let's set d o w n some (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
groundrules) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
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
no subject
dormitories
( Accident, strategy, stroke of ill luck — whatever drove them inside of the quiet house did not stumble them. They make fast progress, the corridors a nebulous, if comfortingly eerie passage.
No subterfuge in the dormitories they encounter: only walls ripped of plaster, succumbed to thick-spun webs. Only the silhouettes of limbs, extracted from walls, shivered, searching for them. Only sobs — and he betrays himself, a man grown and sword in hand, yet flinching as a woman calls to him. A man speaks only, he is yet young. Their voices in scratched, rapid, twisted symphony — before a strangled, reedy gasp that ends with the popped burst of a cocoon's swell, showing shadow and black water within.
Unbidden, yet stranded in the middle of the room, Lan Wangji points it out with the tip of his silvered sword, careful to follow every step of Wei Ying's guidance: to avoid touch. )
The walls weep dark. ( And from another cocoon's belly, closer by, Brother, save us. )
no subject
He approaches the remnants of the burst cocoon, kneeling, examining the dark water near. )
It's like in Serthica though I see no mannequins. ( He takes a moment with it, nodding at his own conclusion. ) ...the dark water seems similar to what was found there.
( Not as potent as what cracked open the ground outside. )
no subject
( He listens, as Wrath walks the room, as the quarters themselves erupt in fresh groans and muffled anguish. Hears the pleas, the chatter — and fleetingly, unasked, raises the polished stretch of parchment that announces a fresh talisman, energies sharp, astringent. Threatening to cut through curses. )
Where puppets were transformed to... living things?
( Not men, not women. In truth, not fully livened. Only borrowing such a conceit and ultimately decaying, failing in presentation. He remembers: Serthica, where only half of a citadel yet retained presence.
Here, he sees no spawning pool, no freshly released creatures. And yet. )
This reeks of birthing. ( Cocoons, webs, waters. The same imagery, over and over. )
no subject
( It's what he is reminded of most with this particular dark water like that of ghosts and spirits unlike what exists in the coliseum itself. However, it is all connected in some way, isn't it? This area has not been reached in some time - has it simply lost some of its potency, and if that's the case, why can it create what it does from a mirror image alone?
Mirrors. He hasn't forgotten their own role in all of this in the past. )
It does. Birthing what? ( Like the room in the warehouse - it resembled something similar. The dark water itself seems capable of forming, becoming. Why all of this? What does it do? And there's sounds, noises, pleas, dark hands, but no living, breathing creature here - not even the semblance of one. ) Have you seen the other rooms? The dark water was capable of shaping itself as whoever entered and looked into the mirror.
no subject
The corridors stole the likeness of memories to torment.
( Perverting them, contorting them, making monsters of memory. His uncle, whispering of his futility and derangement, his elders cursing out the storm of his name. The skin of his back singeing with old aches of wintered shame.
Yes, he walked those corridors. Nearly surrendered, but ultimately withheld his shadow and image from the mirrors. )
All, thieving appearance. ( And he knows, then, where thoughts trickle, how minds turn. Looks upon webs and their slow, crisp coalescence, and walks his fingertips on the remains of them, like graveyards. )
What likeness did the web steal? ( And unspoken, Who wears it now?
The answer, slowly revealed in a hungry hand, in the steely cold that hangs heavy in his palm. He holds up a tag by its chained necklace, the engraving of the Hand soldier's division and rank, writ large. )
no subject
( There was no effort at all for this water to transform into Ben Hargreeves when he witnessed that. He pulled his own insecurities, his own anxieties out of his mind in the same instance that it became formed. Wrath has not felt any psychic pull from the dark water, and so it must operate on something different, something deeper like the very essence of who they are.
It's... an unsettling notion.
Wrath turns to look at the tag that Wangji holds up. His expression does not shift beyond a note of understanding in the gold of his eyes. )
The army of the Hand. This is one way to easily make a great deal in a short period of time.
no subject
( The numbers of conscripts align — only their skillset differs. And he feels somehow removed from himself, his innards foreign and gelid and raw, revulsed in at once repulsing.
Ambition parts man from animal — then himself again, from his own humanity.
It both frightens and storms him, limbs rotting in saccharine futility. There is nothing one man can do against those who choose so freely to ally with wickedness.
He thinks so, sharing words with a great evil. )
My people strengthen and purify to achieve immortality. This should not be — so different. ( Yet it is. )
no subject
( Wrath accepts the reality of this statement. It is certainly likely especially with the dog tags left behind. This whole place had been hidden away though until the earthquake unleashed it.
Exactly how long ago was this army enhanced? What is it that the dark water is capable of doing to them, and what is the cost? There is always a cost after all especially where a great amount of power is involved, especially when it comes to water that can be twisted so darkly.
He glances at Lan Wangji - his eyebrow raises in curiosity: strengthen and purify to achieve it. Interesting. )
...do you wish to achieve immortality?
no subject
( Possibilities, probabilities. The unmistakable reality of threats looming large before them. Death traps, cocoons, whispers, dark wet decaying his bones.
He shivers, and the quiet of his horror laves long licks on his spine. Under the auspices of faint torchlight, he steels himself in increments, walking the room in trickled steps. He is watched, Wrath's interest a familiar weight. )
It is my birthright. ( The strength of a bloodline, passed down. ) The man who holds half of my soul does not share it.
( What use, then, is immortality? Already, his face does not betray its decades, flesh stilled and slowed from ageing. He has betrayed himself, rushing towards a gilded purpose his husband, unknown in his revival, cannot reach. )
They say life is for the living. ( Not grief. )
no subject
He does now remember with some clarity those moments - the grief (and unrelenting wrath like he'd never known before) of loss, the loneliness of immortality without her in his existence.
So there is some rare sympathy at this revelation - the slight softening of the sharp gold of his gaze. )
Immortality is different than life. Life has both beginning and end. It is not a birthright you can deny?
no subject
( A simple, shrugged conclusion: to stifle himself, to strangle his growth with cold, clumsy hands. To make himself so small that, upon convergence, Wei Ying and he may meet on common ground.
It does not matter. Men shape and unmake themselves to fit their arrogance, their wisdom, their affection, their vanity. What carving is so sophisticated that it cannot fit another person? Affection is the gravity pull that nudges and fits a man into the negative spaces of another.
And so, they keep walking, divesting the walls of their webbed skins as Lan Wangji passes, finally holding a hand out: )
There are worse fates. ( And a beat after: ) You carry a dagger? ( ...says the swordsman, fully armed. ) Bichen will stir any energies beneath. Better a neutral blade.
no subject
( A pause at the outstretched hand. ) My House dagger is hardly neutral.
( It was forged in Hell itself on the same day his House came into creation. His serpent winds around its hilt, and it has a large amount of magic, making it one of the few daggers that has any true effect over Wrath within his own realm. He is not going to hand it over to Lan Wangji or anyone else.
Thankfully, he does have another (he does love his weapons), which he pulls from elsewhere to hand over to Lan Wangji. He'll pull his own dagger out in case there is reason to use it - though he has magic as well for that, shadows gather beneath his feet even now. )
...Bichen?
no subject
( At first, sharp and crystalline silence, deafening as Lan Wangi raises his fettered sword, barely revealing a wink of her steel, unsheathing. Then, he lets her settle down at his side. )
Spiritual weapon. ( A true spirit sleeps within, frigid, serene and ruthless. Sensitive to magic, but too rapidly prone to imparting its own presence. ) Probable to stir any sleeping spirits within.
( Better the blade he accepts from Wrath, held far too tightly at first, before Lan Wangji reconditions his posture to accommodate a smaller, more fragile weapon. He cuts in a few tame swings, raining down soft debris of webs, some bled dark. All the better to pilfer and roll in tight balls, and surrender these to his qiankun purse — no greater, outwardly, than a coin sack. A prison of all things, within. )
I shall not ask you not to inflict your heritage unto Emilia. You will cite her choice.
( But know that he nearly did. )
no subject
There is an appreciation to his gaze, however, nonetheless.
Wrath follows near Lan Wangji, keeping an eye out for anything remaining to fight, using the shadows themselves to aid in this cutting. He shapes the dark shadows into sharp blades across the webs.
There is a pause followed by an eyebrow raise. Emilia said she had told Lan Wangji, but perhaps he misinterpreted.... )
Nothing matters more to me than choice. ( He does not need to be told such things when he worked tirelessly to protect his wife's choices while his brothers were attempting their own machinations throughout in their impatience and distrust. ) However, in this case, that matters little - Emilia has always been immortal. Certainly long before she met me.