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

[nothinglikefather]

Jacob would protect about being a prize ox, but he's rather got his hands full at the moment. His opponent isn't bad, per se, he might even make some money if he ever fought at Robert Topping's fight club. He catches Jacob on the jaw at one point, and there's a burst of metallic taste in his mouth.

He laughs, releasing some of the tension and pain the blow caused, and dives right back in, both fists moving, pushing the other man as he dodges to avoid some of the blows. Which, unfortunately for him, he doesn't. A little off his balance, Jacob takes advantage and grabs him by the wrist, pulling him in close while ducking and twisting, tossing the man over his shoulder. He's done it before of course, but he does it now because Wen Kexing is watching.

so what if it's showing off? You want your employer to know what you can do, right? It's not just a show of brute strength. It's just unfortunate that it backfires because some of the gang don't think this is fair, and pile in.

He grins, wiping the blood from his mouth and throwing another punch.

[wifedup]

He doesn't interrupt even as the men begin dogpiling Jacob. For one, he is fairly certain he can handle it, for another they want to look good, having to wade in would certainly put an end to that. Still, he's impressed, he has yet to actually see Jacob fight in any capacity, and from what he can tell of the style he's using he's talented. There's absolutely nothing there that should put them at a disadvantage.

Even if Livius' men are prone to cheating.

"The price of the bet goes up for every man he knocks down, doesn't it?" Wen Kexing asks, loud enough to be heard over the scuffle. Livius grunts in a way he hopes is agreement but could mean anything. In the corner of his eye he sees something, a flash of metal as someone tries to join the fray with a knife. The motion of his own hands is easily hidden beneath the length of his sleeve, sending out a little qi to have that particular opponent staggering off course, careening into one of his buddies and dropping the weapon in the process.

"Your men are getting desperate. Haven't they been properly challenged in a while?"

[nothinglikefather]

There's no way Jacob could have seen that knife coming under the press of bodies. None of them are in Wen Kexing's bright silks, however, so he knows at least that he's not striking out at a friend when he punches. Or when he elbows one man in the throat, which he wasn't intending to do, but turned out to be a pretty good move. As the man coughs, hacks and stumbles, his friends back off a little way, and that gives Jacob a little breathing room.

There are three of them, not counting the man who has, thankfully, been dragged out of the fray, still coughing. Three is a good number. He can manage that.

Two in his line of sight are already closing back in, and one thinks he's being sneaky by coming in from behind, but his boots squeak. They really should invest in better footwear he thinks as strong arms wrap around him.

"No cuddling on the first date," He says, eying the two in front who think the time has come to really lay into him. They're wrong. He jumps, forces all his weight back onto the man holding him, the back of his head colliding with the man's face, and kicks out at the others. One foot hits its target, the other only just, but it's enough. He's dropped as the man behind him curses and then launches himself at the others.

It takes moments before those men stumble back, everyone breathing hard. Jacob's lip is well and truly split now, running down his chin. His cheek is grazed too where another fist connected, but he's still standing solid. The others aren't. One is sitting on a chair groaning, another is holding a cold cloth his to eye, and the third is out cold against the bar.

"Well?" Jacob says, "I think I deserve a free pint, if nothing else."

[wifedup]

"Well?"

Wen Kexing turns bright eyes to Livius who seems deep in thought, frowning a little at the surrounding carnage. He strokes his chin as if deep in thought like he's some grand master and not a two-bit common criminal running a useless little gang out of a shitty tavern, humming and hawing.

"Oh, come on. How many of your men do you need him to brutalise before you see he's a good asset?"

It's really a good thing the man they're pushing is very stupid, he doesn't see that this is quite clearly a set up. And so he nods, once, and Wen Kexing smiles like a shark scenting blood, whipping a handkerchief from his pocket to pass it impassively to Jacob while someone crams a beer in the man's other hand.

[nothinglikefather]

"If you want me to, I can hit a few more. Just let me finish my drink." Jacob supplies helpfully as he moves forward towards the pair, taking the square of fabric and the pint - the latter with more enthusiasm. But he does still wipe away some of the blood on his face, just so he doesn't appear like a complete barbarian.

"Now we've warmed up, you can get me doing something interesting. Gotta be something a man like you has on the to-do list, something tricky you couldn't give to just anyone." Jacob says, then risks a mouthful of pickle-beer. It stings like hell on the cut to his mouth, but he doesn't show it. In fact, he manages to look like he enjoys it.

[wifedup]

Because he knows just how disgusting that beer is, Wen Kexing gives Jacob a bright shit eating grin, one eyebrow raised. Blessedly, Livius is looking away from him, and so he's schooled his expression a little better when the big man turns back his way. He knows eventually he'll have to leave Jacob to his own devices, he's won the man's tentative respect, Wen Kexing is still someone to be cautious off - or, no, they don't see him as a threat yet, but he is an outsider.

There's something, Livius informs Jacob, words a slow drag. How anyone gets anything done around here Wen Kexing doesn't know. But he makes sure he doesn't look interested, idly fanning himself again. People we need dealt with.

It isn't how he'd run a criminal organisation but then, he likes to deal with things himself.

[nothinglikefather]

Jacob simply gives a curt nod of understanding. This isn't unusual or unexpected, the unspoken air of nothing he can't handle, or hasn't handled before. So he shifts, moving a little way towards his new boss, for all intents and purposes.

"Give me the names, they'll be gone by the morning."

It's a bold claim perhaps, but delivered so easily that Livius can be left in no doubts that Jacob is as good as his word.

He hopes the names might be given now, in front of Wen Kexing, so he can get them to the rest of their party, knowing that he may well have to stay a little longer, rather than leave alongside Wen. It would look too suspicious.

[wifedup]

Perhaps he should give Livius some merit, he does glance Wen Kexing's way once before he reaches in his pocket to produce a bit of parchment. He's still stupid enough to do so out in the open. No matter the type of establishment, one should always account for spies. Perhaps Wen Kexing has been playing his role of vapid entrepreneur well enough, or perhaps word has gotten around that he doesn't necessarily care about the legality of things ( though he thinks he's definitely got a reputation for being a bit of a hard ass when it comes to looking after the brothels ). Either way he's deemed not a threat as the list is handed over, the man's big meaty hand clasping Jacob by the shoulder.

You will stay for now, Livius tells him, Blood has been spilt. We'll celebrate.

Wen Kexing is fairly certain that's his cue, lazily snapping his fan shut. "Don't let me keep you. Ah, but Master Frye, my handkerchief if you please. A handsome man gave me that."

He flashes his teeth in a grin, ignoring the murmuring around him. It's hopefully enough of a distraction for some slight of hand, if they're both very clever.

[nothinglikefather]

Huh, doesn't look like he's going to be allowed to leave as early as he'd like. But hell, if he's going to get free drinks tonight then he won't complain.

But it will make getting names to Wen Kexing a little harder...

Until there he is, asking for his handkerchief back and Jacob meets his gaze long enough to understand. Easily, the parchment and handkerchief pass into Wen's outstretched hand.

"I wouldn't want to deprive you of a love token." He teases. He hasn't had a chance to look it over himself but does it matter? Hardly- he's sure Wen Kexing will share the details when he can get away from here. And hopefully that will be soon.

[wifedup]

"Mm, you know I take these things very seriously."

Said, like a man who does not actually take anything seriously. But it's a role he's very good at playing, and it certainly fools men like the brutes currently surrounding them. The parchment is slipped inside his sleeve easily, the handkerchief he takes his time to fold, fussily, putting on a show.

"I'll be in touch, mm?" The list is Jacob's after all, he's just helping. And then, louder, "And you too, Livius! If he doesn't pass muster I'll be sure to make it up to you. They'll be a new shipment in by next week!"

There's a general noise of ascent and Wen Kexing allows the man in charge a shallow bow before he's straightening himself out.

"Have fun!"