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

Poor Beau is never free from scruffy wizards. Strange appears in a nearby reflection of one of the water features, during one of the dark cycles when most sensible people would be sleeping. Considering that his sleep schedule is fucked seven ways to Sunday, Strange isn't sensible, and he doesn't really want to fall asleep inside a fae artifact, Strange is awake.

Hopefully Beau's awake as well because she's getting a loud whisper in her ear,

"Psst! Are you awake?"

Beau wasn't awake - she's napping by one of the smaller pools, with the the water at her back. She's used to being woken in the middle of the night, thanks to traveling on the road, but that's usually in a group, with someone on watch. The idea of sleeping by the water was, nobody would get behind her without splashing in the water and waking her up. That way, she couldn't get surrounded by animals without at least a chance of defending herself.

So when Strange's voice comes from very near and behind her, she jolts to a sitting position with her fists up.

"Guh! I'm up, I'm..."

Not in a camp with the rest of the Mighty Nein, being woken by Caleb's prodding and whispering, or anywhere from before it. It's still that cave.

"Aw, shit," she mutters, then twists around to hiss a whisper. "Who was that?"

Strange winces a little as Beau springs up, fists up, ready to punch something. At that moment, he's super thankful he's in the water and not a big, shiny target for her fist to hit. As for who was that...just because Strange can't see any other animals doesn't mean that some aren't listening. After all, it's a bit dark in here.

So please forgive him if he's a bit cagey on the name front, Beau! Actual introductions will happen later.

"Someone who wants to help," is what he settles on. "Look down at the pool." He waves his hand like a moron before realizing wait, he's in a reflection, he can't get her attention by waving his hand in the first place.

Beau rubs her eyes with the back of a fist, wiping off the sleep gunk and smearing the tiny remaining bit of mascara, then leans towards the pool.

She half-expects to find a friendly talking dolphin, or something. Some animals live in water, and she hadn't accounted for that when she made her sleeping plans. Instead, she's face to face with some weird scruffy guy's reflection.

"What the fuck?" Angry and confused, but she keeps it to a whisper as she glances around her and back at the reflection. "Are you invisible, or, is this some scrying thing, or what...?"

"Oh thank God, you know what scrying is." Yes, it's some scrying thing—and Strange looks pleasantly surprised at the fact that Beau knows what scrying is to begin with. Wonderful, that's one less thing he'll have to explain!

"I'm..." stuck in a plot device. "Well, I can't get to you right at this moment, but I can answer any questions you have. Though truth be told, I didn't know that all of you were here to begin with."

Said with a vague gesture towards the general surroundings. People in Eden? Whatever reason brought them here can't be a good one.

"Any questions I have..." Beau chews her lip a little, sitting up and trying to look real casual like she's just sitting here hanging out. "Uh, yeah, first off, why are you looking up from a pool? Can you even see anything but the ceiling of this... cave, I guess?"

Sorry, Strange. She recognizes the term, at least. But her knowledge of that kind of magic is: it's for seeing places and people and maybe things from a distance, and somehow lead blocks it. A very layman's understanding.

And thus any hope that Strange had about Beau possibly knowing magic and him not having to explain a lot of things just gets crushed to death.

"This sort of magic is reflection based. I can only look through reflections and I'm limited by the position of the reflection itself." So no, he can't see anything but the ceiling of the cave. At least, not from this reflection. "I can swap between reflections, though. That's how I've gotten a better look at...wherever you are."

At a weird garden cave filled almost entirely with humans.

Beau; dashing hopes and dreams wherever she goes. But she's trying to work on it.

"Okay, okay, cool. That's not totally useless. Could you look through a wet wall, or does it need to be a good reflection...? Like, would a window work, or do you need a full mirror?"

If nothing else, being around for everybody's stuff has shown her magic is finicky. Expensive materials, time-intensive rituals, only being able to do so many things before they need to sleep it off... They might not have any containers, but she could always carry water and splash it against the side of the cave somewhere.

She offers a shrug as she finishes asking the question, and adds, "if wet walls are a no-go, I can just hang here and talk. I've been here... a few days now, I think."

"I need a full, stable reflection. So no rivers, no wet walls, I probably couldn't see out of the reflection of a wine glass..." And so on and so forth. There's nothing condescending in Strange's tone: he's just explaining this in a matter of fact tone of voice.

He's craning his head at more of an awkward angle to get a better look at Beau. "Honestly, I chose this reflection so I can talk to you. After all, you probably have questions, and I probably have answers."

And Strange is egotistical enough to assume he has all the answers!

He's being informative so far; who knows, he might be right! Especially compared to her, who knows about jackshit about this place so far.

"So if I stick my toe in the pool, that breaks the connection... good to know." She grins, having no intention of doing that, but it'll be helpful to know how he responds to the possibility.

"I guess my first question is... I can't help you look pretty human. Not just a straightup animal, anyway. You from around here?"

Strange can't help but frown a little as Beau mentions breaking the connection. Don't do that! To start with, it'd be rude. But secondly, Strange is bored as shit. He's fine with voyeurism, but not constant voyeurism! Entertain him and talk to him!

He shakes his head at Beau's question. "I'm from a group called the carnival. We came to Eden to—" don't say 'steal some shit' "—acquire an object that we need. The rest of my group still looks like animals. I just got on the wrong end of some spellbreaking and an impressive fae artifact."

Beau watches, and gives a small satisfied nod at his reaction. The reflection guy doesn't throw a shitfit, he just looks unhappy, which is fair - and pretty promising that he's on the level.

Then the rest of what he's saying sinks in, and she coughs and stares at him. "Wait, wait wait, you're a carny?! You don't look like a carny, you look like just... some guy." The carnival people she knows best are pretty striking-looking, whether they're colorful or stark whites and blacks.

"Of course I'm a carny!" says the man who looks like he's stepped right out of a period drama. Strange can't help but be a little affronted at that not really putting together the fact that no, he doesn't look a thing like your typical carnival worker.

"However, we aren't doing any performances right now. Things got...a bit dangerous." Strange's tone plainly states that there's a lot more story there but, for the sake of not infodumping on the newbie, he's giving her a broad explanation.

"Ohhh. You're incognito, so they can't trace whatever 'acquisition' you're after back to your carnival," she concludes, a little incorrectly, and actually makes airquotes around 'acquisition.

"What sort of danger? 'Cause, I gotta tell you," Beau shrugs a gesture at her surroundings - the greenery-filled cave with solid walls of thick, thick stone, "all I can tell you are stories of being in a really pretty jail cell here."

...sure, we'll go with that. The entire backstory of Eden and of the Mirror is a lot, so Strange is willing to let this little incorrectness slide.

Besides, there's a lot of dangers here anyway.

"To start with, the person who runs this place detests humans. I don't know why you were brought here, but it can't be good. Secondly, this realm is run by magical animals, some of whom seem to blindly follow the human-hating leader. Third, said magical animals have access to a powerful fae artifact."

"Huh. This pretty comfortable confinement, if their leader hates humans."

Beau looks around again, really taking it in. Plenty of space to move around, decent food and water, comfortable sleeping.

"Like, really decent. Like the cells you give the people you have to pen in but don't want to, not the ones you hate... Or the ones you want to mislead about it, I guess."

Edited 2018-08-10 22:58 (UTC)

"I didn't design the jail cells," Strange points out, as if this is somehow a valid defense and good explanation. Because look, he didn't! He's got no idea why humans are being held in a fairly nice garden like this!

"And anyway, considering said magical fae artifact, I doubt Lilith sees any need in beating her captives down." Wait, did he explain who Lilith was? "Lilith is the person who rules this realm," Strange clarifies.

Animals have weird logic, even if they're walking and talking animals who do science on their captives. It's the only answer.

"Lilith, hates humans," Beau repeats to make sure she's got it down. "So what, this artifact is so powerful, she can be all nice about her shit and it's cool? What even is this thing?"

"It's called the Silver Mirror. It's a fae artifact, around ten or so feet tall. It's connected to all the reflections of this realm. It can reveal the truth and dispel illusions. Since it's made of Sun and Shade, it can cut the Darkness or Light out of a person's heart."

Despite the fact that Strange is describing this in terms that are honestly a bit vague, he's downright serious about the power of the Mirror and what it can do.

Vague, and full of poetical-sounding turns of phrase - as if Strange got his info from a prophecy or some old monk's tome - but. There's something about that description. Beau frowns, leaning in on herself, and starts mumbling.

"A mirror... Wait a minute. I saw... Yeah, I saw a mirror, before I woke up here. It..."

She raises her hands and looks at them, clenching her fingers and turning her hands over, before looking back at Strange's reflection and speaking more clearly.

"It felt like it pulled something outta me. I haven't felt right since I woke up, I thought maybe they were poisoning the water, or something. You think maybe it's that 'Light' or 'Darkness' crap instead?"

Strange can't help but frown a little as Beau explains things. "But then I would have—ah, no, you said you were here for at least a few days, weren't you."

That tells her absolutely nothing. It tells Strange something, however, as he keeps talking.

"But yes, I think it must have been this 'Light or Darkness crap', as you so put it. However, I can't tell from here which one it was or how it affected you." An awkward pause before Strange continues. "Also, I'm sorry but I've no way to actually get you out of the prison from here."

So if this guy's right - and she still hasn't asked his name, has she? - the reason she can't feel her ki, or move like she ought to be able to, is probably because... some powerful fae artifact pulled it out of her. She's basically cursed. And imprisoned, and the only friendly person on the outside can't actually get her out.

"Shit," Beau says eloquently, then adds for good measure, "fuck. Can you... Ugh, can you tell me about this place, at least? Like... what's outside this prison area, do you have any idea how these animals get in and out?"

Strange frowns a little, thinking to himself. "I suspect one of the animals must have a teleportation power. Each animal has a 'talent', which they use to describe some form of magic they use." That's the answer that makes the most sense to Strange. After all, obviously there aren't doors, or people would have found their way out by now.

"As for what's outside the prison area...I'm not entirely sure. I can only view things based on the reflection itself. I would imagine you're in a cave of some sort, just because a previous prisoner was in a cave. But as for where the cave is, I don't know."

"Right right, yeah, underground somewhere, but who knows where? Nobody knows." Beau sighs and rubs at her face. The only reason it doesn't smear her makeup is, it's been enough days since applying it that it's already essentially gone. "'Course it's magic shit."

"I'm afraid everything about this is magic shit," Strange sighs. From the talking animals, to the lack of memories, to the weird cave scenario, this is just nothing but magic shit. Still, Strange wants to at least find some way to help keep Beau from being too agitated

"If I had to guess, you would be in an underground chamber somewhere near where the ruins are. Thankfully, people know about the ruins and have scouted out the prison that way before so they'll know how to enter the underground area."

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