let's set d o w n some (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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westwhere2023-10-06 07:00 pm
groundrules) wrote in westwhere2023-10-06 07:00 pm
Entry tags:
- arcane: caitlyn,
- assassin's creed: jacob frye,
- assassin's creed: ratonhnhake:ton,
- doctor who: clara oswald,
- kingdom of the wicked: emilia,
- kingdom of the wicked: wrath,
- last case of benedict fox: benedict fox,
- mcu: america chavez,
- mcu: kamala khan,
- mcu: natasha romanova,
- one piece: luffy,
- one piece: zoro,
- original: red,
- penny dreadful: vanessa ives,
- umbrella academy: allison,
- umbrella academy: five,
- warcraft: wrathion
blood & sand
Hi folks! Welcome to Eastbound’s last test drive meme and the second event of the Ephes Arc, stretching until 25 October. Applications next open over 20-25 October, with invitations required for new players (but not returning ones). Individual cast and game caps are off.
Test driving characters can use this space for both network and log prompts, as well as play both the newcomer and shared prompts. Enjoy!
NEWCOMERS-ONLY PROMPTS
You wake to the creaky swaying of a large wooden cage, in the back of a cart. Balmy sun pinches your cracked, dried skin. Haziness and nausea assail you, your legs weak. Your supernatural powers are muted, due to recover within 48 hours. Several other carts trot by. You share your cage with a dozen others — largely farmers — and sacks of freshly harvested wheat, their bottoms stained dark.
The farmers point you towards a heap of rusted pendants that allow you to speak and glean local tongues, and access a network. They say you were recovered following an earthquake at a Hive — one of the agricultural clusters feeding the extravagant Senate-led city of Ephes. The Ephes army, the elite Hand, was patrolling nearby and is taking you to the citadel for healing.
- ■ Gather your bearings and distribute the scant water that Hand soldiers dole out — the earthquake, you hear, has dried the Hive wells.
■ You quickly learn why the Hand encaged all of you, as one of the Hive farmers starts to jerk, growl and shake, weeping black water as he strikes at anyone around him. Fend for yourself, before the Hand soldiers come to remove him!
You arrive at the main gate of Ephes, where crowds vie for passage. Your carts are inspected, and an irritable woman enters each cage, checking each passenger — before taking you and a handful of others for ‘further customs investigations.’
In the back of an alley, she introduces herself as the sorceress Karsa — and says you are otherworlders brought into the realm of Akhuras by undead lieges of the Brotherhood, who seek to weaponise you in their wars. Her patron, the Merchant, leads otherworlders to ancient transport beacons that can deliver you home.
One beacon sleeps in Ephes, where the rest of Karsa’s party is scattered. The citadel has mysteriously accrued an elite, nearly supernaturally strong army that the undead lady Messalina seeks to borrow from the Senate, in her quest to free her undead companions from the Brotherhood. The Senate is yet to vote on her request.
The black water that has touched you, Karsa says, has previously been found where the undead rally. For now, Karsa gives you a little coin, passport papers identifying you under various civilian roles (player’s choice, but keep it Ancient Rome-themed) and an iron pin of an eye with a sun for a pupil to identify other party members.
SHARED PROMPTS
Decadent Ephes is overrun by rumours, after several Senators who intended to support undead lady Messalina were mysteriously assassinated at the banquet of prominent Senator Maximus Faustus — who, Karsa informs, is one of Messalina’s shapeshifting creatures. Messalina offers her protegees demonic hound escorts.
Hand army recruits protect official buildings, while the rich hire gladiators to watch their homes. Both move freely.
The Senate fears further retaliation against those who champion the dead. Senate leader Caius Justus distantly mourns the Senatorial murders from seclusion at the temple of the Chained God.
Civilians face increased tensions and whispers of curfews in the market. Crowds frequently quarrel over undead allegiances
Following an exercise in divination, priests of the city’s patron, the Chained God, spread word that the deity holds strong despite his Chaining, and he still wishes to destroy and rebirth the world.
Karsa informs the existing party that more otherworlders joined Ephes and wear iron pins depicting an eye with a sun for a pupil. She gives the party similar pins for identification purposes. Newcomers and old timers can recognise each other by their pins or engage over the network!
THE PROSCRIPTIONS
OBJECTIVE: procure proscription lists.
You hear from the city crowds that partial target lists are circulating with the names of politicians targeted for bounties. Karsa tasks the team to recover the lists, which can be used as political currency. Find them by either:
- ■ Infiltrating a tavern run by the ruthless city gang of Livius Decimus and packed with unscrupulous bounty hunters, thugs and professional assassins.
A local ‘delicacy’ drink of wine and pickle juice is often inflicted on strangers. Brawls erupt randomly. Coax shady patrons to share target lists.
■ Visit the empty marketplaces just before dawns and raid the chained wooden submission boxes of news shouters, who receive anonymous tip-offs about fresh bounty lists. The boxes are pinned to the ground and tightly locked, but rusty from the cold seasons — allowing you to break them or pick their locks, while someone keeps watch. Tampering with a news shouter’s box is a jailable offence.
■ Turn in a finished thread to receive a clue!
AT SEA
OBJECTIVE: investigate abandoned ships and rescue sailors.
One early morning (OOCly: Oct. 13), as you entertain sailors for gossip on the docks or fish breakfast, you witness the port authorities screaming for help as several small merchant ships appear abandoned at nearby sea for reasons unknown.
Lookouts spot no activity on board, while sailors organise rescues.
- ■ Row a small boat some 15-20 minutes to one of the merchant vessels. All merchant ships have roughly three hours afloat, as they slowly sink from numerous small erosion holes in their sides.
■ You find no crew on deck, and doorways to the cabins below are locked from within. Below deck, you find numerous sacks of wheat from the Ephes agricultural clusters, the Hives. A black liquid, thick and tar-like, is seeping out of the sacks — corroding the ship’s wood and creating leaking holes.
■ You find a handful of dazed sailors who claim a dark, slithering creature knocked them out. They were selected by Narula, leader of the elite Ephes army of the Hand, to transfer grain onto the vessels of the ‘merchant’ Matthias, much farther at sea. If you mention Matthias to Karsa later, she reveals he is a man (?) who potentially created the undead Brotherhood.
■ Seven sailors who did not know each other were chosen to man the ship. Eight men are in the room, meaning one ‘man’ is the assailing creature. You must decide who to release upstairs for evacuation.
■ Tips: the creature, disguised as a human sailor, has no pain receptors and isn’t afraid of typical dangers (fire, drowning). It does not bleed if hurt. It sometimes forgets to blink and increasingly, unwillingly, slowly morphs its features into yours, the longer it speaks with you. Lastly, the creature has a tattoo on its forearm identifying it as a soldier of the Hand.
■ Once found, the creature turns violent, dissolving into wisps of shadow and materialising once more to strike from behind you. The shadow creature cannot be outright killed — but you can lock it inside the ship.
■ Leave by small boat before the vessel sinks & claim a question if you saved sailors. Merchant vessels can be patched up, if successfully returned to port.
THE RATTLING
OBJECTIVE: survive & explore the arena.
To stoke her popularity in Ephes, undead mistress Messalina organises a sumptuous gladiator game at the Colosseum (OOCly around Oct. 20), inviting plebes, patricians, politicians, soldiers — and you.
Gladiators may be hired (or coerced) to perform, while servants supply copious amounts of wines, oysters and honey pastries. A tiny mechanical golden mouse, passing by each seat, drops folded pieces of parchment with fortunes and riddles, ranging from teasing to morbid to philosophical or sweet. Pick up yours and make sense of it with your neighbour!
Politicians often interrupt the games to announce donations or make elaborate speeches. Toss peanuts to signal your discontent — or join in with your own speech.
- ■ The games start with matches between humans, but are building up to face-offs with reptilian demons, mounted rhinoceros and flying gargolyes whose voices thrall you frozen put.
■ During the games, you feel slight vibrations, and — if supernaturally sensitive — an undefined magical tension. By 15:00, this ramps up into earth tremors that worsen over 12 minutes — as columns and seats topple over, and the ground breaks in deep rifts, releasing black, chilled, tar-like water.
■ Crazed mobs rush for the exit, stampeding carelessly, while columns and decorations tumble down.
■ Dozens of the monsters brought to gladiate free themselves and hunt down spectators. Soldiers of the army of the Hand — disturbingly fast, strong and disciplined — intervene but it’s best you look after yourselves. Some spectators shout these Hand recruits practise some of the techniques performed by a recently missing gladiator — the Beast of Brenne.
■ Passing by the earthquake rifts, you see wisps of the tar-like liquid that gushes from them is gradually assuming the shadowy shape of humans. Stalking after you, they do not speak or bring you harm, but slowly steal your likeness and drain you of vigour and stamina. You get the sense that all they want is a shape. Encountering shadow creatures leaves you with a sense of bitter loneliness that only living company can soothe.
■ If you study the arena, you see the same black liquid is gathering around freshly downed corpses, slowly reanimating them. These newly-crafted undead struggle to walk and speak naturally and remember their lives, often unaware they died. Anguished, they beg help to escape, before inevitably succumbing to the instinct to harm you. Remind or convince them they are dead, and they withdraw.
■ The largest earthquake rift in the arena is overrun by the black liquid and by nearby undead. Within it, you notice a bloodless hand that seems to never sink — Enter a RNG draw to collect it and its clue.
■ As you gather your wits outside, you see followers of the Chained God rallying in the streets, comforting the traumatised crowd that all will be well now — for the Chained God’s destruction will be mercifully swift.
THE QUIET HOUSE
OBJECTIVE: Explore the abandoned gladiator barracks.
NOTE: a Halloween special, this area is entirely opt-in and features several frights. Mind the warnings!
As chaos consumes the Colosseum, you notice the earthquake has destroyed a previously locked arena gate, revealing a decayed tunnel. The corridor leads inside a closed-off barrack whose doors and windows have been barred from the outside with wood planks and chains. Touch these restraints, and your unhurt hand leaves behind a fading blood print.
The barracks building is withered and clearly abandoned, with scarce furniture and a few weapons in a training room.
Several discarded torches stay alight on wall fixtures. Pre-prepared braziers have been filled with spirit-fending incense of sandalwood and sage. Explore for clues.
- ■ THE HALLWAYS ( cw: guilt haunting ): corridors flow into each other, often leading back where you started. You run into shifting wall engravings, some listing the name and ranks of Hand soldiers, or precepts such as GODS OF THE ARENA and BECOME AS STRONG / AS FAST, AS NIMBLE / AS GLADIATORS. A large portrait of Hand leader Narula is increasingly more scratched, every time you encounter it, while the painted man looks healthier, younger and stronger. Inevitably, you hear heavy steps — a deep-shadowed spectre, the Drillmaster, who starts to stalk you with slow persistence. Visible to you and your companions, the Drillmaster fluctuates between assuming the appearance of Narula and the distorted, monstrous figure of someone from your past, who heavily criticised or intimidated you. The corridor lighting changes depending on your proximity to the Drillmaster: green for safe passage, white to tread lightly, red to stop. You can make the Drillmaster disappear out of your way by facing or acknowledging whatever weakness (true or self-perceived) you have that has caused extensive criticism or self-doubt.
■ THE BATHS ( cw: doppelgangers): a long marble hall featuring a large swimming pool, now drained and filled with mould and debris. Steam overwhelms the room, except for a wall-length black mirror at the end of the hall. The more you look into the mirror, the more the black substance that covers it slips down, flooding the floors and also dripping from walls and the ceiling. As the mirror clears, you see your black-eyed reflection that suddenly screams out verbal abuse or plunges at you. Once you subdue the doppelganger (claim a clue), it dissolves into more black water, while the mirror shows scratched inscriptions of A RIGHTEOUS HAND SHAPES EACH OF ITS FINGERS.
■ THE DORMITORIES ( cw: membranous cocoons): hollow, empty, quiet, the dormitories sport strange membranous cocoons in the walls, from which shadowy hands reach out. You hear young wo/men, whimpering and murmuring that they aren’t afraid and want to change to make Brother Narula proud, before erupting into screams or laughter. Break the cocoons without getting trapped into their webs — only to find nothing inside, except stone dog tags, engraved with the names of Hand soldiers. On the floor, you find primitive tattoo needles and ink.
Luck strikes at sunset, when a previously barred door opens to release you from the house — back into Ephes.
NOTES:
- ■ QUESTIONS
■ NPC inbox (for test drivers)
■ Event title shamelessly pilfered from a gory gladiator show!
no subject
It's a long story. [ He hates that most of it probably came from Karsa. ] Mostly involving a clash between the living and the undead. We needed an advantage.
no subject
Okay. What kind of undead? [ Look, ghosts are very real, so zombies? Possible. ]
And how do you think we get a an advantage? [ Ben is going to roll with this and accept there's a lot about this place he needs to learn. ]
no subject
They come in all shapes and sizes. From your stumbling corpses, to your fully realized overlords. [ To your previously-dead brothers. ] I've seen ghosts. We all have. Klaus would have loved it.
[ As for the advantage, that's much more complicated. ]
The list is just blackmail. I'm... still working on the rest.
no subject
[ Five mentions they've all seen ghosts and he has to assure Five: ]
I'm no longer a ghost. You can touch me. [ This was too important not to mention. ]
Blackmail? [ Welp, hopefully he didn't help blackmail someone who didn't deserve it. ] It's too late for me to put the lists back.
no subject
It’s fine, our plan doesn’t hinge on the list. [ His plan may or may not be everyone else’s but that’s besides the point. ]
I can track them down later, after you can point out who abandoned you. [ This isn’t the homecoming Ben deserves. ] Have you seen Allison?
no subject
What is your plan, then?
[ He opens his mouth, then stops. Wait? No telling what Five will do that to poor person, who likely just got scared.] You don't need to know that.
Yes, I have. I ran into her first.
no subject
...My plan is a little too complicated to get into right now. [ He mostly believes this is really Ben, but he has a history and he's believed that before. At the same time, he doesn't want to insult him by questioning his existence. ] We'll talk once we're not out in the open.
What was going on before you came here? You were there for all of it?
no subject
Fine. It can wait.
[There's a frown. Going on? Wait. What does Five know and not know?]
You know. End of the world stuff, again. Klaus created a cult, by accident. All of you were sort of living in the 60s. Had to save the world again from Viktor. Nothing too special. [Except he died. Fully. Again? Something like that.]
no subject
I... am glad you stayed with Klaus. The rest of them were alone. [ When he scattered them through time. He still feels guilty for that one. ] And that you can speak for yourself now.
[ He can't imagine what an existence that was, with Klaus as his only connection to the living world. After a moment, he adds: ]
Allison is ahead of us.
no subject
You say that, but try living with Klaus as the only person you can talk to for seventeen years. And half the time he numbed himself with drugs, I couldn't always even do that. [Ben says this, and Klaus did try his patience, but he misses him all the same. He would have taken the companionship over being utterly alone.]
[Allison and Ben hadn't exactly discussed that, Ben had been more concerned with a lot of other things. He knew Allison was ahead, but now he could ask specifics. If Five knew them.]
How far ahead?
no subject
...At least they weren't alone. Ben had Klaus, and Five had Dolores. Some part of him realizes that's not an exact equivalency, but in the moment it helps him to relate. ]
A little over a week. Ten days? [ He frowns, because he should sound more certain with something that important. ] I've only heard about it from Allison and Lila, but it's... nothing you need to worry about right now.
no subject
[ Five answers, and Ben's jaw remains set, clearly worried anyway. ]
A lot happens with us in ten days. That's like two years for normal people.
no subject
Ben manages a few words that explain why he’s always so tired. The world ends three times in a month, from his perspective, and his time here has hardly been a vacation. They’ve already nearly ended it twice. It gets to a point where he doesn’t have to wonder if it’s him: he knows it is. ]
That much hasn’t changed. [ Ben walked right into another mess that Five is desperately trying to clean up. ] …It must have been harder for you, during that. Maybe we would have had an easier time pulling the family together if you’d been in charge.
no subject
Heh! Me? Can't really do that when you're dead.
You would have to put Klaus in charge and hope he tells you what I say honestly and doesn't lie about my every instruction. [ Not that this Ben want's that control. He liked being Number Six. Playing pranks on his siblings. Nah. Someone else can be in charge. ]
no subject
How often did he lie? [ Klaus had been their only connection to their brother. Now he wonders if he ever told him the truth about what Ben was saying. ]
no subject
All the time, Five. [ Okay, maybe it wasn't that often, but still. ] Of course, the one time he was honest about me being there, and me saving Diego, no one believed him.
no subject
That really was you. [ Diego might not have been exaggerating when he was going on about Klaus saving his life, even if he didn't believe that it was Ben. He'll have to reflect on that one. ]
You were the one to get him to the alley too. You were always looking out for us.
We can probably wrap and focus on the newer stuff?
I tried. [He's not thrilled at the idea he won't be there any longer to do it, but it was time to go.]
sure can!
There are other questions, more pressing, but this isn't the place for them and he finds he doesn't really care that much about the lure of political blackmail in comparison. ]
Thanks for trying. [ All the times he's thought about what he wanted to say to Ben if you could, at least he got that out. He nods back the way he came. ] If you're still thirsty, I can find us something to drink. There's a lot left to fill you in on.
Wrap
You're welcome. [ He literally says that just because he can. ]
More water would be nice. Maybe something with flavor. [ Ben smiles. He can taste again, so might as well enjoy that, too. ] Then you can tell me about all of it.