𝔄 𝔐𝔦𝔡𝔴𝔦𝔫𝔱𝔢𝔯 𝔑𝔦𝔤𝔥𝔱'𝔰 𝔇𝔯𝔢𝔞𝔪𝔦𝔫𝔤 𑁍 [WINTER TDM]

[gorelord]

Welcome to the Test Drive!

The TDM is welcome to current players and anyone who wants to play in the setting and is encouraged to be used by prospective players. If you are interested in joining the game, you will need to obtain invite from the mod or through an existing member.

For information on the game premise, setting etc, please utilize the navigation pages below. Questions specific to the TDM prompts or the setting can go to the comment thread. Anything else relating to game mechanics can go in the FAQ.

Events in this TDM are considered game canon and occurs immediately after the Chapter II eclipse event between chapters II and III. Any threads in TDM are considered canon as long as both parties agree.

Please make sure to identify in your top levels as either current or new player/characters.

GAME PAGES

premise
setting
faq
rules
glossary

i.
rise:
A Dream's Beginning

(cw:nsfwl; ritual sex, mood altering substances )

It begins with a nightmare, the details of which have slipped through your fingers. Only the curling echo of its dread lingers in your chest. Something has snapped you out of a catatonic state: a gust of icy wind whistling through the crack of a window, the soft beating of drums under the melody of strings, the cold kiss of fat snowflakes catching on your eyelashes, the smell of spiced wine and evergreen.

A few things become clear: You are not where you were, and you are not alone.

Feast for Saints

Tonight is a night of celebration for the Lonely Fortress. The horrors have been set aside, replaced with the warm mirth and grace of being alive. Whether this is your first night in the Crucible or your fortieth, all are welcome to partake in this renewing fete under the silver light of a full buttery moon. Snow dances like flower petals in a lazy array, leaving a shallow blanket of white. The fire roars in the hearth of the Great Hall, spreading its warmth throughout its adjacent parlors. Despite murmurings of a recent catastrophic eclipse cleaving the castle twain, its halls and buildings show no sign of decay. The Egregore has been cleansed, balance has been restored. Spirits are high, people are at ease.

If you choose to partake, there are a few select locations where people have gathered to celebrate:

𑁍The Great Hall is open for feasting and dancing. The fortress stores have provided a wintertime feast of roasted meats & vegetables, pies, fresh and aged cheeses, dried fruits, candied nuts, and seeded cakes. The hall smells of spiced honey wine and mulled cider, both packed with a warm and buzzing inebriation that creeps on unexpectedly. A makeshift band of strings and drums plays lively music for people to dance to.

𑁍The Velvet Parlor is a smaller hall branched off of the main festivities for those looking for softer and more intimate comforts under the candlelight. Tonight, its guests pay tribute to celebrate the passion of life and to beckon the sun to rise in a ritualistic tangling of bodies. Here is the place to become a true eater of sin. All furniture has been nudged to line the walls, making way for a sea of cushions and pillows for celebrants to laze upon as they imbibe in strong, distilled spirits, as the air above them swirls with a sweet, toasty incense imbuing a mellow calm and stirs carnal appetites. A masked man plucks away a sultry tune on his lute in a corner as the night gradually gives way to passionate bodies tangled among the pillows.

𑁍The Courtyard brings a breath of fresh, brisk air as snow falls playfully overhead. Large braziers line the yard offer meager warmth from their roaring fires as exiles partake in snow fights and release wishing lanterns bearing your inner most desires into the sky. Steam rolls off the yard's central fountain, which has been fitted to disperse heated water to provide a makeshift heated pool, a perfect place to thaw chilly hands or feet (or just go all in if ye be bold enough.)

A Colder Path

If instead you choose to abstain, it becomes apparent every dream has its limits.

The castle beyond the festivities is cold, dim, and abandoned. Behind every door, a drab and empty room (if the handle isn't locked or broken). The keep's gates are closed, the sunken village beyond a frozen wasteland. The further one strays from the warmth and merriment, the colder and darker it becomes.

Isolation breeds madness, too much time spent away from others may lead to paranoia. Figures shift in the dark, a breath tickles the nape of your neck. You may see familiar faces, hear familiar voices, beckoning you to stray further from your path towards uncertain doom: a crooked nail sticking out of the floorboards, a hurried shove off the top of the stairs, a door that opens over the edge of a rocky cliff.

As determined as you may be, the only way out of this dream is through.

ii.
revel:
Trials of Merciful Holly

(cw:potential for dubcon/noncon, mood-altering.)

As the midwinter evening persists, a visitor long awaited comes knocking at the Great Hall's doors. A tall man emerges with a body molded out of braided wood, bearing thorn-tarnished armor and a tattered crimson cloak. With every step forward, thorned vines that stitch across the walls and floors, blooming with plum purple leaves and small budding flowers.

"The Briar Lord," one exile gasps. "Gregor's returned," another praises tearfully. With a bow, he treats the celebrants of the Lonely Fortress with the innocence of a festive game.

"O' eaters of sin, indulge me in this friendly Midwinter game. Ye have survived a harrowing and for that ye shall be rewarded for purging of thy wickedness. I ask thee this final offering to purge this winter and beget a new spring. Give me thy blood and affection with honor and I shall see this cold vanquished. What I am given, I will return what was given me. Then, in trust and friendship, we shall part."

Bats and Lashes

The Lord's game is a simple marital task held out in the frost covered garden: a duel of branches. Each competitor will be given handful of briar as their weapon. The aim of the game is to whip each other until the thorns of the briar's branches draw blood. The first to draw blood from the opponent is the victor and the blood price paid.

Yet, not all these branches are created equal. A fortunate competitor may be given a Bewitching Branch. Those whipped by this branch will become utterly obsessed and infatuated to whom they've been struck by for a short period of time after, beholden to their branch master until the sting of thorns wane.

Tithe of the Mistle

If you choose not to partake in the Lord's game, the Lord warns that his winter's briar will collect a tithing of affection. The vines that bloomed with his arrival grow rampant behind seeing eyes. Buds turn into flowers, petals shed as they mature into plump white mistle berries that release the sweetest scent to draw you in.

Either you have accidentally stumbled upon the mistle, or it has decidedly grown itself above you without your noticing, but you become bewitched by its scent. As the tricksy bramble coils around your ankles, giving the gentlest of biting from its thorns, it becomes clear that you will be consumed if you do not pay the mistle its tithing. For some, it only takes a kiss, for others, the mistle will demand more. Give it something meaningful. Give it something real, and you will be released.

iii.
respite:
Midwinter Mourning

All good dreams must come to an end. The following morning paints a different picture of the Lonely Fortress witnessed in the night's collective dreaming. The Crucible sits under a thick blanket of snow, the waters surrounding the keep have frozen solid. None of the warmth of the night remains; it feels as though the world has died. The whole of the Crucible feels cold, quiet, abandoned.

Every hearth has burned out, every brazier snuffed under the snow, every candle smothered. It's quiet, empty, dark. Daylight may have come, but a thick layer of storm clouds casts a foreboding shadow. If the desire remains to leave, it quickly becomes apparent there is nowhere else to go.

Warm Winter's Kiss

With luck, you have woken in a bed under a pile of old furs to keep some semblance of warmth with you. With even better luck, you've woken next to company to keep each other warm throughout a cruel cold morning. Without proper protection, the cold is biting against exposed skin. Joints and limbs become stiff and numb, making it difficult to move around without constant tending if one lacks gloves.

While hearths can be re-lit and heated baths can be drawn, the true comfort from freezing can only be found in the close company of other living creatures. Exiles on this cruel morning keep each other warm through sharing heated breaths and pressing bodies. Expressions of passion and compassion help the warmth to linger just a bit longer for those who cultivate it together, granting brief autonomy of movement before finding another's heat is needed again.

Breakfast is served, but it's nothing remotely glamorous to the feasting offered by the Midwinter dream: simple porridge that leaves a stale taste that coats the tongue, nuts and fruits that are half rancid, boiled wine that's been watered down to detract from how far along it's turned into vinegar. Its only promise is to fill an empty stomach until more food can be found.

Outside, the snow begins to fall again. An omen that this winter is here to stay. Welcome to the real Martyr's Crucible.

Comments

A COLDER PATH.

[sapphyre]

[ Cersei? Who's chasing phantoms now?

Something is off, but Aemond can't place his finger on it. A feeling that haunts him throughout the night. He was one to appear overly cheerful at parties, so his nonparticipation in yet another goes unnoticed. What goes on like an ache in his gut, uneasy as if he were blind to something much more important.

Consider him more alert in the moment. To see Jaime a whole courtyard away one moment and gone the next draws him too away. Thirsting to find the source of this nonsense. Hell, one moment, the searing pain, now a winter's ball. People are fighting in the snow. Someone in his periphery gets pegged with a snowball in the place where a scorched pyre, and he in a puddle of his own blood. ]

Ser Jaime. [ Aemond's breath puffs softly before him with what dim light graces them. It's much colder here in the dark, far away from the warmth of the braziers. There is something rotten about this night. Is this where he finds the right stone to overturn? What is he chasing? ] What is it?

[whitecloak]

[ there's a distinct shift in the kinsguard, a shade of himself that so few people have seen that he could count them on his remaining hand and still have fingers to spare. he stands in the archway, peering into the shadows as if expecting someone to emerge from them. some logical part of him knows she can't be here, but the sudden influx of unfamiliar exiles and the lure laced into the breeze that stirs the golden curls at his shoulders that he expects to see mirrored in the darkness have him believing, inexplicably, in the possibility.

it can't be.

...and yet, it could be. ]

I thought— [ you great golden fool her voice singsongs on the wind, but it could have just been the wind. or so he tells himself. he doesn't have to tell aemond the truth, a lifetime of lies spun around his other half makes speaking falsely in regards to her an easy reflex, but he does. for reasons he does not have the wherewithal to examine in this moment. ] I thought I saw my sister.

[sapphyre]

[ Aemond's eye hones in, attempting to make sense of shapes morphing around in the void. There is nothing there awaiting that is any more promising to Jaime than it had to Aemond. Yet something remains off center; his mind's eye wants to uproot every dark corner for it. Idle fingers tighten across the pommel of his sword, stilling as his attention returns to Jaime. It's the first he's seen him look so..well, beside himself. ]

Cersei. [ He repeats. The name he'd heard echoing back at him as he pursued the knight in the darkness. They must have been close. Could that be the twin he mentioned? What are the odds that another of their realm enters their midst?

What is it that Aemond had needed to hear?]

She's not here.

[whitecloak]

I don't want her here, [ he breathes without hesitation; truthfully and in a strained sort of way that's laced with equal parts sadness and anger with hints of something akin to longing.

his hand flexes at his side, fist clenching and unclenching, as if he can't quite make up his mind on whether or not to reach for his own sword. could he strike down a phantom wearing his sweet sister's features? he burned her letter, refused to flee the riverlands and ride to her aid... but didn't that mean he wanted her to die and he cannot say whether or not he could stomach even seeing an effigy of her brought down by the sharpened edge of his blade.

what they had was tarnished beyond repair, forever marred by distance and the difference in the choices they'd made for themselves as individuals instead of two halves of the same whole— but he had treasured it once. loved her more than anyone else. she had been his light in the darkness when the world turned against him, when they celebrated the death of the mad king and condemned him for being the one to bring about his end in the same breath. there was a time when he would have given anything to have taken her and the children and fled for some far off place where they could be together without fear of persecution, but that time has passed.

and he does not want her here. ]

[sapphyre]

[ It's not so strange a cadence to hear when Aemond already feels so similarly about his own sister. The prince already had two of those he cared for most haunting him here, Helaena would be the final tricksy blade that strikes him the deepest. Who, even though she had spoken of his ill fate, deserved none of the madness this place has to offer. He is thankful she's not here and he would rue the spirit of vengeance he'd become if she did.

Aemond sinks a step closer to Jaime, and then another. Each one treads lightly until he can get a better measure of the state the other man is in. ]

There are few deserving of this place. [ Daemon for example. His traitorous wife second. Jacaerys, for all his worth in Aemond's book of wrongdoings, is more of a convenience to him here than a punishment to his snotty nephew. He knows nothing of Jaime's twin. Jaime's reaction tells him that it is by design.

He reminds him again. ] The phantoms trick us all.

[whitecloak]

Cersei is deserving, [ he declares without hesitation, venom and something else — hurt? — in his voice that he can't quite withhold. and in this moment? he doesn't care about withholding, for whatever reason. ] Deserving as she may be, I do not want her here.

[ she would latch on to him immediately. croon sweet nothings in his ear. remind him of all their past times together, of the night she dressed as a servant to sneak out from the maidenvault to rendezvous with him on a street whose name she always got wrong when trying to use it to manipulate him. she would try and crawl back into his bed after having warmed several others. he didn't want her there, either. what was... it was no more. and he no longer knew her like he used to.

with an almost leonine snarl, jaime turns away, sneering unhappily and reaches for aemond's arm in a bid to tug him away from his twin's phantom, lest cersei poison him, too. ]

[sapphyre]

[ Loathing and longing, the prince knows those too. He stares his mistake in the face; he could not outrun him like Jaime's phantom. Aegon, whole and witless before his unceremonious dethroning. No evidence of the prince's revenge. The brother whom he's entangled himself with twice since their arrival to this place, both a strange and intoxicating circumstance that's rendered both as far away from the other as possible.

Aemond's hand claps firmly along Jaime's arm. There's no desire to stay, only the desire not to be dragged around. It doesn't let him go; if anything, it reels him back to look him in the eye. ]

You are beside yourself. [ Check yourself. He sounds like his mother, but perhaps there's meaning in there that's not all callousness. After all, he cannot lose Jaime to the Crucible's madness any more than Jaime can. ]

[whitecloak]

[ the kingslayer can't afford to lose sense of himself, either. between the pull of darkness threatening to wrap itself around him like a comforting blanket he did not ask for and the sound of cersei's bell-like voice ringing in his ears, the urge to stop and turn back is alarmingly powerful. and he nearly almost does—

but then aemond meets his eyes and speaks. jaime pushes aemond back instead of pulling away; a firm press of his stumped arm against his chest, back and back until he's pressed against the nearest wall and the knight's mouth has dropped to his. a greedy kiss, part hunger and part desperation, aemond's lips an anchor to reality against the lure of illusion. ]

[sapphyre]

[ That isn't— for a split moment, Aemond isn't sure where Jaime's hysteria was taking him. The prince's body stiffens instinctively, hackles rising before the cold flat of the wall catches his back. The back of his wrist knocks against Jaime's chest and stays there while he's engulfed by this kiss. Stymied by the fact that the prince isn't accustomed to being shoved around like this by anyone other than his peers.

It would be a lie to say it doesn't ignite something in him, ushering in a heat that cuts through the murkiness of the dream. The movement of his mouth catches at a delay, absorbing Jaime's hungered kisses rather than returning them with the full heat of his own. An unpleasant revolt worms underneath the surface, ignored for now...how uncomfortable it makes him.

Only a moment succumbing until the prince regains grasp of his wits again. He shoves Jaime back, palm turning flat against the center weight of his chest. A breath shudders as he takes quick measure of the lion's state before slapping him across the face.]

You are hysterical, [ he huffs as he wipes the wetness from his bottom lip. ] She isn't fucking here!

[whitecloak]

[ the force of aemond's slap simultaneously snaps him out of the daze he'd been in and brings forth a memory, unbidden—

a woman, practically jaime's mirror image, slaps him hard across the cheek. it stings, and though he'd instinctively lifted his arm quickly enough to catch her hand, he could not do so with a hand that was no longer there. still, he holds the stumped appendage up between them, as if in warning.

"your father lies here dead," an unseen voice from somewhere close by scolds. "have the decency to take your quarrel outside."

"forgive us, uncle," jaime says, "my sister is sick with grief. she forgets herself."

cersei glares at him viciously, but says no more.

jaime lifts his hand to his cheek, touching his fingers to the smarting flesh, green eyes fixing on aemond. ]

My prince? [ he asks, forgetting and then— ah, remembering. he feels foolish and ashamed for getting swept up in whatever the hell that was and for seeking unwelcomed solace for having glimpsed his sister's ghost.

his head dips in penance, ] I seem to have momentarily forgotten myself. That was unworthy of me. My deepest apologies, your grace.

[sapphyre]

[ That's a first. Aemond stands stunned as though he'd been slapped himself, trying to process what he'd seen. He blink, eye refocusing on the man before him before the warmth of irritation sets back into the sharp edges of the prince's features. More deflated than before, but not remorseful for having done it.

Aemond exhales softly staring at Jaime's bowed head without a clue what to do with him. Anyone else, he'd walk away from, for the pity he would not have to spare. Jaime, on the other hand. The prince looks briefly at his hand, focusing on the fading thrum of skin on skin contact, then drops it to his side. ]

Come. Take leave from this darkness. [ There's no more anger, only gentle exasperation. He moves past Jaime with a much gentler cap of a hand on the knight's shoulder. The prince's long fingers the last to slip away as he continues on. Back towards where the light still reaches the hall. ]

[whitecloak]

[ wordlessly, jaime stands and follows obediently in his wake. out of the darkness and away from cersei (once more). ]