blood & sand

[groundrules]

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!

BLOOD & SAND

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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!

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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!

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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!

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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.

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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.

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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!

Comments

wildcard - newcomers :)

[graving]

Astarion has no idea why his tadpole has not begun to transform him into a mindflayer. When he arrives, it's his immediate, panicked reaction. After all, he is far from Faerun, far from the protection of the artifact - it should be metamorphsizing him, turning him into a monster. Again. It never happens - no fever, no tentacles. Yet the tadpole must still be in his brain or else he'd be burning in all this sunlight. There are no answers to that particular question (and he certainly won't be asking - people tend to stab first when you tell them you have a tadpole in your skull), and so his focus shifts to making the most out of this particular situation.

He doesn't help pass out the water (because why should he?), but he mingles near the rest of the other newcomers. Then one of the farmers begins to weep black tears. They weep so grossly that the tears flick from the individual's face and land on Astarion's shirt, dampening it with something dark and ugly.

"What in the hells."

He rears back instinctively with a high pitched sound, which means he runs directly into the familiar wizard (who he ordinarily would have been able to smell a mile away).

[karsiteweave]

Gale's hands shoot out, bracing Astarion before he sends both of them toppling backwards, then immediately retract and raise defensively. Yes, yes, yes he remembers the no touching rule but surely in this instance he can be forgiven?

"Given the pleasant nature of the climate here, I'm quite certain it is not in fact the hells we find ourselves in."

Is that the most important detail currently? No. Did he desperately need to correct it anyway? Yes. Sometimes he simply cannot stop the words coming out.

"Hadn't expected to see you here too, Astarion."

Not that he's complaining, but odd to end up in the man's company twice. Perhaps the gods are telling him something? What, he honestly cannot imagine. At least they both remain blessedly tentacle-free, although how he isn't certain. Unless -- does Astarion have the artefact with him?

[graving]

Astarion reflexively turns and prepares to attack at the hands behind him (never mind they keep him from falling). Gods, he hates being so out of sorts, so unprepared. He should be more aware, but his abilities have truly never been so dampened before. Then he realizes he recognizes the hands, the face, the... unnecessary fact correction to his entirely valid cursing. His shoulders relax from the tension he'd been holding, and there's a brief flit of genuine emotion in his expression.

"Gale." It takes Astarion a moment to recognize the... relief in his own voice, this slip in his dramatic demeanor to something dangerously revealing. Relief though? ...At seeing Gale? Gods, he never thought he'd be so happy to see the man nor to imply that relief within his tone so openly. He makes a face at the realization: "Ugh."

He straightens though, lifting an eyebrow at that particular comment.

"Is it really so surprising? It's not the first time we have been mutually kidnapped. At least this go round we were closer in proximity before being swept away to gods know where."

[karsiteweave]

"I'll consider myself twice blessed, then."

Said with the dry tone of someone aware it may not, in fact, be a blessing. Gale well knows he isn't Astarion's favourite company, given they have a fair few opposing views. Still, any company is good and he's relatively sure (sixty-five percent sure?) that Astarion wouldn't let him come to harm. He knows for himself he'd never let the vampire be hurt if he could stop it. However! Onto more important things! Gale leans forward, lowering his tone to more of a whisper.

"I do note, however, they we are both distinctly lacking in the tentacle department despite our abrupt relocation and the lack of our usual companions. Do you have it with you?"

The artefact? If so, that would in fact explain a lot -- and certainly be a welcome relief! If not... well, then the anxiety continues. Ceremorphosis is something he'd really rather avoid at all costs, especially given his anxiety over the other looming issue residing in his chest.

[graving]

Briefly, Astarion considers lying about having the artefact. Will Gale protect him more vehemently if he believes Astarion is carrying the only thing saving them both from becoming soulless monsters? ...Unlikely. Gale is one of those infuriating do-gooder types (the kind he long ago stopped believing in). Also, he would likely then demand to see the item to study it, and Astarion would not be able to produce it.

It's a flitting thought based on pure survival instinct (wanting a source of protection he can rely on), but he has learned the value of- of some small amount of honesty if two people are to rely on one another. He pulls another face as if admitting to this truth is difficult too.

"...I had been hoping it might be on you, but it would seem neither of us have the artefact and neither of us have any tentacles as of yet. Well, you're the expert on the subject," or at least he's more well read about it than Astarion is who reads a great deal now, but admittedly did not read much at all for a time, "any theories as to how long we can expect to wait before our fevers set in and we begin shifting?"

He... barely manages to curb whatever panic he might be feeling about the subject even if there's more than a hint of urgency in his hushed tone.

[karsiteweave]

Hmmm. Gale drops his eyes away, one hand lifting to rub at his beard in thought.

"In normal circumstances, ceremorphosis takes a full seven days. The fever and memory loss should begin day one. However, I wouldn't call our current situation normal circumstances. Our little friends have been incubating in our cerebral fluids for some time now. If anything, I'd have expected the change to come on faster."

He looks up, brow furrowed in concern.

"And yet, I don't feel any different at all. My mind remains clear."

Does Astarion? If he did, what would Gale do? He doesn't relish the idea of having to run him through, yet the excruciating transformation is hardly to be recommended.

[graving]

Disgust briefly flits across Astarion's expression. "You could not have worded that more nauseatingly if you'd tried - just so we're clear," he says as he tries to shake the phrase 'incubating in our cerebral fluids for some time now' from his mind and finds it near impossible. He rolls his shoulders back anxiously before releasing a breath, because he feels as normal as ever (better still from his recent drinking of blood, his ability to still remain in the sun).

He glances at the nails of his hand before looking back up at Gale. He does not appear to be feverish at all, no, and Astarion does not feel feverish himself. Some part of him thinks he would recognize the feeling of his entire shifting of his body once more, and he has no idea how he would react. Better to make light of it then.

"Hmm." Then he tilts his head to the side with a smile. It's strange (or not) the flirtatious tone Astarion will take to talk about such a wide variety of subjects. His body leaning toward Gale's as his eyebrows lift with interest. He may very well be the only individual that Astarion can currently... rely on. "I do not believe I surveyed you previously as to your preferred method of being killed prior to you sprouting tentacles."

[karsiteweave]

Gale, who has unfortunately thought extensively about his own death, finds his frown deepening.

"You're forgetting something, Astarion."

Said in the low, regretful tones of someone who hates to bring down the tone again but who simply cannot stop. The wizard of Waterdeep, after all, comes with his own method of ending things. One that is catastrophic, that would take more than just himself with him, but that would at least be... quick. Would put a stop to things in a very final manner before any tentacles had a chance to take hold. He has thought of it often, his charge. Has thought of the peace there is in knowing there is a plan, yet in the increasing unease he feels realising he's coming to care about the people around him. That it might hurt to leave them behind.

Still. Optimism. Optimism is the way.

He takes a breath, tries to forcibly lighten the mood.

"But, whatever the reason, it does seem as if fate has granted us a little longer."

[graving]

Astarion frowns, gesturing vaguely and then allowing his hands to fall down on either side of him when no words actually come. It is not that he had forgotten - not really. It would be impossible to forget with the delicate black tendrils along Gale's skin at his neck, and so instead he simply sighs and then in a low voice that's part whine:

"It's no fun when you do that."

Admittedly, in his own self-absorption within their own world, he had not considered what would occur to the orb should Gale become a mindflayer. Does the mindflayer have control over it? Does it utilize the orb for... well. Astarion is now coming to grips with the thought of how much more dangerous it would be if Gale transformed. At least Cazador would have no need for him any longer if he did become a mindflayer (as absolutely terrifying as the thought is of transforming again, of his body not being his again for how ever long it would take).

"I dislike the idea of relying on fate. We're in a brand new world, Gale. It might just mean having the means to rid ourselves of our tadpoles or better yet, to use them to our advantage." He is not picky so long as he does not have to transform. Ever again. Another delicate wave of his hand: "Perhaps we'll even find a way to help you with your..." Gesture. "situation."