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.

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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?

Network · Logs · OOC · Memes · Plurk

Comments

[necrosaint]

Harrow does not grin, because that would be weird. But part of her is walking on air: she has her skeletons back, and people are noticing them.

On the other hand, people are noticing them.

"Yes," Harrow says fondly, looking back to make sure that it's just the ones she expected. "Those tw—what happened?"

Her tone is less concerned for his arm and more generally curious. "Are you aware that you are wounded."

[kyley_b]

"Huh? Oh. Yeah. It's nothing serious, I just got shot at." He pauses. "And burnt, a little. There was an explosion..."

He moves a little closer as he speaks, staring at the skeletons.

"Are they yours? Well, not YOURS yours, I mean are you their owner or whatever. And how'd you find a cow so small?"

[necrosaint]

"Burnt and shot at. Of course, nothing serious at all. I am not the best with flesh magic, but if you would like your skin knit back together or your pain relieved—"

It is so strange to offer, so unlike her. But she is of the First House now, a Saint who should be offering. Sharing her ability for good, whether or not her ScryWatch agrees (presumably it would).

(Also, it's orange: maybe that makes it clear why she's stilted when offering.)

"Yes, they are mine. I made them—oh, is it small?" Harrow squints at Kyle, and then at the cow. "I've never seen one before, so I was guessing. I just had a single bone from the pet shop. How tall should it be?" If he wants to keep being shot at and burnt and exploded upon while explaining to her how to refine her cow, that's not something she'll argue with: it is a life choice. It may not be what she would consider the best choice, but it is a choice.

[kyley_b]

"I mean... you should have seen the other guy." Which isn't a boast so much as it is a fact. Comparatively, he's doing great. "But, I mean. Sure. You can do that?"

A bit of a stupid question when she can clearly animate dead things. It's not like this is some average person, clearly.

"Oh, yeah. Cows are pretty big, they're like... five feet tall probably? Wait, how'd you make a whole cow from one bone?" He pauses as it occurs to him that she got the human skeleton SOMEwhere. Oh dear.

[necrosaint]

She totally got it from the undead guys on the beach that she made double-dead with her elephant skeleton from Anne Bonny's ivory knife, but ... that's not important right now.

"I can make any whole skeleton from any part of it, so long as the part is bony tissue. So," because Harrow doesn't expect most people to know that, "bones or ligaments or, usually, teeth. For some animals apparently that is not the case." She concentrates on the cow and it grows. She's guessing five feet at the shoulders, which makes the whole cow five feet tall when it hangs its head, which is about right, at least.

The skelecow moves its jaw around as if it's chewing its cud. It looks like it should moo. It does not moo, because it doesn't have vocal chords.

"Does this look right? And like I said, my flesh magic is not good, but I am at least willing to try, if you will let me see the wound."

[kyley_b]

Since being abducted into this hellish game of supposed self improvement, Kyle has met several people that have powers. Be they genetic or magic or what, it's quickly become apparent that his fellow Travelers can do some pretty weird shit.

"Right, not cartilage or whatever," he says before staring as the cow skeleton grows.

"Uh. Yeah, yeah, wow. That's about perfect." Something occurs to him belatedly. "You've never seen a cow?"

Does he dare risk creepy magic? Fuck it, he's done stupider. "Yeah, sure, uh, I gotta take my shirt off, is that okay?" Like his pasty flesh might be blinding.

[necrosaint]

"Cartilage can fall under bone for my purpose but rarely does," explains the once-bone adept, who is now a bone adept plus and technically could form cartilage just as easily as she can form ligaments, but ... she doesn't like to. It's weird and something that Mercymorn the First should be doing, if only she were there to.

Harrow never thought she'd miss the awful woman, but sometimes, here and there ...

"Right, though. Not muscles and so on. This is the first cow I have ever seen, so thank you for elucidating for me. I have seen skin before," she adds. Lots of it, in fact. Even been wrapped in it. "You won't traumatize me, though I can understand being uncomfortable with any level of nudity."

Since Harrow would never take her shirt off outside, but she is also not injured.

[kyley_b]

Sometimes in life, you form attachments to people you probably shouldn't. Kyle would knwo all about that.

"Do you have cows where you're from? Like at all?" he asks as he starts working out of his era-appropriate clothes. What he wouldn't give for just jeans and a t-shirt.

There's a wound along his upper left arm where a bullet grazed him - he has it wrapped in bandages but it still smarts. His back has some bandages as well, underneath which are blisters from the explosion. His arms have some minor abrasions and cuts as well, mostly from the fall after said explosion.

He's had a rough month.

[necrosaint]

With Harrow, it's like, everyone—she hates them all equally and loves so many of them equally, but won't say that. She's learning. Slowly.

"No," is her simple answer, as she surveys the damage. She's not looking just physically; she's busy looking necromantically. Her form of necromancy can be used to heal as well as it can harm. As a Lyctor, she can now find injuries and ... encourage them to knit back together. How well it works is going to depend on her level of focus and Kyle's body's level of responsiveness, but she's trying.

Anything minor should clear up pretty quickly, and the deeper wound, well, the lower levels should heal, leaving it still seeping fluid but greatly decreasing discomfort and increasing mobility.

"Other Houses—planets, in this case it means planets, I keep forgetting how people hear that—other Houses might have cows. Mine does not."

[kyley_b]

Kyle's immune system has never been the greatest, so it proved a little resistant at first before succumbing to the powers working at healing it. The feeling is extremely strange, so Kyle tries to focus on conversation instead.

"What's it like there? You don't seem too phased by the buildings and stuff so I'm guessing it's not THAT far off from this place."