polylogs | Carcosa, pt. 2

✖ 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!

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.

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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[Look, he said it was decent, not the best library ever. As a point in its favor, though, it contains nothing but books Sephiroth's never heard of before.]

I suppose that might do well enough. It could easily be taken for some cryptic metaphor.

[His gaze has dropped to the other paintbrushes, though. He's trying to recall if he's ever so much as held one before. ...... He's pulling his hair back first though.]

Art is rarely a metaphor where I'm from.

[1400s pre-Renaissance art? It is all about teaching bible stories, and the Renaissance doesn't exactly hit Wallachia anyway. That's what the Ottomans are for.

Alucard shrugs, and he takes one of the thicker brushes and draws it across the wall in one swoop, tapering off only when he hits a corner of the wall.]

There must be something more compelling out there than this though.

I don't know.

[Hair safely tied back, he picks up a brush and just... holds it for a moment, paint dripping onto the ground in front his feet. No, he doesn't think there's any compulsion. He could put it down if he wanted to.

Instead he walks to a relatively white section of wall and paints a slow line down it, seeing what it feels like.]

I don't much care for this city.

[Alucard's eyes remain on his own work. He drops the broad brush, exchanging it for something with finer bristles. From that streak little lines are brushed out. Not veins, not tree branches, just more abstract lines.]

Being this close to so many people is far too unnerving. [adrian you grew up in a giant castle in fuck all nowhere for most of your life] The decor and art though. That I like.

[Sephiroth shakes his head. While he's never enjoyed crowds, he is accustomed to city life. But he's used to his city being a little less... polished.]

The people themselves are unnerving. They hardly seem real.

Did you encounter any of the walking dead on the shoreline?

[What a casual way to ask about the topic.]

[Seems perfectly normal to Sephiroth. How else do you ask about the undead?]

Yes. More than once.

[Which apparently is neither distressing nor remarkable, as he's still contemplating his line on the wall. Sort of reminds him of Wutain calligraphy... He'll start adding a few more lines.]

They're probably the most real thing on this island.

[Alucard doesn't look up from his work. There are more thin lines meandering from the tip of his brush.]

But I hardly find myself caring about their origins.

Why should anyone be concerned with their origins? Corpses are easy to make.

[Not so commonly animated, in his experience, but that they should exist to be animated is just how things work.]

Real corpses from unreal people though. That should be a point of concern, I think. Death shouldn't work like that. Neither should necromancy.

[He sighs, deciding he hates these lines. He reaches down, taking the broader one again and scribbling the work out.]

I know little of necromancy, but maybe they aren't the corpses of unreal people.

--Hm. [Alucard finally looks up from his work, tilting his head slightly at the other man.] Go on.

[The stroke order was all wrong, but he's now got a big messy 神 on the wall. He glances at the other man.]

...they could be past "Travellers," perhaps. Or people who used to inhabit this place, before it became what it is now.

[The mark is wholly unfamiliar, which means Alucard's eyes aren't moving away.]

Perhaps. They're not articulate enough to ask directly though, of that I am very sure.

[Sephiroth notices his look, but neither remarks on it nor continues painting. He's not sure how or if he wants to complete the word.]

I have met a necromancer here, but I don't know if even she could ask much of a soulless corpse.

Mmm, always worth a shot. Better a corpse than that jeweled skull at any rate.

[He fucking avoided that thing. Nothing good came from something that looked like a saint's bones that had been venerated.]

[A frown. That skull was clearly part of someone's sorcery... Probably not real either. He avoided it, too.]

...I suppose you're right. It's worth confirming.

Got a name for your associate?

[Alucard doesn't expect this to actually get a response. It is just casual. Filling in polite time.]

Harrowhark, I believe.

[He has no reason not to answer. Why keep the name of an acquaintance to himself?

Though the question does make him realize...]

I suppose I should ask yours.

I'll keep an ear out for the name.

[Interesting one it is too.]

Alucard. [Not Adrian Tepes. Just Alucard.] Yours?

Sephiroth.

[Weird names all around. It's almost... refreshing.

There's no "nice to meet you," of course, but he does give Alucard a nod.]

And the symbol in front of you?

[It isn't a language he knows, so fuck it. This is a light enough question.]

...by itself I believe it means "god," though I know it as the first part of another name.

It's plastered on everything, in my world. A testament to human arrogance.

Mm. [Human arrogance. Now there's a phrase his father would have loved.]

May I inquire the full name?

...Shinra.

But if that's a name you know, I expect it means something quite different to you.

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