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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

[gravity_grrl]

"Yeah but those MDs have never had fried food from another dimension now have they? How do you know that this stuff isn't like, magic or some shit and will actually counter heart disease?" She counters with a grin and then bops up to the food stand, ordering them a box of Churros and one corn dog.

She returns to David's side with a grin and offers him the first pick of the Churros.

[helpdesk_hero]

"Actually, I have," David points out. Plenty of dimensional travel on his ticket. His interdimensional passport needs new pages. "And I know what magic feels like. And I'd know at a touch whether it was mundane or not."

She can keep her corndog. He does take a Churro.

"I'm David, by the way."

[gravity_grrl]

"Nice to meetcha David, I'm Roxy."

She grins and sticks the corndog in her mouth so she can offer David her hand to shake, the other holding the box of Churros. She's not ladylike but at least she's friendly?

[helpdesk_hero]

Roxy's name is filed away and shakes her hand, looking half amused. Who needs ladies when there are friendly people.

"A pleasure. MAybe you should sit down before you eat."

[gravity_grrl]

She takes the corndog out of her mouth, the tip of it gone and swallowed. "Nuh-uh, you can't sit at the carnival. It's like a rule, you have to wander and look at everything, even when you're eating."

[helpdesk_hero]

"I think you will find it is physically possible to sit at a carnival," he answers, shaking his head. This woman is just a special sort of mad. "You know we have two months to look, right?"

[gravity_grrl]

She shrugs and takes another bite of her corn dog, walking them towards some of the midway games. "Yeah but it's exciting to look at it now. Besides, who knows what's going to happen at dawn. Maybe this whole place turns to smoke or whatever."

[helpdesk_hero]

"The flowers never left, so I'm going to posit that it will still be here tomorrow," David answered, amused at her statement. "This doesn't really seem like the Oracle."

[gravity_grrl]

"Oracle?" She asks, switching from her corn dog to a Churro. "What Oracle?"

[helpdesk_hero]

"The last island. The flower oracle. She bloomed, answered questions or granted favors, then died."

It was so short. So fleeting. And it felt so hopeful to him.

[gravity_grrl]

"Woah, that's a crappy gig." Roxy says, wrinkling her nose. "Did she tell you anything good?"

[helpdesk_hero]

Good? David smiled softly to himself. A chance to know his sister. To find her again.

"Yeah, she did. That memories are never truly gone.'

[gravity_grrl]

Roxy smiles, not so much at the advice the Oracle gave him since it's seems vague and mysterious but it obviously meant something to him by the expression on his face and that's a good thing.

"Aw, that's great." She says and then offers him another Churro. "So how long have you been on this weird island trip?"

[helpdesk_hero]

Oh it meant more than she could imagine. And he doesn't know her enough to tell her more.

"This will be my third month and change. I had all of the flower island. Now here."

[gravity_grrl]

"Flower island hrm? Was it a tropical paradise or more like a huge island full of little shop of horrors type of plants?"

[helpdesk_hero]

"Neither. Just... Just fields and fields and fields of impossible flowers," David answered with a shrug.

No, it wouldn't make sense save to have seen it.

[gravity_grrl]

"Sounds like somewhere my friend Sarah would like, she's big into nature." She says and then points at some of the games they are walking by.

"Did you want to try one? Win ourselves a dumb prize?"

[helpdesk_hero]

"It didn't feel very natural," David said. "But yeah, could still be fun to see."

That said he nods between bites of the churro. He can do games.

"Just find something you want. I'll get it."

[gravity_grrl]

She gives him a skeptical look, her mouth twisting up into a sarcastic grin.

"What? You gonna steal me one of these big teddy bears? Doesn't that sort of defeat the purpose of playing the game?"

[helpdesk_hero]

"Not stealing. Though Carnival games are made in a way to cheat the consumer," David answered. "I just have good hand-eye coordination, and a lot of skill with knowing how the game is cheating."

To him it's as simple as that.

[gravity_grrl]

"Yeah no duh, that's why they're carnival games." Roxy says with a smile, "The whole point is to know that they are rigged."

"It makes actually winning something dumb and worth 10 cents all the more rewarding."

She shrugs and leads him over to a ring toss. "But fiiiine, show me how good you are then cutie."

[helpdesk_hero]

Is it rewarding when he'd win them on the first shot period? Probably not.

All this time, and David was not good at handling people complimenting his looks. He actually half-stumbled at that.

"Uh, it's David. Definitely my name is David."

[gravity_grrl]

Oh David, if someone complimenting your looks makes you stumble you might have a full on collision hanging out with Roxy...

She smiles at him, "Well come on then 'Definitely David', win me that big stuffed octopus then."

[helpdesk_hero]

Yeah, well, collisions may not be bad for him. He'd spent too much time pining and not enough acknowledging people might appreciate him.

"That's pretty easy," David answered, considering the game. Just a balloon breaking one. He knew how to handle those. It was all angles and force. He had so much of those floating in his head from Scott Summers that he had this one in the bag already.

[gravity_grrl]

"Easy peasy lemon squeezy?" She echoes flirtatiously and leans across the counter area of the game stand, cupping her face in her hands and watching David with a smile. It's a smile he's going to learn means that she's up to something.

She lets him throw the first few darts at the balloons, which to his word he nails, on the next two though she twitches her hand and effects the gravity on them just a bit, making them go off course.