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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.

Network · Logs · OOC · Memes · Plurk

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Wait, what? Did we talk about this? I thought you were from some-when else... Anyway, I wouldn't exactly call you for a brawler. Are you throwing hands around here more than usual? Is this something I should know about?" he rubs his chin like he's earnestly trying to recall talking about this, but given how quickly he's distracted by the offer of a prize it's no wonder he can't remember the things people tell him.

"Red vines," he points out without a second thought. Not exactly something he'll be giving Kyle, but far be it from him to turn down a freebie.

"X-Factor gets into shit sometimes, and so did the Young Avengers and plenty of other groups I've worked with. So yes, being able to fight matters to me," he answered. "And I'm not sure what you're asking about what we have or haven't spoken about. Unless it's Kyle. HE's horrible at hiding stuff."

He nods to the vendor so he would know it was okay to provide the red vines. Prize one, he turns away from the stall. Perhaps he can move on from this stand then. Maybe he can get somewhere.

"And no, I don't intend to try the ring-the-bell game. I don't need to know."

"Sure, right, yeah, I just meant I thought we talked about you being powered— whenever this place plucked you from," he leans over the booth to claim his red vines and munches a few while they walk. He knows David never really wants him around but it's common place enough a feeling that he's an expert at ignoring it.

"Don't need to know what? Did you figure out how it works?"

"Oh, yeah, there's that. But I don't know that I trust that power to stay with me. And I've only used it as weapons briefly in the past. Not that it saved me when I was..."

No, his brain almost screamed. Don't think about that. Don't touch what happened there.

"I haven't learned it enough to do anything more than make a knife or a wall and I'm not sure those are good enough in a fight. Sure, I can make things that are more pretty and showy, but again, I'm not you, I can't really turn it into a good self-defense consistently."

So he adjusts his stuffed animals and looks to Quire.

"No, I didn't figure it out. But people that clearly were doing the right form and everything but it wasn't going all the way."

"I get it," he shrugs thoughtfully, but nevertheless he offers David some of those red vines he's gnawing on. "But I don't think a snack is going to turn you into some kind of shiftless layabout who can't wield the weight of his own fist," he smiles, interested to see if David ever does anything to cut loose a little.

Intentional or not, Quentin can't help but feel the crackle of mental discomfort that surrounds the other man a moment. "Whoa, easy. Don't touch what? What should I not be touching? Or was that meant for you?"

Being able to turn just about anything into a self-defence is probably Quentin's real super power. But David looks so firm in his decision not to touch that thing, that's what has his interest piqued. "The right form? So what? Are you telling me you're afraid to try? Dude... You're smarter than a bunch of dude-bros with good form. I wouldn't trust them to get it right because they couldn't figure their way out of paper bag!"

"Over indulging in snacks might. And I have to keep up a pretty specific diet, which is harder in places like this," he countered. But he does take the red vine. His hand manifests a pair of scissors of golden light in one hand and he uses that to cut the red vine in half. One goes into his pocket, the other he nibbles on as he tries valiantly to reassert the strength of his mental walls.

"I was a reminder for me. But I would ask you to respect it too. I guess I'm not used to being around telepaths who don't close their own powers down some these days. Fuck, Krakoa feels like it was half a dream compared to the other world, I can't believe I am defaulting to my comfort around Judd instead of my caution around her and the telepaths on the Council."

Weird. But yeah, he really needed to up his mental shields. They had a snowball's chance in Limbo to hold up against real scrutiny from Quire but there was no way the guy wanted David's baggage so he was trying to hold it all down.

Better than drowning in memories.

"The last island, it judged us and spoke via the flowers. This place, who knows how, but I think the bell figures in. And I get enough disapproval mojo from the Scrywatch. Thing leaves my technopathy itchy."

He smiles when David caves just a little. It's nothing but it feels like a victory. "I know everyone likes to think of me as the world's worst influence. But I promise. I won't push you to overindulge. Just plain indulge. A little. Sometimes."

He holds his empty hands up in surrender. "I wasn't snooping. It was just an intense thought. Kind of hard to miss. What do you mean your comfort around Judd? Who's Judd? Am I suppose to know that name?"

Quentin's brow twists into a look of curious confusion, but for a change he looks genuinely interested in understanding what he's being told. "You're worried about being judged? By a watch? And a game? And whoever's responsible for booking this endless cruise through the Disparate Isles? Or just by other travellers?"

Just plain indulge. Well that was a really bad comment he would take to heart in the near future. For now he just nibbled on the red vine and didn't give the other the pleasure of him saying he did enjoy the thing.

"Yeah. A surface thought high enough to broadcast. I'm not assuming you'd chase it, but I am asking you not to. It's one thing to explain everything that went wrong willingly. It's another to have it there in your head."

And while it wasn't that he didn't trust Quentin enough to let him know the stuff, it was just that he didn't want to remember it right now.

"Judd was my teacher in the last world. A telepath probably on Emma's level. He taught me how to control the way that world warped my near-telepathic gifts. How to keep them from driving me crazy. His mental walls were like... like mental adamantium and he used them to keep himself out of other people's thoughts, but he could also just lock my mind away from the powers. He was a good teacher."

And more than that, Judd never judged him for his mistakes, his failings, his pain. Not like this place wanted to.

"Most other travelers don't know me and don't know what to judge. This place? The islands before? Make me feel like I'm always being watched, being evaluated. I don't like it.

Quentin's tactlessness is frequently intentional, but sometimes he's just plain oblivious. "I won't, I won't! I know it's not an invitation. Don't worry about it," he says dismissing David's worries as best he knows how. Whether or not the man trusts his word in that is something he's keenly aware he can't fix.

"The last world like— oh. Right. You were in some other dimension before this one. What was that like? Do you think they're connected through anything other than you?" Maybe David has no knowledge of this, but when interdimensional chaos breaks loose these are just the kinds of questions you have to start asking of people.

"Oh definitely!" he chimes with enthusiasm to hear someone echo a sentiment he's been hoping would catch on. "I've been saying since we got here this is a big fucking ant farm designed to watch us dig tunnels or whatever. I'm not particularly interested in giving them what they want, but if they think I give a damn about their judgement and their color codes they've got me all wrong."

No, he doesn't have faith that his mental privacy would be safe. Hell, Rachel was terrible at it and she was a bit nicer than Quentin was on his best day. Which was sad. Though he supposed that provided the man didn't make use of the things in David's head to hurt him, there wasn't much he could do.

"The other dimension? It was... Strange. it brought people there, powered and not, and would give them powers. We were supposed to be heroes, called by a dimensional rift and the echoed power of one of the Greek Fates. It was unstable, that dimension, and ultimately we had to find a way to close the rift and send everyone away, otherwise that dimension and others would have been destroyed."

David had thought he was going home. Instead he'd awoken on a boat. He sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. All those people he had known and cared about were easier to accept losing when he didn't have to remember them.

"As for here? Clearly ulterior motives. But I suppose I can go along with them some."

"Hmmmm," he rubs his chin despite being thoroughly beardless and seems to give that information some honest consideration.

"I'm not getting any Greekiness from this place so maybe they're not connected. You gotta admit that's weird though, huh? Being sucked into one interdimensional nightmare and spat out into another. Bad luck, dude." The crooked way his lips twist to say that implies some real empathy from Quentin, which may not seem like much but any empathy tends to be a lot coming from him.

"Clearly! Right? Fuck. I've been saying that for weeks and I feel like everyone is just like nah, it's cool, it's probably nothing. It's never nothing!" his intensity rises easily again just to have someone validate his point of view. "Yeah, that's my plan. I'll play their games when it suits me, but I'm not complying with anything just because I'm supposed to."

Beardless and unable to grow one thanks to that request to Josh. Yes, David knew. He got plenty of annoyance from his friend over that.

"I heard that it happened to other people before they came there. And while there I was bounced around more dimensions too. It was a mess. I've been through another failed utopian island of course. Which was so stupid. We should have known better. I think. A lot of bad things happened there. But I miss it. I miss Josh, and Laurie."

And oh he can't help the way he misses them, or the way memories of loving them and second hand memories of intimacy with them bubbles into his surface thoughts. He did push them down quickly though.

"From my experience, you need to play ball a little. But that's just my experience. Could prove wrong here."

The fact that Quentin hasn't heard anyone else reporting a stop off to another dimension before this place says nothing of David's credibility and everything of Quentin's inability to take an interest in other people. It's a message he's been getting a lot lately, much to his irritation.

"Weird. Was anyone else here in the other place with you?"

He's poised to get a hit of something off David. A glimmer of a feeling or a memory. But instead that suggestion redirects his attention. "Play ball?" he snorts. "I'm not going to grade grub for some cosmic gatekeepers. Not my scene. My cooperation in this little social experiment depends entirely on what I know about the motives of our Keepers. And as of right now, it's precious fucking little."

“Not that I’ve noticed yet,” David answered. Not even anyone he recognized from there. Then again, there were a lot less people here than there had been in that place, and so it was always possible that David had come here without anyone else. A small sample size wasn’t always strange.

“You’re not likely to find out their motives. But if you do, let me know. For now, all I know is that they are judging us.”

"Bummer," he sighs. More because it's just another dead end than anything else, but he's willing to concede it probably sucks that no one else was brought here from there either.

"Thanks for the vote of confidence," he scoffs. "I dunno if you've noticed but doing things people tell me I can't do is kind of my hobby."

Bummer. God what a thing to say. David laughed, unable to help himself from how amusing the word was to summarize everything that he was lacking here, all the people. It was easier to avoid thinking about all of it when he could, lest he miss people. People he cared too much for to want to miss.

"Oh, I've noticed. Which raises the question: am I saying it just to get you to figure this out, or do I really think you should save yourself from tons of work for no reward."

Quentin has a way with words. The laugh makes him think David takes him for callous, but that's not an assumption he's apt to correct.

He snorts at that. "I can't imagine you care what kind of Sisyphean tasks I set myself too. Then again I think you also know it can't be considered reverse psychology if it's only applied after the fact. Sooo maybe, you're just politely trying to brush me off? That I could buy."

"Hey, whether we get on all the time or not, I sort of need to care. We're both mutants, and what's more than that, I'm still hoping to learn from you. So I sort of need you to not get yourself offed by pissing off whatever power that is here."

What, was it wrong to be focused on himself and his needs like that? Perhaps. But for now he was willing to be a little selfish. Plus, you know, Kyle seemed to like the guy.

"You really assume it was reverse psychology applied afterward? Quentin, I'm a genius. I don't retroactively make plans. The plans are already in motion."

"Ah haaa, that makes sense. I get it now," he says snapping his fingers. Finding a self-serving motive in someone always validates his whole world view. If nothing else, he clearly doesn't hold it against David. Frankly, from where Quentin stands, it makes hims a little easier to understand.

"Yeah, yeah," he waves a hand. "You're a genius, I'm a genius, half the people we know fall into some degree of geniushood. At some point the bell curve flattens out," he smirks.

Hey, sometimes you had to be self-serving to survive. And he smiled at that. At least he wouldn't be judged for it.

"Yes, but when you're at my point it's really just a scattering of dots. Not even a line," David answered with a smirk. Bring it man. "Still, survive for now. I finally have an active power that can defend people, or be used in a fight. I don't intend to lose the Bruce Lee of it."

Quentin practically lives by that creed.

"Hmmm pretty sure that's a different kind of graph," he mutters and rolls his eyes dramatically before steamrolling his own remark. "Don't worry about me. One of these islands has yet to meet the full force of Kid Omega. But if you wanna practice some psionic shit sometime I'm around. I kind of told Carter I'd help him out anyway,"

No, it's not. He's just so far out on the curve that the line almost disappears.

"I'm worried about the islands meeting the full force of Kid Omega. That's my concern. But I'm impressed Carter is willign to let someone help him."

David? He just took advantage of anything he might get. And that included this. That included learning a skill.

"I do, of course. Not like Betsy is here."

Quentin smiles to hear it. It's such a satisfying thing when his reputation proceeds him.

What that says about Carter though, he has no idea. "Yeah? Why? Maybe he does't feel as safe after that ride on the Carousel That Time Forgot."

"Pftf, she's a one trick pony anyway. I'm an innovator," he smirks and chomps on a fresh Redvine.

Oh man, not the carousel. David winced to even think about it. Because thinking about it reminded him of Jean-Paul and wow so much shame there.

"Betsy's a bit more... finesse than you are. You're basically a machete to her filet knife."

"First of all. Sha. A machete packs way more punch than a fillet knife. Second. If I'm anything in this analogy I'm Swiss Army Knife," he prattles, but the little shift in David's demeanour doesn't go unnoticed. Even if he can't catch any one of those thoughts before he stuffs them back down with that wince, the act of stuffing them away so quickly makes him instantly curious.

"Did you ride the Merry-Go-Back-In-Time too?"

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