polylogs | Destination: Carcosa

Destination: Carcosa

✖ Carcosa

Ⅰ. THE TEMPLE
You can read all about your character's arrival in the game lore.
The island's harbour is full of other ships, although not a single one of them seems to actually have a human being aboard. (You could certainly try to steal one, but doing so is an exercise in futility - you will find that even if you set off into the ocean you will wind up right back in the harbour again after spending a few hours lost in the fog.) Beyond the harbour is a glittering city of glass and gold. Curving arches and sharp geometric lines are the hallmarks of the architecture - an art deco paradise that whispers of decadence and hope for the future.

The people who crowd the streets wear suits and hats, drop-waist dresses and furs. Their faces are all blank smiles. It's the roaring twenties, darling, why do you look so concerned?

If it is your first experience of the Endless Isles, you have access to the High Temple. Should you wish, you may also seek out the island's own temple as well, which is located inside the city, in a district mostly forgotten by the residents. Don’t worry - your feet will carry you there.

The building is not large, and it is old and neglected. It has a domed ceiling, with panels of glass crisscrossed with metal painted gold curving upward. Whatever fine pattern may have formed there is lost to time; the glass at the centerpoint of the dome is gone, letting in the smell of the sea.

There are rooms equipped with beds spreading out like a spiderweb from the middle of the building. The temple proper is of course in the exact center, below the broken dome. In the middle of this circular room you will find dead branches gathered together to make a vaguely humanoid shape. This crude figure has been haphazardly painted yellow. A slab of concrete sits in front of it. There is not much to explore here; it is very quiet.

Either temple is a good place to simply rest, or meet some of your fellow Travelers. The High Temple of course has the Temple Chef and its usual Guardians, Flock, and Lantern.

The Island Temple has its own Guardians, which are small, pale humanoids with perfectly blank faces and small antlers like young deer. They will leave you alone unless you try to meddle with the central room. Doing so will result in one of them approaching you, and you will find yourself falling unconscious on the floor.

Ⅱ. THE MASQUERADE
Through happenstance, you find yourself in an enormous ballroom. Low couches are dotted everywhere, and a live band plays somewhere at the end of the massive space. A long bar takes up one side of the room, bottles sparkling under the light cast from the many cut-glass chandeliers hanging overhead. Champagne flows freely, and the scent of gin pervades the air.

All of the attendees are wearing masks.

You're dressed for the occasion, of course - you will find yourself wearing something reminiscent of 1920s America, with a small yellow sigil of some sort pinned to your breast. Ask any of the guests about it and they will tell you, "ah, it's a secret." You too, of course, are wearing a mask. You did not pick this mask, but if you look in the mirror hung over the bar you will find that it nonetheless hints at some aspect of your personality.

Which would be all well and good, except that you can't take the bloody thing off.

Moving around the ballroom, you will discover that a few other people also have the yellow sigil pinned to their clothing. It probably shouldn't surprise you that these people are all other Travelers, equally unable to take their mask off.

No, you can't unmask until you share something with your new-found friend: a secret. A REAL one, the sort you'd never speak aloud.

Of course, you can choose not to share. If you choose that route, however, you'll find that the mask is fusing with your skin. Leave it on past midnight when the cries of "UNMASK! UNMASK!" begin, and it will simply become your new face for the duration of the month.

Ⅲ. THE PLAY
Maybe parties aren't your style. No fear, there's plenty more to do and see in such a wondrous city. There's a theatre - the Meliora Grand as a matter of fact - and perhaps you're just the sort of person who would like to take in the arts.

The theatre has plush seats, and fabulous electric sconces lining the wall. Once you take your seat you'll find yourself looking at the stage, where a blood-red velvet curtain hangs. The theatre doesn't seem to fill up - indeed, it really seems that there's only you and one or two other people there. Curious.

The lights go down and the curtain is drawn open, revealing... well. Not much.

There are two chairs on the stage, a table between them. On the table lays a pallid face: a mask. Just a mask. Why not go on up and take a closer look?

Should you choose to touch the mask, you will feel a deep urge to speak to whoever else is in the theatre. You will, in fact, feel the desire to act out some sort of emotional trauma with them. Perhaps they suddenly look like your mother, your father, a lover who left you. Why don't you tell them how you really feel?

Naturally, you can both just sit in awkward silence instead. You'll be waiting until the morning to be let out, if that's the case.

Ⅳ. LOST CARCOSA
CW: the undead.
You find yourself walking along the beach at night. Along the shore the cloud-waves break, and black stars rise above you.

You can't quite pinpoint when you realise you are no longer alone. Maybe there is only one other person on the beach with you, or perhaps a few; you move as one down the expanse of sand until you realise there is something laying up ahead of you.

There is a heap of yellow cloth there, dry and tattered with age. It smells faintly of spices. Nestled among it is a jewel-encrusted human skull. Its empty sockets compel you to sit down in the cool, bone-white sand, to sit and speak to those around you about loss.

Everyone has lost something important to them. A person, a thing, a place, an aspect of the self. Something that's gone and you're never getting back. The skull grins endlessly, endlessly, encouraging you to speak about something you may not have laid to rest.

You can resist this compulsion. Maybe you were never good at sharing. Refuse the skull's silent request and you may continue down along the beach, or perhaps head back the way you came. As you walk, however, you will notice that there is a fog rolling in. It comes in off the sea/sky, obscuring the beach until you can barely see.

It's a terribly handy cover for the corpses that are shambling out of the surf. Wet, bloated, with eyes that glow a dim gold, they head for you silently. They wish to drag you back with them, into the depths. Better hope you can outrun or outfight them.

Bonus: What's that? You want a Carcosa playlist? You've got it, babes!

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That is not a random comment. It's a very very CREEPY and POINTED comment. But he'll worry about that later. Because that John Carpenter fog is getting thicker, making it nigh impossible to know what direction to run in.

And then Ryan Reynolds has beaten his own arm off.

"Sick, dude!" is the only thing Kyle can think to say. But he takes the blood-slimed rock in his hands. He still doesn't know who or what Threshy is, but it doesn't matter. It's time to run through a zombie horde without a chainsaw.

"Come on, Mr. Reynolds." With that, Kyle charges forward toward potential death.

But what else is new?

Look, this writer just had to work in the line from one of his favorite scenes of Southpark ever! Although what that says about this writer is perhaps not flattering. Oops.

"Yeah. It sucks. Regenerating is great, but what nobody ever talks about is how you still feel the pain. But when your whole life is pain all the time, you kinda get used to it. Oh. Uh. You know, if we're gonna fight zombies together, I guess you should get to know who I really am under this sweet new face I scored at the party. You can call me Deadpool, if you want. Although I'm coming to realize that I appeared here without my whole costume, so that may not be as believable as it should be all things considered. So congratulations, your life is in the hands of a servant of the Mouse."

In a way, some things maybe made a little sense now. Or at least, you could draw a line from one thing to another and make some inferences. Deadpool appeared on the island without his costume. His costume was more his face than his own face. At the Masquerade, he went out of his way to insure he could keep the mask as a better face. Deadpool's life was one of an addiction to masks, and yet ironically all he wanted was for somebody to really see him. It only made sense that he wouldn't be able to keep up his charade for long, even with a relative stranger like Carrot Top.

"But I know who you really are, Carrot Top. You didn't even have to tell me your name!"

He charges forward with his new zombie slaying buddie, swinging his "sword" around and hollering like a crazy person. The zombies take a few lazy swipes at them as they get near, and Deadpool starts making with the stabby stabby. Piercing weapons are usually not as good against the undead, but there is a particular savagery to the way he stabs up under the chin and pushes up so hard it takes the head clean off. If more than one gets too close, he boots the extra away with a swift roundhouse kick until he can make the same kind of targeted strike on the next one. Because everyone knows that it's the head or bust with zombies. Anything else is your ass.

(And because we like to cite our sources, that last sentiment was brought to you by....Blade! In the first movie, he said "You aim for the head or the heart. Anything else is your ass." We do so love referencing the first Marvel movie we ever truly loved forever and ever amen.)

At least the writer didn't actively picked someone from the series to play.

That's an awfully lot of information to dump on someone at once, but Kyle's a smart boy. What really sticks out is the comment that regeneration doesn't do anything to dull physical pain. He's not going to forget that.

Lacking a long range weapon, Kyle has to rely on pure ginger savagery and a lifetime spent in a town where death is an ever looming presence. He is nowhere near as fast as Deadpool, but he's determined, and so he bludgeons in a few skulls in his attempt to escape.

There's a break in the line of the undead and he runs for it, only to reverse direction to grab Wade by the shoulder. "Come on, come on!" he shouts. No man left behind.

"Do not fuck with a redhead, damn..." Deadpool just kind of watches Kyle in a little bit of impressed awe. "No wonder Carrot Top survived all the hate for all these years. Dude is savage."

Would it be too much to notice that one of the zombies is wearing a Kenny name tag? Would that be too much reality warping around Deadpool to suit his love of fun connections and references? It would be fun to do the "OH MY GOD, THEY KILLED KENNY" to Kyle of all people. If he knew this was Kyle.

Oh well. It probably would be too much. And the fact that he stopped to grab Wade by the shoulder gave him pause in fucking with the guy. That was...nice. For no reason. Deadpool had to have thoroughly scared this poor guy with his manic too knowing kind of psychotic bullshit, but the guy still paused to make sure he made it out okay? Huh.

So..he doesn't. If there's a Kenny name tag, it goes unnoticed. He turns and runs with Kyle, stabbing a zombie through the eye with his stump and dragging it along with them until the head pops off.

"But where too?!? I know this island doesn't want me dead, because I've tried, but how do we escape this?!?"

The tragedy, of course, is that Kyle wouldn't get it. Kenny McCormick can't die. And nobody remembers. That hasn't changed.

"If we can just get off the beach," Kyle says, panting. "I think if we can get back to the city." Which is in what direction, exactly? The fog makes it extremely difficult to tell. "It's the opposite direction of the water, one way or another, so if we can just figure out..."

He falls quiet, listening desperately. It sounds like the waves are breaking to their left. "Right," he says with a confidence he doesn't entirely feel. "If we just run straight."

"That's a big if, CT."

Deadpool isn't panting, but his bad arm is starting to regenerate already and what is growing there is now flopping awkwardly. There will be no more stabbing with the broken shard still attached to him, as it's far less sharp now and far more covered with recovering flesh. Instead of panting, he's trying to work around the flopping, hold it steady, keep it from flapping in a gross zombie face.

"I think the theme here is that we're supposed to learn a thing in whatever place we end up in. Have you learned your thing yet? This may be the one setting where I actually did what I was supposed to do, rule breaking aside. But all I've seen you do is run from the legions of undead. And you did say you haven't seen any-"

At that point, a familiar bonedazzled skull rises up out of the mists to trip Kyle up. She grins at Kyle, but Deadpool is certain she winks at him with eyelids she doesn't have. Insanity, or just a deep connection to his forever set apart lady love? It's hard to tell, really.

"Ah, THERE it is. Wondered where you got to, beautiful." Deadpool gestures to the skull and looks at Kyle. "Okay. Do the thing." He has no idea what the thing is, though. And the undead maybe slow in their approach, but they aren't patient. And the mist is hungry.

Watching someone run around with a weird little baby-arm flopping everywhere is an experience Kyle can add to his ever expanding list of Shit I Didn't Need to See.

"I don't really know what I'm supposed to learn?" he laments right before he bowls over the skull to face-plant in the sand. "Fuck."

He sits up and scoots back, getting wet sand all down his pants but not really caring. It's a lost cause at this point. He looks at Deadpool, then at the skull. Then at Deadpool again.

"I'm supposed to talk to it? About what? What did YOU say?"

"Um. I dunno. I'm Ryan Reynolds, not some wise oracle." He rubs the back of his head, looking around at the aggressive mist and the lazy but dangerous undead.

"What did I say? Well, she's my lover, so we shared some intimate pillow talk." Among other things. "I dunno man, have a deep heart to heart. Compliment her bedazzling. Treat her like a lady. I'll try to give you some privacy and buy you some time."

And with that, he bounds away, baby arm flopping, wielding his former arm and shouting vaguely pirate things with many emphases on the ARRRRRS.

Kyle, who has precious little experience treating anybody like a lady, stares after Deadpool a moment. "Don't just--!"

But he's gone. "--leave. Fuck."

Kyle looks morosely at the skull. "It's hard to find anybody who sticks around," he tells it. "You know that? When I was little, it was like your friends stuck by you no matter how crazy shit got. But since I've grown up? It's not like that. People just come and go."

He sighs, scrubbing his eyes with the palms of his hands.

"I miss having friends," he mutters.

And, just like that, it the mist seems to evaporate in a certain direction. The dunes moving away from the ocean are now visible, and some stars even twinkle overhead.

He can hear Deadpool shouting as he runs up, "HEY!!! You did it! Looks like you told Death something she wanted to hear! Let's get the fuck out of here!!!"

As he runs up, Kyle can see that Deadpool has a zombie hanging from his ass from where it chomped down and wouldn't let go. "Look, it's a lot harder than it looks to only have one arm. I couldn't fend this one off as I was stabinating another one. But we should go. Somehow, there's a lot more of them than earlier. It's like they're just multiplying on their own, appearing out of thin air. Maybe it's all the buried shit everyone has getting unearthed by this sneaky devil here."

Interestingly, do some of the zombies in the mist resemble undead versions of Kyle's friends, the ones who have gone? No...couldn't be. They aren't dead, and buried truths don't look like zombies. Do they?

"Not sure if people telling her shit is smart or not, but at least the telling gets us out of here? C'mon, CT, let's get moving!!!" And he grabs his new bud and starts dragging him towards the parting of the mist.

As is so often the case, Deadpool has stumbled over some greater truth. Well, stumbled, fallen dick-first into it, and given himself a concussion. Metaphorically.

Kyle goes along, stopping only to grab the legs of the zombie biting Wade's asscheek. He yanks, and predictably the legs tear off and send Kyle sprawling in the sand. "Oh for fuckssake," he mutters. He digs in the sand to find a piece of driftwood and then uses that as best as he can to cram between the zombie's teeth. This means he does jab Wade in the ass a few times, but it does get the zombie to let go.

"Okay, okay, come on," he agrees, running alongside Deadpool again. He doesn't stop until they reach the buildings that line the harbour of the island.

"What a night," he says, slowing to a stop.

Although he could book it out of here faster than he's going, he sees Kyle working to help him out with his Zombass problem. The yank makes him yelp in pain as the teeth clench in tighter and his butt cheek gets yanked, and he pauses when he sees Kyle went tumbling with the legs.

As Kyle gets to work with the driftwood, he eeps and dances, and then the zombie breaks free with a new set of wooden dentures replacing the lost teeth.

"Oh hey, you really do give good wood, " and then he too is running. Dick jokes, indeed.

When it seems they are safe, he pauses with Kyle and looks back over the beach. From this angle, it looks like a clear night with no zombies, mists, or sexy skulls on the beach.

"You can say that again. I'm glad I was recently king of the monsters so the weird shit doesn't phase me as much. But this definitely isn't your usual comic book."

Kyle manages to run and still give Wade the what the fuck dude look. Punctuated with a, "What the fuck, dude?" Just to get the point across.

The beach looks downright pristine. It's eerie; there should be evidence of all they've experienced, but there simply is not. It's as if the past has bene swallowed whole. But it's waiting, underneath. Oh yes.

"King of the monsters? Like Godzilla?" He decides not to tell Ryan Reynolds that they're not in a comic book. He seems a little unstable.

"Hey man, who doesn't love a good dick joke?? I mean, that was pretty low hanging fruit there, but that's never stopped me from fondling it before."

He looks out over the beach. It looks so perfect for a moonlit walk with gently crashing waves. That was, after all, what had drawn him out there. One wouldn't think it of him, but Wade very much enjoyed solitude sometimes. All the time, actually. But that was another of those secrets he didn't tell at the masquerade.

"What? Oh. Kind of. I've got a few kaiju. Also a wolfman, a blob monster, a kraken thing, a thing that teleports you around by barfing you out...it's a whole medley of the who's who of monsters, and the who isn't, and the who you never thought of. Or...I had them. In a different life."

A pause. "Is it just me, or do you have the perverse urge to go back to the beach and see if it's still a shit show that we just can't see from here?"

"You've got them. Like as pets." Or possibly hidden up his ass, like poor Jeff.

Kyle looks back at the beach. "...it's not just you," he admits. Then he looks at Wade, scowling. "But we're NOT doing that!" he says. "Nope, no how, no way. We just escaped near death and we are not - NOT - marching back to test our luck. I am through with stupid shenanigans."

"YES!" Except they probably would balk at being called pets. But that's what they were. That man wolf guy even liked to have his treat before bedtime. If he didn't get it, he was cranky. But he was also cranky if Deadpool gave it to him. He was impossible to please.

"Okay FINE. We'll take the smart way out this time, but only because we're buds now and I respect your opinions and shit. But I don't think you're done with stupid shenanigans. I am pretty sure these are the Stupid Shenanigan Isles."

The common denominator of the crankiness might be Deadpool. Just a thought.

"It's totally possible we'll avoid further stupidity by just being rational and cautious," Kyle says. He honestly believes he is both of those things.

"Uh, I'm Kyle Broflovski. Thanks again for not letting me get eaten."

(Oh it was.)

"HEY!!! I see you over there ganging up on me, Kyle narration and parenthesis!!! My monster buds LOVED me!!!"

(If you define love loosely.)

"Hmph. Well, hi Kyle! I think I've seen a cartoon documentary of your childhood exploits." He absolutely has, but it's just polite to put it in the "think" framing. "You can be as rational and cautious as you want, but I know islands that are meant to fuck with me when I see them. They want me to learn things. I'll show them. Deadpool doesn't learn anything, EVER!"

There is probably some kind of psychology behind his defiance to learning lessons here. It is probably an opportunity for character growth throughout the course of the game. This is probably a foundation for....something.

The narration would never.

Kyle stares at Wade with an expression of someone who has heard outlandish claims so often that he can't even work up enough emotion to be disbelieving. This is what happens when you regularly receive phonecalls at 2 AM about made-up cryptids and have spent a lifetime watching every adult around you act like a particularly stupid lemming.

"...right. Okay. Well. I guess we'll see." he holds up his wrist, displaying the Scrywatch. "You know, if this thing is monitoring us or whatever, it would show you."

Deadpool just glares at the air for a few moments, missing Kyle's stare until he speaks up. He looks again at his Scrywatch and then back at Kyle.

"You so sure about that? You really don't have a paranoid bone in that whole body? I bet it's recording everything, and keeping it in some Dreamwidth database on the internets or something."

"I think all my bones are paranoid," Kyle replies dryly. "I mean like... it's also designed to communicate to us. So if it's really trying to make you learn something, and you keep not learning, it's probably gonna let you know."

Deadpool stares at the watch as if daring it to say something to him.

"I hope it does talk to me. I have all kinds of fun conversations with voices nobody else can hear. But so far...it's just trying to do a disco color scheme. Shulkie said that's because I haven't decided who I want to be here yet. I guess I'm already behind the curve."

He plops down. "So you're Not-Carrot-Top-Kyle. What do you think you're here to learn?"

"Shulkie?" He watches as Wade just takes a seat, frowning.

"I don't know," he says irritably. "I don't HAVE anything to learn. I'm a normal, functioning young adult."

Lies.

"She-Hulk, Jen....I just like to call her Shulkie" He waves a hand as if that part doesn't matter so much.

"Wait what?" Deadpool stares at Kyle. "Um. Cartman. Towlie. Mr. Hankie. Imaginationland. Barbara Streisand. Cartman. Your dad riding his giant swollen testicles around town like a freaky bouncy exercise ball."

Unless that cartoon had been wrong, just exaggerating for cartoon effect and all. But still. He watched Kyle for how the word association would hit him. And also for if lightning would hit him for pulling cartoon knowledge into this.

Kyle's first reaction is to twitch. He can't help it, it's that name. Then his eyes get wider and wider until he snaps and grabs Wade by the front of his spiffy new suit with one fist.

"Don't you say that name!" he warns, like he really will haul off and pop him one. He lets go, looking pale.

"I don't know how you know all that," he says sickly. "And I don't care. Just. No. NO. That was years ago."

Destination: Carcosa

CW: Blood! Violence!

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