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

[whitecloak]

A shove that was entirely expected, for his impulse had been a knowing gamble, something he wasn't entirely sure she would accept, especially coming from someone like him. Dishonorable and tarnished, a man who has said cruel things he's only half sorry for to her face for no other reason than to rattle the invisible bars of the cage she had put around him in the soggy landscape she dragged him through (and to hear the sound of his own voice when silence had been a constant, unwanted companion). He's been awful to her and sent her on a quest that he wasn't sure was capable of being completed and yes, she betrayed him and nearly lead him to his death and let that monstrous version of Catelyn Stark continue to take haggard, rasping breaths— But this is not the sort of penance he would ever ask of her.

Ever ask of anyone.

Jaime is craven and cruel, but he isn't vile. He isn't Aerys or Robert or any of the other loathsome, reprehensible men whose throats he would gladly slit (again).

So it's an apologetic look with which he regards her with when she balks at him, repentant words on the tip of his tongue to excuse his behavior that he's unable to get out as she returns her mouth to his own and he cannot help the sound he makes against her lips as she does.

[wenche]

He is not vile, no. For all her fears and betrayal, Brienne had begged her lady to see that Jaime is not the man he was. He would not harm her, not with intent.

She is careful, and not practiced. Perhaps it is too much grace given to call this kissing. But despite her size and the way her hand fists into his curls, Brienne is a gentle young woman.

He does need to shave, though. The soft curl of facial hair abrades the tender flesh that is still sore around her mouth, makes her gasp— but she only presses further against him instead of pulling away. And, oh isn't that a new feeling?

The bramble gives her a little slack, which she only uses to rest her hand against his chest.

[whitecloak]

The honorable thing to do would be to draw away from her mouth and do what he can to disentangle them from the vines, but the bramble is all but forgotten as Jaime rises up on the balls of his feet to kiss her more soundly, deeply the moment he's able to move without threat of the thorns scraping against his skin. Her gasp is punctuated by the press of Jaime's mouth and tongue, and a pleased rumble-like noise in his throat.

She could so easily break him in half and yet, she's being so gentle with him. As if he's a person who ought to be treated with care and consideration instead of the violence he so often inspires. He's not sure which he yearns for more with her, fighting or fucking, but he if it's the former she chooses once she comes to her senses, he'll be delighted all the same.

[wenche]

The sound in his throat strikes against her ears abruptly, because she knows what his pain sounds like. Because surely it means he has come to his senses. But Jaime does not himself draw away; her mind cannot process it as he presses closer even as her body welcomes his own.

"Jaime," she sighs— worry, laced with desire. He has freed her, and it is terrible. Whatever he has done, the bramble unravels and lets her slip from its thorns, and something else within her has unlocked too. The slip-slide of his tongue, the abrading heat of his beard, the sound in his throat, these are not the things she should know of his body. Yet she wants. She wants, and wants, and—

She takes, for just a little longer. Just one more kiss. Just one...

[whitecloak]

"Brienne," is his response, breathed against her lips huskily, voice thick with desire.

The knight is oblivious to the retreating vines, the bramble having released them upon being paid its lord's dues, snaking his stumped arm about her waist in a bid to pull her closer. They've been pressed together tighter than this before with fewer layers than they don now, yet this feels far more intimate than any of the experiences they've shared up until this point. Intimate in a way that intimacy with Brienne had yet to be defined in his mine, even if a part of himself he refused to let out of the corner he'd shoved it into had desired it for quite some time.

Jaime carries on with the kiss. The third kiss? A third more like a first, gentle and tender and drawn out. Sweet and soft in all the ways that those of their shared time would refuse to believe the Kingslayer to be.

[wenche]

The Briar Lord releases her into arms which have held her before, but never so tenderly. She's had that dream before, yet where stood the Briar Lord it was her own lord father who passed her to Jaime's hand, and helped him with a beautiful crimson cloak.

Her own mind is a swirl of fuzzy confusion from the past fortnight. She has weathered an unending chaos through which Brienne could only hold fast and trust that her feet would face the right direction, pointed by her guilt and shame, and—

And he doesn't shove her away, and now she's done this thing she can't take back, and Jaime is kissing her so gently, and, and, and...

"They are gone," she says, whisper-quiet. Brienne frowns, and even through the mangled tissue that is half her face, she has the youthful look of a confused and fragile puppy. "You freed me."

[whitecloak]

Her words take a moment to register through the haze of comfortable contentment that had settled over him in the midsts of this sweet, sweet kiss. When they do, he draws back a little — enough that she'll be able to see the scrunch of his brows as his green eyes scan what he can view of her form without pulling away further and relinquishing his old on her.

"I did?" The bramble is no longer wound around them like the ropes Vargo Hoat and his men had used to keep him bound to her when he kept toppling from his horse in the midst of the illness that plagued him after they took his hand from him. "I did."

His surprise his genuine. Freeing her in that manner — had kissing been the solution? — had not been his intention. Yes, he would have done so had he suspected that to be the key to her release, but he had kissed her for purer, simpler reasons: because he wanted to.

Perhaps the mistletoe, since vanished, that had been hanging above their heads had pulled that desire to the forefront from where he kept it banished to the back of his mind, but that initial kiss had been pressed to her lips of the lion's own accord.

[wenche]

"He had said..."

She's practically speaking to herself; there were words she didn't understand, and had set aside with little thought. A tithe of affection. Yes, certainly Jaime inspired affection in her. A scant thing, there and gone in a breath: the corners of her mouth lift in a soft and gentle smile. It pulls at the torn tissue on the right side of her face, ugly and distorted but the affection reaches her gaze all the same, undeniable.

Her arms press a little more, firm and unyielding, to separate them more wholly. A respectable distance. Her head dips in a grateful bob, even as she now inspects their surroundings for more of the sinister and beautiful flowers.

"Thank you, Jaime."

[whitecloak]

A respectable distance that Jaime immediately disrupts by raising a hand to her ruined cheek. He brushes be backs of his fingers gently against the marred skin, green eyes bright as he lets himself bask in the obvious affection held for him in her bluer-than-blue blue eyes.

He's known. A part of him picked up on it some time ago, but hadn't allowed himself to ruminate on it. She was... too good. Everything he had wanted to be when he was sent to Crakehall to squire for Lord Sumner. A knight in all but name. A great an honorable knight, like the ones the singers still sang of. Someone undeserving of being chained to him in that way.

They were tethered enough as it is. He would be her damnation. Her ruin.

And yet, that affection is reflected back to her, open and unrestrained in this rare moment.

"You're welcome, my lady."

She cannot be his lady, however much a significant part of himself may want her to be for a myriad of reasons rooted in his own self-loathing and his besmirched reputation, but in this moment, he could (almost) be her knight in shining armor.

[wenche]

Brienne moves, shifting and turning before he can make contact with the ruin of her face.

"I had meant to retire," she says, awkwardly.

Before she saw the pretty flowers, and felt drawn to them. Before she smelled their sweet fragrance and was compelled to see how soft they were. Her eyes snatch around them again, uncertain, but there are none left to tempt her again. None left for her to bring along, and remember this by.

"I should go," she begs off, with a shallow bow. Before she upsets him; before she makes another disallowed choice; she legs it away to go faceplant into a mattress.

[whitecloak]

A bow that stings like a slap. He isn't her superior— did he give her that impression by tasking her with Queen Alicent's protection? Had he insulted her by kissing her, even if it had, apparently, led to her freedom from the vines? He has no opportunity to ask after either before she's off and gone, out of sight.

Jaime stands there, dumbly for a moment, before stomping a foot in irritation and stalking off to go check on his king and Prince Aemond.