![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
the lighthouse & plot rolls
Did someone say to… turn off the lights? Brace to explore Ellethia’s ghostly lighthouse — and help with a freshly baked plot roll. The below should tide us until 6 February.
If you’ve received a plot roll and want to rally the troops for assistance, feel free to top level for your search here, or do your own lostcompass post, hunt down a carrier pigeon…
Note: Ellethia is surprisingly fertile ground for plot opportunities, and there is "spare plot" for about four more character. If you missed the 'deadline' to ask for a roll but still want one, drop a line in one of the subsections! But don't feel pressured: the people who have received a plot roll will need a lot of support, and there're plenty of ways to get involved with their roll. Allocated, thank you!
Crawling, clandestine or crumbling, you’ve made your way to the mist-drenched lighthouse of Ellethia-Hamsour — a gargantuan, converted tower that regularly flashes an eerie green light signal. Those who know MORSE code can recognise a strange mix of BEWARE, STAY AWAY, DANGER — and COME THIS WAY.
The compulsion to possess the lighthouse disappears when characters come in a 3km radius of it. In the tower surroundings, they can find sweet water wells, vegetable gardens, chicken coops and sheep, all seemingly well looked after and self-replenishing overnight. These plants and creatures are not subject to Ellethia’s life-death-rebirth cycles. Characters who stay within the aforementioned 3km range of the lighthouse can now safely remove their haute couture red gear, Enam reveals. He urges the party to reside at the lighthouse for the next three weeks, at the end of which one of the Merchant’s ships will collect them to travel east.
Characters can journey back and forth to Ellethia-Allayar over this period.
The tower spreads over 12 floors, featuring exceptionally high and vast rooms with emptied bookcases, sturdy tables, and scatterings of technological tools on the ground. On the walls, mindful visitors can spot discreet engravings of an eye with a sun instead of a pupil. A room on the ground and first floor each have cracked signs, spelling out IN TI T OF TE N LO and IBRAR O AR S, respectively. The 8th and 9th floor house well-used sleeping quarters, with bathing rooms located on the 6th floor. The 10th floor is all one large room, barren except for the wealth of very thin, crushed shards of various mirror types. The 5th floor hosts several long, ornate discussion tables — at night, those who travel it can hear ghostly whispers of vitriolic conversation, with speakers insulting each other and their impudence.
Those who spend time in the 1st to 4th floor past midnight will sometimes hear screams urging everyone to retreat, as “they come from above.” Sometimes, the long staircases will grow wet overnight with blood and decay, which disappear come morning. Across the various floors, the nightly ‘soundtrack’ includes panicked shouts, glass smashing, feral screams similar to those of the undead and running steps.
The lighthouse keeper Zenobius takes little notice of his visitors, allowing them to make their quarters where they please and partake of his resources. Enam’s helpers supply Kaneki some lugged-around stale dead meat, or he can fish undead mermaids. Using a fluffy sheep as bait is always recommended.
Zenobius is often found on the 12th level, absentmindedly using mirrors, lantern lights and glass panes to flash MORSE indications. He is often rushed, distracted and unwilling to converse. Sometimes, he appears to forget the people he has already encountered; on other occasions, his own name eludes him.
Swarms of mermaids encircle the coastal area close to the lighthouse, furious, feral and trashing to crawl onto shore. Every few days, Zenobius brings broken glass pieces from the 12th floor and throws them in the water, briefly appeasing the creatures before their fury stokes once more.
Every day, Zenobius spends several hours on the 11th floor, whose main entrance is sternly locked and enchanted. Characters can still climb to the 12th floor — where Zenobius sleeps — without entering the 11th floor hallways. To the right of the 11th floor main hallway door is a mechanical device that requires a palm print, which Zenobius seems uses for entry. On the door, a sign asks, WHAT DO YOU WISH FOR? Scratched beneath it, possibly by human nails, TURN BACK. For each time they want to enter the 11th floor halls, characters must speak a different wish and face the consequences.
Inside the room sleep 10 men and women of various ages, seemingly comatose on stone slates. Some show signs of scratches or healed bite injury. Depending on the hour of entry, you might find Zenobius sponge washing their bodies, combing their hair, mending their clothes or massaging their limbs.
The Sleepers live.
PLOT ROLLS
- ■ Lily, Joker and Anduin
■ Five and Daenerys
■ Yennefer, Eleven and Moiraine
■ Lorna, Wrench and Marcos
■ Zuko and Slick
■ John Connor and Kaneki
■ Hermione and Jon Snow
YENNEFER, ELEVEN AND MOIRAINE
Around late 27 January, Yennefer, Eleven and Moiraine are approached by a bright, if wild-eyed Zenobius, who appears in a rare state cohesion. He says they want their yearly ablutions, pointing to the large wooden baths he is struggling to carry, alongside salts, incense and other bathing instruments. He requests help with the proceedings, and lures the trio up to the 11th floor, where he offers his palm to the mechanical device and gains entry to the great Sleepers’ hall. He takes the three within.
There, Zenobius begins to reverently toil around each of the Sleepers. With the trio’s help, he lifts and deposits some of the Sleepers in the tubs and shows them how to carry out the washing, murmuring to the Sleepers that they are too stubborn, hasty and proud.
As they attend the bathing, each member of the trio will be suddenly grasped by a Sleeper and will succumb into an immediate sleep. They become spectators of what appears to be the memory-dreams of several Sleepers — flashed, violent glimpses, often incoherent.
They can witness as follows:
■ Eleven: memory 1: feet, rushing down the stairwell, to an explosion of violence behind the viewer, just as he slips down; struck, he turns his head to see undead pursuers and scrambles up; memory 2: a hidden viewer peers through a cracked door into the discussion hall, where two other Sleepers gift a third man a white, better decorated version of their grey uniform coats; he hesitates to accept it, until one of the Sleepers says, ‘He resigned. Take us to the new era.’
■ Moiraine: memory 1: eight of the Sleepers and the viewer laugh as a man sheepishly reveals his dreadful haircut — screams erupt from higher up, and a woman running down the stairs tells the group to flee; memory 2: the viewer nudges a young man forward in the queue of at least half a dozen others, who are lined up to speak to a vast, dark mirror on the 10th floor. The young man nearest to the mirror excitedly murmurs something. Moments later, he bursts into a howling fit of panic at whatever he sees within.
■ Communally (the trio members can see each other as present in the dream memory, but cannot be seen by anyone else in the memory): memory 1: a very large group, including nine of the Sleepers and a more upbeat Zenobius, celebrates with drink in the Sleeper’s hall; the bright light peering in suggests the time is late morning or midday; memory 2: the same hall, its celebratory ornaments tattered, and the hour late evening; the viewer sees a woman’s hands, cut on the large piece of mirror glass she is still holding; ahead of her, nine Sleepers appear battered, anxious but resigned.
The trio can awaken by either:
■ Throwing themselves off of the dream-tower’s balconies — note that they would never die, but jolt awake. The compulsion to fling oneself from the tower starts to grow, the longer they spend in the dream.
Each of our fine adventurers wakes somehow knowing:
■ Eleven: The Sleepers relieve their memories each night, to endless suffering.
■ Moiraine: The Sleepers beg to die.
Zenobius has already fled the halls, by the time the triad wakes. He has completely forgotten the episode, if he is asked about it later.
Yennefer, Eleven and Moiraine wake with a dark, gunmetal silver mark not unlike an ache-less burn print on their limbs, in the shape of the hand of the Sleeper who touched them. The mark remains until they leave Ellethia.
Note: once Moiraine, Eleven and Yennefer leave the 11th floor hall, they need to speak a wish to get back in, just as everyone else. Please try to share the dream memory info with the broader group.
( You can, of course, coerce someone else to help with the bloody cause. )
no subject
.... you know, if she decides to do something like that.
no subject
Just.
Turn Eleven around during it or something.
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
Since there's always a chance one of the three might... try to do that pesky honourable thing where they try to fight others for Life [TM] — if you guys can all let me know how you feel, or give me a collective position, appreciated!
no subject
no subject
no subject
This has a rather big bearing on the entire Ellethia plotline, so you'll get your consequence in early Feb :)
Good luck killing.
( P.S: folks, I need this threaded in some way. )