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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!

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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.

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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

Ⅲ.

[necrosaint]

The Ancient and Harrowhark Nonagesimus have an understanding, now.

This understanding, resultant of her meeting with the Oracle and showing her faith as about as pure as any faith could ever get around here, has essentially resulted in Harrow's shifting of her religious duties for the most part to the Ancient. Thus every new island and every new trial is a test, as they should be, and most of them she embraces them with the confidence and surety of a proper nunlet. Largely, this is downplayed to simple acquiescence to participate; occasionally she shows a genuine sign of enthusiasm for something.

A carnival has not won the genuine enthusiasm, but she hasn't been refusing to leave her sleeping quarters or anything of that nature,a nd has even forced herself into being willing to explore. That doesn't mean she's touching anything, because she knows the divine will lead her where it may, and so she will be drawn to something if it's terribly important--

Oh, and then there's this.

That specific shock of red hair isn't the most unique thing anymore, but it's unique enough, and if she catches sight of those golden eyes, more the better. Harrowhark pinches the bridge of her nose, closes her eyes, and slowly inhales. Then exhales just as slowly. That is most certainly a Gideon Nav she has seen before, wandering away from the spinning thing, or maybe having been trying to before she was startled by how everything looks, which Harrow can completely understand because it's not the Gideon Nav she was expecting.

"God help me," comes the sigh, and then she picks up the pace to catch her frightened sword-child. Not literally. Just to approach. "Gideon."

This is Harrow, for sure, but a Harrow at eighteen with face paint that includes red and blue and a little bit of purple, and she's wearing a black-and-white batik skirt with her black boots and black turtleneck. One of her black-painted nails is chipped. And she just looks tired.

Re: Ⅲ.

[necrosavior]

Gideon squints, which causes the sunglasses she’s wearing (which she only recognizes because of the magazines she’s tricked her way into receiving from the all too rare shuttles that come to the Ninth House) to fall down off her nose. They slide slowly, as the sides ooze past her ears. She shoves them up and looks at this unreasonably tall Harrowhark Nonagesimus. It isn’t fair that Harrow has learned something fucking new from her decrepit library that isn’t even about bones. Yes, she had to elongate her bones and create more of them in her body to have the structure to hold up all the muscles and fat and gristle and everything else still decorating skeletons when their people are alive. It’s the rest—the muscle! If Harrowhark knows how to cheat her way to muscles, this is going to go horrendously badly. Her eyes are still small, so Gideon plans to jab her in the eyeballs as soon as she does anything untoward. She isn’t that tall.

Something is wrong with Harrow, more than being an oversized greedy lump of muscle and sinew. Her face paint is wrong, and her face paint is never wrong. No one ever pins Harrow down and rubs gritty paint on her face. Her clothes aren’t proper Ninth either. Gideon doesn’t know what that white is doing on her skirt, but it’s halfway to the Eighth House, and Gideon knows that one isn’t much better than the Ninth.

“Harrow,” Gideon says warily. Everything’s gone ass up since what was supposed to be Gideon’s moment of victory. This cannot be anything good. She thanks her lucky stars Crux isn’t around, but that never lasts. “What happened to you? You look bonkers.”

[necrosaint]

"And you look like a literal child." Harrow says this impassively. It's almost as if this is normal. That isn't to say she isn't flailing internally; which of them is this a test for? Are there other people this is happening to or is this Harrow's personal curse for something she did to Gideon at this precise age?

Like --

Oh.

"Do you want--" This is so painfully awkward. She is a child. "Let me fix your face. The scratches."

[necrosavior]

Cheating her way past puberty has not improved Harrow. The hormone-saturated girl manages to look down her nose at Gideon literally. “I’d be in the Cohort if I were in the Fourth House,” Gideon declares as evidence she is totally not a child.

She steps back instinctively. “I don’t need them to match,” she says. “And I don’t need more face paint.” It’s not up to Ninth standards, but it’s grimy and gross and forced upon her against her best efforts. There’s a zit forming under it, and it’s sure to have followers. “Fix your own face. Crux ought to make you clean the steps for that.” Gideon’s sure that somehow the marshall (a skeleton overdue for freedom from its meat prison) will still blame her.

[necrosaint]

Harrow sighs, rolling her eyes skyward. "No you wouldn't; that minimum age is thirteen."

Thirteen year old Gideon had much more notable acne than this one does. Harrow remembers that; Harrow knows why she remembers it and wishes she didn't. "I just--I wanted to undo what I did." She should take a position of authority over this genuine child who later became her cavalier. She does not know how to cope with children, whether or not they are Gideon, and she's pretty sure Gideon doesn't believe she is actually an adult. She is failing at what she should do. She is nervous and her attempt to hide it makes her sound even brusquer and meaner than normal.

"It is your face, though. And it's covered well enough. So is mine. The colors are to blend in a little more, it's respectful and it is the best way to represent the Tombkeepers. The--local faith is a part of ours."

Harrow is the only Tombkeeper left and she can go right ahead and say that.

She has spoken to both gods.

[necrosavior]

The irrational thought I would be thirteen if I were in another House almost blurts out of her mouth. Gideon wants a lecture about ‘how astronomy works, Griddle’ as much as she wants one about ‘how to be a proper nun, Nav.’ Instead, she chooses a much more infuriating option. “I was just the smallest toddler the Ninth House had ever seen,” Gideon says. There, now she’s thirteen. You’re not the only one that can cheat time.

In ten thooooooooousand years, no one in the Ninth has heard of a color as bright as one on Harrow’s face. If anyone did, the great aunts would die of shock. Harrow, the most Ninth nun to ever Ninth, is not one to throw off tradition.

She pauses. There was that time Harrow opened the Locked Tomb. Okay, all bets are off.

Gideon looks around them. The average age in the area has dropped fifty years at least. “What locale is this local faith in?” Gideon asks. “Did the Ninth branch out with an army of your constructs? You cannot go and make yourself god, Harrow.”

[necrosaint]

If the aim is to give Harrow valid criticism, it misses the mark (even though it would be pretty valid criticism if that's what she had been doing); if the aim is to make Harrow very angry, success.

"I should slap you for that," she sniffs, keeping her face stern rather than letting any emotion leak through the edges, "But considering I don't make it a habit to inflict harm on anyone younger than I am," she has only recently even met people younger than she is so even with her tendencies toward violence that hasn't been that hard, "I won't. That kind of accusation is beyond inappropriate--anyway, this is a different system. So our God does not oversee it, their Ancient does. We've met and I have taken on her cause; they are not incompatible."

[necrosavior]

Gideon crosses her arms. Of course Harrow would have a violence policy that doesn't apply the entirety of Gideon's life until this moment. Not particularly impressive. Most sense evaporates in Harrow's presence, but Gideon manages to bite her tongue instead of sarcastically asking who else would dare to open the Locked Tomb? Since she made Harrow an orphan and all that. Guilt piles on her as much as Harrow, but it's familiar guilt, the burden she'll carry around her whole life and, knowing the Ninth, until her skeleton finally breaks down if she doesn't manage to get stay away from the house.

"Don't know how anyone dragged you away from that pit in the ground," Gideon mutters. A moment before, she had no idea other systems (beyond the ones they are fighting) exist or that any other god exists. "At least this one likes color. What's her/your cause then? Beyond not hitting kids." Which is already a huge step up from the Ninth. No one's ever held back on her account. Even when Harrow's the one in the wrong.