we should totally just stab caesar

[groundrules]

Hi, everyone! Still a bit of The Channeling event to go ( til 18 November ), but a wild plotting post appears to transition us into the last phase of Arc VII.

Plotting for anything requiring mod feedback is open til a hard deadline of 23:59 GMT on 19 November. A summary of everything planned & approved follows on 20 November.

You can play out everything agreed here til 4 December — and will receive the setting and CR opportunities for your one-month cooldown event on 5 December. December is historically a crammed month, so expect a classically haunted winter wonderland and small-scale plot opportunities. An obscure teaser.

WHAT WE KNOW

Ephes struggles to decide on undead Lady Messalina’s request to receive the elite army of the Hand and vanquish the undead Brotherhood abroad. Senate leader Caius Justus calls to refuse Messalina and says the citadel’s divine patron, the apocalyptic Chained God, would want Ephes itself to conquer, without an intermediary.

It emerges that Caius Justus, who created the Hand, and cultishly devoted Hand leader Narula have been supernaturally enhancing recruits by feeding them ‘dark water,’ a sinister magical medium that always appears where the undead are, like the mysterious Matthias. Dark water is revealed to desperately want a shape, much like the Chained God once did. The black liquid has been slowly absorbing Ephes, reanimating corpses and trying to consume the Chained God — before Mo Ran killed him. RIP Chained God.

…meanwhile, a young boy claims his ‘friend’ Matthias must cut off parts of himself and leave them behind, to anchor the dark water on a premise. Matthias has been receiving sea shipments of grain infested with dark water from the Hand and Caius Justus. The child still wants his umbrella.

( grab your knife, gretchen )