⇨ TEST DRIVE MEME: GREYSOL

[ringleaders]

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 (and should) read the full premise here. Reserves and Applications are 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, the players agree to it, and it makes any sense contextually. If you are interested in additional IC and OOC plot responsibilities, consider applying for a Supervisor position. Head Cook and Treasurer are currently open. Otherwise, we're pretty much down for anything, roles wise. CURRENT STOP↴ ⇨ GREYSOL ⇦ Greysol is a large coastal city that seems to roughly equate to late 20th century Western culture and mores, with a vaguely Victorian teslapunk-influenced aesthetic and somewhat uneven technology. Horse-drawn vehicles and just plain horses are common, but horseless automobiles and strangely 21st century-looking bicycles don’t cause too much of a stir. There are paved streets, skyscrapers, and electricity even if they call it "anbaric lighting". Hot air balloons and dirigibles can be seen in the sky. There are many moving picture theaters, black-and-white and with somewhat questionable sound, but small portable radios are common. Watches that bear a suspicious similarity to smartwatches are all the rage, though they are in fact simply watches and require winding. Every human and witch in this world has an external soul which most cannot go more than about twenty feet from, and non-consensually touching someone else’s dæmon is tantamount to assault. This presents some logistical difficulties in a big city, but humans have built Greysol to accommodate their other halves. If you want more info about them, look here! ► DÆMONS: Those external souls are called dæmon. The other half of a human's soul, they can come in the form of any type of Earth animal, and are usually of the opposite sex, though not always. The Ringmaster has cast a spell over the carnival's workers in order to give them their own dæmons during their stay, as not having one will make you stick out like a sore thumb. While on the carnival grounds, there is a chance that your visiting character will be caught within this spell, and will develop the beginnings of a dæmon. It will not be as solid as a native dæmon, however. ► MISSING: Alternatively, if you don't have a dæmon, the locals will find the sight of you horrifying - as if they are witnessing a person be split in half. There will be a number of off worlders visiting the carnival at any given time, but for any visiting locals this will be quite shocking. This may cause a bit of a fuss with the NPCs, unless you can convince them your dæmon is just hiding in your clothes or something like that. Your character won't be able to leave the carnival grounds without signing a contract or eventually finding their way home. Those who app in during this TDM's run will be entering the game between Day 162 and onward - when signing your contract, you do not always leave the tent on the same day you entered. Sometimes the Ringmaster will create a time skip that causes you to emerge after festivities have wrapped up for convenience sake, so there is some flexibility as to when precisely you enter the game. 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. 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 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. ► TUNNEL OF "LOVE": A brand new attraction in the carnival, the Tunnel of Love is mostly what you'd expect from such a ride - two people sit in a boat together which journeys through some glitter filled caves, complete with mood music. Unfortunately, there is also something else in there with you... in the form a moody kraken living in the waters, who has very particular opinions about shipping, and may either stubbornly interfere with any attempted intimacy, or may politely encourage it. Or they may just generally be a dick if they're in no mood for either. The Ringmaster insists it is a romance expert. ► 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. ► 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! ► DUNK TANK: Sometimes acting like a dick will earn you the gentle reprimand of being sent to work in the Dunk Tank for the afternoon - you know that game where people throw balls at a target, and if they hit it you get dropped into the water? It's like that, only sometimes there are daunting (but harmless) critters in the water, or some other strange magical affects to spice things up. Hopefully, the visitors will have bad aim. ► 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!

Comments

Alphys | Undertale

[textsfromhotland]

Greysol

She just got here and already people are swarming her. Maybe this wasn't such a hot idea after all.

Are you a daemon? Why are you wearing clothes? Where is your other half? And various other questions follow her wherever she goes. Alphys politely tries to explain that she's a monster, and she's pretty sure that SOULs don't work that way, but all the unwanted attention causes her to stutter and stammer and barely get a word in edgewise. She could use a hand, maybe?

Tunnel of shipping love

The other patrons of the ride are having a lovely, uneventful time, free from the kraken. For the most part, because they have to put up with listening to it and Alphys having a very serious discussion.

"What!? How c-can you NOT ship Hideki and Jun?" Her voice is almost shrill in disbelief. "Don't you remember their horoscopes from the school festival episode?"

The kraken... responds?

"S-so what if it wasn't canon by the end of season three!" Alphys argues. "It's SUBTEXT!"

If the kraken could roll its eyes, it would.

Mirror Maze

Alphys realizes she's picked the wrong attraction the moment she walks into the dimly-lit maze, but the door she entered through has mysteriously vanished when she turns around, leaving her with no choice but to try and find the real exit. It's dark and cold and entirely too familiar for her. Keeping her head down and following the floor only gets her even more lost, and soon she's starting to hear things.

"I-it's just my imagination," She gulps as she rounds a corner and finds a long hallway lined with more mirrors. It's entirely likely that the exit is on the far end of the hall, but that required her to walk past all of those mirrors first. Alphys takes a deep breath and starts scurrying, repeating "don't look up, don't look up" to herself as she goes. But as scared as she is, she can't help but take one quick glance at her reflection, just in time to see a speech bubble with an exclamation point in it appear over its head.

"O-oh, n-n-no..."

The speech bubble melts, stretching into a form that could almost look like a bird at first glance, but there's too much about it that doesn't seem right. It looks more like several different things mashed together in the approximate shape of a bird. An amalgamate If you will. It starts to speak in several different voices at once- or does it? Maybe it's all in Alphys' head. Either way, this is all too much for her, and she sinks to the ground and tries to make herself as small as possible.

WILDCARD

come at me bro

greysol

[osteothropy]

Here's the question: what freaks people out more? Some kind of yellow lizard person without a daemon, or a skeleton with one?

The answer is inconclusive, but the ones currently hanging around certainly look daunted by Sans showing up. He appears mysteriously, as is his way, but when he does he has to pause for a moment to stare at Alphys, his surprise somewhat buried by the fact that he's literally got seven eye sockets now. The moment only lasts for one or two seconds, before he's raising his hands to the locals.

"Hey now," he says, invoking some nebulous sense of Warden authority. "She's a guest of the carnival as much as you guys are. She can be as yellow and as single as she wants, right?"

Anybody who was trying to engage Alphys seems put off enough that Sans is able to dominate the situation - an opportunity which he mostly uses to face her and shrug his shoulders.

"Hi," he says, real casual like. "Long time no see."

[textsfromhotland]

As much as Alphys had hoped that no one else from the Underground would be here, seeing a skeleton around is still a welcome sight, especially when he disperses the crowd. She feels like she can breathe again and takes a deep breath to test it out.

"W-wow, thanks, I didn't think they'd ever leave m-me alo..." She trails off when he turns around and addresses her.

She knows this guy. Under the extra eyes(ockets), the tail, the claws, this is most definitely- "S-s-sans!? What are you doing here?"

[osteothropy]

He's anticipating this, now. He went through it with Papyrus, and that was like a million times worse. No reason he can't handle this like a pro. He's always been more hands off with Alphys anyway.

He spreads his hands illustratively.

"This... is going to be confusing," he predicts, though his tone and expression are still light and casual. "Speaking generously... I think we're several screwed timelines removed, at this point."

He isn't cautious about mentioning timelines to her because for once he can be pretty sure that she'll get it - both as a scientist and also as a nerd.

Greysol

[sworntothesword]

Connie hears the commotion around Alphys. She's been keeping a barely-plausible excuse about her Daemon being in her backpack up till now, but she sees Alphys in trouble from behind a nearby wall. Inspiration strikes!

"Ha ha!" she shouts, jumping from behind the wall. "Got you! You totally fell for it, thinking my daemon was by herself, when in actuality I was hiding behind this wall this entire time!"

[textsfromhotland]

Alphys nearly jumps out of her skin when the human girl appears out of nowhere. She shies away at first, but then it becomes clear that the human wants to help.

"Uhhhh..." She feels like she needs to say something. "That's... right! O-of course. W-we got you... good?"

[sworntothesword]

There's a mix of confusion from some and relief from others, the latter nodding and laughing at the good 'joke.'

Connie doesn't want people to start asking too many hard questions, so she gestured at Alphys to follow along.

"Hi! I'm Connie! Are you new here, too?"

Mirror maze

[tacosgay]

Taako doesn't usually bother taking in the attractions anymore; they're kind of boring after the first thousand tries. But his daemon-- a bush viper named Flauta, all spiked, vividly red scales and round green eyes-- hasn't been in them herself. Besides that, Taako is very curious to check out how he looks with his recent magical changes from an outside perspective, and a snake very much resembling a tiny dragon curled around his neck.

He's strolling easily through the maze, his newly-glowing violet freckles casting an odd light off the shining surfaces of the mirrors; he admires them with an appraising look, turning his head from one side to the other with a faint "hmm."

"We look fantastic, darling," volunteers Flauta, and Taako breaks into a grin.

"Huh. I knew I liked you for a reason."

... and then they're interrupted by a voice-- someone panicking down the hall. It must be someone new; the mirror maze does so love to fuck with newcomers. Taako hesitates, gazing down the hall, thinking; Flauta is the one who finally speaks up.

"... should we, uh...?"

Taako sighs, swinging his Umbra Staff back against his shoulder. "Yeeeah, I'm going."

He makes his way down the hall, towards the source of the voice; when he sees what could, for all intents and purposes, be a chubby yellow dragonborn huddled on the ground in a trembling mass, he feels an odd pang of pity for her.

"Hey, uh... are you okay?" Again, it's Flauta who breaks the silence, her body glancing at her and then folding his arms across his chest.

[textsfromhotland]

Alphys is covering her head with her hands, and lets out a small squeal at the question. She peeks nervously through her fingers and sees not the nightmarish vision, but an... elf?

"Uh... um... are you real...?" Is this another vision? he's a little more pleasing on the eyes at least.

[tacosgay]

He sure is.

"Uh... pretty sure I am," Taako responds, glancing at Flauta and shrugging his shoulders lightly. "I'm not some fuckin'... mirror illusion, if that's what you're worried about, so, hey. No worries there."

9S | Nier: Automata

[dressedtothe]

[Gamer's Circle]
There is sooo much new data just from being in the Carnival that 9S almost doesn't know where to begin. Pod 153 isn't with him right now, so he can't ask it for suggestions, and it would be too conspicuous for Pod 153 to be hovering at his shoulder right now.

After receiving the "glamour" he'd gotten used to the animal referred to as a monkey that's currently riding on his shoulders. He'd gotten a strange sense that she was a part of himself, especially when she chattered bank to him. But she couldn't really answer his questions about the place. Not really, when he'd only heard about carnivals from Old World records and didn't truly understand them.

So the only solution he can think of to unravel the mysteries before him is to ask someone who would know. Whoooooo is walking past right at this very moment.

Right. Okay. He can do this. He can talk to a human. Who's only one of his creators. No big deal.

Approaching, 9S begins politely, "Excuse me, sir."

Or ma'am, if they look like a female. Or, if he can't tell, 9S will verbally stumble as he tries to figure out how to best address them before totally skipping the title. He points at the nearest carnival game, be it shooting hoops or shooting water into a rotating clown's mouth, with amazing accuracy considering he appears to be blindfolded. "Could you tell me the purpose of this?"


[OOC: I match formats!]

[kingsroads]

The game that Strange is currently standing in front of is a 'toss the ring over the milk bottle' sort of game. And...he's trying to figure out how to cheat at it. He's got a perfectly good excuse, this is just him trying to figure out how to best hone his magic, it certainly has nothing to do with the fact that he's played this one last week at the carnival for about fifteen minutes straight and couldn't win anything.

A large grey seal, his daemon, flops at his feet and watches him with a bored look, very sort of 'come on dude, really, we can be doing something else instead.' Though thankfully for her, Strange gets distracted when he hears 9S's voice.

"Of course! You toss the ring and try to land it on the milk bottle. You've three chances. If you land one of them, you get a small prize and if you land all three of them, you get a large prize." The prizes for this one are at least typical fairgrounds stuffed animals of dubious quality: a bootleg Pokemon, a rastafarian banana, bears of various colors, and so on and so forth.

[dressedtothe]

9S looks over the prizes, dubious, his daemon mimicking his actions.

"Ummm... People actually want these?" Maybe he'd understand it better if he played the game himself. "I guess I'll give it a try."

He takes one of the rings, weighing it carefully in one hand. The ring doesn't seem like metal, and a quick scan confirms his suspicions. What a pain; this means he can't cheat guide the ring over the bottle with the same electromagnetic field that keeps his sword floating at his back.

...But even if the ring was made out of metal, humans don't really have electromagnetic fields, do they? If he's gonna do this, he better do it the way humans do it. Taking aim, 9S tosses the ring, which lands onto the milk bottle... before promptly bouncing back off it.

"Oh come on!" It slips out before he can catch himself. "That totally landed on it!"

[kingsroads]

He can't help it. The wry smile on Strange's face is also mimicked in his tone of voice. It may be a bit jerkish of him, but he's amused by 9S missing the milk bottle as well--at least, it makes him feel a bit better that he also sucks at it.

"At the risk of pointing out the obvious, you might want to take your blindfold off."

It doesn't occur to Strange that there's probably a reason 9S is wearing the blindfold in the first place and that bringing up said blindfold might be a sensitive subject.

i have no idea what im doing here

[kuudroid]

Well, there's no way that 2B knows just about what anything here is, so 9S won't be receiving any answers from her. In fact, 2B is slightly unnerved by the whole carnival thing. A lot has happened in a short amount of time. Humans have suddenly happened in a short amount of time and they are everywhere, though a few have a good number of changes that make placing them as that slightly strange.

To suddenly be surrounded with those who created you is daunting, even for an android like her! And she doesn't know quite what she should be doing, in this case. She's no scanner unit, but 9S is. And so she watches him interact with some of the humans to... try and gauge how her own behaviour should be.

Maybe she should have paid attention a little more to 9S's fascination with humans. 2B purses her lips slightly, and it's only when the person he's dealing with is gone does she walk up to him. Even if he probably knew she was there the entire time. Scanner units.

"9S." 2B starts, then hesitates slightly. "Did you find out anything useful about the humans here?" Please help her behave like a normal person.

same here does that make this the blind leading the blind

[dressedtothe]

He turns and greets her with a smile and a cheerful, "2B!"

She's right; 9S had been aware of her approach. But that's more a case of being generally aware of 2B's presence than a particular Scanner trait; he likes to think maybe they have a special kind of connection to each other.

"Ummm..." That sort of depends on what 2B thinks is useful. They seem to have very different ideas on that, sometimes. "They're pretty ordinary, once you get to know them. It's a bit like talking to another android."

Which kind of makes sense, in hindsight.

Sasami Masski Jurai | Tenchi Muyo! OVA

[saint_sami]

Daemon

Oh, well, this was awkward. There was now the case of someone having two Daemons? That's impossible! In hindsight, Sasami shouldn't of left the circus, but having done so, people were shocked to see the reflection of an older woman (who could have easily passed as either an older Sasami or her mother) coming from her. And the little girl was trying her best to deflect all questions and accusations.

"I-I'm sorry, I wish I knew what you're talking about, but I don't have anything like that." She said. "Seriously, you were seeing things! There's no way it could be true!" She said, desperately.

Gamer's Circle

"Oh, wow, look at all of these games!"

It was really stirring up the excitable child in sasami. She had to play one of those, she just had to! She ran up to one of them - the ring toss and waved down the attendant. "Excuse me! Uh, can I play a round?" She asked. The person asked if she had any money. "Oh... um... no, Imm sorry." The person goes to shut her down, only for him to come up with a compromise - she can play a bit, if she can work off the debt. "Oh, um... I guess I can do that! I can cook really well, so...!"

And at that, he gave her some rings to try. How long she's been at it? Up to you.

Gamer's Circle

[dressedtothe]

Somewhere in the general vicinity, 9S is watching this entire interaction, drinking from a bottle of water so his internal mechanisms don't lock up from the lack of it. This human looks pretty small... that would make her a child, right?

He watches her toss the rings over and over again. Sheesh, doesn't she get tired of that? He doesn't get how she can be so engrossed in that; it looks kinda boring to him.

Capping the bottle, 9S approaches the girl. "You've been at it for ages." Though it may be surprising he can even see that Sasami's been tossing rings, given that he appears to be blindfolded. But his skin also seems flawless, unnaturally so. "Is throwing those rings really that interesting?"

[saint_sami]

Sasami blinked as she looked over at 9S, stopping her gaming for a bit. "Well... yeah, it is. You throw the rings and you try to get prizes. But, the way the rings are made, it's quite hard to do so."

She looked away, grinning sheepishly a bit. "Besides, I rarely get to do things like this, so I'm trying to get my fill of it..."

Luke Skywalker | Star Wars Legends

[sandwormie]

Greysol

The thirteen-year-old who's literally spilling coarse grains of sand as he walks is already so blown away by the trees and the buildings not made to survive a sandstorm and that's more clouds than he's ever seen before and look at all these people!! that having a dæmon does not seem especially remarkable. Maybe she's a guide! Except she's every bit as confused and delighted as he is.

For the moment she's a long-tailed, slightly translucent wolflike anooba padding at his side, and he has a hand on her head and is grinning, delighted. "So what's your name?"

"I don't know yet!" The dæmon-anooba's tongue lolls. "I've never had one! But I like Sycorax. Or Peregrine!"

"Sycorax is kinda dark," he says, uncertain. That's the name of a powerful Force-witch from an old story. She could help people and raise the dead and people turned on her. "But I like Peregrine! I like - whoaaahhh, look at that! Why would anyone dip people in water?"

TUNNEL OF POOR WATER QUALITY: The lake is too far off the beaten path for a guest like Luke to stumble upon it, but he can certainly come to the entrance of the Tunnel of Love attraction and gawp at the water. It's just sitting there in the open!

"Hundreds of liters! Doesn't it just evaporate?" Luke leans in, marveling. "Is it because there's just so much water in the air?"

His dæmon, now a camellike eopie, leans down to take some of the water into her mouth. And spit it right back out, dismay on her face and Luke's. "The calcium and nitrate levels in there are disgusting!"

tunnel of poor water quality

[anti_nonsense]

Standing nearby, a girl with large wings and a long tail seems to be busy writing something in a notebook. Her daemon, presently in the form of a caracal, lies curled up by her feet, ears twitching at the sounds of voices coming from Luke and his daemon.

"If you want water that doesn't taste weird, don't try drinking it out of weird places," Rita says flatly, glancing up from the notebook with a raised eyebrow. "And why the heck would it evaporate?" She didn't look like it, but as it turns out, she was listening.

[sandwormie]

The dæmon-eopie flickered into a lanky, beaked jakrab with one ear raised high and the other down, staring at the girl and her dæmon.

"'When lacking a multi-spectrum analysis test strip, you must learn to analyze water quality through its flavor,'" Luke says right back, clearly quoting something. "And water evaporates, that's just what it does, even if you're somewhere with just one sun and really, really high humidity, it doesn't stay in one place."

tunnel of please don't drink the water

[reflash]

"Excuse me," says Yukio, from behind Luke. The teen hasn't been here for more than a day or two but he's already fallen pretty smoothly into his security job, and today he's been spending hours monitoring this tunnel. He's been splashed with water, he's been knocked into the canal, he's had to physically separate the kraken from riders, and overall he's just not having a good day.

Yukio's smile is polite, but strained, but the ghostly snow leopard at his side is clearly unhappy, her ears pinned back and her teeth visible as she growls. Omoikane isn't quite corporeal enough to make any sound, thankfully.

"That water is off-limits."

[sandwormie]

Luke jumps and spins around. It instantly strikes him that this person's dæmon is being threatening. In response his own dæmon shifts into a krayt dragon, though she keeps her maw closed. She's small for a krayt, but small krayt dragons still have heads bigger than Luke.

"I'm not going in," Luke says defensively. "Why would you have water just out anyway, if it's not for animals to drink?"

His dæmon gives a little cough, a sound not at all fitting her current size. She's not an animal, Luke.

Luke Skywalker | Star Wars Legends | Veteran

[force_ful]

Luke pushes his hood back and looks up at the lights, which throw the tiny indistinct scars peppering his face into relief. The opalescent black scales on his cheeks and down the back and sides of his neck gleam, but his clothes hide other changes. There's a slight unreal quality to him, too; he's backlit or outlined in a sort of bluish white light, and doesn't seem quite as real or solid as most people.

He cups his dæmon against his side with his mechanical hand, unconcerned by her presence. She's made of that same material, black and with hints of many other colors, and is something amorphous and alien that seems like stone and oil at once, right now being a large blob in his hand extending tendrils to braid up his arm. He says, "Been a while, hasn't it?"

"For them too, I think. You should call me Sycorax." Not having a mouth or a head, her voice just sort of emanates from her general vicinity. Luke smiles faintly and doesn't argue.

"I think my old contract was almost over." He'd been ridiculous with it, going home every few weeks it felt like, coming back every year. And then the sandcrawler had stopped near the farm and they'd bought two droids, and since then things had never stopped happening. "What did I even ask for?"

Sycorax flows into a kind of sleeve braiding up his arm. Half-amused, she says, "Rain."