⇨ Test Drive Meme: THE ATHENAEUM

[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 CLOSED. Lost Carnival is now accepting willing recruits only. This means that your character will have to willingly sign on in exchange for a major favour from the Ringmaster. Current characters are encouraged to make this offer known. Future events will temporarily make specific forms of unwilling recruitment available, but those will strictly event specific and will be announced as they occur. 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. CURRENT STOP↴ ⇨ THE ATHENAEUM ⇦ 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. As it turns out, the carnival is currently nestled right in the middle of this massive library, with tall shelves of books replacing what would usually be trees. It's a peculiar sight - thought perhaps not quite as odd as the hundreds of book character brought to life that are attending the carival with you, as fellow patrons. ► BOOK GHOSTS: 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. For more details about these book ghosts, check out the event post. Recruits from this month will be signing on with the carnival between Day 47 and Day 53 on the season calendar. They can appear in the carnival at any point during those days, or the weeks following if time distortions happen. 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. The spirits are even more grouchy and bored since the Ringmaster told them they weren't allowed to trick people into taking on debt anymore. ► 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. They may have originally been tricked into service, but apparently the Ringmaster isn't doing that anymore. ► 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

[hellzone]

And then in an instant, the fallen angel act is dropped. Yoshiko's voice goes from a deep alto to her normal, more high pitched sort of voice as she screams. Because what the hell, that frog is talking.

"T-talking frog! No, weird lady who turned into a talking frog!" She doesn't know what's going on but she does not like this. Without even thinking, Yoshiko grabs one of the balls that the poor attendant is setting up for the next person in line...and straight up chucks it at Eruka.

She panicked, okay? Weird talking frog! This is out of her comfort zone!

Because she's a comedic side character, she gets good aim for this one throw: the ball flies straight for Eruka's face.

need more frog icons...

[amphibiopathic]

The girl screams, and reflexively, Eruka screams back, trying to take a step backwards ... except she's a frog, so that doesn't really work, and she tips backwards in her panic. Because she's a comedic side character, it adds injury to insult when the ball doesn't hit her in the head, it catches her right in the stomach.

With a horrid-sounding croak, Eruka goes flying backwards, tumbling end over end before finally coming to a stop, down for the count in the dirt. What now, 'fallen angel'?

[hellzone]

It's only as Eruka makes that awful croaking sound that Yoshiko realizes wait, she hit a talking frog with a carnival ball. Well great, she feels a little awful now. As obnoxious as the frog lady was, she probably didn't deserve to get beaned in the stomach.

Yoshiko takes a few careful and veeeeery tentative steps forward. Bending down, she lightly pokes Eruka in the side.

"Hey? Miss Frog? Um, are you okay?" How do you check to see if the frog's alive? She doesn't know frog cpr! The only pet she ever had, she took care of for two days, Yoshiko doesn't know how animals work!

[amphibiopathic]

For a little while, it doesn't seem like Yoshiko's going to get a response. Eruka lies on her back, limbs twitching slightly as she struggles to catch her breath ... and then abruptly hops up, smacking one cold, froggy webbed foot right into Yoshiko's nose. There's virtually no impact behind it, so it's more symbolic than anything else.

"DO I LOOK LIKE I'M OKAY?!" she ribbits at great volume, obviously steamed. "YOU ALMOST MADE ME PUKE MY GUTS OUT, YOU SCATTERBRAIN!"

[hellzone]

Whap, frog foot right on her nose. Yoshiko just blinks, a little confused, before she realizes wait, the frog's yelling at her, and, completely abandoning her lower-pitched Yohane voice, she starts to yell right back.

"You're the one who scared me like that! PEOPLE DON'T TURN INTO FROGS!"

[amphibiopathic]

Eruka throws her froggy hands in the air, exasperatedly.

"Just what sort of place do you think you've wandered into?!" she shouts, before it occurs to her that she doesn't know if she's supposed to talk about that... but hey! She's not currently employed here, consequences are moot!

[hellzone]

"I thought it was a normal carnival," Yoshiko fusses back, crossing her arms over her chest in a hmmph. "But since strange ladies turn into frogs, it's obvious this place is weirder than I thought!"

Or, Yoshiko's hallucinating. But if she was hallucinating, she'd hallucinate something much cooler than a screaming frog lady (screaming lady frog?). Though hey, if the lady frog knows about this weird carnival place...it can't hurt to ask.

"What sort of place is this, anyway?"