polylogs | Carcosa, pt. 2

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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?

Network · Logs · OOC · Memes · Plurk

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Leave 'em here, Travelers!

Would Victor be able to find the underground doctors to help them out?

If he took/borrowed equipment, would that come with him to the next port of call?

He certainly would!

Anything not a weapon that Victor could fit in his backpack he could take with him.

Can Harrow get the underground doctors to pay her for her help, because she really wants some better quality makeup. But she's able to fix trauma injuries very well without using any supplies other than eating!

All characters are given currency to spend on the island, but of course that can be used up pretty quickly! If Harrow is in need of extra cash she can certainly convince seedy underground types to pay her. Hopefully they don't try and stiff her on the bill!

Be aware all the makeup will be era appropriate, so we're still not at Sephora level.

Her typical makeup is grease paint so this is pretty perfect Harrow-level stuff.

(She will not admit she also likes healing people.)

Then she can definitely load up at the cosmetics counter!

(Well, of course not, where's the fun in that?)

I've kept meaning to ask - what is there in terms of bookstores/libraries? Would they have 1920s Earth literature in them?

There are bookstores and a sizeable library available, all of which would contain any literature you could find on earth up until the late 1920s on earth.

I - Curly's Pet Shop
[Before you enter some kind of shady location requiring a secret password, it only makes sense to investigate the publicly accessible part of that building, right?

Sephiroth wouldn't normally care about a pet store. He's never owned a pet and has never had the inclination. However... He's already realized that the fauna here aren't entirely the same as the ones he knows, and this is his first time seeing some of them.

The rodents are either unfamiliar or they definitely shouldn't be pets, and that is the smallest adamantoise he's ever seen... What even is an alligator? He's not staring, really, he's just studying them.]

II - Speakeasy
[...oh. To find that this is just some cramped bar is a little disappointing. He's not much of a drinker, but he'll pick up one of those gin cocktails he's never heard of and look for somewhere to sit where people won't try to talk to him.

Maybe there's something else going on here, if he hangs around to listen for a while? At the very least there's music, but otherwise Sephiroth seems rather out of his element.]

III - The Sigil
[What else would an insomniac do but walk the streets at night? But Sephiroth isn't used to losing his way. He's explored quite a bit of this city already, and he has good night vision, but somehow neither are helping him now. Retracing his steps seems to take him in a different direction than he came. The buildings don't look right. Has he come under this city's sorcery again? When he spots the first sigil, it cements that thought, and at first he refuses to follow them, looking for some other way out of this unexpected maze.

Are you lost, too? Maybe you run into him in the streets. He will eventually take up following the sigils, practically stalking them as though he's hoping to find a fight at their end.

Instead, he finds himself inside that white room. The paint is an obvious invitation, but by now he's growing frustrated with this, and he snatches up a brush. Will painting the damn sigil open a way to something worthwhile? You could try to stop him, or just let him have at it and see what happens.]

IV - Library
[Throughout the month, the most likely place to find Sephiroth is at Carcosa's sizeable public library. He mostly sticks to the nonfiction sections, standing in the aisles while he reads up on Earth history and geography and various random topics he's seen mentioned on the network. It might be a little out-of-date to most Travellers since there's nothing past the 1920s, and he hasn't been able to figure out what "Netflix" or "Boomers" are, but it's a start.

If you're lucky, you might catch him sitting down to read... faerie tales? So one of them might be called The Pink Fairy Book. What of it?

If you're extremely lucky, you might catch a glimpse of him sleeping in a chair. He's a light sleeper, so it's difficult (but not impossible) to approach without waking him, but you definitely haven't seen him sleep at either of the Temples. He's more comfortable here.]

((Looking for something else with Seph? Feel free to hit me up at

yinza! I am also absolutely down for bar raids, so just have at it or let me know if you want the thread to go that way.))

i. speakeasy;
[ Finally, Rackham thinks, it's a place he finds intimately familiar. The speakeasy's missing the sand and the snake in the tree and, well, the pirates, but it's the Nassau-like energy he really appreciates. There's a hum in the air, a certain vibe of not a crime but also a crime, something Jack drinks up the moment he speaks the password (he'd said it was calico, he's not entirely sure why) and the door opens.

The place is crowded, cramped, foreign but pleasant music in his ears, and as he's waiting for his drink to be fetched he drums his hands on his thighs, a toothy grin surfacing on his face. ]

Finally. [ It's said with relief as he plonks himself down at a table, elbowing himself between two people, and turns to the one on his left whether they like it or not, chatting like they'd been friends for years. ] Some actual fun, with neither pomp nor circumstance hovering around the room like miasma. If I'd want trouble to cloyingly envelop my surroundings, I'd find my way to the nearest whore house.

[ His whore house, to be more precise. But this comes close. He knocks back a drink eagerly: Jack Rackham, social butterfly and extrovert, at your service. ]

Do you think the owners could be convinced to shuffle a few turtle eggs our way? [ He'd seen one on the shelves in a little tank, after all. It never hurts to ask. ]

ii. impressionism yourself;
[ It's certainly appealing, painting something with the instruments provided, but while Jack has always been a connoisseur of good art, he can't actually paint for shit. He's not about to learn, either, not when there's someone else right next to him. He's not lazy, he's just very good at delegating. Made for a great quartermaster for a reason.

Also, he just doesn't want to. Not when he's staring at that white canvas, thinking about that little yellow symbol. ]

I don't suppose that insignia is familiar to you? Other than from the terrible masquerade. [ He hitches his nose up, wrinkling it, still feeling how tight the mask had been. ]

iii. jailbreak; (closed to anne bonny, nate and sam drake)
[ It was bound to happen. Inevitability likes to glide towards the two of them, drawing them closer and close while they remain in blissful ignorance. He just wishes Invetiability didn't also hit them upside the head with the butt of her rifle and without warning, leaving them bleeding out in the streets.

Something like that.

Strange metaphors aside, it really was a matter of time before Jack and Anne wind up being dragged into cells by rather powerful police. Rackham is keenly aware there's blood on his face from when his head had collided with a table courtesy of an officer that looked suspiciously like a humanized version of a ham hock. Talking, apparently, had gotten him nowhere, and neither had Anne's way of doing things after rhetoric failed to calm things down.

They're two of many, and Jack only starts to truly struggle when he realizes he and Anne are both separated--they're put in different cells, something that sends a shock of panic through him as he's shoved into one, tailbone smarting as much as his head, his lanky, thin frame tossed right on his ass. He doesn't assess the cell, not yet, darting up to grab at the cell doors just as they're slammed shut. ]

Anne-- [ he doesn't finish his sentence, doesn't say 'we'll be alright.' He doesn't think he needs to, though he tries in vain to stick his hand out of the bar as far as he can to grab at hers, dramatic and instinctual. He can't reach. ]

iv. wildcard;
[ If you want to plot or have an idea in mind and want a starter for it, hmu at

whitespire or slied me a pm! ]

Edited 2021-06-03 21:58 (UTC)

Ⅱ. SPEAK EASY:

They say that music is a language all on its own and for Carter it's one he knows well and has dearly missed. The last month has been truly bizarre with being swept away to this strange island where he's witnessed sea zombies, grinning skulls, and a few other notable strange things. So to be able to do something that is normal and fun for him seems almost bizarre but he's not about to say no.

He doesn't bother asking questions when one of the jazz musicians offers to let him sit in with the band for a song or two, he grabs the opportunity like a dying man grabbing a life preserver.

So now up on stage, crammed next to the bass player he is sweating, straining and feeling almost delirious with joy, his fingers flying across the guitar as he tries to keep up with the frantic pace of the song. When the song ends, with a great jazz flourish of course, he grins and thanks the band leader before hopping down off the stage and making his way towards the bar.

"Fuck that felt great."

[ this is surprising. he didn't expect to see sephiroth at a party. the man seemed to highly dislike all kinds of social interaction, so seeing him was a surprise. loki approaches him, bemused. ]

Did you get lost?

[Sephiroth looks up at him with a wry expression. It's not social interaction if you're drinking alone, but there are worse people who could have spoken to him than Loki.]

...I was expecting something more than a bar, given the secrecy.

[ he cocks his head. ]

What were you expecting?

[Sephiroth shrugs.]

Some kind of criminal activity, I suppose.

This might be what was considered as criminal activity at this time period.

( i. speakeasy )

[ from one party to the next. but that's fine. parties are fun. enjoyable. more importantly, parties are where people talk. loki flits from corner to corner, eavesdropping from conversation to conversation. his glamour flickers, shifting the way he looks, making sure their attention on him does not hold as he makes a quick break for it.

until he makes eye-contact with you and he gives a little shrug, not sheepish whatsoever. ]

Oh, I'm sorry. I thought you said my name.

[ he takes a sip of his drink, all forged contriteness. ]

( ii. expressionism yourself ) cw: grief, trauma, possible violence

[ loki likes purpose. and unravelling this place and its mysteries is purpose enough. it lends itself to the beating of his heart, to break down all the rules, all the structures. he wants it to burn. or he wants himself to burn. it's the same thing in the end. loki flips through the play he discovered with a huff. at least one thing is abundantly clear. the inspiration for this island, this place is all drawn upon this play. how droll.

he gets as far as the first act, when he spots something from the corner of his eye. a mask? loki discards the play, chasing after the spectre. his senses seem to narrow, heavy and oppressive. like a vice around his neck. fingers around his neck. loki suddenly claws at his collar, pausing to catch his breath.

whose fingers? thanos? the masked man? who remained out of his sight? his hands glow, green-gold, ready to lash out. ]

Who is there?

[ his breath comes out in sharp, staccato bursts. he can hear them. he can hear him — there. loki sends out a blast of magic but it hits a wall, making the stone crumble. he freezes, the sound jarring with the reality around him. and then loki hears him, a voice next to his ear, look what you've done. you are the worst. the worst. you ruined everything.

a sob nearly tears itself from his throat, he did, he ruined it all, but loki keeps it together, wild-eyed and frenetic. ]

Show yourself or I'll tear this place to shreds.

[ it is not an idle threat. ]

( iii. gangsta's paradise )

[ loki didn't know what to make of this . . . criminal activity. robbing banks? murder? car theft? it was all so . . . gauche. still, there is power in the criminal underworld. loki understood that much. after all, he made good use of it the last time he was on earth.

so it's time for him to make some connections. he sidles up to whoever is near, sugar in his voice. ]

Do you want to start a gang? Why not take back some power for ourselves?

( iv. wildcard )

[ got a prompt in mind? hit me up @ timmtams / pm this account ]

Hm. Tame, isn't it?

...are you going to sit down?

[It's not exactly an invitation, but if they're going to have a conversation, it seems odd not to.]

[ loki raises an eyebrow but politely takes a seat, letting his glass swirl his drink between his fingers. ]

Earth is on a slower learning curve than most places.

Earth, or humanity?

[If the latter, he's not really inclined to take it for a personal insult. He's disparaging enough of humans himself.]

Earth.

[ not that loki cares for humans all that much either, but he likes to distinguish, at the very least. ]

It seems everything here resembles that planet.

I'd wonder if there was some connection between that and the fact that most of our fellow "Travellers" seem to be from Earth, but I'm not certain any of them are from this time period.

[ he shrugs. ]

It's possible

[ with a grimace. ]

In my experience, Earth always seems to take up the most . . . space in a conversation.

[ but really, that's just loki's bias talking. he's never forgiven them for what happened to thor. he probably never will. it twists at him more lately because he'll never see thor again. he'll never see asgard again. ]

It is... somewhat frustrating.

[He'll agree, but for different reasons. He just doesn't like not knowing what amounts to common knowledge for others.

He takes a sip of his drink.]

But then, I'm not one of those men who enjoy speaking of home.

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Carcosa, pt. 2

Questions, comments, concerns?

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Sephiroth | OTA

Jack Rackham | Black Sails | OTA

Carter Ghazikhanian| X-men 616 (Adult) | OTA

( ii )

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loki odinson | mcu | ota

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