🤡🤡🤡

[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

[unkindled_madness]

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.

[necrosavior]

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.

[unkindled_madness]

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.

[necrosavior]

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?"

[unkindled_madness]

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."

[necrosavior]

"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.

[unkindled_madness]

"...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."

[necrosavior]

At Canaan House, everyone knew the Ninth House. The Ninth House has a reputation. For better or worse, it meant something. Shadow cultist. Warrior nun. Isolationist asshole. It's been freeing for people not to associate her with the geriatric congregation aspiring to one day having strong enough bones for manual labor again (after freeing those bones from the restrictive duties of carrying around ever weakening bodies). It's also strange. Sephiroth giving her credit for a wider range of experience is up there. Gideon wants to repeat it to Harrow and laugh. She is sure he's interacted with more people.

Planet-wise, he's right. Two is greater than one. Even if they are two shitty planets.

"The Nine Houses are much farther along," Gideon says, "Ten thousand years or so of space travel. First in our system, Dominicus. I got two of those. With a name like the Nine Houses, this'll surprise you. That's two out of nine of our planets. I can knock off meeting people from each of the houses. Never got to a planet outside our system."

That gets a little sigh.

"That is a nice thing about being here, weird as it is. It's someone else's weird. Like those giant insects that love bad poetry and fish. Sure. Why not? Why would giant insects always be murderous hiveminds?

"This place isn't like your planet, right?"

[unkindled_madness]

"Ten thousand years... That's impressive. I would have expected humanity to destroy itself before that kind of achievement."

There are times when he talks like he isn't part of humanity, and this is one of them. He may have interacted with quite a lot of people, but there's been no depth to it.

He did, however, mean 'wider range of experience' with some sarcasm.

"And no, this isn't like my Planet. It seems more Earth-like than anything else..." A fact which is a source of some frustration for him, but he won't mention that now. "But perhaps that would be more familiar to me than your world."

[necrosavior]

"Eeeeeeeeeeeeeh," Gideon shakes one hand back and forth. "It kinda did. Shaky on the details. Events few people survive don't have that many. But apocalypse followed by the start of necromancy. AKA humanity died but didn't stay dead. Then ten thousand years of space travel." There is more to it than that. Gideon even knows a little more, what with eavesdropping on that first necromancer before she came here. She doesn't entirely trust anyone's story of what happened, and Gideon isn't sure how much it matters. It's been ten thousand years. It's ancient history.

Gideon isn't sure of the answer to that. She could have paid more attention or read more books or whatever. The Ninth House isn't much like any of the other houses. Particularly more so than the rest of them, and Earth sounds like a name out of a crusty old book she'd more likely use as a pillow. "Possibly. It's more like the First House than the Ninth here, and we got busy in not that long with the whole murder problem. I've enjoyed the lack of life-ending problems. Punching mirrors isn't that bad," she says. "Though, the uh, whole no directions you're supposed to learn stuff is a lot like the First House." No one seemed to believe in directions or classes, even horrid ones with Dr. Skelebone.

[unkindled_madness]

"...a recovery from near annihilation then." Maybe not impressive in the same way as a sustained civilization, but it still seems like some sort of achievement. In his world... It's difficult for him to imagine it without Shinra, but Shinra will fail sooner or later, and it may well take civilization with it, if not the Planet itself. He supposes he's made his contribution to that.

"I've no interest in learning whatever it is the Ancient wants us to." He still believes what little direction they've been given is a lie, anyway. A pause. "Are your planets at war?"

[necrosavior]

"Down to population: 1," Gideon nods. She knows the birds and the bees. Necromancy isn't the norm for population growth. If that's confusing, eh. The Ninth House is gonna reach that eventually. She doubts Harrow can do the same as God. Even as a saint.

She laughs. "Okay, but how do you know what not to learn?" Gideon asks. "Hard to avoid what you don't know to avoid. Like the opposite of trying not to think about the corpse in the room." That is nearly impossible to accomplish, to avoid particular thoughts. That sets her stomach to churn. It is possible, after all, if one's mad enough and stubborn enough. "There is a war. Not with each other. There's a group that hates necromancers, and the Houses don't like having their people blown up by grenades or whatever. So it's still going. I think someone used a nuclear bomb recently?" She shakes her head, unsure where that idea came from. Something Harrow knows? Something she flipped through while fighting heralds? She was kinda busy at the time and only skimmed files.

[unkindled_madness]

Well, now he's... Hm. He really doesn't know enough about necromancy. If a single person can revive enough of the dead... "Can the undead have children?"

He shakes his head. "The Ancient wants us to change, in one way or another. I don't intend to." Whether she wants him to become a 'good' person, or an obedient tool--he'll have none of it.

A 'nuclear' bomb doesn't actually mean anything to him, specifically, and maybe it shows. "Then you are at war with people from another solar system?"