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

[catherding]

Very smart. It's been some time since anyone's levied that particular accusation, and the onslaught of crashing into a pillar, full speed ahead, suddenly reminds him of the natural limitations of his intellect. He should have known, but remembers now, as debris slobbers and crackles over his head, for all he crosses his arms to protect his thick, stupid skull. Their mount, at least, seems utterly uninconvenienced, dashing through obstacles as if they were carved of butter.

If not for the immediate and ongoing threat to his fragile, flesh-cased person, Hector might be impressed. But then they're out of the thick of the guttering dust and wayward stone, and the worst of it's accrued, feverishly, toppled on their pursuers. He hears moans, hears hurt, hears... braying.

Sees the rubble, a mountain over the downed animal, who struggles to breathe his last. Prolonged, unnecessary agony.

"...stop the rhinoceros." A man of a single mind. But his voice is now limpid. "I need to put an end to that."

[nothinglikefather]

Jacob has, just once, been involved with the derailing of a trail off the edge of a cliff. The roar of the crashing balcony isn't as metallic as that, it's as organic as what happens behind them. But it's still a cacophony of noise, of breaking beams, of breaking bones, of things falling from height. He's almost glad that he can't look back, that he has to steer their mount through the gates into the area behind the arena, because it's not going to be pretty.

The other rider must have been killed pretty quickly if he didn't jump away. The other rhino had no such luck, its single-minded pursuit left it no chance. Jacob feels sorry for it, just like he does the horses that end up entangled in the wrecks of carriages, so when Hector, with that broken voice, says he will see to it, Jacob nods. He's got a blade, not a fighting one, but sharp, tucked into his belt, just like many Ephians do. He unclasps it, sheath and all, and holds it behind him. He doesn't know if Hector has a weapon, or there's any around here, but it feels like the least he should do.

Their own mount has slowed, recognising the place but also because it's no longer being urged to run, and its sides heave with deep, exhausted breaths. Clearly, running like that for such a long time is not what these creatures are meant to do.

But there are large cages in the cool darkness in here. Some are more like crates, some are stables with iron walls and doors set into the stone, strong enough to contain an angry lion and perhaps a rhino. He thinks here is the best, safest place to leave the creature, and let it recover.

Once in said stall, Jacob carefully gets down, slipping from the strange saddle as the rhino drinks deeply from a long trough, and makes his way out before the creature can charge him again- if it had the energy. Locking it in, he makes his way back towards Hector.

"Are you alright?" It seems the only thing to really ask, after the chaos of the last few minutes.

[catherding]

He takes the knife.

Later, he will sit and still and wonder when it was he learned what to do with it. How to cleave from himself weakness, and from others the parts required to build life anew. He nods his thanks and his fleeting farewells, taking the blade to see the bloody work through. A kindness, he tells the animal, eyes closing.

Then, it is done. Another lifetime prior, he might have considered his hammer, put to the use of revival. There's no point here, no stability in magical flows, no prime materials to start the appropriate rites.

It doesn't matter. Jacob and he have their work cut out, and escape seems a non-trivial, emergency priority. Is he all right? His hands, violently shaking.

He returns the knife. "For a value thereof." Which is to say, trauma is trivial. "We should make scarce."

[nothinglikefather]

He takes the knife, tucking it back into his belt before his hand touches the man on his shoulder.

"I'm sorry."

If it could have been him, he would have done it, and maybe he should have done it, when all is said and done. Unfortunately he can't change it now, all he can do is make sure this guy gets out of here.

"Come on. There's got to be a way out through these tunnels." After all, they have to get the animals in here, don't they? There's got to be a way that goes out to the streets of Ephes.

"We should be safe now. The performance is all for the Arena. Now we're just... gladiators done for the day."

It might not be much of a reassurance but that sort of thing has never really been his forte.

[catherding]

"I've never fought for my life before," he offers conversationally, for all he understands this is a subtle deceit: he has offered objections and opposition, he has stood his ground. He has not, perhaps, blooded a man for his own gains. His creatures have usually succeeded better in that.

"Mostly I've run or sat very still."

But now they're moving, circulating fluidly through the corridors, as if they're veterans of the arena and not casual amateurs who've lucked into survival. He offers Jacob a light pat on his shoulder, congratulatory —

And cringes, when his palm comes away blood-stained again. Really. "You may wish to... shower."

[nothinglikefather]

How does Jacob respond to that? Not easily. He's killed people since he was a child, it's everything he is, everything he knows. Not having to do it sounds like an impossible dream- in fact, it is an impossible dream, there's no way for him to escape his life. Perhaps that's why death doesn't scare him.

"This place is dangerous. Not just Ephes, the whole world. You'll have to learn to fight here." He says, trying to sound as supportive as he can, trying to summon some of Evie's ability to put people at ease. He's not entirely sure he's picked the right words. "I know it's hard. But we're all in the same boat."

To Hector, it seems that Jacob is navigating the corridors and tunnels easily, but he's cheating, to some degree. He's no longer seeing the world in colour, but in various hues of black, grey and white, using his Eagle Vision to locate what must be the door to the streets, heavily reinforced.

"We'll get out first. Then I'll get a bath." Hopefully. "I'm used to it."

[catherding]

"I'm not." A beat. "Please don't make me used to it."

Please, mother of mercy, bathe. But at least Jacob is furthering their escape plan, and Hector's learned the art of efficiently, obediently navigating a clustered and claustrophobic space. What he needs to do now is to make as small and negligible of a nuisance of himself as possible. To understand that he might not be in the presence of his betters, but he's still the less acclimated element in this landscape.

He's got learning to do: fast and uneasy.

"When we get out —" When, not if. He has no patience for the kind of flagellating self-pity that brings about questions of mortality. "Show me where the bodies are."

There is hope for Hector still.

[nothinglikefather]

"I can't make you do anything mate, I'm just letting you know." Adjust or die, you might say. It's not nice, he appreciates that, and he's not trying to be cruel. But Jacob is very much used to death, causing it, seeing it, being close to it. He's not got time to be a wet rag about it.

If the other man had said aloud anything more about showers, baths, washing or otherwise dealing with the fact he's covered in blood, Jacob might have smacked him. Thankfully, Hector has the good sense to keep mum about it. After all, they're trying to escape this place, not get ready to address parliament. Priorities, Hector.

"What bodies? The undead ones?" He asks, distracted for a moment by the strange question. But if, as Jacob expects, this is a brand new arrival, he might not know the lay of the land. "The bodies walking around and whatnot are camped outside the city. I'd stay away from them if I were you."

[catherding]

"I'll settle for the ones that don't stroll yet," he murmurs, in the way of a man who has summarily presented himself to the marketplace knowing fully well he will be cheated of both his coin and his dignity, and is nevertheless heeding the call. Of course it'll come with trouble, indignity and fruitful combinations thereof. It is in the nature of such things to traumatise the maximum number of people and satisfy the fewest.

All the same, and he starts to wave Jacob along, as if it is Hector who knows their way into the mouth of the corridors, they have no options. Hector has no choice.

"I need corpses. The kind known to lie still." Less ambitious in their promenades and carnage-filled exercise routines. "And a forge."

[nothinglikefather]

Jacob really does not like the idea of the dead getting up and wandering around. The dead should stay dead, once life has faded they are just husks, they rot and they're gone. You don't mess about with them, you don't try and make them get up again.

He can't help but make a face at the request, he can't see why on earth Hector would need bodies. But curiosity makes him stop, putting his arm across the man's path to stop him. Barring him an escape down the tunnel.

"Why?"

[catherding]

Should he show his hand so readily? No, he has paid the price of transparency once before. Forgemaster aren't merely beautiful artists to compensate handsomely for the resilience of their hand and the clarity of their vision —

They are prized weapons, instruments of war. Easy captives and castaways. No, a sweet rhino's ride doesn't earn that kind of trust so easily.

"Because they have an army," he offers his shoulder, and the tunnel captures his voice, returning it in crystalline echoes. "And we need one."

Hector needs to forge them one.

[nothinglikefather]

Jacob's eyes close, slow and tired, and at the same time he exhales a breath.

"They have an army. Of the undead. That's the problem."

He doesn't inderstand. Fighting the undead with more undead, surely its just adding to the problem? The living are already outnumbered, how can getting more bodies out of graves help?

"If you want to mess around with that stuff, you'll have to speak to someone else. I'll get you out of here, but I don't get... I don't get involved in that."

[catherding]

"You don't even know what that is."

But it's heatless, arid. The sort of objection that speak of an academic interest in debate, sooner than genuine indignation. He speaks not of undead, but of same-souls forced back into bodies, under command. Of pure and pristine revival, not the artless and uncivilized recreations here exhibited.

Far from Hector to judge, but the look of disdain aimed tirelessly in every-each direction speaks a long, pained rhetoric of his declining faith in the skill and knowledge of the practitioners who woke these creatures.

The corridor is long, dusk-shrouded. Enticingly soothing. Calm. He walks, increasingly at ease.

"You just jousted on a rhinoceros. It can't be me you're afraid of."

[nothinglikefather]

"Maybe instead of telling me what I don't know, you should tell me why you think it's a good idea, when you've only just got here?"

Jacob knows it is hard- so bloody hard- to let go of what you did, and how important it might have been back home. Everyone he's met here has had some meaningful purpose in their existance, something they've been doing for so long that it's hard to see beyond it now they're somewhere else.

...himself included.

But that doesn't mean he's fine and dandy with bringing the dead back and letting them lurch around like they didn't already have their turn.

"I'm not afraid. I just don't want anything to do with them."

[catherding]

"I'm not... passing judgement."

He is, in fact, palms outward and step light as he carries heading into the distant no where, with no true understanding of his whereabouts — doing just that. What is there to fear, of and from the dead?

Nothing. They're delightful, obedient, disciplined, kind. Hector should only wish to be so blessed by their presence, compared with the ever more deceitful living company. This man, at least, appears... honest to a fault. Forthright.

"I'll speak to the others. There are others, aren't there? That wasn't a lie? The woman Karsa was — ...angry."

Perhaps for her reasons.

[nothinglikefather]

"Bollocks." Jacob laughs at the man's nerve, telling such a bold-face lie.

But Hector hasn't met the undead here, the spirits that tried to imprison people in that underground labyrinth. One of the undead is eating innocent women in Ephes, and hell only knows what the undead army ravaging this world have done.

"You don't know the situation here. Speak to someone who knows better than me first." He says, and then pauses, looking down the fork in the tunnel- one smells of fresh air, but it leads only to a narrow grate. The other way actually leads to a door. He picks that option.

"And yes. There's a lot of people that have been brought here. Unfortunately no one can agree on what's best to do."

[catherding]

"That... sounds entirely predictable." But far from him to suggest that herding cats isn't a venture restricted to vampires. Humans invented strife. Every other species has the decency to cannibalize itself before that escalates into an inconvenience.

As for Hector's immediate plans — they start and end with finding an escape route. A dark, lean, precarious corridor with scat exit opportunities to offer. He feels significantly less optimistic than mere moments prior. The rhino is missed.

"Look..." Reasonable, with an inviting wave of his hand that is entirely lost in the dimness. "Let's take it step by step. We leave here first. Worry about the chasms in my knowledge later. Agreed?"

[nothinglikefather]

"Leaving is what I've been working towards." Jacob explains, wondering if the man thinks he's just been blindly wandering through tunnels and twisting corridors.

Then again, Jacob hasn't actually told him he can see the path that leads to an escape route. Probably should have discussed that, but talk of the undead had distracted him.

"There's a pair of double doors around the next corner. They lead into the street behind the circus." His Eagle Vision is very helpful, he's not sure if without it he would have found them a way out so quickly. "From there the world's your oyster. There probably isn't another rhinoceros about."

[catherding]

The world... his oyster.

He's heard that before, its kind and its approximations. All pretty, dainty, impossible lies. Myths and tragedy. But then, he has lived through that and survived its thrall, and now he faces it again, its wonder.

He follows, until it seems as if the road is done, and there's a glimpse of light between two cracked doors, the same the man had forecast he'd encounter. He should ask how he knew, in pitch dark. It doesn't matter.

"Probably. Well. Look after yourself." Don't... die, in the way of people who say they never would, then do.

[nothinglikefather]

Don't die, just what he and his sister say to each other before they go out on an assassination.

"You too. At some point, you owe me a pint." He says as they get to the door, patting the other on the shoulder.

He's ready to see the man off, let him go, and head back in. There's something prickling his skin, telling him something is wrong, something isn't as it should be. He's not about to leave, not when his instincts are telling him to stay, but he'll see this strange fellow out and to the relative safety of the streets.