Carcosa, pt. 2

[polymods]

✖ Carcosa

Ⅰ. CARCOSA
You Are Still Here.

Another month, and you’re still in the city of Carcosa! Isn’t that just wonderful?

You still have access to the city’s temple and the High Temple.

The side effects you may have suffered from throughout the month of May are now at an end - if you had a pesky mask glued to your face the whole time it will now fall off. You might need a little moisturizer, but otherwise you’ll be just fine.

You could sit around inside the relative safety of the temples, of course, but why not get out there and explore the city some more? Come on, grumpypants!

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Ⅱ. SPEAK EASY
CW: Optional alcohol consumption.
What kind of pet shop is filled with rambunctious yahoos and hot jazz music at 1 AM? That's right - the best damn pet shop in town! Sidle up to the back door of Curly's Pet Shop and a panel will open enough to reveal a pair of eyes. "What's the password?" you'll be asked. Whatever word first comes to your mind, well, that apparently is correct because you're let in at once.

The front of the building definitely does indeed house fish and birds and kittens, but the back room is definitely not a good place to find a new animal companion; you find yourself in a crowded little room with low lighting and a small bar crammed into one corner. There's seats and some tables, and most importantly there's a band playing jazz music across from the bar.

Why not take a seat and have a drink? It's probably not paint thinner. Probably. Maybe you'll spot some of your fellow Travelers and you can sit and have a chat. Make a new friend who can hold your hair back if you party too hard.

And you better hope that the place doesn’t get raided!

Notes:
1. The drinks are all era-appropriate - you’re not getting Redbull with vodka here - and even if your character has non-human physiology they will work the same as they would on a baseline human. That’s right, your magic or your healing-factor or your vampire blood is no match for these Gin Rickeys!

2. If Curly’s does get raided while you’re there, you can run and hide or choose to engage with the police, who are armed and not too shy about opening fire if you go on the offensive. As with the rest of the regular residents of Carcosa, the officers are human and can be killed. Killing them may affect the colour grading of your Scrywatch depending on the situation. (Is it beneficial to personal growth to kill in order to save someone else, for example? You tell me!)

3. Did you want a pet from the front of the building? Well, just remember that baby turtles and alligators might SEEM like a good idea, but they grow up! Also any animal you take will not travel with you to the next island. So sorry.

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Ⅲ. EXPRESSIONISM YOURSELF
CW: Optional paranoia, hallucinations.
If you wander the streets at night, you may find yourself getting turned around. You'll find that the streets have lost their many lights, and the beautiful and delicate art deco architecture has given way to something much more stark and heavy. The buildings are block-like, but they curve in exaggerated ways that hurt the eye if looked at too long. All are in blacks and whites and greys. Nothing looks quite real, but you can walk along just fine. Probably better not to go off alone, though.


Periodically you will encounter that pesky sign of some sort painted on the walls. If you follow the sigils, you will eventually be led to a long staircase that winds down and down until it finally terminates in a large white room lit by a few electric lanterns. There's black paint there, with brushes. Maybe you're feeling creative?

Notes:
1. You’re pretty sick of this stupid sigil, aren’t you? In fact, you consider yourself QUITE the detective and have been searching after its meaning! Or maybe you played Call of Cthulhu a lot in college, you nerd!

Painting the sigil on the wall will cause you to feel disoriented and paranoid until you leave the white room. From that point on you can discover a copy of a play entitled The King In Yellow anywhere in the city you choose. Reading the first act of the play has no effect on you, however if you choose to read beyond the first line of the second act you will spend the rest of the month suffering from periodic hallucinations, often of a tall man in a pallid mask.

2. While there is no compulsion to paint, choosing to work out any of your character’s issues through art therapy can be reflected in your Scrywatch colour if it is significant enough.

---

Ⅳ. AS FAR BACK AS I CAN REMEMBER, I ALWAYS WANTED TO BE A GANGSTER
CW: Optional gun violence, injury.
Art? Theatre? Music? BAH! Boring!

Maybe your tastes are a little more on the dangerous side? Whatever this island may be, it seems to offer plenty of opportunities to get into the seedy underbelly. Maybe you feel the need to steal a car, rob a bank, transport some illegal hooch for a smiling fellow in a yellow fedora. Grab your tommy guns, kids, it's time to outrun the Feds!

Naturally, you could wind up injured having all of this fun, but surely you could get some help from your fellow Travelers, either directly or by having them haul you to some sort of underground doctor. These doctors do exist, although it might take a while to get referred to one by a local.

You might also find yourself under arrest and stuck in an old-timey jail cell for a month. What fun!

Notes:
1. As was stated in the first prompt, the regular residents of Carcosa are normal humans. Killing them is possible and may affect the colour grading of your Scrywatch depending on the situation. Any weapons you find are era-appropriate.

2. You can break out of jail if you’re resourceful enough.

3. The underground doctors aren’t working in a real hospital for a reason. In fact, some of them might be less doctors and more, well. Vets.

You still jamming to that Carcosa playlist?

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Comments

Alucard | Castlevania

[cryptsleeper]

II. Speakeasy

[The wine is shit.

Alucard knows that, huddled in his little corner of the bar, pouring the last drop of a bottle into his wine glass. It is terrible wine, sharp with too many tannins and no real flavor to it, and he shouldn't be drinking it.

But he is.

He's turning into Trevor Belmont and he absolutely fucking hates it.

There's a sigh as he shoves the bottle away, making it easier for the bartender to pick up. His eyes go everywhere, noticing how few are actually drinking wine and--]

I suspect I've picked the wrong drink.

[He sighs when he says it. Somehow, he's even screwed up drinking to negotiate with trauma.]

III. Expressionism
A
[The room is white. Alucard understands he's drunk enough that following the ominous sigils is not a great idea, but where they have lead is an interesting enough place that the part of him that should be on high alert isn't there. There is, instead, a tiny part of him that remembers that on occasion, he enjoyed drawing. That he wasn't half bad at it, even if most of his work in the past few years was more architectural.

There's paint. There's brushes.

Alucard walks over to one of the paint buckets, considering. And then, in one fell swoop, he splashes the entire bucket towards the wall with the sort of violence he'd reserve for an actual fight. The splatter sounds, followed by the clank of the tin hitting the floor.]

--Satisfying.

B
[The initial splatter is opportunity. From it, Alcuard has taken up brushes, dragging the globs of paint into terribly dense trees. Then thinner ones. A landscape in black, made of intersecting branches and implied bright moonlight above.

His hand isn't steady. He's drunk. None of it matters. He's absorbed in the work of it, hardly aware of anyone else entering the place.]

Wildcard
Please PM me if you'd like to do something else!

III - A

[unkindled_madness]

[Sephiroth reaches the bottom of the staircase in time to see Alucard hurl the paint. He lets out a noise somewhere between a laugh and a scoff as his feet carry him into the room.]

It's an improvement.

[He doesn't like the white walls, he doesn't like whatever magical headgames have led him here, so he appreciates what he perceives as the other man's rejection of the whole thing. Even if it doesn't get him anywhere. A little violence is still an improvement.]

[cryptsleeper]

Hardly.

[The one word response comes with folded arms, Alucard glaring accusingly at the splatter. There's a thick, oily drip running down the wall, spilling out onto the floor and spreading from there. It is a mess.]

The only improvement would be if walking through a pitch black hole got one out of this nonsense.

[unkindled_madness]

That sort of thing only happens in fables.

And I doubt it would lead us anywhere we wanted to go.

[That moment of vicarious satisfaction was fleeting. Sephiroth lets out a frustrated sigh and starts a slow circuit of the room, as though closer inspection will reveal anything more than the white walls. He never quite turns his back on the other man though, keeping him somewhere in the periphery of his vision.

What's expected of them this time? More secrets?]

[cryptsleeper]

Most likely.

[To which part? Both? Neither? It doesn't matter. Alucard walks over to the thick, black puddle that is now on the ground and carefully taps his foot against it.

Solid floor all the way through. But he pauses, then takes the toe of his shoe and smears some of the paint off to the side.

Now that is satisfying.]

I imagine now that one is here, one can choose to leave.

[unkindled_madness]

Do you? The earlier games sought to force us to engage.

[But he glances at the stairs. This one could be different... maybe. Is he going to play along now just because not doing so went badly for him before?]

[cryptsleeper]

There were games?

[Alucard, wrapped up in his own head and depression, had avoided much of the night life in the city. He was happier on the forlorn shores, up until the zombies showed up to make everything more complicated.

The dhampir shrugs it off. Moves his foot along more. Another thick, black streak of paint follows.]

Try then. The experiment is easy enough to test.

[unkindled_madness]

[Did he actually manage to avoid them, or does he just object to calling them games? Sephiroth eyes the other man for a moment before striding towards the staircase.]

If any sort of mask should appear while I'm gone, I suggest you refrain from touching it.

[He's gone for some long minutes, back up that long staircase and down a few streets. He could just leave and not come back, but something seems different about this scenario. As long as he isn't trapped, he's more inclined to investigate, so he returns, eventually.]

[cryptsleeper]

Noted and taken under advisement.

[In the time Sephiroth is gone, Alucard has gone from using his foot as an experimental brush to taking an actual paintbrush in hand, smearing thick, broad strokes over the wall. There is no design, no artistry or consideration to it, but the action feels good. All consuming, focusing.

Alucard's terrible at getting out of his own head. Yet this seems to have done what so many other things could not.

But isn't so lost in the meditative state to miss the reappearance of the other man. He turns, paint splatter on his face and in his hair.]

--Well?

[unkindled_madness]

There seems to be no barrier to leaving.

[He looks the other man over (really, you're getting it in your hair?), then past him to the brush strokes he's added to the wall. If they're meant to depict something, he's not seeing it.]

...do you feel some compulsion to do that?

[cryptsleeper]

I do not.

[It is all utter nonsense. That makes it a little easier, choosing to do this.]

It's simply here. Why not use it?

[unkindled_madness]

[A soft laugh.]

A simple way of looking at it.

[This place is making him paranoid. Maybe it is just a room, just paint, just a man who avoided being caught up in the earlier spells through sheer luck.]

But I doubt I could add much to your... artistic vision.

[cryptsleeper]

[There's a shrug from the dhampir. Simple, yes, but right now that helps a myriad of anxieties.

Artistic vision though? That gets something close to a laugh. It comes out as a cough, like he's forgotten how to make the correct noise for laughing.]

High praise for throwing paint around for no reason. [No reason other than he can.]

It's that or risk those petty games, or else sit in that temple doing nothing at all.

ii

[aviate]

[Hal is nursing an ale which has worked out far better for him. He's had better, but he's also had worse.]

Wine's harder to pull off when you're stuck in the prohibition era.

And when in Rome... [He gestures around the room where most people seem to be holding an ale.]

[cryptsleeper]

[Well there's a new word. Alucard pauses very, very pointedly when it is said. The differences of time between himself and others tossed into this nonsense had not been a surprise, but inquiry would be useful at this point.]

I hope I never live to see it properly.

[Ale though. Ugh. The dhampir's nose wrinkles. He's not Trevor Belmont for god's sake, he has some self respect.]

[aviate]

Yeah, it probably sounds better than actually living it. [He does, however hold up his drink.] Although this holds up better than I thought it would.

[cryptsleeper]

I imagine it is some time in my future, thankfully.

[Buddy y'all ain't even gotten to the right landmass yet back in 1476.]

What are the contents?

[aviate]

Uh, no alcohol allowed anywhere so everyone ends up making it in their backyards with [He shoots a meaningful look at Alucard's glass.] varying levels of success.

What year is it for you?

[cryptsleeper]

1476. [And, as a point of clarification, as it seems rather pertinent.] In Wallachia. The Ottomans are mostly getting their way with turning the country into a vassal state.

[aviate]

[He has no idea where Wallachia is meant to be.]

Well good news. You're about 500 years too early and that sounds you're somewhere in Europe so wrong country too.

[cryptsleeper]

[Romania, but it'll be a few centuries before that yet.]

--500 years sounds like a fair enough lead time.  [thank god.]  On the Balkan peninsula, near the Black Sea.  I presume there's been a name change or two since then.

[aviate]

Alright, so definitely Europe I just have no idea what it would be called now other than not Turkey.

[Is it really his fault, he's more familiar with space rather than Earth geography?]

[cryptsleeper]

[Turkey? Alucard sighs, that name is far less interesting.]

I suppose geographic knowledge wasn't a requirement for most people back home either.

[What 1400s peasant even needed that information?]

[aviate]

At least I know how to read and write.

[He's not sure he likes the education comparison with people who lived hundreds of years ago.]

[cryptsleeper]

There is that, but the way you say it makes it feel a little underwhelming, giving the importance of education.

[So you know, give yourself a little credit.]