⇨ New Location: THE ATHENAEUM

[ringleaders]

PREPARATION↴ On Day 47, the carnival will find itself merged with the new location, the grounds moved from their usually dimension right into the middle of the Athenaeum. This mean everyone will be waking up to a carnival surrounded by bookshelves instead of trees - the major things being left behind are the forest, lake, and menagerie, which can be accessed through a convenient tree portal made by the Ringmaster. Otherwise, it's book time now, welcome to book city. SETTING↴ The Athenaeum is a city sized library realm comprised of absolutely nothing but hall after hall of books. Some rooms are well organized, vast and carefully categorized, while others are simply enormous piles of tomes with no rhyme or reason to their contents. Many cannot be read at all. The ones you can read, however, are a sampling of literature and history from all over the multiverse, in quantities beyond your comprehension. The catch? The only true way to find what you're looking for is to trust in fate. Literally. The books are cared for by a pair of celestial beings called the Curator and the Scribe. The Curator focuses on collecting and sorting books, both fiction and non-fiction, from all over the multiverse. Their idea of organization is esoteric to say the least, so finding your way around can be more than difficult. The Scribe, in contrast, is primarily a writer - they have penned millions of volumes of true stories from the multiverse, covering a random array of subjects from the beginning of time to the daily anecdotes of mortals in backwater galaxies. In fact, there are almost certain a few stories about you. The real challenge is finding them. You could spend and eternity here without finding what you are looking for. Magic meant to find specific items is non-functional, and brute forcing the process is impossible. All you can do is follow the whimsy of the Athenaeum's stores and find what you were meant to find. PATRONS↴ ► THE CURATOR: The more serious and reasonable of the beings, and prides themself on the idea of having the most expansive collection in the multiverse. They don't normally have a physical form, but they will occasionally take one for the convenience of visitors. Despite being willing to allow select groups to tour the Athenaeum, the Curator does not actually give away or lend out books without receiving something in return. Trying to take or destroy anything without permission will get you in a boat load of trouble. Thankfully, though, the Curator is open to trades - they are always interested in acquiring new or unique books, including stories written by your characters, and will sometimes trade them for volumes of other things they see as being easier to reacquire. They have to actually be some sort of quality, though - the Curator has standards. ► THE SCRIBE: The 'creative type' of the pair, the Scribe is gifted with spontaneous visions of events taking place all over the multiverse. These visions can be of the past, present, and even occasionally the future - the Scribe considers them all to be of great import, and diligently records all of them as they arrive, filling what is probably billions of manuscripts with stories and illustrations. These manuscripts have no real order or narrative purpose - each fragment of story can range from a single sentence to a few pages in length. While trading away these original manuscripts is unthinkable by the Scribe, they are happy to allow visitors to browse and record copies of their works. They may even remember you from one of their stories! They won't, however, remember where they put the book you feature in. ► FICTIONAL CHARACTERS: The nature of the Athenaeum's realm is such that sometimes the being and things from inside of the stories it contains come to life. This can include fictional characters from the Curator's vast collection, or even spectral copies of real people from the Scribe's manuscripts. None of these beings truly have a will outside of role in their own story's structure, but they can be convincing doppelgangers at first glance. These book ghosts are the creatures that the carnival will be performing for - the Scribe is under the impression that visitors make the books happy. In exchange, the carnival may have access to the Athenaeum's resources. DANGERS↴ ► FICTIONAL CHARACTERS: While many of the specters are perfectly innocuous, there is nothing dividing them from the evil and dangerous things in fiction, and within the Scribe's recorded history. It's entirely possible that certain characters or imagined beings may threaten carnival visitors - the best way to fight back against them is to improvise a story back at them, and to play by their stories rules while turning events so that you come out as the winner. Suffice to say, it will be difficult if you aren't a creative type. ► NON-FICTIONAL CHARACTERS: You'll have to wait to see which ones. REWARDS↴ So, it's pretty obvious that the bulk of what you're going to find here is information - which is good, because it's exactly what the Ringmaster chose this location for! If anywhere would have a record of the Queen's Miracles, it'd be this place... the only trouble is actually finding it. Characters will be able to help search for relevant metaplot information and also personal gain, with key information being dealt out based on RNG sign ups. The only catch is that if you sign up for metaplot clues, your character must be willing to share. Sitting on or hiding important plot info won't be allowed long term. Characters will also be able to find Scribe-written stories about the past or future of their own canon, as well as other people's canons, but only with the permission of everyone involved. All Scribe stories will be written as if they are a fairy tale or legend, meaning they will not have much in the way of character introspection or details. The Scribes writing is more like a collection of disjointed fables than anything with a coherent narrative structure - in fact, many of the events they describe have no real point or context in the format they are written. They are all true, however, though the wording may be unintentionally confusing or misleading. Some are accompanied by drawings. You do not need mod permission to play around with information about your own character, but you can't find info about other characters or canons without getting their approval. There will be a place where players can submit pre-written tales based on their character that are open to be found by anyone who wants to, or you can just plan private discoveries among your CR. CHANGES↴ Changes may possibly result from getting wound up in the reality of certain legends and stories. The specifics of this will vary from case to case, however, and will be explained in more depth later. Beyond that, this is a PLOTTING POST, which means you can use it to make plans! The game chat is also a great place to discuss plots, so we welcome you to pop on in if you haven't already! The calendar has been updated with event timing.

Comments

[betheman]

it's time for a story and that story is the wolf who didn't eat for like

A While

ANYWAY I am so here for getting Gongenzaka involved in dramatic stories especially since with Marishi around I can kick the part of him that would be Extra Into It (-gestures vaguely to THE DEMON TRAIN tbh-) into overdrive hyehehehhe

gosh if he tells her there were unicorns in the summerlands she's going to just wonder how many things she missed in that place oh... (More seriously tho I'm gonna be using the cast plurk to beta the stories so -fingerguns-)

[hippocarnival]

So you mean Yuya gets to find out the actual details. Time to dig out your skeletons Gongenzaka.

She missed a LOT of Yuya will regal her with the miracles and stuff, and maybe they'll get to visit again before her contract is up.

[soft_focus]

Reira's gonna be so '!!!!' bc she even slept in the summerlands the whole time she spent there

She just stares at her summerlands dress is there a miracle inside

ANYWAY Gosh, Gongenzaka's skeletons are gettin dug out here I guess!!! I'm amused bc there we were talking about how long it would be, before Yuuya realized 'hmm'

'hmmm my stable pillar appears to in fact, be made of sand. frozen wet sand that was slowly m e l t i n g'

And here we are-