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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

[extrasensory_problems]

"Thank you, and yeah I know it's not weird. It just feels...really sudden, like I went most my life liking girls and then suddenly one particular guy makes me all giddy and stupid."

He sighs and puts a hand over David's, giving him a small smile.

[helpdesk_hero]

"I get it," David promised. He really did. He knew how weird it could be. He had to consider himself lucky for the fact that his revelation clearly came at a younger age.

Then, to try and loosen up the mood a bit, he put his hand over Carter's hand on his hand. King of the hand pile.

"You strike me as prone to giddy and stupid anyway."

[extrasensory_problems]

He laughs and uses their joined hands to try and shove David away playfully, "Yeaaaah okay. You've got me there."

"So have you gone on any of the rides yet?"

[helpdesk_hero]

You know, in the long run it really wouldn't be a surprise if Kyle came to the completely wrong conclusion that David had a thing for Carter, because fuck they touch a lot. David, meanwhile, let himself flop over on his side when 'shoved'. But he kept the grip on Carter's hand tight, as if to pull him over as well.

"Damn right I've got you. Had you read from the word hello. I'm just that good."

Then he smiled and shook his head.

"No way in hell someone is getting me on a ride here. My luck, it will turn out to be run by a murderous carny. Last proper plane I was on actually fucking crashed. I'm definitely not a rides person."

[extrasensory_problems]

If Kyle sees them together he's going to think that they're married by how often and the familiarity in which they touch. When David flops over Carter laughs and let's himself get dragged down with him, laughing.

"You really are good."

When he mentions being in a plane crash Carter raises an eyebrow, "Oh shit. That's scary, okay yeah I understand why you might not want to go on any big rides then. But what about walk through ones? I saw that they have a haunted house that looks pretty silly."

[helpdesk_hero]

One could easily have said the same about David and Josh once, what felt like a lifetime ago. David didn't think about that, though. Instead he lets himself get almost crushed by Carter.

"Oh, I've been in multiple plane crashes. Sometimes when I'm flying the plane. That's... a mistake. Don't let me fly things."

A haunted house? David shakes his head.

"I've been haunted before. It would... touch the places where memories of my sister should be."

[extrasensory_problems]

"Oh so you're a shitty driver, got it." He jokes but then turns serious, moving off of David so he can look at him.

"Your sister? What do you mean?"

[helpdesk_hero]

"Amazing driver, shitty pilot," David corrects very seriously. Look at how serious his face is. And then he laughs, because of course he does, it had been a joke.

A joke that died with that question. Right, he hadn't told Carter.

"My... memories of her are all second hand. The last world I was in, there was an apocalypse. As part of saving it, I had to give some things up. My ability to figure skate, my first memory with my very first team... and everything about my sister. The telepath I mentioned training under for my powers, Judd, he gathered all the memories Josh and Laurie had of her and put them in my mind so I'd have something. But beyond that and one the Oracle gave me, I've got nothing."

He was trying to get them back.

[extrasensory_problems]

"Oh geez David..."

Did you want more cuddling? Because you're going to get it.

"I'm so sorry, I...that must be so hard. Like fuck I can't even... Okay yeah no haunted house for you."

[helpdesk_hero]

Yes, he will always take more cuddling from a friend. Jean-Paul wasn't cuddly, Kyle was a bit angry at times so that wasn't much of a chance, and he hadn't gotten to the 'physical touch is comforting' point with anyone else yet.

"She was there, at the school, when there was a haunting. I like, was missing most of the weekend she visited. But their memories at least gave me some memory of her. I try not to touch things related to her while I go on this apparent quest to find my memories again."

[extrasensory_problems]

He nods slowly, still very upset at the idea of loosing such important memories. If he had to give up something like that, say all the memories of his mother, he doubts he would be handling it as well as David.

"Quest to find your memories again.." He muses, "Well...I mean, if I can help in any way you know I will. Like if you need brain power, I might suck at my powers but if it will help you I can learn how to get better."

[helpdesk_hero]

David's had... Well, he's had the better part of a year to deal with the loss, even though he hadn't known it until later. But he kept working the best he could.

"Don't force yourself to fall into powers you don't want," David countered. "Jean-Paul's definitely in my corner on this one. And hey, if there's ever a winter island, maybe I'll try and learn to skate again."

[extrasensory_problems]

"I won't force myself but you know...if you need help. I'm here for you." Because what's the point of him having these abilities if he can't help his friends, especially ones he is growing close to so quickly.

"I've never been skating."

[helpdesk_hero]

"I know you are," David answered, smiling and hugging his friend a bit tighter. "But it's not a thing that telepathy can really solve."

That said, he has to smirk at the admission.

"We can learn together."

[extrasensory_problems]

He hugs back, "Well then I'm here for you in any other way that could help, okay?"

He smiles and nods, "Sounds like a plan. And then when I inevitably fall on my ass you can help me ice it."

[helpdesk_hero]

"See, first of all if you fall on your ass, you're already icing it. Secondly, ask Jenn for help. I'm not going to take care of your butt owwies, man. There are limits to our friendship and my medical degrees."

He's teasing. Of course he'd help.

[extrasensory_problems]

He laughs, "You said you're a doctor! You can't turn away from an injured person! It's like part of the law isn't it? Or the oath?"

[helpdesk_hero]

"Don't have official degrees and never took the actual oath. I can nope out if I want," he grinned.

Not law at all.

[extrasensory_problems]

"But my Butt!" He exclaims, laughing. "My poor buuuuuutt!"

[helpdesk_hero]

"Dude," David said, shoving him and laughing. "Keep that up and people will get the wrong idea."

[extrasensory_problems]

He continues to laugh, "David refuses to ice my buuuuutt!"

Eventually his giggles taper off and he sits back up, wiping at his eyes. "Whooo sorry. Got a case of the giggles there."

[helpdesk_hero]

"You are such a child," he chuckled with a shake of his head. "One day I will befriend a mutant who isn't a child."

[extrasensory_problems]

"Yeah good luck with that." He says with a grin and reaches over to pick back up his guitar.

"So what do you think? You wanna hear how she sounds? I'll play you something."

[helpdesk_hero]

"I'm not Domino. Luck isn't my thing," David answered as he smiled at his friend and gestured for him to play.

"Play it once, Sam, for old times' sake. Play 'As Time Goes By,'" he quoted. What? Casablanca was a fucking classic.

[extrasensory_problems]

Carter grins at him, "Just another reason for me to like you. Excellent choice."

He leans back against the caravan they are sitting in front of, looking up briefly at the sky to try and remember the chords but like always his hands seem to remember before his actual mind and he begins to play.