the channeling

[groundrules]

THE CHANNELING

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WEALTH WHISPERS

Assignment: the Merchant fears that Matthias, alleged father of the undead Brotherhood, might be the ‘merchant’ who was due to receive dark water-infused grains by sea from the Hand. Chasing information, the Merchant routes party members towards the docks-side underworld district of Tibras, in the outskirts of Ephes. The Hand keeps grain warehouses nearby.

In Tibras, short and decayed houses are like parasitic growths toppling each other, plaster peels falling into rivulets of bloodshed. Tension thrives. Petrified, natives overwhelmingly number beggars, pleasure workers, crude bounty hunters and thieves, who look to cut throats or purse strings. Occasional bodies drift by the docks.

■ Just outside of Tibras is the abode of the merchants’ syndicate — a ring of warehouses, private clubs and houses of currency. Merchants here are protected via steep fees and travel freely. Inside the syndicate house, doorways are barred by inextinguishable living fire — which you can cross unharmed, if you rearrange the runes marked N, W, S, E on a nearby wall in a cardinal-point formation. You can also pretend to be a servant, a merchant or quality inspector to get to the Hand warehouses. Ask a clue.

Alternatively, the Merchant forewarns that a notable guest will join the syndicate for three nights: Captain Maximilian Hawk of the Dawn’s Reach Trade Company, which deals in magical artefacts. Hold him at knifepoint, seduce him, do your worst for knowledge!

■ By the entrance to Tibras is the shop of Apollonius, noted collector of supernatural artefacts and information broker. Crafty and sly, he will cooperate, in exchange for a pair of ‘eyes’ from the ghost Tykhe, who haunts the nearby anonymous burial grounds. Come midnight, Tykhe’s spirit — whose sight was gouged — appears and picks out and bewitches a pair of marbles, buttons or stones to act as her ‘eyes.’ With them in hand, she searches the graveyard for her dead sister, Cassandra. You can steal the orbs, or she’ll give them freely, if you escort her from tomb to tomb to reunite with the mute ghost of Cassandra. Return to Apollonius.

■ Deeper within Tibras is a gambling nest of sailors who were cursed by a scorned sea witch to assume the appearance of sea creatures. Led by the giant octopus Crassus, they charge protection fees from commercial merchant ships and even intimidate pirates, gleaning information from sailors and recovering drowned bodies. This illustrious group adores games of chance — as long as you can cover your losses.

You can decide or RNG how many tries it takes for your character to win — submit a finished thread to get a question! The higher the stakes, the better the information.

— a scantly informed junior goldfish throws dice. Lose, and you must share a highly embarrassing secret.

— a moderately informed catfish, offering Baccarat. Lose, and he steals your good luck for 24 hours.

— a composed, well-informed whale plays roulette. Lose, and you must share one of your most precious memories.

— a highly-knowledgeable shark, Aurelius Longus, plays a mean hand of poker. Lose, and he asks blood or a pledge to save his life one day.

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THE FLOORS

Senate leader Caius Justus exits his seclusion, ending weeks of prayer to convey the message of Ephes’ divine patron, the Chained God of chaos. And he says in a public speech:

Friends, Ephesians, countrymen…

”Friends, Ephesians, countrymen, lend me your ears. I come to speak for the Chained Father, not to praise him. The victory men reap lives after them; but cowardice is often buried with their bones. So let it be with Ephes. The noble Senate tells you, the Chained Father wishes only Ephes’ destruction. If it were so, it is a grievous fault, and grievously has the Father answered for it. Here, under leave of Messalina and the Senate – for Messalina is an honourable speaker; so they are all, all honourable speakers – come I to speak of the Chained Father’s wishes. He was my maker, faithful and just to us: but Messalina says, turn away from him. And Messalina is an honourable speaker. He has brought many territories under the heel of Ephes. In his name did the Hand rise: did this in the Chained Father seem unworthy? When now you weep asking empire, the Chained Father answers: tells you to be made of sterner stuff. Yet Messalina says the Father is unworthy. And Messalina is an honourable speaker. You all did see that I withdrew to his temple, where he spoke to me: Ephes, seize your path alone — was that unworthy? Yet Messalina says to turn away from him. And sure, Messalina is an honourable speak. I speak not to disprove what Messalina spoke, but here I am to speak what I do know: you are all children of Chaos, not without cause. What cause withholds you, then, to use the Hand yourselves? O, ambition! You have fled to brutish citadels. And men have lost their courage. Bear with me: my heart is in the temple, there with the Chained God, and I must pause and beg the Senate to vote against Messalina, til it comes back to me. ”

Returning to public life, Caius Justus advises the Senate to refuse Messalina’s proposal, but defers to a vote. Citing recent civil unrest, he imposes citadel-wide 10 p.m. curfews, bans congregations of more than eight people in the streets and sends the Hand to confiscate any visible weapons and to quiet or pre-empt unrest. Hand members — forced to present in large numbers — appear erratic, prone to violent outbursts and to taking out their anger on civilians. Hand leader Narula is excessively smug.

Newscasters are careful with their words, speeches decrying Messalina abound, and senators are‘escorted’ by Hand delegations, also for their protection. Caius Justus announces he will run again for Senate leadership — to begrudged murmurs among Senators, given his previous pledge to retire.

Assignment: lure Senators toward the position that the party supports. After Caius Justus’ return:

■ 51 Senators back Caius Justus to refuse Messalina’s proposal.

■ Maximus Faustus convinces 53 Senators to accept Messalina’s proposal

■ Caelius Silvanus persuades 47 Senators to vote to postpone a decision on Messalina’s proposal for another season.

Following the party’s previous interventions, Senators are open to considering Messalina’s cause. Many are skittish, fearing their careers or lives will end with disobeying Caius Justus. Optionally, party members previously assigned a political role might receive threats from Caius Justus’ supporters.

■ Persuade, bribe, threaten or blackmail a minor Senator to switch votes. Perhaps you can offer coin or rally supporters in the marketplace for their next election, or heal their donkey or get rid of that pesky boy mooning after their daughter. Or maybe prove their corruption streak, or place a polite knife at their throats. Hold the whole Senate floor hostage, if you want, of blockade Senators from entering the Senate on voting day!

■ Ask for a RNGed Senator if you want or submit threads of swaying votes. A final tally will be taken on 19 November

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INCENSE

Priests of the Chained God whisper that the god shows signs of awakening to trigger an apocalypse. Chained and warded twelve times to prevent the end of the world, the Chained God allegedly rests in the Halls of the Sleeper, in the underground belly of his main temple in Ephes. Above ground, the temple is silent, rife with milling priests, hummed prayers and cloying hallucinogenic incense that encourages lethargy. Access is unrestricted, but monitored.

To progress downstairs, you may need to convince guards that you are one of the groups of ferociously devout pilgrim worshippers, or a priest. Below, you feel overcome by creeping, paralysing dread.

■ You are haunted by sinister, saccharine voices murmuring intrusive thoughts only you hear, diminishing your worth and paranoically asking if your companion means you harm. You are more irritable and prone to violence.

■ The halls increasingly resemble narrow subterranean corridors with limited and overheated air reserves. You reach locked stone gates, covered in loose chains and crudely carved with the inscription, the Sleeper awakes. Instructions state the Chained God demands sacrifice and proof of chaos.

■ To enter the Sleeper’s Hall, instructions say, you must commit an act of betrayal, by: drawing your companion’s blood and smearing it over the inscription (lean into the corruption!), which prevents them from entering the halls with you; or chaining them to the door with the gate shackles, condemning them to watch as you enter; or pushing your companion away, verbally eviscerating or attacking them until they flee. With player approval, your character could get a sense of what theirs is emotionally or physically vulnerable to, then exploit it. Acts of betrayal cannot be faked.

■ The Sleeper’s Hall is narrow, nearly spherical and lit by thin rivers of flowing magma that cross cracked floors. Amid swelter, you hear the periodic gulps and quakes of stone trembling around you. The supernaturally sensitive feel the presence of great, if constrained power.

■ The black water previously associated with the undead also gushes from rifts in the ground. It has a cold, sinister aura.

■ Search the room for clues — and leave urgently, before corruption consumes you.

■ Towards the middle of the room is a large, nebulously shaped creature, fully fettered and covered in magical wards, chains and blood-painted runes. Anyone in the Chained God’s presence may feel overcome by emotional or physical agony, claustrophobia and bloodlust — but the divinity only speaks with the RNG winner.

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NOTES:

■ Some players have asked about potentially stabbing ousting Caius Justus and Narula in a coup — everyone can plot and participate in that, and a plotting post will go up on 16 November.

■ NPC inbox, if you need anyone!

■ QUESTIONS

Comments

[downswing]

( To think the Yiling Patriarch surrendered the sword, only to twist his knives with fervor. Lan Wangji heeds him, having never learned to turn away. Listens and does not laugh and gods and dogs and the bite of both quick and stormed and cunning, blood only rabidly red on the first draw. After, infection and sickness, the easy contagion of fear. Both religion and canines weaponise terror.

Here, before wreaths of chains that lour back, unmoving, he feels, too, compelled to dread. To hate that which wishes to intimidate him, an itch crawling up his fingers, riding his knuckles, pulling his hands taut in a steeled fist's bind as if the creature beneath his skins grows too large, too broad for its confinement.

And he touches the shackles, hand dripping over Wei Ying's below. ) They bred you.

( The Wen. Their burial grounds. Their nightmares, their deaths. How many traps and talismans did Wei Ying weave and string, alone, like beads added to his good-luck chain? For their glorious carnage during the Sunshot campaign? How many Wen yet died to forge him?

He smiles. Cleaved, sharp, it suits another mouth. Crests and breaks on his lips, like tidal waves. )

It cannot be you who passes. I forbid it. ( Hear him say it, and the choice might as well be his own. )

[weifinder]

( Dry, desert dry, the voice that answers: )

That would explain A-Yuan, wouldn't it?

( Because whatever forces sought to crush in him, what the world thought it would swallow, had only been true in the moment he watched his sister die. When the only unconditional love in his life had been stolen by the violent greed of their righteous leaders, when every restraint, every moment lived quiet and desperate and simple, had never, would never be enough.

Does he notice when his grip grows too tight, when flesh parts, when blood breeches, when the open air touches what should remain within and meets no difference, so hot, balmy, cloying the surrounding air? No, pain is not what registers. The heat of his husband's hand, the feral angles of his unwarranted smile, the edges creeping up his spine, and he turns into him, blood welling fat and fertile, dripping towards wards in a slow, steady inevitability.

Wraps his arms around his husband's violence, leaning in, inhaling for the joy of breathing, the cruelty of exhalations against skin. Speaks then, limpet even as blood traces and falls at his back, wood greedy and thirsting, chains tense with desire, by Lan Zhan's ear. )

Why is it you don't think to start with asking? Or do you like it, sounding so firm? Commanding? Expecting to be heard? Heeded?

( Penitent, in only the edges of his affection, in the ways he would rather pursue those lines electric through his frame than the grave paranoia, the anger, the despair that suffused the surrounding, broiling air. Sweat beads and falls and evaporates from the exposed expanse of his neck, and oh.

Oh, he acknowledges, he refuses, the fears now. Be equal, he asks with his own heat and forced proximity. Be equal in this too. )

[downswing]

( That would explain —

It is the heat, surely. Biting and stinging and raising goosebumps and blooming in his cheeks like fever. It must be so. He is well past the age of childish, naive pretences: a man does not awaken and present the moon of his gravid belly to the world. Baby Yuan was born of a mother's flesh, and the only question may have been if Wei Ying shared her bed.

Still. 'Breeding' is to be exorcised from his verbal repertoire with immediate effect.

But then, Wei Ying seeks him out like a thorned flower, thirsting for the latch. Shackling him, embracing him all over, a scent wet-metallic reeking off his body, prone. He understands, intrinsically, the game here: knows their purpose fleetingly matched. )

Why deceive with pretense of a lesser conviction?

( That which he wishes will become truth: he refuses an alternative reality. Observe: how he does not push, does not force, only walks into Wei Ying and nudges him, step by step, back and turned, ribs set for the unpleasantness of collision and grazing the door's shackles. Daring them, coaxing them out, as they writhe and start to fetter in a manner nearly organic. )

Shall I ask, first?

[weifinder]

( Backed like a recalcitrant horse, a mule, the Apple of his eye, and a stubbornness as familiar as breathing rears up, filling in the cracks as anger simmers, icing over, running cold. With the heat between them, within them, around them, copper limning the air.

His face angles in, nose nuzzled to temple, words low. The chains edge at his back, and he feels them, but the driving frustration is the man his limbs wrap around, the one as unapologetic as ever, as righteous, and irritatingly, not strictly wrong. Only Lan Zhan is new to nuance, is learning it still, and in the cauldron of the temple's bowels, in the false fixations of gods, dogs, fear driving creatures, fear driven creatures.

From mood, singing clanks of chains, all at his back, shifting under the press of Lan Zhan's bearing down.

One word, silk over steel: )

Kneel.

[downswing]

( A trifling thing for a man who takes to obedience like death to the noose, bound inexplicably.

Wei Ying intends it a humbling. Were they other men and this a better life, he might concede it so. Instead, under the cluttered roil of the room's heated rumble, his only inconvenience is extricating Wei Ying's limbs from around himself and watching the delicacy of his soulmate's flesh against the hard wakefulness of waiting stone, and knowing it'll scratch or bruise or bleed, and it must be done (again).

Kneel. Perfect composure would demand him stricken down, legs numbed. Instead, he takes the left knee, sinks it down, and holds position, watchful and patient as he accepts Wei Ying's governance from below —

...and politely snaps a lesser, downed door chain around Wei Ying's ankle, appreciative of the access. Thank you. And the second ankle, Next. )

[weifinder]

Oh.

( The jerk, the shiver, and his dark eyes staring down at Lan Zhan, kneeling, restraining. He laughs then, and it's low, then rolling, rising into a thunderous sound swallowed by the creaking of the door he's now attached to, swinging.

His eyes close, and he laughs, chin tucked in. Oh. )

I'll remember, Lan Zhan.

( Eyes slitting open, dewy from the laughter, or the heat, or anything else. The smile then more teeth than good humour, let alone good will, but the questing he does with what energies he pulls prod and poke and thwart at the compulsion, riding stronger: the weight of this place, the weight of mountains, that keeps him as bound as...

Ah. )

Just as it should, for whoever bound it there. Happy hunting.

( And he lifts his head, lets it thunk back against chains and rotting wood, the scent of copper swirling strong, the words blocked by his torso greedy as they consume the gift he'd unwittingly given, as his husband kneels, as his husband wills into something else.

No trust, he supposes. The door hinges, and beyond, the chamber awaits what he cannot properly see. )

[downswing]

( You will. A simple benediction, certainty like spumes when a wave's broken and the sea reshapes itself. Everything is ephemeral, only Wei Ying's righteous grudge will remain. Strong and deep like his bones' marrow, the red metal of his mouth.

He thinks, for good luck, to kiss him. Thinks, too, there are wives who send their men to war, eyes half clawed off. The feverish current of the room's attraction nearly pulls him to the shore. He feels — anger, simmered, boiling. At himself, for rotting the foundation of their trust with — sacrifice. At Wei Ying, for words yet unspoken, yet anticipated, for accusations that Lan Wangji does not trust, and it is one rule for him, and another for Wei Ying, and where is the justice in this marriage?

...where was the justice at Nightless City, Wei Ying sundered down?

He rises, first. Rises alone. Wei Ying's ankles bound as loosely as the shackles will allow, Lan Wangji's mouth pressed to one knee in passing. There, there. Step on his spine, next. Curve in his back, make of it a sickle. Protecting the gravid, swelling aches of his overly protective care. If he survives, he'll deserve it.

In passing — happy hunting — only a trinket of qi and the great, groaned gasp of the room, shivered from any demonstration of power, however withered, however faint. It is a whim and a waste and a child's plaything: he fashions a news-bearing butterfly in Lan-moonlight and leaves it to fret and fly and keep Wei Ying company in Lan Wangji's absence.

And, like every coward, he flees the room, gaze downed. )

[weifinder]

( He's never had the patience for binding. He's borne up under it, regardless; no choice behind the action, and when chosen, especially. Now he waits, and it is the turning of his intellect and curiosity toward anything but Lan Zhan's kiss at his knee, the fluttering of moth-like butterfly, his own fingers twitching, calling upon a finger flick seal of qi that sends his barrier breaking streaks of beautiful, twinkling red dashing forward. Not toward the room swallowing his husband, but oh he listens, he listens for anything so failing to think it might consume, listens as his eyes watch red surround the not-quite white, the cascade of them flying about the room, twitching the bound presence and its oppositioned twin into gurgles of awareness.

Nothing much more.

Nothing much won.

Everything, however, sliding toward the cliff's edge of loss. A battle waged, and he tugs at his bindings, tugs harder, bleeds without the consideration of the pain that accompanies it. Methodical, and oh, when he manages it, one freed hand, he lets his own lacerations drip down to fingertips, begins writing out his own escape in the sort of qi that sends the world around them thrumming with hunger, the paranoia reaching higher notes, dipping lower. Mine.

The second shackle falls, but the barrier he senses, the opposition of his self to whatever room continues to lurk behind him lessens not at all. One stronger bewitching, and this mockery of binding that he methodically breaks through, even as he starts to hum. Starts to whistle. Considers, idly, if he might sing. )

[downswing]

( He does not linger.

The truth, such as he did not — should have considered: the maws of the room snap shut and grind him, and its teeth are blunt and numerous and strong, and the energies of the Chained God's halls churn him. He is a dust mote, irreverently absorbed, carefully digested.

The god yet rests in his presence, rejects the swirling tempest of his frustrating frailty, how he presents a spark of hope in the chasm of its dormant, all consuming, destructive power. He emerges — eaten, stained, immersed. Chewed out. Spat back, energies entirely drained and corrupted, weight of him as if the flesh of his back wishes to melt and only scars linger.

He feels dragged, and dragging himself. Limbs torn, ligaments strained. Walking, mouth far too dry, ripped and bloodied. His thoughts have stilled.

In the corridor, where air is no longer a punched force and sugar-spun thick, he breathes. And breathes.

And does not, cannot rush for Wei Ying, but simply — accepting somehow the blood-let miracle of him — crawls toward the rasped, clawed sound of his hums and drags a hand onto his shoulder, anchors on him. The full weight of him now is kitten-like, strained. )

Have your say home. ( Only, get him there. )

[weifinder]

( The rest fall away before the weight of a hand on his shoulder, the fingers curled in, the collapse of Lan Zhan in the degrees that Wei Wuxian has so often visited himself. The core of him, that which has nothing to do with the cultivation their culture has venerated, aches to see him so; if the anger were not cold in his veins, the concern would more easily rise to surface.

It is fettered, now, as he had been. Still, his arm circles his husband's waist, drawing lines of red against blue and white, beautiful collapse they'd both make into the craven restlessness of the floor.

Yet it bears them on, and Wei Wuxian pulls his tumbled, chewed, god-bitten husband close, and says only what he means, stripped of the charismatic caring that defines his steps through the world. )

It's you, my brother, and Qing-jie who delight in I told you sos.

( Before he is the unflinching resistance that brings them upward, birthed out of the darkness in their bleeding sacrifice and venerated in the drops of life they leave scattered behind them, the exhaustion that he refuses to show, the strength he refuses to give up in its pretense. Not for each stumble, not for the thirst that trembles within him, not for the concern that blooms like a midnight flower in the wake of their exit, not the certainty of his own skills, not the qi he sends, for once, into Lan Zhan on their way home, to any place that is not here. No, not with his targeted questing, coaxing to slowing and stopping any lingering bleeds, singing to the body in the way he largely hasn't tried for any since Alem, and two men are tired and bloodied and sweaty and weary at the edge of the rooms he keeps near the senator's estate he pays ceremonial guard at whim, and it is to the privacy of a small offshoot of the bathing rooms that he brings them, waters cool, the offense in their nature to not be cold enough, not be hot enough, not be enough.

Good enough for bathing, and for in the dripping exhaustion that follows, the lullaby that leaves his lips, a song to send Lan Zhan asleep, before Wei Wuxian goes tumbling after, curled up by his side, destined for the pained awakenings of cricked necks and poor sleeping posture.

A problem for later. For now, the city feeding the death of a god rumbles around them in the mixture of living and dead, and they drift onward into the darkness that lurks beyond dreams. )