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livinglot2016-09-29 10:38 am
ringleaders) wrote in livinglot2016-09-29 10:38 am
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⇨ TEST DRIVE MEME #1
WELCOME TO THE SHOW!↴ Or, more specifically, Lost Carnival's first 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:
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. ► 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. ► NOT YOUR WHEELHOUSE (NEW): 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? ► 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? ► 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! |
Ashleigh Mischief | OC
Hey...
[The catgirl taps at a mirror with one claw, not hard enough to scratch but definitely with some force behind her. Opposite her, her reflection smirks at her condescendingly as it meets her claw with its own.]
What kind of funhouse mirror is this anyway? And how many are there? I swear I should have been out of here by now.
[Turning her back on the reflection, she leans against it, the guitar slung over her back like a sword pressing against her shoulder blades as she taps a finger against her lips.]
There must be a trick to it.
Trying to Leaf
[One moment, the forest is quiet.]
[The next, music rolls out of it, sounding very much like a full orchestra has appeared out of nowhere to perform where absolutely no one can see them. A voice rolls out over the trees in song that fills every particle in the air with energy and vibration.]
Bring me around,
let the night pass by.
Lost in the dark,
caught wondering why.
Searching for the only place I've ever known...
So bring me home.
[The last word lingers in the air atop the fading sounds of violins as Ash steps out of the woods, her hands spread wide and her head tipped back. As the last of the word curls out from between her lips, the rest of the music all dies out as well, leaving silence in its wake.]
[Straightening her neck, she opens her eyes, and the confident smile on her face lasts for one second only before she focuses on the full-sized gingerbread house which has appeared quite literally out of nowhere.]
Oh come on! That's not even -- that's not right! [She gestures with both hands at it, palm-up, as if inviting the entire universe to observe how ridiculous this is. Petulantly stomping a foot, she folds her arms and tucks a hand against her cheek as her tail curls around her leg.]
Was I out of genre? Or did the near-rhyme spoil it?
Mirror Maze!
[Mettaton... hasn't felt stuck in the hall of mirrors, on his part. He isn't 1. in a hurry to leave the carnival in general; or 2. a man who's easy to unnerve with his own reflection, however, ah, accurate it is or isn't. The way he's seen it so far? His reflections have been acting, modeling, poooosing without having to fellow his example - and you know what? How appropriate and novel!
Still, when he turns to face the catlike-humanlike young lady in the room with him, he isn't scoffing at her or writing her off by any stretch - how unbecoming it'd be to give that attitude to such a total friggin' stranger, good lord! - rather... showing no more than something like a casually journalistic sort of interest.]
Hm...! Such as...?
no subject
Maybe one of the mirrors is a secret door! Or maybe you can only see the exit in a reflection and not looking at it yourself!
no subject
What it hadn't occurred to him to think is that there even might be a trick to getting out of the mirror hall - again, he wasn't really trying to get out! - but. Heck if he's going to allude to that.
A smirk and a cocked brow. A "hm!"]
Not your first strut through puzzling entertainment, dear?
[Falling-then-rising inflection on "puzzling" - a vocal flourish as he's settling down tonally into emcee-mode - enough to feel satisfied he's sounding sufficiently assured to cover up his curiosity.]
You have your ideas - surely you've happened by a clue or two to help you pin them down?
[It's actually more like 75% inflected as a question.]
no subject
Well, the reflections are the only clue I'm sure about. They all look a little different, you know? Plus it's a mirror maze, so why would your clue not be about mirrors in a mirror maze?
[Eminently reasonable logic from the catgirl's perspective.]
no subject
[Said impulsively, "privately", and very slightly in his nose. "Privately" in quotation marks because, yeah, it's not like he wasn't capable of not saying that out loud. Come on, if you're going to sound that sure, now...!
Either way! Rolling on, with less of the implicit condescension and more of a shift back into the pomp that he'd been starting to strike up.
Starting off with a fringe of a laugh:] That is a start!
But!
[A pointer finger out and thrown up at a diagonal, plus a smile favoring one side of his face.]
It still sounds a li~ittle like a shot in the dark, don't you think? "About mirrors" doesn't quite say much about the solution to a puzzle.
no subject
Sure it does, when you're surrounded by mirrors. [She spins her forefingers in a circle to encompass their environs.] I just started working on the puzzle angle, so expecting a lot more out of two seconds of thought is reaching a bit, don't you think?
no subject
[That's chased in his head with a follow-up along the lines of "we can't all cover the same amount of ground in the same, can we" - the slant of his smirk sits and settles on it, but he holds his tongue on actually saying it - it's just the two of them, and blurting out sass there'd be anywhere from just pointless to kind of a net loss.]
Rrrregardless, if that's the type of game you think you're playing, do keep your peepers peeled for patterns from here on out.
[The emphasis on the alliteration being most plushly understated. He's trying to sound passively encouraging, as someone who still doesn't feel as if he's got a horse in the race. Quite yet, anyway.]
no subject
no subject
[With one forefinger bent below his lower lip. There's genuinely no sass in his mind with that one - come, now, magic is a perfectly valid just-as-it-is answer, but in terms of purpose or engineering, well... the former's not exactly something it's his business to know and as for the latter, honestly, magic's never really been of interest on a scientific level to him in general, especially in the wake of having had a friend he could've fallen back on for input on that front, once upon a time.]
no subject
[Never mind that with some extra wandering and trial-and-error they could escape this place the way it's meant to be conquered. This challenge is metaphorical string, and the catgirl can't help but chase it.]
no subject
Thinking of going off the rails, are you?
[Shifts his weight. Dries whatever amusement might've carried over from that laugh out of his voice into plain amicable matter-of-factness.]
...Well, if one wants out, it's definitely an approach.
no subject
no subject
Lightly claps his hands together.]
Innn-dubitably, darling!
[Sincere agreement!]
But, let me tell you, I am - [Brushes his bangs slightly aside with a flick o' the wrist.] - plenty used to magic. Seems as though I might be too much so, if anything.
no subject
[Ash shifts her weight to one leg, letting her hip jut out and her upper body lean in a perfectly calculated pose she pulls off looking like she's just born to. Which, to be fair, she mostly is.]
Oh yeah. Me too.
[Pulling her claws back in, she lifts a hand to snap her fingers -- and when she does, a guitar chord rips through the air, all warm distortion and tingly on the skin. It hadn't come from the instrument on her back.]
S'why I thought of it.