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[polymods]

✖ THE CARNIVAL

Ⅰ. ARRIVAL & THE TEMPLE
You can read all about your character's arrival in the game lore.
You can see the lights of the Ferris wheel from the water, and by the time you pull into port you can smell popcorn, cotton candy, grease, sawdust. Music drifts on the air, interspersed with screams from the rides.

The carnival is in town.

Not just any carnival, either - the carnival. The one to end all others. Every circus you ever read about or saw in a movie, with striped tents filled with acrobats and sideshows, midway games complete with carnival barkers in straw boater hats. But it's also every shitty fair that ever rolled through your hometown, with unreliable looking men with greasy mullets smoking as they jockey the Wild Mouse, the Gravitron, the Zipper, the Corkscrew. There's a constant stream of 80s hair metal playing underneath the roar of the rollercoaster tracks, blending somehow with the traditional piping organ of the carousel.

Experienced Travelers will know by now that every island has its own temple, and this one is no exception. It’s not in the carnival proper, though; if you step away from the lights of the midway and tents, you’ll notice dozens of old wooden circus trailers, arranged in a circle, growing tighter together the closer to the center you walk. The trailers are functional living places, with built in beds - sometimes one, sometimes two - and a small table and an old wood burning stove with a cooking top just big enough to boil a kettle on. There’s a toilet, but if you want a shower you’ll have to go outside and find a tent set up at the outskirts of the makeshift trailer park where there are tent showers set up, locker room style.

The clearing in the middle of the parked caravan is completely empty except for a solitary midway game: a towering high striker. It must be at least twenty feet tall, surmounted by a round, red bell. A wooden mallet is leaned against a sign next to the game that reads, predictably, TEST YOUR STRENGTH.

Step right up.

Notes:
1. Please remember to mark threads appropriately with Content Warnings when necessary.

2. These prompts are a jumping off point - how they affect your character and their development is up to you.

3. The island temple is accessible to all. The High Temple is only accessible to new characters this month - it will re-open to all others next month.

4. The Test your Strength game can be played by anyone. How well your character does is entirely up to you, but the game does not necessarily measure physical strength.

5. These residents of the island are normal humans. Killing them is possible and will affect the colour grading of your Scrywatch depending on the situation.

6. Any food found on the midway is safe to eat, and is consumable by non-human entities.

7. Have fun!

---

Ⅱ. HALL OF MIRRORS
When it comes to amusements, the Hall of Mirrors has always been second-fiddle to the Haunted House. But the line for the former was shorter, so here you are. The guy working the door has weasel eyes and is smoking. He gestures for you and whoever is behind you to enter together; "No singles. For safety."

The lights are a dull neon, cycling from deep blue to cyan to purple and back again. You find that your outstretched fingers will bump against smooth, clear glass as often as not. The mirrors reflect the maze back into itself over and over, disorienting and strange.

Some of the mirrors are convex, some concave, and as you pass them your reflection warps and bends alongside that of whoever you're stuck inside the maze with.

At some point you will realise that the reflection looking back at you isn't quite right. It's still you, sure, but it's not how you really look, not on the outside.

Looking back at you from the cold glass is how you perceive yourself. Perhaps that's stronger, perhaps uglier, perhaps as a sniveling child or an ancient hag. And this reflection is going to follow you from mirror to mirror as you desperately try to find your way out.

One of you spots an exit sign, bleeding red light. Only catch is that it's behind a pane of glass. And another. And another. You could break your way through all of them, certainly, but it's not as if there's anything laying around for you to use to do so. Just yourself, which might work in action movies but tends to cause a lot of physical damage in the real world.

Above the glass someone has placed a sticker that reads, “who are you really?” in black sharpie. Answer it, and the glass will swing open. Don't, and well...

Guess you'll have several years worth of bad luck.

Notes:
1. Yes, characters can bash their way out of the maze, but it is real glass and will cut anyone who isn’t invulnerable. There is a first aid station run by extremely unreliable carneys on the premises, so hopefully they can patch themselves up enough there.

---

Ⅲ. THE CAROUSEL
CW: childhood trauma
Old fashioned organ music and a million flashing lights draws you to the carousel. It's a vintage delight: huge, with ornate animals carved out of wood and lovingly hand painted. There are horses, of course, but also lions and leopards and birds and rabbits and wolves... any animal you could want! In fact, you'll see an animal that looks perfectly YOU. You just have to climb up on it for a ride.


Settled on your mount, the ride begins to move. To your surprise, it begins to move backwards. You can't seem to ungrip the pole you're hanging on to, so you're helpless to escape as the ride spins again and again.

When it stops and you step off, you will be younger. You will in fact be the same age you were when a formative event happened to you.

You're a kid at a carnival! How fun! Well, maybe you're not that young, and it's probably not very fun at all considering that now your trauma is fresh.

The only way to become your proper age again is to get on the carousel and get it to run forward. Depending on your age, you might not be able to figure any of that out, but surely one of the other Travelers can help you. You'll definitely need someone to man the carousel controls. Oh, and be careful not to knock it into overdrive...

Notes:
1. If your character does not get back on the carousel and ride it in reverse, they will revert to their actual ages at the end of the month.

2. Please be especially mindful of content warnings with underage characters. A reminder that the game does not allow explicit sexual content with minors.

3. You do not have to regress your character to childhood - if a very formative event happened at age 20 for example, you can choose that route instead.

4. Speeding up the carousel while it is moving forward will result in, you guessed it, aging your character UP. Obviously you can ride it backwards again to fix this, or again the aging will be reversed at the end of the month.

---

Ⅳ. COULROPHOBIA
CW: clowns, suffocation
Who can possibly resist the big top? Not you! You're ushered into the tent and you take a seat in the stands, where you have an excellent view of the huge ring before you. The excitement in the air is palpable, and even if you're the grouchy type you'll find yourself a little bit thrilled.

It's a little surprising when the lights go up to the sound of screaming guitars. Mist belches from hidden foggers, and flames shoot from near the center of the ring. The lights stutter red, blue, green. The whole thing is a lot more rock show than it is Ringling Brother's.

At any rate, even if the ringmaster looks like a reject from a trailer park metal band and the music is liable to burst some eardrums, it's still a circus. There are trained horses and riders, contortionists, and a score of talented trapeze artists. It's all sparkling and impressive and terrific fun.

The trapeze artists take their bows, clearly ready for a break. And if a break is needed at the circus? You know what happens next, don't you?

SEND IN THE CLOWNS!

The clowns spill into the ring, all sorts of them! There's Harlequin and Pierrot, Auguste and Tramp. There's Bozos and Ronalds and Clarabelles and Krustys. Hopefully no Gacys, but there's so many of them that it's hard to know for sure.

One of these clowns - the one you hate the most, of course - approaches you in the stands. With comically exaggerated movements, it leans close to you and whispers...

Well. It whispers horrible things to you, really. It recounts to you some instance in your life where you delighted in the suffering of another, a moment where you really and truly were happy that somebody else was hurt. It's not a moment to be proud of, for sure, but as the clown tells your own secret shameful joy to you, you start to laugh. Really laugh - soon you're bent over double, tears running down your face, absolutely howling with laughter.

Your stomach hurts, and you're running out of breath. Very soon you won't be able to breathe at all.

Eventually, one of your fellow travelers won't be able to resist asking you, "What's so funny?"

The only way to stop laughing is to tell them. Otherwise you're going to pass out right where you sit, a creepy clown leering over you the whole time. Maybe your fellow traveler will be nice enough to drag you out of there if that happens, because if you're left alone? Everybody knows clowns get so much scarier alone in the dark.

Notes:
1. What happens if you really do get ditched with the clowns? Great question. Maybe they make you one of them. Maybe they eat you. Maybe you just wake up in the Big Top dressing room and see all the clowns smoking cigars and taking their floppy shoes off to film Clown Foot Erotica.

It wouldn't be a party without some jams.

Network · Logs · OOC · Memes · Plurk

Comments

David Alleyne | OTA

[helpdesk_hero]

1 - The 'Temple'

Temples, he supposes, can be a metaphor. Perhaps they have to be when you're in a place like this. David was happy to 'explore' this one, strange as it was in how it manifested. He looked distrustingly at the game in the middle, deciding it probably wasn't worth touching. Instead he moved to find a trailer, considering the space. Somewhere safe to sleep mattered. Once he was certain that existed, David moved slowly through the trailers. He looked for people, hoping to run into someone. Who, well, he didn't care.

Just knowing there were still people around was always a comfort.


2 - Showers!

Being free of a land of pollen AND delusion inspiring hotsprings was a bit of a worrying thing. Would there be a way to finally get well and truly clean? While David was often someone who enjoyed yellow as a color, he had not exactly been happy to be coated with it so fully all the time.

But when he finds the shower tent, David made the happiest noise.

"Finally. Finally no more pollen!"


3 - Carnival Prizes

A carnival. Truth be told, David hadn't been to one in a very long time. The whole old school feel of it didn't really bother him either, it was just... It was pleasing to see something so simple and relatively safe. Relatively of course because David never trusted any place to be all it seemed. Still, it wasn't attacking him yet, so he thought he might enjoy it before things exploded.

If there was one thing that being an ImPort had proven to him, it was that things always moved toward an explosion of one form or another.

David strolled carefully through the carnival, listening to the people hawking their foods, their rides, their games. These David mostly ignored, because it was well known that carnival games are rigged. But he had to stop when one called out.

"What are you? Scared of trying?"

And that had been the catalyst. It had been what had led David to his latest carnival game, a small stuffed animals hanging out of every pocket he wore, out of his back, and even a few held around his body with a rope, sort of like a bandolier. He had too many stuffed animals and other prizes, and yet was still rolling a baseball through his hand, testing the weight, as he considered the next game of skill.

2: just like the YMCA showers...

[speed_of_snark]

"Wow," a dry voice intones from one of the shower stalls. "That's all it takes to make you happy? You must be easy to please."

It's a familiar voice for David, but it's also not quite right. The accent is thicker, the tone a little less over it.

Jean-Paul, looking like he would only barely be allowed to drink, leans out from his shower, smirking, and gives David a very obvious once-over. "I do like that in a man."

omg jp!

[helpdesk_hero]

Yeah, he knows that dry tone. And it's energetic today. Well, more energetic. David flinches and looks toward it, about to tell Jean-Paul off for even assuming that, they both know he's difficult as fuck. Except...

Except Jean-Paul is checking him out.

Well, there's also the hair being way shorter, and the apparent lack of recognition in the other and... David takes a deep breath and tries not to be flattered (he fails). His arms cross over his chest to try and show he's not pleased with the compliment (he is) and he gives Jean-Paul the most bland look he can manage.

"Very funny, Jean-Paul. Do the showers have soap? I'm so fucking done with pollen. Don't act like you're not as well. And we both know you like a challenge."

;)

[speed_of_snark]

Jean-Paul's impish grin doesn't fade. "I'm sorry," he says, one hand twirling lazily through the air. "You have me at a disadvantage. You know my name, but alas, I don't know yours. Unless we've met and I've forgotten, which I have a difficult time believing."

He gestures at the shower behind him. "Ouais, there is soap," he says, still looking at David appraisingly. "You wanna check?"

[helpdesk_hero]

A disadvantage? David freezes and frowns. Jean-Paul doesn't remember him. He tries to push down the blush that comes from the active flirting. Truth be told, he rarely noticed when someone was hitting on him. But the way Jean-Paul did it made his heart skip a beat. Because it reminded him so much of Damian.

"You really have no clue who I am?" he asked rather than taking the prompting to look in Jean-Paul's shower. He definitely wasn't getting close enough to move in such a way as to see more than just Jean-Paul's face and shoulders.

That isn't a question he needs answered in person when he already knows it in theory.

[speed_of_snark]

Jean-Paul is not a subtle personality.

"Non. Should I?" he asks, eyebrows lifting.

[helpdesk_hero]

Yep. Something is wrong here. Very wrong. So he raises his own eyebrow right back.

"Something is wrong here. This isn't you as I know you. I'm David, by the way."

[speed_of_snark]

"David," jean-Paul repeats, rolling the taste of it around in his mouth.

"I'm not sure what you could possibly think is wrong. I love the circus. I worked in one, for a while."

[helpdesk_hero]

"I'm well aware," David answered. This was all so very awkward. How did you explain to a guy that you knew his whole history because it was buried in your own mind?

But damn, he is very shocked over how nice his name sounds in Jean-Paul's accent when he man is contemplating it.

"Have you, uh, don't anything other than showering since getting to the island, JP?"

Because David really needs to know what caused this. Clearly it's going to need fixed.

3

[detectivemiracle]

"You might want to think about saving some for the rest of us," Chloe comments mildly at the stranger who is, apparently, covered in game prizes. "Or, maybe find some kids who would like one?" She waves a hand vaguely at him. She looks amused, rather than serious about it.

[helpdesk_hero]

The tone gets David to look back over his shoulder and smile.

"Pick what you like, as many as you like. And it's not that I'm not saving them, it's that these vendors keep suggesting I'm too cowardly to try their game," David answered.

He too looks amused. But damn if he was having a problem backing down.

"I'm just sorta good at things like this. Knew a kid who lived around carnivals growing up."

[detectivemiracle]

"There is always the choice to just... not take the bait," Chloe points out, but without any real heat behind it - she's kind of used to people who can't back down from a challenge. Sometimes, she's one of them.

"There don't seem to be many of them around anymore," she adds, waving a hand vaguely at the whole thing. "Or at least, not in my... world, or whatever."

[helpdesk_hero]

"Is there though?" David asked. "I mean, I don't think I could make Deadpool a stuffed animal pocket bandolier if I didn't win a lot."

It was meant as a joke but hello if he could get thread he just might do it to amuse the mercenary.

Her observation about her world had him nod in understanding.

"Sorry to hear that. Earth is replete with them if you're at the right time of year in America. Usually September actually. All the Labor Day celebrations. Schools and local communities throw little fairs and the like. And there is always summer county fair season."

[detectivemiracle]

"Really? Maybe I just don't live in the right part of America, then," Chloe says with a faint smile. "Disney and Six Flags kind of have the monopoly on amusement parks in southern California."

And Universal Studios, and Santa Monica Pier, and...

[helpdesk_hero]

"See, there's your problem. You're California," David answered with a smile. "I know they still do them out in the 'burbs in Chicago, and upstate New York."

He puts the ball down and turns to offer his hand out to her.

"I'm David. Always nice to run into someone from Earth. Quick question, how do you take your pizza?"

Gotta get that controversy out of the way quickly. Can't be a man of Chicago without getting aghast at people not saying 'Chicago style'.

[detectivemiracle]

"Nice to meet you, David. I'm Chloe. And I'm definitely not putting myself in that argument - I don't eat pizza enough to have a strong opinion either way."

She laughs faintly.

[helpdesk_hero]

"Smart woman, Chloe. There are definitely wrong answers and it isn't a battle worth fighting I suppose," he noted with a smile.

He waved to the man running the stall and accepted he was forfeiting his money to talk to her.

"So, your Earth have super heroes or no? It's one of the distinctions I find as a good starting point for placing people in the multiverse and how weird or not weird my life is to talk about."

3 - Carnival Prizes

[quire]

Quentin too looks like he's been doing well enough with these carnival games. A strap of red vines and cotton candy runs across his back as he eyes up the next thing that could tempt him with a sugary prize.

He chuckles to see David respond to that kind of goading and files that away somewhere for later. "More of a plushies man than a munchies guy huh? I dunno if I'd have made that assumption."

[helpdesk_hero]

Ah yes, Quentin. David hears the voice but he doesn't stop focusing carefully on the game before him. The current one that had goaded him into action involved using a rather poor catapult to get a floppy rubber frog onto a lily pad. It was really just a question of proper physics calculations, and he was good at those.

"The food here is predominately bad for my teeth or my body in other ways. Can't stay lean and fighting fit if I'm stuffing my face with candy. Not blessed with a speedster's metabolism," he said, before smacking his hammer on the catapult and watching the frog sail perfectly toward a lilypad. Unless something interrupted its flight, the thing would land perfectly, netting him another toy.

[quire]

"No idea you were such a fitness mom either," he says glibly as he hops into a seat on the edge of this carnival booth. The carnie running things doesn't seem thrilled about it, but says nothing and Quentin takes no notice.

"Did you try the big one?" he asks, watching David land his rubber frog. "You know the big hammer smash thing... whatever it's called. The one you always see in cartoons."

[helpdesk_hero]

"I get into fights. I need to be able to stay able to protect myself. Not like I have active powers when I'm back home," David noted. But the frog does land and he looks over toward Quire.

"Pick the prize you want, Quentin. I've got plenty. Maybe you could give it to Kyle."

Oh yes, he's heard something about that.

[quire]

"Wait, what? Did we talk about this? I thought you were from some-when else... Anyway, I wouldn't exactly call you for a brawler. Are you throwing hands around here more than usual? Is this something I should know about?" he rubs his chin like he's earnestly trying to recall talking about this, but given how quickly he's distracted by the offer of a prize it's no wonder he can't remember the things people tell him.

"Red vines," he points out without a second thought. Not exactly something he'll be giving Kyle, but far be it from him to turn down a freebie.

[helpdesk_hero]

"X-Factor gets into shit sometimes, and so did the Young Avengers and plenty of other groups I've worked with. So yes, being able to fight matters to me," he answered. "And I'm not sure what you're asking about what we have or haven't spoken about. Unless it's Kyle. HE's horrible at hiding stuff."

He nods to the vendor so he would know it was okay to provide the red vines. Prize one, he turns away from the stall. Perhaps he can move on from this stand then. Maybe he can get somewhere.

"And no, I don't intend to try the ring-the-bell game. I don't need to know."

[quire]

"Sure, right, yeah, I just meant I thought we talked about you being powered— whenever this place plucked you from," he leans over the booth to claim his red vines and munches a few while they walk. He knows David never really wants him around but it's common place enough a feeling that he's an expert at ignoring it.

"Don't need to know what? Did you figure out how it works?"

[helpdesk_hero]

"Oh, yeah, there's that. But I don't know that I trust that power to stay with me. And I've only used it as weapons briefly in the past. Not that it saved me when I was..."

No, his brain almost screamed. Don't think about that. Don't touch what happened there.

"I haven't learned it enough to do anything more than make a knife or a wall and I'm not sure those are good enough in a fight. Sure, I can make things that are more pretty and showy, but again, I'm not you, I can't really turn it into a good self-defense consistently."

So he adjusts his stuffed animals and looks to Quire.

"No, I didn't figure it out. But people that clearly were doing the right form and everything but it wasn't going all the way."