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westwhere2023-10-06 07:00 pm
groundrules) wrote in westwhere2023-10-06 07:00 pm
Entry tags:
- arcane: caitlyn,
- assassin's creed: jacob frye,
- assassin's creed: ratonhnhake:ton,
- doctor who: clara oswald,
- kingdom of the wicked: emilia,
- kingdom of the wicked: wrath,
- last case of benedict fox: benedict fox,
- mcu: america chavez,
- mcu: kamala khan,
- mcu: natasha romanova,
- one piece: luffy,
- one piece: zoro,
- original: red,
- penny dreadful: vanessa ives,
- umbrella academy: allison,
- umbrella academy: five,
- warcraft: wrathion
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!
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!
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!
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!
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.
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.
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!
proscriptions
He offered the assurance before bending down to take a closer look at the lock. He could bash it open but that would be loud and possibly attract unwanted attention if it took more strikes than expected to break. Picking the lock might take a bit longer but Benedict was fairly certain this lock wouldn't be hard to bypass. He withdrew a set of tools with which to pick the lock.
And got to work while Hargreeves stood watch. It wasn't a terribly difficult lock. It really shouldn't take him too long to pick, so long as he wasn't interrupted.
no subject
"You need anything else to pick it?" Look, it's been a long time since he could talk to anyone not Klaus. He might be finding excuses to do so.
no subject
"If I did, we wouldn't still be here," he replied as he got back to working on the lock. "We'd be getting it so we wouldn't be standing around hoping to get caught."
no subject
He raises his hands and gives Benedict a smile.
"Got it. I'll let you focus." He turns his attention fully back to the street, still empty and quiet, for now.
no subject
He started again. He was fairly certain it would be a cinch now. He knew what his fingers needed to do.
But in the quiet morning, he could also clearly hear the crunching steps of the first person headed in this direction down the adorning street. Instead of panicking, however, he trusted his partner to cover and meanwhile he doubled down on his endeavor, hurrying his movements as much as he possibly could.
no subject
The footsteps are heard by Ben as well, he steps out of the alley and greets the guard.
"Hi, there. I think I saw a thief run down that other street, there. Some pickpocket. I didn't want to get involved, though. Didn't seem safe," Ben attempts, and even manages to extinguish that smile he's had on his face since he found himself alive, to look totally serious and concerned.
no subject
The lock clicked open. It sounded like a gunshot to Benedict's ears but he told himself it was a quiet sound that no one would notice unless they were close. He hurriedly opened the box and looked inside, only taking a second to make sure he grabbed everything before closing the box and locking it back once more. He stuffed the contents into his pouch.
As he heard doubt creep into the stranger's voice, Benedict made his way out of the alleyway discreetly. When Ben went back to check on his partner--with or without the doubting stranger at his heels--there would be no sign of Benedict or his tampering with the lockbox.
no subject
"Hey! Jackass! Part of that's mine!" he calls out and starts to look for any signs of which way Benedict might have gone. Of course, he will never let his siblings learn of this. Ben can manage on his own, and who knows what they would do to someone that just ditched him in the middle of a mission.
He can't find any sign of the other, so he takes the most likely route and starts to rushing around the streets to see if he can find a flash of his momentary companion.
no subject
He ran the rooftops where he had taken to hiding to wait out the disturbance. When he came across a rather large gap between buildings he kept running without hesitation and leapt into the air. He wasn't going to make it on his own. Two dark tentacles whipped out to grab hold of the opposite roof and vaulted him onto the building. He kept running without missing a beat.
Eventually, he got ahead enough of Ben to skid to a halt and look down over the edge. There didn't appear to be anyone else in sight for the moment so Benedict decided to chance it. When Ben was within range, another two tentacles shot out and grabbed the youth around the waist before yanking up. The trip was quick from ground to rooftop, the tentacles depositing Ben solidly on the surface then receding and disappearing from the physical realm. Benedict stood in front of Ben, waiting for the young man to register what happened and, hopefully, calm down.
He crossed his arms over his chest. "Are you done yet? That was a completely useless waste of time and effort." Benedict huffed a sigh of hot, annoyed air. "Why would you yell like that after a successful stealthy heist?"
no subject
There is a definite yelp when he's plucked from the ground, then wide eyes and confusion. Those are...definitely tentacles, and they're not his.
He gives Benedict serious consideration and once over when he's up on the roof. Ben crosses his arms.
"I yelled because I had no idea where you went. You were just gone." A beat, he licks the roof of his mouth, then has to add, "So tentacles. You have tentacles?"
no subject
He was less ready for the second part of what Ben said, and when it caught up with him the detective clamped his mouth shut very suddenly. He blinked. He was quiet for a moment.
Well. He had been his own fault, really, for using them. It had just been convenient. He took a slow breath and used it to speak deliberately.
"Yes, I have...access to special abilities that...may include control over tentacles." There, he admitted it. That wasn't so hard.
no subject
Calmer, Ben mutters, "Me, too. But mine feel like they're less under control and something I just put up with that help once in a while."