westwhere | blood & sand

Entry tags:

blood & sand

Hi folks! Welcome to Eastbound’s last test drive meme and the second event of the Ephes Arc, stretching until 25 October. Applications next open over 20-25 October, with invitations required for new players (but not returning ones). Individual cast and game caps are off.

Test driving characters can use this space for both network and log prompts, as well as play both the newcomer and shared prompts. Enjoy!

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!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

NEWCOMER ARRIVAL (A)

(Luffy isn't sure what got him but waking up slowly to hot air with the sun glaring down on him wasn't on his Grand Line checklist. He has no idea how he even got to wherever this was and the young man pulls himself into a sitting position, instantly regretting the sudden motion as the haziness kicks in. Urk. What...? It's a wooden cage on a cart from what Luffy can see and he squints, trying to get his bearings as he lets the dizziness pass, hands going to his hat as he ensures it's still there.

After some prompting from a farmer Luffy snags one of the pendants, listening to what the others are talking about. Hives? Ephes? Healing?? Everything is so far removed from being on his ship out on the ocean that Luffy can barely even keep up. If it involved a hive it had to be about bees, right? Right?

Luffy has never been one for staying still and it isn't long before he feels well enough to stand, getting to his feet as much as he can before pointing to the farmers. He has no idea what this is, but a cage is a cage and the rest he can deal with later.)

Don't worry, I got this, all I gotta do is just reach around the side of these bars and — (As Luffy talks he's trying to stretch his arm out behind him, intent on somehow picking a lock and blinking when nothing happens. No stretching, not even a flex and he pulls his arm in front of him, eyes widening as he tries to wrap his head around that.) — what?!

(The panic and concern is instant. He's made of rubber, he should be able to get out of this cage no big deal and not being able to? Worst news ever. Luffy spins around to grabs the bars of the cage, face going bright red as he's pressing up against them almost as if trying to squeeze his head through.) Just. Gonna. Need. A moment!

NEWCOMER ARRIVAL (B)

(Soon enough they arrive at the main gate of Ephes and Luffy finds himself taken to one side. He can't help but glance back at the farmers, concern visible in his expression at the uncertainty of their fates. But there's no time for that when Karsa is explaining everything and to Luffy's credit he listens to every word. None of it makes much sense when comparing it to back home, but he can learn by doing. He always does. By listening he'll be able to think of where the rest of the Straw-Hat pirates are; their absence is glaring and Luffy is already missing them as he hopes they're doing better than he is.

He's handed some money, a pin and some papers which he peers at.)

Is this like a job? A "taste tester"? I get to eat and get paid for it? (Luffy gives a whoop, looking at the nearest person. It's lucky for anyone in this place that he won't be working, if only because they'll never know he's somewhat immune to poison until it's too late.)

Paid to eat, isn't that the best?? I mean uh. So what do you think about all this.....?

AT SEA (A)

(Luffy naturally gravitates towards the docks, heart aching ever so slightly over the fact his crew are still missing. He doesn't know if they're here or not and no matter how much he has looked or listened, there's yet to be sign of them. So the dock is the natural place to go; if any of the Straw-Hat pirates are around he's certain this is where they'd head to. Luffy's faith is unshakeable in them, knowing that if they are in this world they will cross paths and find each other again no matter what.

It's only when someone starts shouting that Luffy looks up from the paper he's staring at, eyes squinting at the vessels that he's sure weren't there before.)

What's going on there?

AT SEA (B)

( There's no question in Luffy's mind that there's a mystery to be solved and he doesn't think twice about grabbing the nearest helpful looking person and taking a row boat as he proclaims that this should be his job as future king of the pirates! Something is happening here and as a pirate himself it's almost personal to him that it involves ships, boats and strange goings on. Luffy even rows the boat himself, making sure not to get any salt water splashed on or near himself.

They'll need to be quick if the ship is due to sink in a few hours. Should Luffy get salt water on him he'll be weak, paralysed and unable to do much of anything. Sinking with this thing is the last thing he wants to do and so he races around the place trying to find clues as to what is going on.

He can be found later in a room with the other sailors, slowly pointing to each one as he counts quietly. That can't be right. Luffy counts again, and again, totalling the group up five times before putting his hands on his hips with a confused smile.)

Huh. Something isn't adding up here. Am I that bad at counting...?

QUIET HOUSE (DORMS)

( Luffy doesn't do regret, nor does he ever look back and wish he'd done things differently. He's very much living in the moment, always walking forwards with his head held high. Though right now he's simply staying put, head tilted to one side as he tries to listen to the noises around him. Something about not being afraid, making someone proud? Luffy almost jumps out of his skin when the screams suddenly piece the air and he instinctively grabs the arm of the nearest person.

Who's idea was this place anyway?! )

Just so you know, I'm not scared. Are you scared? It's actually okay if you are, it's a natural thing. So if you're scared just let me know, I'll get us out of here....

NETWORK

( Luffy has no idea how this network works, but he's just going to go for it. Sadly Luffy does not come with a volume button, so his voice cuts loudly across in audio format, name showing as KINGOFTHEPIRATES.)

IS THIS THING WORKING? HELLO??!

WILDCARD

( Happy to do any prompt or something completely different, feel free to PM or PP at

spiciest ! )

un: absterge | text

Discretion, a virtue.

un: KINGOFTHEPIRATES

It writes too!! That's amazing, but changing the topic when I've just started won't do anything.

( No Luffy, that's digression. )

Greetings.

( Give him a moment and — )

HELLO! ARE YOU SEEING THIS?

Monkey D Luffy | One Piece (la) - Test driving

net... work... but I'm probably going to hit up your log prompts too, I love Luffy T_T

yes please ♥ also Lan Wangji I love him I'm sorry in advance

<3....!!!

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network i am so sorry

No no I'm sorry!

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QUIET HOUSE (DORMS)

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network | un: yiling laozu

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quiet house

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WILDCARD | @ the docks aka the reunion! O Captain! My Captain!

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Network | un: hide_and_seek | Audio

network, audio

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