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

iii. the quiet house

[matermali]

[ It's been easy enough to stay hidden while trailing far behind the young woman. Vanessa has no need for a torch to see in the dark, and her footsteps were light even as a human. If she's discovered now, it's only because she had been more concerned for the woman's safety than remining undetected.

She seems to catch herself, though, and by then Vanessa's already in the doorway to cast a ghastly silhouette. For any trouble the other has squinting through the steam, Vanessa can see clear enough to feel charmed by such a person who would foolishly think to call out a greeting to the unknown.

Vanessa (Vanessa?) had once been such a person. ]

Hello.

[daughterheir]

[Elayne regains her composure quickly - as quickly as one can when faced with a strange woman looming ominously in a doorway barely visible through the steam, anyway.

She smiles, determined to be friendly.]

I didn't see you there.

[matermali]

[ Vanessa is draped in the local garb, enough for the gold of her bracelets to gleam on her approach only seconds before she steps close enough to reveal herself. And yet, behind her still, something else lurks to growl when Vanessa draws near to the pool.

A glance is cast over her shoulder to calm the beast still beyond the door. ]

You ought to be more cautious of where you go, then. Why are you here?

[ The young woman seems to be one of their own, but Vanessa doesn't recognize her and so she must be new and ignorant enough to have no business wandering into this kind of danger just yet. ]

[daughterheir]

[There's something ominous about this woman, but Elayne refuses to be intimidated. She takes a step towards the stranger - and away from the edge of the pool, lest she lose her footing again.

She raises the torch a little higher, trying to peer beyond the woman, but the room is too wreathed in steam for her to see what the woman is looking at beyond the door.]

I'm exploring, of course. [She speaks with the absolute conviction that she's allowed to be wherever she happens to want to go.] And what brings you here?

[matermali]

[ Hoping to keep the body count of their own to a minimum. ]

Following you.

[ Only a murmur, but it carries easily in this hall. ]

You ought to leave unless you wish to soon be flattened beneath rubble.

[ Vanessa steps closer, then veers to step around the young woman so that she can skirt the edge of the pool. There's something toward the back, and it looks to be shaped like a mirror, but...the glass is black.

Already she knows that to be foreboding. ]

[daughterheir]

[Well. Elayne can respect the forthrightness, though the answer does nothing to ease the aura of foreboding that's draped around this woman like a shawl.]

And to what end have you been following me?

[She speaks politely, but the conviction that she's entirely in the right and is precisely where she ought to be is still there, audible in every syllable as she takes another step - positioning herself just far enough away from the woman that she can see both her and the door. Whatever's lurking just outside still isn't visible, but there's something.

The woman's warning goes entirely unheeded.]

[matermali]

[ If she stares long enough, the woman may see a momentary glitter of two yellow eyes floating low in the darkness before fading back into nothing, still hidden in the hall beyond the door.

Any useless questions fade into a white noise while she circles the pool with creeping footsteps, scanning the mirror on approach with a slightly furrowed brow. She knows something of what black mirror shards can do, but is this the same thing?

She also knows of what else mirrors can do and what they can be, and so Vanessa can't help but stare as though she expects one of her old enemies to step through. The black substance covering it resists her reflection, though, which answers that. Yet she can't stop staring. ]

[daughterheir]

[As Elayne peers after the fading yellow eyes beyond the doorway, she realizes that the woman's moved away from her without answering her question. Her curiosity - and trepidation - pulled between the door and the woman, she chooses the woman.

It's a quick trip around the side of the pool towards the mirror, and the strange black sludge that seems to coat it.] I've seen that before. [The man in the cart, weeping black water as he turned into a mindless, violent creature. Is it some sort of magical effect? With proper study, could its properties be deduced? Recreated? Cured?

She pulls a small vial from her pocket and reaches out to try to catch at least a few drops of the water.]

[matermali]

[ Vanessa's quick to catch her wrist, staring with narrowed eyes. ]

Do not touch it.

[ Black water is rarely a sign of good things ahead, but she will release the woman's wrist with a cautious nod for her to continue. Samples are well enough if she's careful not to touch it. Nothing may happen, but it's never worth the risk. ]

[daughterheir]

[Elayne pauses. Waits. Eyes the woman who has laid a hand on her. People don't really do that. This is... new.

In a way, it's an odd sort of liberating. The same unexpected feeling that had taken hold when she'd arrived at the White Tower and realized that not only was she to be living in the novice quarters with the other novices, to do all the same chores as the other novices, make friends with the other novices, but that they'd gotten rid of all the fancy bedding and furnishings that her mother had sent along with her. The feeling of being just a regular girl.

She almost smiles.

Almost.

When the woman releases her, she returns to her task, careful not to let the water touch her as she collects a few drops in the vial.]

We haven't been properly introduced yet, have we? I'm Elayne Trakand.

[matermali]

[ Whatever quizzical reaction this young lady has to her grip is of no consequence to her, though every micro-expression is caught before she turns her attention back to the mirror and what it's covered in. Which is...moving.

Whatever has been captured will have to be enough, because soon Vanessa is thrusting an arm in front of Elayne to motion her away, keeping in front of her as she attempts to back up a few feet. The dark water, if this black sludge can indeed be that, seems to be melting away and revealing a mirror for true.

While trying to keep Elayne from being overcome by the inky threat, she ends up captivated by her own gaze. More than that, she's staring as though she expects someone to come through. She's known other women who can quite easily. ]

Something is here.

[daughterheir]

[The vial is quickly stoppered and put away, and Elayne is about to ask the woman's name - really, a polite person would have volunteered it - when she finds herself practically shoved back.

It's just the woman's own reflection, what is she--

And then the eyes move. Just barely, but in the wrong direction.

Immediately, Elayne reaches for the Source, threads of white and gold light winding around her as she prepares to weave a shield between them and the mirror.]

Step back. Behind me.