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✖ 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

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"At least flowers are, I don't know, organic," she mutters.

"And I'm new here. I'm Chloe."

"Guess if that's your priority," Hawks answers with a laugh. He doesn't really care, of course; food is food, greasy and friend or not. He'll take his terrible for you popcorn chicken over weird flowers any day.

"I'm Hawks," he says. "Looks like whenever we switch islands, we get some new faces. Makes sense they'd pick up more people when they shuffle us around. You sure you don't wanna try something fried? This chicken is pretty good for sketchy fair food."

Chloe sighs, glancing at the various food vendors. "I might have to, if this is all there is for a while. Uh, how long do you think we'll be stuck here?"

She doesn't bother asking the obvious and how the Hell do we get back home, because that seems to be a question without an answer.

Hawks considers the question for a second, letting his gaze drift up towards the sky while he thinks.

"I dunno. A month or so? Maybe a little more? We don't seem to stay all that long on these islands, but I'm not sure what the catalyst for moving on is. Might be there's a totally set time more than there is an event that gets us goin'. I wanna say we do something that makes them take us somewhere, but that's probably just the hero in me wanting to feel like we're making progress."

He holds out his wrist with the ScryWatch on it, yellow like his eyes. He's not embarrassed about it, but even if he were, it's not like the thing is all that easy to hide or get away from.

"This thing hasn't changed colour the whole time I've been away from my own world though, so I got my doubts about what kind of so-called progress we're really making."

He looks back at Chloe with an apologetic smile.

"Sorry, that's probably not the answer you wanted, huh? I'd hate to lie to you right off the bat or something. I'd hate to lie to you at all."

He's actually very good at lying, but he's telling her the truth now: he hates actually doing so.

Chloe just studies him, glancing at his ScryWatch for a moment. Her own is green, which she doesn't comment on, because she's still not entirely sure what they mean, if anything. Does it matter? She'd never rely on something that looks like a frickin' mood ring to tell her about the contents of someone's character.

"I only ever want the truth," she says simply. "I can handle it. What I can't handle is being lied to. So thanks for the honesty."

She glances around, frowning. "Do you know of anyone who has made progress, in this system they've set up? It might be helpful to discuss what's even considered 'progress'."

Hawks himself isn't sure what they mean, either. He's seen various shades of them. He hasn't outright talked to anyone whose ScryWatch has changed, but surely someone's has? It has to, right? What's the damn point of them? Is redemption a lie? He privately thinks it is a lie, or a ruse, or a trick, but he hasn't figured out to what end. There must be rules, but whether the rules change by island or not is anyone's guess.

He pops more chicken in his mouth. He has enough manners not to talk with his mouth full (this time).

"I don't really like lying," he says with a shrug. The motion moves his wings along with his shoulders.

"Dunno. I know a few people who seem to have disappeared between islands, though. I don't know if they won the game or lost it, though. Not like that boat guy answers questions. I'll ask on the network, yeah? Stay tuned."

He shifts his greasy food around so he can do just that, but he's used to cell phones and whatever so he can multitask about this. He's still paying attention to her. Phones are easier, though. Video functionality when, ScryWatch?

"Oh, huh, I didn't realize they could do that," she says. Chloe is one of those older millennials who, while she knows how to use social media, and maybe she's on Facebook sometimes, she never really got on board with most of it. She's no luddite, she has a smart phone, but she's never been a Twitter doomscroller, either.

"So," she says, tilting her head at him curiously. "Mind if I ask - uh, what you are? Is that rude?" She indicates her own back, where she clearly does not have wings. "Are you an angel?"

That is clearly not a euphemism, or a flirtation. She is seriously asking him if he's an angel, and wanting a serious answer.

"What, the network thing?" He asks. "Oh, yeah. It's kinda lame, though. It's just text. No pictures or whatever." He's from a place that's probably futuristic compared to where Chloe is from, but it's not Star Trek or anything. He's used to social media and all that, though; he has a big social media presence, since part of the culture of heroes involved publicity stunts and whatever. He's good at that bit. He's incredibly popular, being young and hip and personable. A lot of his public personality is cultivated to be just that, after all.

It's exhausting sometimes, but it is what it is. It's better than the life he could have had growing up on the streets starving.

He looks surprised at her question, but then just laughs.

"Well, that's the first time I've gotten that question," he says. If only she knew what I've had to do in my life, he thinks. He's not a bad person at all, not really, but he's a spy. Not by choice, but by necessity. Of course he can't say that, and he's not a spy here. He's not a hero here either, though.

"I'm a human being. But I'm guessing people don't have wings where you come from. Actually, they don't really get wings where I'm from either. I mean, some of us do, I guess. Where I'm from, people have what we call quirks. It's like a mutation. Some people don't get anything very obvious like me. The number one hero in Japan, Endeavor, he can light his whole body on fire! He can throw fire, control fire, it's incredible."

Is Hawks an Endeavor stan? Yes, absolutely, and he's not at all ashamed of that.

"But there's loads. I had an apprentice recently who has a bird's head. He has this pretty cool shadow ability that's like almost separate from himself. I know people who can create explosions, one kid can do this thing that makes people float, manipulating sound waves. Goes on and on. I like being able to fly, but on the other hand, it makes it pretty obvious to anyone I'm up against that hey, here's my quirk, you know?"

Once Hawks gets talking, he can talk for a minute. Though it's a little misleading, too; his quirk isn't just that he has wings and can fly. He can do a lot more than simply fly, but it hasn't been terribly relevant on these islands yet, other than the time he fought the mantis-type people on the last island.

It's okay. She's used to dealing with people who like the sound of their own voice. Well, one person, in particular. She's fine with letting Hawks talk himself out. It allows her to cover up the small pang of disappointment in her chest. It's not like she actually expected him to be an angel from her world - one of Lucifer's siblings she hasn't met yet. That was always going to be a very, very long shot. But still, she had a glimmer of hope right up until he quashed it.

"Sounds like superheroes. We don't have those in my world, but they exist in fiction," she says with a faint smile. So she's at least familiar with the concept. "Where I come from, humans don't have wings. Angels do. So, that's why I asked."

He's more surprised to hear her tell him that angels are actually a thing; he'd imagined it was some hypothetical question, not something she'd actually witnessed before.

"Yeah, superheroes," he says, but he mostly just throws that away because, "Hold up. You have literal angels in your world? Like come from heaven angels or am I missing a meaning here?"

"Yeah, angels from heaven," Chloe says with a faint shrug. "Is that any weirder than mutant humans with wings?"

She thinks it's probably a toss-up.

He still looks surprised for a second before he gives half a laugh.

"I mean, I never really believed in heaven, I guess. But this whole place is pretty wild, so why not, yeah? Angels. Sure. Mutant humans is just life to me. I'm not anywhere near the strangest looking person out there. These angels, they just...hang out with regular humans? You seem like it's commonplace for you, so, that's either a your world thing or it's a you thing."

"It's not commonplace in my world," Chloe says quickly. "And believe me, a lot of it is still very weird to me, even though I've known about it for over a year."

She scuffs her shoe along the ground thoughtfully. "I just got lucky, I guess. That I met one, and we became friends, and fell in love."

Hawks watches all of it, her reaction, the way it changes a bit when she talks about…oh. Oh, that's interesting. She has a personal interest in one angel. Are angels and humans compatible? Man, he knows really nothing about angel. He's not the religious type, never has been, so he just has sort of this vague idea of what they are. Magical deity sort of things with wings or whatever, right?

"Wow, that's actually really cool," he says, genuine. Meeting an angel and falling in love? Who gets to do something like that! "I've never been in love before or anything. Someday, though. Probably just with another human, if I had to guess." He winks at her because he's a nerd like that.

"So you just know the one angel?"

"And I'm sure you'll fall in love with a very special human," she says, almost automatically. It's almost the kind of thing she might say to her daughter, if Trixie ever expressed any interest or curiosity in it. She's twelve - and more interested in space travel than romance, which is fine with Chloe.

"I've met a couple of Lucifer's siblings," she adds. "Amenadiel is a good guy." Michael... not so much. She doesn't want to talk about him.

He chuckles at that. It seems like the kind of answer you might expect from a teacher or something, or maybe a parent who might actually care enough to say such a thing. Hawks doesn't spend a lot of time bothering to think about romance. The physical aspect, okay, maybe, but the other part? He doesn't have the luxury of it. He can't let anyone get that close, especially as long as the Commission is still making him serve as a spy. It's too dangerous for him and for anyone else. He hates that aspect of his life for so many reasons but it is what it is.

"Hold up. Lucifer? Isn't that, like, the devil or something?" He hasn't heard of that other one, but he's hardly an expert on angels. He knows enough pop culture to recognise the name Lucifer, though, even if he's aware he might have this mixed up or the whole other worlds thing might be working against his knowledge here.

"Yes," Chloe says bluntly. She's still getting used to just acknowledging his true nature to strangers here, but what she's not hesitant about is sticking up for him. "And no, he's not evil. He's a good person." Her hackles aren't up - she's not offended or accusatory. Simply firm in her conviction.

Hawks holds up his free hand, the one not holding his mostly empty popcorn chicken bucket, as sort of a defence anyway. He doesn't have any reason to argue or to not believe her, after all.

"Okay, okay. What do I know about the dude? Not much, honestly. So he's...not like the stories or something, huh? None of that like prince of lies business or whatever." He really has no idea about what's in the Bible and all of that, so he's mostly just saying words. "How'd you even meet someone like that?"

"He's almost nothing like any of the stories," she affirms. She should know, she did a lot of research when she learned the truth. She rarely found anything recognizable in the stories. "He hates being vilified. And he never lies - I think maybe because of the whole 'prince of lies' thing."

It makes sense - he gets labeled a liar, so his stubborn insistence on complete honesty is just another way to try and buck the labels.

"And we met through my job. He was a witness to a murder, and I caught the case. He lives in LA - owns a nightclub. He made himself a nuisance, but helped me solve the case - and saved my life. Then he just kind of kept coming around until he wormed his way in as a civilian consultant. We've been partners for five years." She says all that with a sort of fondness that suggests, well - a lot of good memories. Just a normal woman, talking about how she met her normal boyfriend.

Hawks tilts his head and listens to her talk about him. Well, it's sure not what he'd expect to hear about angels. Lucifer sounds like some normal dude, just hanging out, owning a nightclub, totally normal things. Her world is clearly different to his, but then, aren't all their worlds pretty different?

"I imagine he doesn't go around telling people he's an angel. Fallen angel? Something? Anyway, it's probably not something that's just, like, super common knowledge." Again, he's mostly just saying words. Hawks is talkative by nature. But he's definitely absorbing what she's saying here. He has a chill 'doesn't care much' attitude, but in the end, he's paying much more attention to things than he ever lets on.

"You're…what, a cop? You solve murders? So that's kinda like being a hero. You still go after the bad guys." Cops aren't exactly the same, even where he's from, though of course police where he's from all have quirks anyway, because pretty much everyone does. But the flashiest powers...well, usually big name heroes have them. It's easier to become a hero when you have the the flashier powers. Maybe it's set up that way on purpose. He's not in charge of that. (He's not in charge of much, really.)

“No, when I say he’s totally honest, I mean it. He tells everyone who and what he is. Most people just don’t believe him.”

She didn’t, for like almost three years.

“And I guess so. I mean, I try to do good and help people get justice. I’m a homicide detective.”

Hawks considers that answer and laughs. "Man, I guess that's one way to do it. I probably wouldn't believe it either. It would sound like bullshit, right? Someone being like hey, 'sup, I'm Lucifer, like that Lucifer. Hiding in plain sight." Actually, it sound like a good tactic to him, too. He can respect that. He's still not sure what to think about this whole thing, but he's met vampires and fae (which he's still not 100% sure what that was, but with Maleficent not having joined them on this island, he doesn't have answers on that one) and androids. So why not!

"That sounds pretty heavy, solving murders and all," he says, sympathetic. He doesn't see a ton of death in his line of work, since he's not who they call when someone is already dead. At least, he hadn't been seeing a lot of death until this past year when the big deal villains started doing what they're doing now. It's been a lot recently, but he's still not in the same line of work Chloe is.

"It took me about three years to finally believe," she comments lightly.

And then she looks thoughtful. "I mean, I suppose it is, but - I'm helping people. My dad was a cop, killed almost twenty years ago. I know how it is, having your life torn apart, losing someone important like that. The least I can do is help other people in that situation get some closure. And besides, I have great people I work with."

So why is she quitting again? That's... a question for another day.

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