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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.

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Ⅰ. ARRIVAL & THE TEMPLE
The islands, Gideon continues to learn, are full of color. She expects as much compared to the Ninth House. Perhaps even next to the dead decaying First House. It's still so much. Colors blur, and Gideon ducks her way around and through the loud noise. Only way out is through, yeah? (no, but it's her answer for a lot of things). Her mind skips from element to element, unsure how much it resembles the other houses or even farther abroad parts of the universe.

The element that grounds her and nabs her focus is the hammer with the sign: test your strength. This, yes, this. Gideon knows this. Someone's ahead of her, and she's got enough sense of fair play to wait her turn. She postures, watching them. "How hard is it?" she asks, teasingly.

Ⅱ. HALL OF MIRRORS
CW: murder, blood/horror

Buddy system is a little suspicious (the last time Gideon followed the buddy system people were being murdered), but sure. The first reflection she sees looks a lot like her. Her clothes are all black (she's got some color now), and most importantly Gideon has her sword. She longs for it the way she needs air and food and sleep and Harrow. Gideon holds up her hand to the mirror and stares.

She's no Naberius Tern, so Gideon moves on.

The Hall of Mirrors stops being as fun when Gideon sees herself falling asleep in a broad mirror that drips with blood. It drips from her too, even as her eyes droop. Each time Gideon blinks, a spear of light sears against her eyes, and more blood coats her hands. Her mistakes. Her failures. Her face flushes, and Gideon strides farther on. She glimpses further images of herself--holding Harrow in that water-filled hole (and her corpse impaled on a wrought-iron fence), eleven year old Gideon dazed, Gideon fighting heralds (as herself, not as Harrow, which she knew didn't technically happen, but she had fought them, so it had, shit just got complicated).

Standing at the exit doors, Gideon sighs and feels scraped dry. "Gideon fucking Nav," she declares at the glass series of reflections, holding all of the versions of her. Nothing happens.

Ⅲ. THE CAROUSEL
Other people may have learned to expect shit to happen. Gideon is slow or stubborn or both. She's having fun damn it, and sometimes that means riding some four legged construct that's pinned to the floor. She laughs as it speeds up and laughs and laughs and-

She's laughing but gasps shut. The gangly eleven year old gulps back and eyes everything suspiciously. This has to be Harrow's doing. No one else just does this. Even these people look much too young (how many corpses is she puppeting now? Are there more?). Her jaw sets, and Gideon climbs off the construct (Harrow is soooooooo going to scratch her face off if she learns Gideon climbed her precious skeleton construct). She backs up and backs up and what the ever-dying fuck there's a sky.

Ⅳ. COULROPHOBIA
CW: suicide, child neglect

Gideon hasn't seen Harrow, and she doesn't know what to make of the other people. No one knows her, and no one's immediately come up and done whatever. AKA absolutely fucking normal. Except most people aren't wearing face paint, and those that do aren't skulls. That's even weirder than people not wearing face paint (because that is the way her face is when she wakes up in the morning, before someone holds her down and paints it on).

Then it's worse. Because someone knows what she did, what was supposed to be that 'gotcha' moment. Everyone who knows was dead or Harrow. Harrow wouldn't tell. Gideon definitely wouldn't tell. Someone knows? Even as the laughter racks her body and the tears are as much from guilt and the sinking sensation in her stomach, though not the painful way all this laughing tears at her stomach (Aiglamene's lessons are harder), Gideon's scared. She tries to find a way to be alone, but it is hard to slink around in broad daylight (thank something for the sunglasses) and while laughing.

OOC: Internet access issues --> responses will be sporadic for the time being.

Edited (formatting) 2021-09-11 00:17 (UTC)

Sephiroth wasn't interested in experiencing the place so much as he wanted to get away from the crowds, and he wouldn't have allowed himself to be ushered inside with just anyone. He imagines he can tolerate Gideon, and he appreciates the dim and the relative quiet. The colors are reminiscent of Midgar, cold and uninviting and therefore comfortably familiar.

As they move through, the changes in his own reflection are far less dramatic. His outward appearance has always reflected the otherness he feels, and he's cultivated it--growing his hair long, rejecting the standard SOLDIER uniform. His reflection shifts to show his chosen uniform: the long black coat and gloved hands and white pauldrons. His sword, too, appears in his left hand, a part of his identity. The truly uncanny parts are subtle. His reflection's eyes glow more prominently, and somehow, it appears more distant from the glass than it should, throwing off his spacial awareness. He takes to keeping a hand against the glass to feel his way.

He doesn't comment on Gideon's reflections, much as this place might want him to, and it doesn't surprise him to find something barring their exit. He doubts it wants anything so easy from them as their names. Still-

"Perhaps without the expletive," he suggests dryly.

“Anything intelligent should be able to handle one shitty expletive,” Gideon says. If it’s some kind of Harrow too-literalness, then sure, perhaps the lacking of fucking is a problem with using that word. She considers ‘Gideon shitting Nav’ because that one’s sure true. The image of Harrow making a face but opening the door because it’s technically true makes her smile.

“Or we have to say it together or hold hands while saying our names or maybe it’d like a fighting demo. I vote we try that one,” Gideon says. She looks to the dead end of mirrors stretching out. “Gideon Nav.”

She waits. No luck.

“You can try yours. If it wants poetry, I know some that will never leave your head.”

"Sephiroth," he says, because it is worth a try, and he has no problem saying his own damn name (unlike certain people).

Nothing happens, of course.

"Unless you are, secretly, a poet, I doubt poetry is the answer." And he really doesn't care for it.

He glances around them, at their various reflections staring back at them. At least his are consistent, but he is starting to feel hemmed in. These halls might be largely empty of people, but they're hardly spacious. The exit is right in front of them, but the red light tells him he cannot pass.

Oh, he is absolutely not confessing that aspect of his identity. "We might simply break it," he proposes, even if his current clothes don't offer the best protection against shattering glass. It's better than certain options.

Gideon is not a poet. Nor much of a reader (of poetry, magical theory texts, or anything else considered of value). “More into puns myself,” Gideon says. She briefly considers punning the house of mirrors into letting them out. Annoying people is one of her great skills. Just ask Crux.

The mirrors aren’t so much telling a story as depicting Gideon the different ways people could see her. Some of them good, some of them bad, some of them Gideon wants to turn away from but always continues to see in the corner of her eye.

“We could,” Gideon agrees. She bites her lip rather than moving forward on that. Harrow’s voice is in her head, and Gideon knows Harrow wouldn’t simply brute force her way out (Harrow does not do brute force). Surely Harrow will be disappointed in her if Gideon breaks it all down. “We’ll always have that option, so lets take a minute.”

What would Harrow do? What would Harrow see? If these are Gideon moments, they are ones Harrow has almost seen all of. Gideon’s eyes slide back toward the bloody vision of herself, the one that clearly must have been how she looked the night Gideon went down into the complex with the Fourth House. Isaac. Then Jeanne-Mary. That’s their blood on her hands. What’s the point of showing her that? Gideon fucks up, and it gets people killed. (see also not killing the Saint of Failing to Kill Harrow (wait, that’s like two of them) and everything going to shit). It feels like doing those tests again, somewhere between the two they completed. She doesn’t get to fight anything with her sword, but she’s also not in how-the-fuck-am-I-alive agony.

“Cavalier Primary,” she tries. “Dumbass-in-chief.” She looks over at Sephiroth’s reflections. Back at hers. Hmm? “Goths who like boobs.”

That last one gets a quiet snort from him. "Speak for yourself." Is he a goth just because he prefers black? Does he look like a boob man?

"SOLDIER, First Class. The Demon of Wutai." Nothing. "I don't think it wants titles either."

He stares into his reflection, a face that looks a little more off, a little less human. Is that what it wants from him? Would it even accept a negative? An admission that he may not be human, that he doesn't know his own origins? Even that is something he's reluctant to speak aloud.

"...the son of Jenova," he tries, and if he'd really understood what that meant, then it probably would have worked. But he doesn't. He ascribes the name to the wrong person, thinking her a human woman. Nothing happens, and he lets out a frustrated breath. He looks to Gideon, his expression saying that he's about out of ideas-- or at least ideas better than breaking the glass.

Gideon waves casually toward Sephiroth’s reflections. Clearly, he at least likes his own cleavage. It’s not the point because he’s right. These titles, official or tongue in cheek, aren’t working. Just as their names aren’t working.

They aren’t meaningless, but it’s information people can have without really knowing anything about her. Silas Octakiseron knew her last name because he spoke to a spirit. He didn’t understand anything about the Ninth. Not really. Much less her.

Gideon needs to channel Harrow. Harrowhark Nonagesimus. Gideon cannot unravel the magic or understand it’s underlying theorem. Nor does she want to. Harrow, she knows, would be so frustrated with her, with Gideon standing here the fool embarrassing the Ninth House. “Griddle,” Gideon grumbles in Harrow’s voice.

That name is theirs. When Gideon is embarrassing or too stubborn or stupid or impressive or working together. It’s always Griddle.

The reflections waver and snap together, a myriad of images in one. One person. Her. The mirrors start to part, letting them closer to the exit. Not out but halfway. Maybe.

“Your turn,” Gideon says. “You still going to punch your way out?”

Edited (Hit post early) 2021-09-17 15:46 (UTC)

Griddle... means nothing to him. It's a piece of kitchen equipment, not an identity. And yet it works for this stupid test.

If he had anything else to offer that she wouldn't understand... Well, he does, but it's not something he's ever allowed himself to put words to, and if it didn't accept his mother's name, then what's the point of anything further about his parentage?

"To be quite honest... I would rather give it a little blood than play this guessing game any longer."

In other words, yes. He won't warn her to step back, but she has a few seconds while he pulls out his utility knife; he could use his fist, but this should at least save him a few cuts. Assuming the glass isn't a magical barrier...

It's something of a relief when the handle of the knife connects and the glass breaks the way glass ought to break, even if he does suffer a few cuts to his exposed skin. No big deal.

She’s not about to pour her heart out or reveal her gather full details of her relationship with Harrow (a thing rarely if ever talked about honestly, even between them). The name, however, isn’t some huge secret. Harrow still uses it, and Gideon doesn’t mind sharing at least that much. Perhaps Sephiroth has an embarrassing personal nickname from someone he doesn’t admit to caring about.

“You do you, bro,” Gideon says. She steps back enough to avoid most of the splash zone. If only the shards would come together into some mirror construct tom fight this would be a lot more fun. She picks up some pieces of moderate size. They’re sharp. They’re different. They could be useful. A lifetime in the Ninth House teaches people not to waste things.

Staying some steps behind, Gideon watches his reflection. “Anything important about the way your reflection…” she motions toward what doesn’t match. “Is like that?”

Sephiroth looks at the reflection still waiting for him on the next pane of glass. Cold, distant eyes with a glow he can pass off as 'the mark of SOLDIER' but which he's had since well before he joined.

"I am unlike others," he says, tossing his hair back as if for emphasis. "What a revelation."

His sarcastic observation does nothing to open the way, so he promptly smashes through the next mirror, leaving just one pane of glass between them and the way out. He'll move to smash that, too.

Except that he is as tall as her, clearly not a necromancer, without face paint, and in many other meaningful ways, not Harrow, Sephiroth sounds just like Gideon’s spiky lifelong… evil stick. “I doubt anyone else washes their hair as much as you, I get it,” Gideon rolls her eyes.

“Who does get you?” She asks. “You can hate it all you want, but unless you grew up in a society of one, I bet someone knows your hair flipping ass better than you’d like.”

Gideon Nav | The Locked Tomb (content

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inevitable locked tomb spoilers everywhere

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