Lan Wangji, worshipful of every part of his beloved, anticipates whatever skill, habit or pretense Wei Ying concedes to wear, as a natural extension of his person. Another, gratefully sensible, pushes him to cross his legs.

Helpfully, the rabbits stumble forward and, spying this new immobile construction ready for conquest, climb his back and his shoulders, nosing and peering at Wei Ying from their great new perch. Delightful. )

I brought my soulmate to heal, not seduce. ( Should they yet speak of something so crass and unthinkable? Let it be done. ) There is strangeness in this citadel. Death. Messalina's creatures, hunting despite talk of tolerance.

[weifinder]

( The exhalation of laughter, brief and genuine, when the rabbits scale Lan Zhan as if he is the mountain they wish to conquer; so sure already, or tumbling in gentle falls down slopes to a lap that leads as gently to the floors. Small forms that kick and jostle and leap off, falling and rolling and unperturbed by the inadequate coordination of youth, the elasticity of unshaken belief in their capabilities, their only domineering instinct that to flee or freeze in the face of detailed fear.

Wei Wuxian watches them in glimpses, fond but not overly concerned. Turns his gaze fully upon Lan Zhan, fond and intricately concerned. )

Only hers, or do we see more than one hand at play?

( Hand in hand or out of Hand, not the only things, not the only reasons. )

Even Anurr, claiming his iced perch, enslaves. Messalina is no different. The talks delay, play to the ones seated in power here, though I'm uncertain how long they imagine they'll remain that way.

( Says he, reaching for his husband, capturing one of the mother rabbits and coaxing them both up. There's the refreshing sort of tingle of Lan Zhan's qi in his meridians, but as he learned, he doesn't hold to it, lets it pass through, heal when directed, and passes it out again as he breathes. What ache of hollowness rests in his centre for the core transplanted stirs, then settles, unremarked upon. His ability to hold qi is compromised, not his ability to wield it. Small mercies.

In two years, only his laugh lines have grown even a fraction more evident. Now he tugs and hopes for his husband's company, to converse as he wishes, but not in supplication, and not in dominance. He misses the ease of shared beds, and so what if this one is softer than most he's known, is of Taravast and not the stones of the arena or the stone of Yancai or the creaking, falling apart houses in other cities, towns, realms of this world? It is a home, with his husband here to share it.

There's a strength in claiming that, even as Wei Wuxian finds his hands filled with rabbit, holding the silken softness between fingers, plumped sides and the tolerant for the moment dangling hind legs, then the descent into his lap. He sighs, smiling down at her, and sighs, smiling over at Lan Zhan. )

One man, one little bird, and two eggs in a nest. I've only been gentle since the once. Sliding leaps across ice may continue to be ill advised.

( Only if his husband resettles on the bed will he divest himself of the rabbit, instead rewarding Lan Zhan's lap with a cover for the bird's nest beneath his robes. )

Likewise, this chained god here, or the death of a man known for his military insights. That's not coincidence. Nor the swiftness of his brother's rise, from what murmurs I hear around the dark niches of the arena. Where you stand, what have you heard?

[downswing]

( The talks delay. It is as if amid the greater sects: a farce of trial, opinion and justice. The politicians of Ephes play at justice and consideration with greater enthusiasm than the milling armies of rabbits accrued in Lan Wangji's lap, balls of brown fur and pinked noses, sniffing each other and rolling with demonic, uncontainable glee.

One lands, legs upward, struggling to roll back — he assists... him, by the indecency of his person with a lone, soft finger's nudge. Then, the even greater audacity of Wei Ying, who coaxes and teases, summoning him on a spread of sheets no doubt consistently visited since its debut. Lan Wangji should not wonder of the hygiene of this particular love nest. Cannot help but envision the glimmer of stains. )

You cannot wish to lie in a bed of the world. ( Enjoyed by dozens of men each week, unscrupulous in their base appetites, to be satisfied at a whore's rushed hand. No, it cannot be a man of Cloud Recesses who seals his approval of their present hospitality.

But then, he is wedded, never bedded, and owes Wei Ying the flexibility to... shift, as he does, and perch on no more than a finger's width of the bed, long-suffering, brow knitted. Monstrously aggrieved, in contrast to the peaceful picture of the rabbits than bask in his lap. )

Only the work of Messalina's champion. Proficient in the Senate. Coercive. Merrin, Vanessa and Yelena are supplied coin unending to... persuade interest through wealth, sooner than reason.

( And softer: ) Messalina does not rein in her creature. Feasting and frolicking.

[weifinder]

( There is an indulgence he allows himself now, that Wei Wuxian asks for, comes close to his version of demanding, by leaning into his precariously perched husband, letting his eyes slant closed as he listens and hears the rabbits at their machinations, young and slightly older, and hears Lan Zhan breathe, hears if he truly listens closely, the creak of the bed's frame, his own heart, the more distant thrum of Lan Zhan's pulse. )

Where does Messalina not invite eyes to look? Where does he keep them focussed, so that they're blinded? Beyond the thirst for empire, and we know how that goes. There is never enough.

( And the hum, the exhalation soft, near amused. )

I care less for the bed than the partner.