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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!
no subject
You may choose to play out any part of the below among yourselves!
One day, prior to the Colosseum catastrophe, Wei Wuxian and Emilia are summoned before arena master Laetio. Please assume your character is invited to the arena for a few hours for a check-in, if you've been having them hired out to affluent patricians throughout the second part of the event.
Laetio is in the company of a tall, quiet soldier of the Hand — identifiable as such because of his uniform, arm tattoo with his division assignment ( third finger ) and old timey dog tags comprising of small stone plates engraved with a number. No name is listed on the dog tag.The soldier is wearing a wrapping covering the lower half of his face, but the upper half appears unmarred and human. The soldier has regular dark eyes. He emanates a strange absence of any magic (spiritual, elemental) you might associate with living things, while also not feeling undead.
Laetio loudly says that the army of the Hand are old-time friends of the gladiator arena, and that the army unit has expressed interest in Wei Wuxian and Emilia in light of their impressive combat records. The Hand would like to host Wei Wuxian and Emilia for a special game to showcase their skills at the barracks of the Hand. They would be returned to the citadel and their duties, says Laetio, by sundown.
As he pretends to check their posture and bodies for wounding, Laetio whispers to Wei Wuxian and Emilia that they will not be harmed and this goes quicker if they cooperate, adding it would be apolitical for the arena to refuse the Hand, which was the pet project of Senate leader Caius Justus and remains patroned by him. Laetio will speak to you later about this, if you decide to go.
Do Wei Wuxian and Emilia accept to go?
Respond here with your character's vote. They can go individually or together, so unanimity is not required. You may need to invoke a reasonable excuse for your character not to go (illness, wounding, scheduling conflict with the patrician), to keep Laetio out of trouble, if you choose NO.
Please answer within 48h!
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They will be keeping their husbands informed about this.
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Wei Wuxian and Emilia are taken to the Hand barracks, where they retain pendant communication access (relevant, if they choose to try to escape at any point and need to shout to any of the people in the Hand). Their height, weight and other medical measurements are taken, and they are briefly assessed by healers and magicians of the Hand, for their own safety. These results are carefully logged in scrolls that are held in a small, shuttered and locked display case, among dozens of other scrolls.
The two are then taken to perform in an atrium-style hall room, where roughly two dozens young soldiers of the Hand are watching, seated. Wei Wuxian and Emilia are asked to go through a set of their arena performances, first pitted against each other or asked to demonstrate without an enemy in sight. After some time, magical enemies of air or water are summoned, purely for demonstration purposes. All attack using hand-to-hand combat and can be fought off.
The lighting of the braziers is brash and stark, perhaps blinding — making it difficult at first to glean details about their surroundings. But more careful observation reveals their spectators are... unwell: trembling, jittery, some weeping black water. All struggle to contain themselves while seeming predatory, as if fighting the instinct to take sick or pounce. Guards of the Hand now and then interrupt to remove some of the spectators and bring others in, or to whip them down.
After two hours of this, Wei Wuxian and Emilia are offered replenishment — water, food, half an hour's rest — while still in the atrium. In the second part of the demonstration, some of the spectators are called down to try to defeat the gladiators, typically 2-3 of them against the allied Wei Wuxian and Emilia. These spectators, now combatants, are still highly jittery, but also excessively fast and strong, seemingly struggling to contain their power or to know how to wield it.
Worse, they are imperfectly, but very recognizably able to mimic Wei Wuxian and Emilia's attacks that were demonstrated earlier — they primarily imitate the hand-to-hand combat exercises, but also show aptitude to imitate any magical ability shown. They are also copying (still imperfectly) any maneuvers that Wei Wuxian and Emilia use in combat against them. The spectators each get about 5-10 minutes with the gladiators and are switched out... until the number of spectators runs out.
This means that unfortunately Wei Wuxian and Emilia are looking at some 3-4 hours of exhaustive combat, interrupted by breaks of water and feeding — and an offer to taste the Hand's restorative draughts and replenish their strength. Does either of them accept a booster?
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You can have two questions each, enjoy!
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2. Is there any chance of him palming any of the booster to take with and examine later? If he's allowed to have a qiankun pouch with him or not, considering who knows what he's allowed to wear in with the demos.
no subject
Wei Wuxian and Emilia are welcome to memorize their faces or dog tag numbers and try to meet with them later, or to get anyone in the Hand to do so.
2. Yes, you can pilfer one booster in a glass vial with a conveniently tight stopper!
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2. Likewise nice! He'll see about handing this over to anyone with better resource access or examining it himself, to see if/what can be made of it. Is that something from other players I can guide back your way if they want to see if they can parse out the booster's ingredients?
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Get the people from modern times to go PUMPKIN SPICE SEASON!!!
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But yes, the booster should be visually and magically identifiable as (literally) watered down black water of the kind that has been previously encountered. This is water like the one in the quiet house.
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1.) When were these boosters first introduced, exactly?
2.) How closely is the Hand working with Caius Justus and/or Messalina? She's also trying to get a feel for where their opinions lie on these figures when they're spoken of.
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2. That's not the kind of info people who
kidnappedhandle them would have/be able to give — but it's known externally that the Hand is the pet project of Caius Justus, who completely overhauled the previous, less exemplary army model and handed its leadership over to Narula's brother and Tavernus. You may remember Tavernus as the guy who lost his head about things last event. For reference: Lockwood still has the head. Wei Wuxian shared some of its memories on the network.no subject
ALSO.
You mentioned that Laetio would speak to them later about all of this if they did decide to go. What would she have said?
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1.) Caius Justus
and
2.) Messalina
no subject
1. You can expect Laetio to be dutifully courteous in giving this answer, in the way of most people who acknowledge the risks of their words getting back to a figure of authority. He would say that Caius Justus is a wise and strict father of the nation, the firm hand that Ephes requires — inspired with more vision than his predecessors: he was the one who thought to open, grow and monetize in trade the agricultural clusters of the Hive, and also the man responsible for the overhaul of the old army and the creation of the Hand as its spiritual successor. Caius Justus, in other words, possesses a great and admirable ability to see into the future, irrespective of his fierce devotion to the Chained God and occasional penchant for discipline.
2. He doesn't really have an opinion.