livinglot | ⇨ Test Drive Meme: EDEN (Rescued Captives)

⇨ Test Drive Meme: EDEN (Rescued Captives)

WELCOME TO THE SHOW!↴

Or, more specifically, Lost Carnival's test drive meme! We've changed a lot this time around and have introduced a whole new method of entering the game. Before we get started, let's lay down some details:

You can (and should) read the plot FAQ here.
Reserves and Applications are currently OPEN.
This round, new characters will be entering as rescued captives. Initially stolen away into this world by the leader of Eden, they will be rescued by current characters as part of an in-game event.
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. They will arrive in the carnival grounds with no entry log necessary.
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 SCENARIO↴

⇨ GARDEN OF EDEN ⇦
Eden is a magical, almost idyllic realm created by a powerful nephalem, with the specific purpose of finding a way to craft the perfect mortal soul. Above ground there are beautiful forest, gardens, and architecture that is otherworldly in its splendor. You, however, don't get to see most of that, because you have been brought to its underground prison, locked away like a zoo animal to be studied by the locals. This is extra weird because everyone living in Eden is some kind of uplifted animal - the beings attending to you are a diverse assortment of species, all with the ability to talk and apparently bend reality.

The underground garden you're being kept in doesn't look like a prison at first. Despite its lack of natural light, it's well decorated with plant life and various water features, its trees growing enough fruit to sustain you indefinitely. But there's no way out. It's just you and the other captives, and occasionally one of Eden's beasts coming in to check on you, or drag someone out to be examined. It's like being abducted by UFOs if the UFOs were talking animals, and the spaceship was a magical realm.

You may have noticed by now that, eventually, individual test subjects stop being returned to the garden. You could imagine this is because they've been released, but realistically, you suspect it's something much worse.

► THE MIRROR: The first thing you remember of your stay in Eden is seeing a mirror, its pristine silver surface being all that you can focus on. You don't know how you got there, only that the reflection seems to reach inside of you and pull something out, as if it's splitting you in half to create your mirror image. Eventually, you lose consciousness, and wake up in the garden prison. It took you a while to get the chance to talk to any of the animals, and they are disinclined to give you anything but the most basic of information - what to eat, where to sleep. They don't seem to want to get attached.

► THE GARDENS: There's not much to do in the garden, besides lounge around and maybe speak with your fellow captives. They have more information for you than any of the animals will - some of them are human, but some of them are obviously alien, telling tales of different worlds far beyond your experience. The lights dim at night and brighten in the day, but there's no outdoors to be seen. There are cushions and blankets laying on the grass for you to sleep on, but there are no beds. No one who has gotten violent towards the animals that attend to you has come back after being hauled off.

► SOMETHING MISSING: Since the moment you've arrived, no magic or powers you had previously have worked. More than that, you feel like something inside of you is missing - like some part of your soul never came back from being split into that mirror you saw. Maybe that's an abstract idea for you, maybe you don't believe in souls. Yet, now it's an instinctive feeling that is hard to put out of your mind. What did they take from you? Can you get it back?

► WILD CARD: Want to try some threads with the assumption that your character is already with the carnival? 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 run the obstacle course? Hang out in the Backyard? Choose whatever appeals! These prompts will be considered non-canon, unless you are applying as a veteran.

Recruits from this month will be signing on with the carnival in an entry log that will be posted around the start of August. You can view the in-game calendar here.

ENTRY STATUS↴

Approved characters will arrive as part of an in-game event log which will cover their rescue. TDM threads are meant to be pre-rescue circumstances, and current players will be tagging in as NPCs or other captured characters.
Characters rescued from Eden can have been imprisoned in the gardens for anywhere from a single day to up to three months. Good luck keeping track, though, there's no clocks down here.
Characters rescued from the gardens will be mostly depowered at the time, but will get their powers back by the end of the event.
Characters will be imprisoned with only the clothes on their back. All items will have been confiscated, but can potentially be retrieved in the event log.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

It's during one of those times when there aren't many animals to complain to, that a face magically appears in the reflection of one of the water features in the garden. Said reflection is Jonathan Strange and he is looking up at Dark with a very concerned expression on his face.

"Good Lord," he mutters, looking up at Dark. "You're human!"

Says the person who is also human, but kind of on fire and looks like he got hit in the face with a bunch of reflections. The ends of his hair are on fire and Strange's eyes and hair are covered with a reflective coating. "What the hell are you doing here?"

He isn't even bothering to hide the concern in his voice as he whispers to Dark.

( ooc: hey there! I'm a player at lc and through in-game plot developments + mod permission, Strange can talk to people on the tdm. I don't mind infodumping plot stuff at you so just hit me up with any plot clarifications ya want~ )

Dark raises an eyebrow at the strange man. His eyes are close enough to Daisuke's to be easily mistaken for brown, so he's not really surprised by the 'human' assessment. He certainly isn't going to correct the guy.

"What's it look like I'm doing? Slowly dying of boredom in this stupid place. You planning on doing something about it or what?" He assumes from the very odd appearance of this... apparition? That Strange is in the real world, just peeking in to this one temporarily. Dark has some experience in this area.

[ooc| yesss good! Dark is an asshat but his app is in so I'd love to know about stuff going on in-game even if it's only narration. ]

"Eventually, eventually," Strange responds, brushing off Dark's concerns. He's not entirely certain he's the one who'll actually do something...but someone else might. He's certainly going to try and tell the others about the whole 'surprise, there's a dungeon full of people' thing.

Though this does open up more questions than answers. Still in the reflection, Strange peers up at Dark with a little frown.

"How did you get stuck down here in the first place? Humans aren't allowed in Eden."

"Something pulled me in," he answers grumpily. It wasn't an artwork, not one he's familiar with. Which means that some random magic object snatched him, the great Phantom Thief Dark, out of Daisuke's body and into this bizarre prison.

"And I'm not the only one. Whatever it was that did this, it needs to be dealt with." That last bit comes out suspiciously like a threat.

"Trust me, we're planning on dealing with this," Strange remarks, with a little frown. Especially now that that there's actual people here, stuck in some sort of bizarre garden jail. They've got to save them.

"I'm not certain what pulled you in, but you're in Eden. It's a realm composed almost entirely of sentient animals. The sentient animals work with an object of great magical power called the Silver Mirror. I'm obviously not an animal." No shit, Sherlock. "I'm from a group called the carnival."

“Eden, huh.” Or the Silver Mirror. No, that doesn’t sound like any special artwork he knows of. But both are a common theme, so maybe it has another name that he would know. Either way, it’s not an artwork he’d want to steal. It’s way too much trouble.

“What the hell do I care who you’re working for? Get these people out of here and destroyed the damned thing already. You have a way in or we wouldn’t be talking right now.”

"If we could do that, don't you think we'd have done that already?" Strange grumbles in return, letting out a small hmmph. "We'll try our best to free you, but it might take a while. It's only through special circumstances that I can talk to you in the first place."

He's a dumbass who got whammied by a plot item. It's only because Strange doesn't think before he does things that he's able to talk to Dark.

He scoffs his disgust at the limitations of magic. He hates being stuck in here without his powers, virtually helpless... He would take a great deal of pleasure in destroying the magic items involved.

"Fine. Then tell me what I can do from in here. The damned petting zoo is restricting my movements, but there are ways around that."

Strange frowns a little, thinking to himself. He's someone who's always done what he wants, damn the consequences. So to have someone ask him for advice on how to best handle a situation is...unexpected.

He really wants to come off as a competent person who knows what he's doing. So, he thinks before answering.

"Pay attention to how many of the animals show up and what kind. If the animals seem to report to any authority, then pay attention to that as well. Also...I'm still not entirely sure how you all arrived here. The more information about that, the better." There's a pause, before Strange asks, "How did you arrive here to begin with?"

"I've already done all that," he retorts flatly. He is a phantom thief, scoping out the situation is priority one!

"I saw the mirror, or at least one of its faces. It pulled me out of-" Daisuke "myself, somehow. Probably pulled out the memory of how I found the stupid thing, too." There, that sounds better than 'I don't remember'. He has his pride.

As Dark mentions the phrase 'pulled me out,' Strange can't help but wince. It's obvious from that wince that he knows more about the idea of the Mirror pulling something out of someone. But how best to explain it...

"In all likelihood, the Mirror you saw is the Silver Mirror. It's a fae artifact of immense power. The Silver Mirror has the power to banish the Light or the Dark from one's self." The way Strange talks, it's obvious those nouns have capital-letter levels of importance even if he can't actually speak the capital letters in what he's saying.

"I don't know what happened to you. But I suspect it's the reason why you don't remember what happened or how you got here."

That’s just fucking rude. Yeah, okay, he is the dark side of Daisuke, but still. Rude.

“Fae? Like fairies? Are you fucking kidding me? How the fucking hell did a damned thing like that end up in Azumano when I’ve never heard a fucking thing about fucking fairies anywhere in Japan? When I find out who did this I’ll rip their fucking throat out!”

"You weren't brought here by the fae," Strange clarifies. There's a little bit of a needlessly defensive tone in his voice as he continues talking.

"The Mirror is fae, but currently owned by someone else. In all likelihood, you were brought here by..." oh god, this is going to sound ridiculous. "Erm, either a half-angel, half-demon woman or a group of sentient talking animals."

Strange's facial expression is pure 'yeah, I know that's kind of dumb.'

You're talking to a living painting, Strange. He's not even fazed.

"The animals I've seen. Tell me about this woman."

"Unfortunately, she's not here at the moment." Don't get your hopes up to beat her up, Dark.

"Her name is Lilith. She's a nephelim, half angel and half demon. She created this realm, Eden, in an attempt to find the perfect being. She uses the Mirror in her attempts to do so. She also doesn't like humanity, hence why talking animals rule over everything here."

That sentence is said with a straighter face than the phrase 'talking animals' deserves.

This is all a bit more fantasy than Dark is used to, but he deals exclusively in dangerous enchanted artworks so he can’t really judge. He doesn’t really like using violence if he doesn’t absolutely have to either... magical animals he can hit, but not a lady. Then again, she’s not human. Maybe Lilith won’t look like a woman at all, and he can bash her face in without feeling bad about it.

But back to the matter at hand.

“Maybe she’ll listen to someone who isn’t human, then.”

"Why would she?" Strange simply replies. "She's creator of this realm. If you have power enough to make an entire world of your choosing, why would you listen to anybody to begin with?"

Besides, human or not, Dark's kidnapped. That's another point away from Lilith actually listening to him. Though that does raise a few interesting questions. He stares at Dark, as if looking at him long enough will somehow explain this curiosity.

"Are you not human?"

"If you had that much power, why would you waste your time kidnapping people instead of building them from scratch? Everyone has something they want."

He flat out ignores the last question. He's never been a fan of explaining himself. Better to be dramatic about it.

"On the other hand, if you had that much power, why waste your time building your own materials when you could just as easily use someone else's? It's much quicker to contract someone for the lumber than to chop down a tree yourself."

Strange doesn't know if Lilith could actually build people up from scratch. But in his mind, if she wants to use people for...some reason, then there's a whole multiverse full of them ripe for the taking. Which is a bit morbid, but there you go.

"It's an angle, which is all I need." It's something to try in case punching her turns out to be an unreasonable expectation.

Strange gives Dark a look that plainly states whatever angle he's thinking of, it's probably a terrible one.

"What you need is to lay low and stay calm. We'll find you eventually." Partly because of the carnival's own attitude towards saving others, partly because one of Strange's friends is also captured and he's going to try and tear this place apart until he finds them. "It won't do you any good if you've attracted the animals' attention before ours."

"I'm plenty calm." He's just also pretty pissed. But far be it from him to let that get in the way of a daring escape.

"So get a move on. I've got better things to do than wait around for you guys to get your asses in gear."

Strange scoffs a little, letting out a short 'hmmph!' of a noise. What a rude person!

"Considering you're stuck in a prison, you can't do any of those better things in the first place." But, he will get a move on. "Try to stay alive until one of us shows up."

And then blip, there he goes! Strange's image fades from the reflection, leaving Dark to stare at some water.

Good. Time to FLIRT OUTRAGEOUSLY WITH EVERYONE

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

⇨ Test Drive Meme: EDEN (Rescued Captives)

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