undergrounds | The Night Tournament!

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The time has come. Sixteen competitors have been chosen to represent their species. Over the next three weeks, they will use all their power and all their skill in a quest for the ultimate glory: to be crowned Night Champion.

It's time to play in the Night Tournament.

Week 1: Single Combat
Between 7th and 12th August the competitors will take part in a single combat game with knockout rounds to determine the winner. Here is the final bracket for the first round:

The venue is the Redbright Institute Training Arena in the basement of the school. Think of it as a cage match: the two combatants enter the arena which is magically sealed so that neither can leave. They are not allowed to take in any weapons. In the arena they will find three items: a wooden chair, a tennis ball and a skipping rope. Do with these as you will.

The crowd are packed in around the edges of the arena, cheering and whooping and generally creating a good atmosphere. The three adjudicators, Sylvia Redbright, Alexandrie Belrose and Yasmine Merad are seated at a judging panel with an excellent view of the arena. They will declare when the match is over.

The only rules are the conditions for victory. The match is over when:

• One of the combatants is killed. (Yes, killed.)
• One of the combatants is knocked out.
• One of the combatants is incapacitated for a minimum of 10 seconds.

A protection spell is cast on each of the combatants before they enter the arena which will bring them back to life if they die. Healer witches and meta human medics are on hand to provide aid after each match. The fights are expected to be brutal, and the crowd will be baying for blood. Better give them what they want, eh?

Week 2: Mystery Room
Between 14th and 19th August the competitors will play a mystery room game that requires them to work together to escape. The game again takes place in the Redbright Institute Training Arena, which has been modified into a set of four rooms that competitors must escape from. There's also raised seating in the arena for the audience to watch the events on a large screen, as all the rooms have cameras in them so you can enjoy the show.

Mystery Room Results
1) Desmond Miles and Evie Frye (13 min 42 seconds)
2) Eames and Lydia Bennet (20 min 56 seconds)
3) Fun Ghoul and Roddy Geiger (21 min 14 seconds)
4) Cole and James Flint (23 min 25 seconds)
5) Mogget and Lancelot (24 min 05 seconds)
6) Maximina Choi and Micheletto Corella (26 min 18 seconds)
7) Matt Murdock and Olin Stacey (26 min 48 seconds)
8) Ban Sidhe (3 min 10 seconds) and Joe 'the Bear' Orsini (DNF)

Room 1: The Dungeon
Room 1 is an old-fashioned dungeon lit by a pair of oil lamps hanging in brackets on either side of the door. You begin with one of you locked inside a large wooden cage and the other outside the cage. The person inside the cage is handcuffed to the bars. (NB. The tournament organisers will always choose the physically weakest character to lock inside the cage, unless of course you're a ghost in which case your partner will be the one inside the cage. The handcuffs and the cage itself are not that hard to break; if your strength is 3 or above you can break them no problem.)

The key to unlock the cage is inside the cage itself, half-hidden in the straw, but it's pretty much in the middle of the floor and therefore should be out of reach both for the person handcuffed to the bars and the person who can walk around outside the cage.

The key to unlock the handcuffs can be found beneath a metal grate outside the cell. The metal grate is stuck so you will have to stick your hand between the bars to reach the key.

Finally, once you're both out and free to walk around the room, you may notice the imprint of two sets of footprints on the floor facing the door. All you have to do is stand on each of the footprints (i.e. one person stands in the correct spot to the left, one person stands in the correct spot to the right) and the door will automatically unlock.

Room 2: The Study
Room 2 is a study which contains a desk, three chairs, several bookshelves, a standing globe of the world, a grandfather clock, a small mirror, three wooden chests, and several oil paintings on both the walls and the desk. If you search the chests, you'll find a lot of random junk but also a couple of flashlights which may come in handy. The desk itself is crammed with random antique instruments and books, several of which seem to have migrated to the floor. There's a lot to take in but if the first thing you look for is the exit, you'll see it straight ahead of you: a heavy door with a combination padlock. You'll need to enter the correct four-digit passcode to open it.

One of the books on the desk is called The Mystery Room. Opening it will reveal a scroll which reads as follows:

Count only that on display.

Fruit - Horses - Shoes - Goblins

None of these are items in the room. But they are items depicted in the paintings. Counting the numbers of each represented in the paintings will reveal the correct passcode.

Room 3: The Dark Room
Room 3 is utterly pitch black. If you haven't found them already, you might want to go back to grab those flashlights. Once you've managed to shed some light on the place, you'll see the room is almost empty except for four large wooden blocks in each corner. These are wide enough to stand on, but different heights: two feet, three feet, four feet and five feet. They're sturdy, but can be dragged around anywhere in the room or even stacked on top of each other.

Meanwhile, there's a locked door leading to the next room, but no key in this room.

What you need to do is look up. This is a room with a high ceiling. There's a ventilation shaft high up on the wall, and the grating covering it is loose and can easily be removed. It's 10 feet up though so you'll probably need to move those blocks around to reach it. Once you've reached it you'll realise it's a very tight fit: just about possible for a relatively small woman to squeeze through, but a large or heavyset man would get stuck.

Crawling through the ventilation shaft will lead you through to the next room, which is...

Room 4: The Sacrificial Chamber
This is a room that appears to have been inspired by black and white horror movies. It's a stone chamber artfully decorated with ripped curtains, stone pillars and a creepy sarcophagus right in the centre. On top of the sarcophagus is the key to Room 3: that's easy enough.

But there's no other exit. Or at least, there doesn't appear to be. The final door out is hidden by a low level illusion spell which can only be detected by those with magic power of 3 or above.

There's writing on the lid of the sarcophagus, but it's indecipherable. In fact, it's mirror writing, so you will need to go back to Room 2 and pick up the mirror in order to read it. Once you've done that, you can read the following:

To reveal the way, a sacrifice must be made. To open the door, wield the bloody blade.

This sounds ominous, so enjoy debating what it means, especially if you open the lid of the sarcophagus and find the skeleton holding a dagger clasped to its chest. In actual fact all it means is that the tip of the blade must be dipped in blood. Once blood is drawn by the dagger, the illusion spell disguising the door will break and you'll be able to see the shape of the door revealed as part of the stone wall, plus the depression in the wall that is clearly meant to fit the dagger. Place the dagger in its rightful place and the door will open.

You've made it. You escaped the Mystery Room.

Rules:
• Do not attempt to destroy the walls of the rooms in order to escape. If you do this you will be disqualified.
• You must go through one room to the next in the correct sequence. If you simply teleport or phase outside you will be disqualified.
• You have one hour to escape the rooms. Your final ranking will be determined by how many of you escaped (both escaping ranks higher than one) and how long it took you to escape.

Week 3: The Race
The final event is a simple one: get from point A to point B faster than anyone else to win the game. The starting point is the Redbright Institute in Hanwell, Ealing. The finish line is in Danson Park in Bexley, which is approximately 25 miles away (around 1 hour 15 min by car). Here's the route.

Race Results
1) Mogget (55 min 18 seconds)
2) Evie Frye (1 hour 35 min 30 seconds)
3) Fun Ghoul (1 hour 49 min 55 seconds)
4) Roddy Geiger (1 hour 51 min 15 seconds)
5) Matt Murdock (1 hour 55 min 12 seconds)
6) Eames (1 hour 59 min 13 seconds) (+ Basket of Kittens)
7) Lydia Bennet (2 hours 1 min 19 seconds)
8) James Flint (2 hours 13 min 41 seconds)
9) Desmond Miles (2 hours 14 min 49 seconds)
10) Joe 'the Bear' Orsini (2 hours 18 min 29 seconds)
11) Micheletto Corella (2 hours 35 min 11 seconds) (+ Balloons)
12) Maximina Choi (2 hours 39 min 14 seconds)
13) Olin Stacey (2 hours 45 min 32 seconds)
14) Lancelot (4 hours 14 min 20 seconds) (+ Sculpture)
15) Cole (DNF)
16) Ban Sidhe (DNF)

The race takes place on 23rd August, starting at 8.30pm. Competitors don't know where the end point of the race is until they're given a map with their destination on it at the start of the race. They'll also discover that there are certain bonus trophies they can collect to get extra points:

• For 5 bonus points: a basket of kittens which you can collect from Cafe Poirot in Barnet. All kittens must be delivered safely across the finishing line.
• For 5 bonus points: a collection of party balloons which you can find at Hillingdon House in Hillingdon. All balloons must cross the finishing line without being popped.
• For 10 bonus points: a glass flower sculpture which you can collect from the Reading Abbey ruins, Reading. You must carry the sculpture across the finishing line without damaging or breaking it.

These are all looked after by a steward at each of the locations and are not hard to find – the challenge is in getting there. Note that there is only one of each of the above items, so if someone else gets there first you won't be able to collect the trophy. If you get there at the same time as someone else, you'll have to get creative and fight them for it.

Rules:
• You cannot bring any items or equipment with you when you start the race. (No one is stopping you from packing whatever you want and hiding it in the car park or cloakroom to collect after you start the race though.)
• You may not use your own personal vehicle, borrow anyone else's vehicle, call a taxi/Uber, or hitch a ride from a friend. You can use public transport.
• You may not kill or injure any of the other competitors. Sabotaging, stealing and generally annoying are all fine.
• If you haven't managed to cross the finishing line by midnight, you'll be marked as DNF.

Leaders' Board
After Week 3, the final results are:

Eames (32 points) (CHAMPION)
Evie Frye (30 points) (Vampire Champion)
Fun Ghoul (21 points) (Werewolf Champion)
Lancelot (21 points) (Meta Human Champion)
James Flint (20 points)
Mogget (20 points)
Desmond Miles (19 points) (Witch Champion)
Roddy Geiger (17 points) (Shapeshifter Champion)
Lydia Bennet (16 points)
Micheletto Corella (15 points)
Matt Murdock (12 points)
Cole (9 points) (Ghost Champion)
Joe 'the Bear' Orsini (9 points)
Maximina Choi (7 points)
Olin Stacey (6 points)
Ban Sidhe (5 points)

[OOC: Please see the information post for more details on this event and to ask any questions! This log will be updated week by week as the games progress.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Competitors, you have until 12th August 20:00 GMT+1 to submit your summary for the single combat game! The summary is not a description of what actually happens during the game, it's a description of how your character would approach the first round fight and their strengths and weaknesses in combat.

Please include the following:

• Your character's approach and tactics for the fight. How will they try to win?
• Your character's strengths in single combat. What can they do to help them win?
• Your character's weaknesses in single combat. Why might they lose?
• Any particular supernatural species or type of combat they would be really good or bad against e.g. Your character could totally punch a vampire, but they've got no protection against magic from a witch or fae.

This doesn't have to be massively detailed, I just want to get a general sense of how likely a contender your character is. If your first round is against another player character, you can also decide between you who wins that first round and say so here. Or you can leave it to me to decide. I will use the summaries to decide which characters advance through each round and who ultimately wins this game, so the sooner you can submit your summary, the better!

Good luck!

Eames by and large is going to be relying on his illusions to alter the field to make it as disorienting as faely possible, basically weaving the arena to confuse them and maybe spook anyone who's particularly susceptible to that. Also to obscure himself from them. If he can manage to get his hands on the... ridiculous items, he'll try and improv some weapons. Breaking the chair to get what he can or making a lasso from the rope or... I dunno, throwing the ball at their face? Maybe he can use it to trip someone up who knows.

Anyone human sized (read: not the bears) he could try to use his telekinesis on to keep them away or move them where he wants them, but lbr he's not going to bother in the first match at least because who's gonna bother with a rat. It's a rat. (Regardless of who wins, that is a choice he will almost certainly regret.)

Generally his approach can be summed up as: wear them out and distress them enough to make them an easier target.

Roddy will be partially shifting into his rat form. He'll have the claws and teeth of a rat, and the face as seen in the icon, but he will remain his usual size. His strategy will be very rat-like, as he uses his enhanced senses to be very alert to his surroundings, dodging away quickly, and when backed into a corner he'll lash out with an animalistic fury, biting and scratching at his opponent. He likely will not charge at his opponents unless they use some form of projectile, but instead will let them come to him.

He will, at least once in the fight against Eames, pretend something has injured him far more as it has and 'play dead' for a few seconds, just to spring up to try and get a bite in by surprise. In the fight with Eames, as the illusions confuse and disorient him, he will get increasingly aggressive.

If he gets a chance to grab the chair he will do so and attempt to hit his opponent with it, but won't do much with the ball and rope aside from keeping an eye on them so he doesn't trip over them.

It should be noted that rat teeth are very hard and very sharp. They fall at a 5.5 on Moh's scale of hardness, meaning his teeth can scratch glass, but can be scratched by a steel knife. The incisors also have a sharp, razor-like beveled edge. He also is very fast and very agile, and his senses are very keen, which might alert him to any incoming attacks in time to dodge.

However, Roddy has no training in combat. His style is messy and animalistic because his instincts are the main thing he has in his favor. He does not know any actual techniques. Furthermore, he has no real way to combat magic other than trying to muddle through it the best he can.

Hahaha what strategy. Cole has absolutely no strategy and absolutely no tactics and is going to spend the first part of the fight downright confused as to but how can he get knocked out, he's a ghost???

Cole will spend most of the fight being intangible and confused while he tries to figure out how to knock somebody out despite the fact that his tangibility is wonky. His strategy will mostly consist of launching some of the small objects at whoever he's fighting via telekinesis. Cole will also try and improv some weapons with what they've got and would actually be surprisingly deadly in any sort of stabby close combat sort of thing (knock them out with a chair?)...except for the fact that he keeps going intangible and probably drops items at the most inopportune moment.

Cole can't possess people but he does have creepy empathy powers which'll mostly tell him that hey wow, this person's all hopped up on adrenaline, wonder why. He'll be especially weak to magic as that can actually affect him so the likelihood that Desmond kicks his ass in round one is PRETTY DARN HIGH.

Edited 2017-08-09 18:32 (UTC)

Evie is an extremely skilled combatant. She's trained in multiple weapons, and multiple fighting techniques. She's been training for over 100 years, and has single-handedly defeated some of the worst vampires in her time(s). Her general thought is to end the fight quickly and painlessly for her competitor. She's also not a show-off by any means.

Evie excels because she combines the rough, fisticuffs style of her time with the elegance of trained combat. As weapons are not allowed, Evie will be happy to brawl with her bare fists. She is light on her feet, and her vampire strength and agility help her to move in quick and dance out of the way quickly. She's just as well-trained in hand-to-hand combat as she is with a sword or a gun.

Evie, however, is very methodical in her attacks. Every lunge, every duck is performed the same way. She's text-book, which can lead to Evie tripping herself up when it comes time to improvise.

Evie has no protection against any sort of magic. But she has years of being a trained Assassin behind her.

Edited 2017-08-10 04:03 (UTC)

when faced with an opponent ghoul feels equal to or better than, his play will be to rush in hard and overwhelm them quickly. he's got enhanced strength and speed on his side, which will make the fact that he goes for weak points all the more painful. he fully embraces fighting dirty, so a lot of eyes, throats, joints, etc., are going to end up wrecked if he's not kept at a distance. he will also gladly make use of the items in the arena, despite how ridiculous they are. a tennis ball is bound to hurt when thrown by a werewolf, jump ropes surely don't feel good when they're being whipped at someone's face, and chair-pieces seem like they'd be fantastic for bashing or stabbing. he's not formally trained in any particular style of fighting, which makes him unpredictable. however, it also means he makes mistakes, falls for common feints, and doesn't use defensive maneuvers like he should. his tendency to sacrifice his own safety for the chance to score a great hit could hideously backfire on him.

if he's up against someone much larger and/or obviously stronger than him, his strategy will change a little. if he can use his smaller size and speed to dodge around his opponent then he'll attempt to do just that, until he can eventually wear them down with fleeting potshots. he'll be in trouble if the big guys are also fast and high-stamina, though.

his primary weakness is magic. it can be offensive magic, illusions, mind control, whatever- he has no defense against any of it, and if an opponent uses any sort of ranged magic, then he'll have a very tough time of taking them out since he needs to be close-range to deal his worst damage. the most he can do against a kiting magic user (or a ghost) is 1) throw things at them, 2) use his sense of smell/hearing to maybe track them if they're using vision-obscuring tricks, or 3) chase them around until one of them tires out.

aside from overpowering him with superior strength and speed, the best method of beating ghoul would be to patiently hang back, away from him, until he either runs out of steam or gets so frustrated that he becomes even more sloppy and reckless than usual.

Lydia has not got much training in the way of fighting (or magic). She can best her sisters through a combination of slapping and kicking, and the occasional bite, but she is by no means professional at this.

Rather, for this leg of the competition, Lydia is going to run in late, still wearing the high heeled Louboutins preferred by one Cesare Borgia for naive witches. Her hair is already a mess from Cesare's gallant efforts to satisfy the pair of them, and she is definitely more than a little tired.

She is going to kill Cesare: she wanted the Night Tournament to be her chance to prove she's a Serious Witch and not a silly little nit who is sleeping with the President.

Desmond's primary aim will be to incapacitate/knock out his opponents with magic. His strengths are that he's quick on his feet, knows some basic spellwork, and has the memories and training of an Assassin ancestor to draw on. He knows a fair bit about vampires, so those are the ones he'd have the most ideas for how to take down, whether that's forming a pentacle out of the skipping rope, casting an incapacitation spell, banishing them (...to the other side of the arena, I guess?) etc. With other opponents, his main strategy will be "blind them long enough to get behind and whack with the chair."

The main drawback of course is that he's still basically a human (with all the physical limitations on speed/strength that come with it), the fact that he can only cast spells at low levels, and the fact that he's pretty squeamish about actually killing anything that isn't actually trying to kill him. He has no natural weapons and doesn't know any directly offensive spells. If someone can get the first hit in on him (especially vampires and werewolves) it's over. Though he can probably get himself out of most grapples if his opponent isn't very skilled at hand to hand combat or isn't very decisive. He would be a little bit resistant to direct mental influence, but not prepare a defense for it, and he could still be fooled by illusions.

ALSO, thanks to his coven, Desmond's spent a month eating healthy, jogging every morning, and doing more yoga than he's ever done in his life, so he's really in pretty decent shape, for whatever that's worth. He'll mostly put his stamina/speed to work by trying to stay out of range of attacks and buy him time to get his spells off. He KNOWS unarmed he won't put up much of a challenge.

Edited 2017-08-09 17:09 (UTC)

It's fair to say that Mogget is not a fighter. He has two main advantages in combat, the first being his ability to shapeshift (cat, human, crow), and the second his ability to create white fire which he could do if for example he manages to scratch his opponent. He'd also fare better than most against an opponent with illusory abilities because he has a very finely attuned sense of magic.

As for tactics... well, speed is his friend, he's likely to spend a lot of time dodging and he does also have a habit of taunting his enemies. He'd probably attempt to trick his opponent into making a mistake and then either take them out in human form if his opponent is physically weak or else relying on his agility as a cat to swipe with his claws.

He's surprisingly durable even in feline form, but he could be taken out by powerful offensive or binding magic, and he could be temporarily incapacitated by a good hit from a physical attack.

Sadly, he's going to lose out to Fun Ghoul in the first round. (All in all, he's not too cut up about it. He really didn't want to fight a bear.)

Flint is brawler - and an extremely skilled one at that. He's taken on men twice his size with nothing but his bare fists in his time alive and probably a bunch more since his death. He's learned boxing and sword-fighting during his time in the Royal Navy, has mentored more than a few men and women later on and finds extreme satisfaction in his newfound strength, speed and stamina as a vampire.

For this fight, Flint doesn't plan much of a spectacle — he'll prefer rather a quick, brutal tussle with little regard for his opponent's life or health (if they live, good for them, if not, it's ... well ... really not his problem). He'll fight as dirty as necessary to win the first round, no punches pulled; but he does remain vulnerable to magical attacks and other illusion spells.

Use this thread to play out the actual fights! It's entirely up to you how many of these you play.

Of course it had to be the wolf. And if by some miracle he wins this, he'll be up against a bear. Mogget would dearly like to give up before he even starts, but he has been told to compete and that means he must compete.

So, here they are, in the arena which is basically a giant cage and he can practically feel the ground rumbling as the crowd roars, excited to see their first match. There's also some laughter when Mogget pads his way over to his side of the arena, but that reaction is exactly what he's counting on from Ghoul as well. He's a small white cat with a collar and people underestimate him. That might just give him a chance.

"And... FIGHT!" bellows the announcer.

Mogget doesn't rush in because that would be insane. Instead he stalks along the edge of the arena, circling his opponent. He's also surreptitiously getting closer to the skipping rope. It's the one item he thinks might come in handy.

Week 1: Single Combat Summary

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Warnings for Lydia and Ces (maybe nsfw)

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Week 1: Single Combat Cage Matches

ROUND 1: Fun Ghoul vs Mogget

ROUND 1: Cole vs. Desmond

Week 1: Pre-Match, Peanut Gallery and Post-Match

Peanut Gallery - Bear v Bear Deathmatch

Week 1: Place your bets!

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Week 2: Mystery Room Summary

Roddy and Ghoul

Week 2: Mystery Room Shenanigans

Roddy and Fun Ghoul

Week 2: Peanut Gallery and Post-Viewing

Week 3: Race Summary

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Week 3: Racing Across London

Week 3: Peanut Gallery and Post-Race

Week 3: Place your bets!