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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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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.”

He throws her a look for the remark about his hair, but doesn't bother to correct her. You really can't wash hair that long as frequently as the average person.

A society of one? It may well have been, for as little as he was permitted to participate. And the people who've tried to know him since... Well, not everyone will put up with 'spiky.'

"No," he says, "not better than I'd like. And there's no reason for you to pry into it. I didn't, did I?"

He strikes the last pane of glass. He doesn't know about the superstition, but is it cumulative? 21 years of bad luck?

“Was throwing you a bone, my dude,” Gideon says. She pulls one of the bones a furry friend brought her out of her pocket and mimes flicking it at him. They’re animal bone, not human. People don’t recycle here like they do in the Ninth. She wonders about the other houses. Given the ships are covered in layers of bones, however, Gideon doubts it is much different.

“Griddle wasn’t random. It’s what the person I’ve pushed and pulled and tackled and scratched and kicked and punched and been through every hell with calls me. I doubt anyone else would have understood everything I saw in the mirror,” she explains, “Besides me. I’m the coolest person you’ve ever met, I know. I’m made of hundreds of bones, and you’ve barely seen my longest fingers.” She holds these up with a wink and a grin.

“You’ve already made at least two friends here, so don’t tell me no one else has gotten past your guard.”

"You certainly have a high opinion of yourself," Sephiroth remarks as he steps out into the daylight. The coolest person he's ever met? Unlikely. Perhaps one of the chattier ones.

"...what two friends?"

He honestly has no idea who she's referencing. He hasn't designated anyone as a friend yet, and certainly Gideon doesn't know him very well.

“You saw my reflection in the mirror right?” Gideon poses like she has her sword, ready to face down anything in the whole damn galaxy with the standard issue Ninth House broadsword. Strong old iron. That’s the Ninth.

She follows after him, sunglasses across her face again proper. Every island feels like it’s pressing its face against the glass directly toward the sun. Blinding. “Harrow,” Gideon holds up one finger. “And me.” She holds up a second.

Spiky Harrow is Gideon’s oldest friend, so her model of friendship is based on that. They could hate each other’s guts and still be friends. Which, actually, what little she remembers of the OG saint crowd, fits in there too. Just as well.

"Yes, and you seemed to be bleeding quite badly in some of them." Clearly the epitome of 'cool.'

Sephiroth may be bleeding a little bit himself right now, but he never claimed to be the coolest person she's ever met. He stops outside of the hall of mirrors and gives his robe a shake, aiming to dislodge any stray bits of glass. The hair's going to need a toss, too, and a more thorough check later.

His expression is all the more skeptical at her explanation of his 'friends.' "Harrowhark is an acquaintance. And you and I are simply sparring partners."

That wasn’t her blood in the mirror, not most of it. Gideon doesn’t correct Sephiroth’s notion because they’d turn the corner from some bad shit all the way to Gideon’s mistakes greatest hits avenue. “What, like you wouldn’t lose a little blood fighting hordes of magical maddening person-sized space wasps?” She says instead. “No one could like cleaning that up afterward. Not even the constructs.”

“I’m the one you chose to go into the House of Mirrors with,” Gideon says, “Breaking down some defenseless mirrors doesn’t count as sparring. You looked around, and who’d you land on? Me.”

She looks at him, wondering if he’s even worse at this friends business than Gideon is. “You got friends back whether you came from?” Gideon asks. “How’d they earn their friendship bracelets?”

Given giant insects are just a Thing in his world, Sephiroth doesn't see anything impressive about fighting a lot of them. They aren't intelligent enemies.

"I mistakenly assumed you would be less irritating company. I won't, in the future."

He is absolutely worse at this friendship business; at least she's willing to apply the word. He'll even take the convenient out she provided him and dodge answering the first part of her question. "As if I would present anyone with anything so childish as a friendship bracelet."

...Zack would have liked that though, wouldn't he? Case in point, Zack is a child.

“How’d you get that idea?” Gideon asks. He clearly hasn’t talked to Harrow. Perhaps he’s mistaken Harrow’s clinginess (to the point of a shared bedroll) as an indication. He’s enough like Harrow in his stand-off-ish superior doesn’t make friends way, with an obsession with his hair instead of face paint, that she could imagine him doing that. He could try being stuck in the back of someone’s mind, bobbing up and down in consciousness, not able to do anything or say a single world, for a year or however long it was and see how annoying he was then.

On top of his own brand of annoying curated extremely well.

“Metaphorical friendship bracelet,” Gideon rolls her eyes. “Maybe you wash each other’s hair or hack monsters apart or cook really bad food. I won’t judge that last one. My shit is extremely plain and still better than snow leeks.

“You were a child at some point, weren’t you? Children do childish things. It’s in the name.”

"You were perfectly tolerable during our sparring session." He gets along with Harrow, but outside any chain of command, he doesn't typically trust others' assessments. And any affection he's seen Harrow show Gideon actually renders her opinion less valuable to him; it's an obvious bias. He liked fighting Gideon, but maybe she's best taken in that context and that context alone.

He's quiet for a moment, because she almost has a point. He forgot, for a moment, what's normal. Being permitted, as a child, to do childish things. To have childhood friendships. He's heard Zack talk about them.

"I didn't get on with other children," is what he says. "Too much biting, perhaps." It's an exaggeration of a single instance, when President Shinra brought his son into the lab to observe a demonstration. He hopes it sounds like something normal.

Gideon is an absolute delight as a sparring partner. A nod acknowledges that. If she were doing her vow of silence act Sephiroth would really like her company. It always gives people the absolute wrong impression of her. The shadow cultist. The Ninth nun. Penitent of the Locked Tomb. Without Harrow threatening to off her, it hasn’t been worth it.

“You should have met me,” Gideon says. “I doubt you’d have bitten me more than Nonagesimus did. We tussled a lot. Scratching, kicking, biting. Biting was mostly her.” Perfectly childish behavior. Admittedly, her memories of other children was largely Harrow with the late additions of the Fourth and the creepy uncle. Jeanne-Mary had definitely been a biter.

Pushing her sunglasses farther up her face, Gideon considers that Sephiroth possibly has no equivalent name as Griddle. It’s the nonsense kind of name only children give each other. If Sephiroth only made friends as an adult, he’s out even more of something than Gideon is. It’s more than a nickname. It’s the whole of Gideon and Harrow mixed together to the point neither of them can break it, even when they both tried their hardest. They were in each other’s bones. “You’re due a friend like me,” Gideon says. “Super annoying and frustrating but there even when you do your worst. I’d prefer no biting, but it’s not a dealbreaker.”

Tussled... Sephiroth listens to the description without comment, filing the words away as something to inform his understanding of childhood. Something for a later pretense, maybe. Avoiding the subject entirely can make some people suspicious.

"I fail to see how it would benefit either of us," he says. "Friendship is no requirement for sparring." He's never understood the immediacy with which some people take to friendship, and he understands it even less now. Gideon doesn't know his reputation, she has no cause to idolize him the way people do back home. What exactly has he done to invite this? Why does she think he needs an annoying friend?

Sparring, outside of training with Aiglamene sometimes with the assistance of skeletons and/or Crux, honestly is something Gideon’s only done a handful of time. That brief stint at Canaan House before Magnus and Abigail were murdered. It had shocked her to learn other people didn’t spar to the floor, until someone wasn’t getting back up again entirely of their own accord, and going to bed sore and bruised and occasionally with something broken. Except for the last couple months at the Ninth House, Gideon had even gotten to use her broadsword, not a toothpick.

“You do seem awfully concerned with your hair,” Gideon admits, “but you’re not an absolute dick. I cannot wait for when we actually get proper swords, even if they are rapiers. I feel like I can ask you about any absolutely epic shit you pull, so I can learn how to do it. Necros may start drooling over magical theorems, but swords are way cooler.”

She shrugs. If that’s not friendship, what is?

Sephiroth tilts his head at her. That's less annoying, and more familiar. He's never had a sparring partner on equal footing; he's much stronger and faster even than his fellow First Class SOLDIERs, and those fights are more often teaching moments than they are opportunities for him to blow off steam. If she wants to learn from him... it's a familiar pattern, but the outcome is less certain. She is, after all, from another world.

"I am open to teaching you," he says. "Though I'm afraid I can't join you in turning your nose up at magical thoery. I'm no necromancer, but I am versed in magic. I simply can't cast here. A sword is... more reliable."

Even if he doesn't have a proper one. He at least has a blade.

Gideon shakes her head, but no what Sephiroth said still makes absolutely no sense. What does ‘versed in magic’ mean? Because Gideon would expect that to mean ‘cannot do magic’ because magic is the thing necromancers do. Sephiroth, as he said, cannot do magic, but only here.

“Are you a lyctor?” Gideon asks. Lyctors, too, are necromancers, but it’s the only logical union of magic users and sword users. He also has the better than you confidence Gideon can vaguely remember from the OG lyctors. It feels right. Which, wooooooah. Who did he eat?

“Back at you, if you want to learn a twohander or anything else you like that I can do,” Gideon makes sure to offer back. No one knows everything. She doubts he’s had to fight in a body that’s never done a single pushup.

Her offer to teach him clearly amuses him, but he gives a light shrug, not rejecting it outright. It's not impossible she knows a useful technique or two.

"I was under the impression that lyctors were another type of necromancer. Either way, it isn't anything we have in my world. Modern technology means that anyone could use magic, but few really understand it."

He hasn't eaten anyone. Sorry to disappoint.

Gideon thinks to the very little she knows about Blood of Eden, much of that coming from the pissed off throat of a corpse her dead mum was possessing at the time. They are absolutely fuck yourself and die hateful of necromancy. What if that's not of magic, only of necromancy? She tosses it off. The Cohort would know about that, she thinks. It'd be known after all this time. Unless? What if BoE kept it secret? Or have whatever technology that means anyone can use it (what the fuck, Gideon thinks at that thought)? Or if he's not Blood of Eden at all but (possibly not the first time she's wondered about people here) some other group that fucked off all those years ago. Some group that's not "necromancers must diiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiie"? Huh.

"The ones I know of, yeah," Gideon says. "Necromancers becoming necromancer lyctors." She wonders if there are any baby pictures of Sephiroth, something she could use to check eye color.

She hums. "Saying anyone can use magic sounds way out there. I'd totally go and do it, but that's not here is it? We're in some other god's domain," she sighs. Perhaps each god makes their own magical rules? "Any gods in your world?"

There are probably plenty of baby pictures, sealed away in top secret Shinra files. His eyes would still be green, though, whatever that means to her.

"If there are any true gods on my world, I couldn't speak to them. Few worship them anymore. And our magic comes from the Planet itself--albeit through a conduit, as humans are incapable of speaking to it directly.

"Of course, there are those here with innate magic who claim to be human. I suppose we all find each other puzzling."

"Froooooooooom the planet," Gideon repeats. Necromancy comes 'from the planet' if you mean 'dead/dying things up to and including the planet.' They don't speak Gideon thinks. Resurrection beasts (number seven anyway) aren't chatty. Not all spirits are either, but even her mom yelled 'Gideon!' repeatedly. For the Ninth. She had said a lot more to God and the lyctors. Take that, Ninth. You weren't worth talking to.

Harrow is, also, still human. Calling a necromancer not human is more Blood of Eden sounding-y. Harrow's humanity or lack thereof don't have much to do with magic. "Give you puzzling," Gideon grants. "Course I was only on two planets before I died. No Cohort. No frontline planets. No passing Dominicus and collecting two hundred dollars." She shrugs. The First House had managed to have fewer people than the Ninth. This place, she grants, at least has people and they're under the age of eighty and rattling in their bones.

"...you realize I have no idea what that means," Sephiroth says. He has no context for Dominicus or the game Monopoly, and he only recently figured out what dollars are. Is she making an inside joke with herself?

He at least understands the notion of travelling to different planets, although: "Space travel in my world is in its infancy. I have been to no other planets, before coming here. One might think that would give you a wider range of experience."

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