livinglot | TEST DRIVE MEME #6

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test drive meme

TEST DRIVE MEME #6

WELCOME TO THE SHOW!↴

Or, more specifically, Lost Carnival's test drive meme! This is an opportunity to try out your characters in the setting before you apply, or to put together samples for characters you've never played before. There are going to be options for both new arrivals and veteran characters. Before we get started, let's lay down some details:

You can read the full premise here.
Reserves and Applications are both currently OPEN.
You can apply as a newcomer or as a "veteran" character who has been in the carnival for up to three years. In the case of veteran characters, you will need to come up with an explanation of why they haven't been around the carnival recently.
TDM threads can be used as game canon after the fact if both characters are accepted and the players agree to it.
If you are interested in additional IC and OOC plot responsibilities, consider applying for a Supervisor position. Treasurer, and Wardrobe Manager are currently open. More roles that currently need filling are listed here!

NEW RECRUITS↴

You gotta start somewhere, right? These prompts are for characters who are arriving in the carnival for the first time, and who are destined to sign a contract. How they go about that is up to you, but in the meantime they can enjoy the sights and sounds of something truly out of this world. Visitors to the carnival comes from many different worlds today, as the ringmaster casts out her recruitment lures. Will you become her most recent hire?

► ADMISSION FEES: After crossing into the carnival's realm and passing through the trees, most visitors will find themselves at the front gate - though not all choose to enter that way. If they enter legitimately, however, they will have to pass by a clerk who will trade admission and tickets for various attractions and rides in exchange for "anything of value." What is of value may seem highly subjective, and so some may struggle to produce payment at first, though in actuality the carnival will take anything from mundane currency to items of purely sentimental value.

► MIRROR MAZE: The mirror maze (pictured above) is a big attraction in the carnival, and stretches much further on the inside than it looks like it will on the outside. It's hard to get through, and what's more, after you've been in there for a while your reflections will start gaining a mind of their own - mostly in order to taunt and distract you with personal information. They don't know everything you know, but they know more than they should, and their mind games can be pretty hit or miss.

► GAMER'S CIRCLE: Almost all of the game booths are organized in a large ring around the Cookhouse, called Gamer's Circle. Your can play just about any carnival game you can imagine here, for a variety of prizes sometimes traditional, exotic, or outright magical. Dart tossing? Got it. That game with the water guns? Got it. Most of these booths are currently manned by humanoid spirits who look like they are made of smoke. If they can trick you into earning debt, they will.

► NOT YOUR WHEELHOUSE: Sometimes, even magical ferris wheels get stuck. The carnival's particular wheel is enchanted to create a particular out of this world experience - as you pass along the top, you feel as if they are so close to the sky that you can interact with the stars like baubles hanging above your head. Of course, the novelty probably wears off when the wheel is broken and you've been stuck enjoying the light show with some stranger for the last half hour. How are you going to pass the time?

► TRYING TO LEAF: No matter where you came from, you seemingly emerged from a forest. Obviously, to get back home you should be able to go back in the same direction, right? It turns out you can't. Worse, trying too hard to get through the wood will result in you getting lost, or turned back to the carnival. The trees here are not normal, and are varying levels of alien, including things like trees with glowing fruit or orange flowers that constantly burn like candles.

► WILD CARD: Anything else you can imagine in this setting! There are a lot of possibilities and you're free to explore them. Check out the rest of the game info or the locations page for additional inspiration. Want to make a starter with your character experiencing their first theoretical change? Go for it!

VETERAN WORKERS↴

These prompts are tailored to the carnival's existing employees, the veterans. Odds are they've been here from somewhere between a few months and three years already, and know their way around the block. For them, this is just business as usual - and depending on their attitude towards their job, they may or may not contribute to a few people accidentally getting themselves a contract. Whatever you do, though, don't warn visitors away from the carnival - the ringmaster hates losing business like that.

► DO YOUR WORK: This one's pretty simple - just have your character doing whatever you'd like to have their job be! There is a big list of ideas over here, and you could use this to try things out with a character you intend to be a new arrival, as well.

► WILL O' WISPS: The ringmaster's will o' wisps have gotten free, and she's asked that everyone keep and eye out and help her reclaim them regardless of their official jobs. Wisps are small creatures that burn both hot and cold and comes in a few different variations of the same basic theme. Handling them physically (or psionically, or magically, for that matter) is difficult due to their near intangible nature. Touching and being around them can result in confusion and a sensation similar to being comfortably drunk.

► BREAK TIME: Whatever you were doing, it's break time! It's time for you to relax however you see fit. Do you enjoy some of the carnival attractions yourself, or is that old by now? Do you hang out in the Cookhouse to get a snack? Do you take a nap? Yolo, baby!

► RIDDLE GAME: For a bit of fun, the ringmaster has left a variety of locked chests around the worker areas of the carnival, each with instructions and a riddle written on their lids. The chest will accept three guesses from each worker before refusing to respond to them any further. If you guess the right answer, the chest will open and you will be rewarded with some manner of fun magical knick knack. If you've run out of guesses, maybe you can conspire with someone else and promise to split the prize?

► CAPTURE THE... EGG?: The Ringmaster likes to keep things exciting for her employees, and this time she's devices a game that mixes an Easter egg hunt with capture the flag. She's hidden various metallic "eggs" around the carnival that chime like bells when people get near, and divided participants into three teams (red, blue, yellow of course.) The carnival has been divided into three zones, and the objective is to gather as many eggs as possible for your team (three points for gold, two for silver, one for copper.) However, when you are in a zone that doesn't belong to your team, if they can snatch off your team flag they can take you to "jail" and confiscate any eggs you may be holding for their team. When in doubt, bullshit the rules! This is a prompt, after all.

► WILD CARD: Anything else you can imagine in this setting! There are a lot of possibilities and you're free to explore them. Check out the rest of the game info or the locations page for additional inspiration. Want to do a performance? Hang out in the Backyard? Choose whatever appeals!

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It's not surprising to be asked the question. After all, Sans still has his wrists and neck wrapped up in bandages, the bones that escape the fabric still tinged a sickly blue, like bruises. Of course, he's not expecting to see Elsa period, so her suddenly being there causes his brain to sputter out momentarily.

Being looked at by someone he knows, but that still hadn't know about this, manages to make him feel overly exposed all over again.

"Hey Elsa," he says, trying to keep it level, though his voice wavers slightly anyway. "Been a hell of a week."

Edited 2017-03-30 01:57 (UTC)

He looks awful, and Elsa's brow creases with worry. She's not used to Sans sounding... almost fragile, like this. The fact that he didn't even bother with a pun this time just adds to the alarm bells.

Whatever happened, she should have come back sooner. Even if she couldn't have prevented it (and she doubts she could, if the other supervisors together couldn't), at least she would have a better understanding of what happened, and how to help.

But there's no time for survivor's guilt right now. She has to do what she can in the aftermath.

"...Maybe we should go to my trailer and you can tell me about it." Instead of standing out in the middle of the carnival. The trailer she's claimed as hers is already back the way she likes it, that is, mostly frozen over by a few inches of ice.

Technically he did actually pun, but it was a sad pun that doesn't work without context. Maybe she'll understand and appreciate it later. Either way, though, he doesn't seem very invested in a reaction to it.

He debates her proposal for a moment, and then shrugs a shoulder, trying to minimize how uneasy he looks. Someone is going to have to explain it, right?

"Sure. I guess I got a front row seat."

That kind of pun is even worse, but right now, without context, she can't say anything about it.

She knows he isn't happy about this, and she feels like maybe she shouldn't even ask. But she wants to know, and feels like it will be better for all the other supervisors if she's already up to speed; she hates making him relive whatever happened, though.

"Alright."

She leads him back to the trailer, largely silently. Once inside, she offers him a seat at her small table, then waves her hand, creating small snowmen. They chatter to each other as they go to make tea, protected from the heat of the stove by the ever-present bitter chill of Elsa's trailer.

"I already know the vampires returned," she says slowly, remembering what Strange told her earlier. "And I know that Mari... didn't make it back. But that's all."

One way they can get along easily is that Sans doesn't notice the cold, either. One of the benefits to not having flesh, he guesses. He watches the snowmen walk off with dull fascination, and then glances distracted back to Elsa when she explains what she knows.

"Bunch of us got turned this time," he explains, bluntly. "Newbies, mostly. Tried to stop 'em, but all of the supervisors ended up getting captured, too. Kind of caught us off guard, I guess."

That is convenient; warming up the trailer to a temperature comfortable for most humans takes awhile. Besides being a skeleton, Elsa knows Sans comes from a snowy place - he certainly had more than enough jokes ready to go when they first met. She didn't appreciate it back then, but a lot has changed in two years. She would much rather be listening to another joke than having this conversation.

"You were captured and then taken somewhere." She just assumes that must have been the case. "Is that where you... were hurt?"

She hesitates on the last two words, not sure how much Sans really wants to tell her. He can answer the question with as much or little information as he wants to.

For a second that catches him off guard, wondering how she knows he was hurt. Is it that obvious? But then he remembers the bandages on his neck and wrists, and he turtles down into the fabric of his hoodie a little.

"Yeah."

He stares at the table, trying to figure out where he's going with this. There are so many more details he could add, but none of them are really necessary.

"It's iron poisoning. Makes it do you can't do magic, which turns out to be a problem if you're ninety five percent made out of it."

She couldn't help but notice when she first saw him. The bandages were a giveaway.

For a moment, the ice behind Elsa cracks and splinters along the trailer wall. It even seems to turn gold, though perhaps that was just the reflection of the carnival lights outside. Her train ripples in an unfelt wind before Elsa takes a deep breath through her nose and breathes back out through her lips.

"Sorry." For what part? Not being here, too? For Sans getting hurt, or making him talk about it? For the new recruits getting turned into vampires? For letting her anger catching her off guard? It's hard to find something more specific to say than that, though it's a paltry offering.

"Is... is there anything that can be done for that?"

That's an intense look for her, and Sans takes note of it. He can't blame her, though. He'd be feeling pretty intense if he heard about this from the outside, too. Theoretically, anyway.

"Nah. Healing magic doesn't help - no surprise. They say its gunna get better with time." He scratches at the bandage around his neck a little. The pain is dull at this point.

"Nothing to do now but start getting over it."

"I see..."

She nearly jumps when the snowmen reappear at her side once again, passing a tea cup to her before offering another one to Sans. She'd forgotten she'd sent them off, and suddenly she's glad that tea hasn't been spilled all over her trailer floor while she wasn't watching (though who knows what kind of mess is on the stove).

"Well, I'm back now," she says, as she mixes in a little sugar, "hopefully for good. So if there's anything you need from me, treasury related or otherwise... well, I'm easy to find."

"Oh, yeah."

He takes the offered tea, and pulls a squeeze bottle of something red and dumps it into the cup, mixing it in with a spoon afterwards. Where did he get that bottle from? It's a mystery. What isn't as big of a mystery is the fact that it was ketchup.

He drinks some of the reddish brown mixture, then adds.

"I'm the Warden now, by the way."

He can't remember whether that happened before or after she left the first time.

Ketchup, really. Elsa narrowly avoids making a face at it (okay, she makes a little bit of a face).

"Really? So she convinced you?"

Elsa remembers, after what happened to the old Warden, the Ringmaster seemed to be leaning toward Sans to take on the job. She also seems to remember Sans not really wanting to. Though she's not sure how surprised she is that he took the position; the Ringmaster has a way of getting what she wants.

"And I'm the Treasurer, so we're both supervisors now."

"Guess so!" He puts the spoon between his teeth. You'd probably assume he was licking the tea off of it if he had a tongue or anything. "Lucky you didn't show up a month earlier. Castiel just missed it, too."

"Besides the... stuff already mentioned. It's kinda the same crew as before. Got some fun new people, anyway."

The last part is added a bit more quickly, like he's brushing off the first things he said as being kind of a bummer to think about.

Elsa has given up trying to figure out how Sans eats or drinks anything, if he's even really eating or drinking.

Lucky, she guesses. She's still pretty upset about the whole thing, but Sans is clearly trying to turn the conversation, so she lets him lead. "Some fun new people, hmm? Anyone in particular?"

He wasn't actually thinking specifically about Papyrus when he said that, but it only takes a few moments for him to remember. Right. She wouldn't even know about him, yet. Just like it was with Sophie. Weird.

"My brother, I guess," he says. He seems a little dazed as he says it. Maybe he has mixed feelings.

Yeah, Elsa would have mixed feelings about that, too (although not that mixed, after what just happened with the vampires). She misses Anna a lot, but not so much that she's sure she wants her here. She chose this, after all; she can wait until she goes home.

"I haven't met him yet." She can say this with certainty, she's pretty sure, because she assumes Sans's brother is also a skeleton and she would have noticed that. "What does he do?"

He definitely is a skeleton - at least Elsa doesn't ask whether Papyrus is a human or not. That question gets to be a bit taxing. Still, Sans sounds a bit troubled about the whole thing, even if he's trying to play it off as something relatively positive.

"He's a janitor, around here," he explains, with a bit of humour. "Which... when you meet him, you'll probably get why." He drinks more tea, contemplative. "...It's all gotten pretty complicated, though. In a bad way."

The last part is added tentatively, because he's not sure he wants to bring it up. It's been such a shitshow, though. He doesn't know what to do with himself.

She wonders what that's supposed to mean, though if Sans and Papyrus are anything like Anna and herself, she guesses they're pretty different people. She can't really imagine it, though; she'll just have to meet him and find out for herself.

"...I know something about things being complicated, with siblings." She hesitates too, because she doesn't really like talking about what happened, or even really thinking about it. She knows trying to pretend it didn't happen won't help her, but sometimes it's hard to face it head on.

"I don't know if you want to tell me, but... I might get it."

Sans knows all about finding it difficult to face things head on, too. They're probably more similar than either of them realize. Sans spends a long time hesitating before eventually saying something.

"...I spent so much time lying to him back home, now that I've been trying to come clean..." He trails off. Part of him wants to be mad at Papyrus for this, but he knows that's not even remotely fair.

"I guess it's just getting pretty obvious that he actually doesn't know anything about me. Which is... one hundred percent my own fault." Its hard to read his expressions, but he seems more like he's grimacing than grinning at the moment. "Guess it's starting to feel like maybe it'd be easier to not bother."

They really are more similar than they realize. Elsa finds herself empathizing too easily; having to hide yourself away (in Elsa's case more literally, perhaps, but it's all the same in the end) hits close to home. Trying to reconcile after years of doing that can be hard. Even though Anna fully forgave her, sometimes it still felt insurmountable, the issues they had to sort out. There should have been a relationship between them, grown naturally, but they'd had to start from scratch instead.

"It would be easier, but I don't think you'd be happy that way." Which she knows is easy to say, but not easy to do. "I don't know your brother, but if he cares about you, he'll want to learn more about you now, while he can. Even if that's difficult for you both."

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TEST DRIVE MEME #6

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