⇨ New Location: SHABONDAMASHII

[ringleaders]

PREPARATION↴ On Day 92 the carnival will have fled from Eden to a new rest location. NPCs will have been dropped off in the necessary places, and then the Ringmaster is settling everyone into a space vacation while she works on dealing with the aftermath of her fight with Lilith. More specifics will be incoming, but this is what you need to know. SETTING↴ Shabondamashii is technically a bathhouse, but the name is also used to describe the small city surrounding it. 'Shabon', as often called by foreigners who are bad at pronouncing things, predated the community surrounding it - over time, the rest of the city has built itself around the famous bathhouse's existing prosperity. The city is incredibly dense, and mostly filled with things meant to appeal to tourists. In this case, 'tourists' also includes beings from many other worlds. It's a universal nexus of a more frivolous variety, and both employs and is visited by a large variety of unique species. The owner is a powerful being, and as such, many employees are 'paid' via room and board, plus broad magical favours similar to what the Ringmaster would offer in exchange for service. Helpfully, everyone is there willingly, and are allowed to keep tips as a secondary income source. Service tends to be excellent, given the worker's desires to earn as much wealth as possible before returning to their homes. The layout of the city is incredibly dense, and overflowing with content. In terms of what you might see, it's pretty much anything you can imagine being in the world of Spirited Away, primarily defined by Japanese and other east-Asian culture. It isn't exactly like the earth variety, but it's close enough, and will be recognizable to people who come from those backgrounds. For the most part, as long as you aren't making up resources for your character to stockpile, if something fits the setting it's probably safe to assume it exists. The specifics of this location super don't matter. PATRONS↴ ► YOU: You're the patrons this time. The Ringmaster has booked everyone in for a week, meaning that rooms are available if you want them, as well as some local clothing. Food and spa treatments are also covered, so you can basically utilize that as much or as little as you want. They've got some helpful herbs and other treatments for iron-based wounds, which you might want to take a look at. You can make up the specifics of this, but they are essentially natural and non-magical remedies that will ease the healing process. As for the workers, this place seems to be accustomed to the same level of chaos that the carnival is. They have secret 'retreat' tunnels that they use to leave heated situations, and the management's stance seems to be that it's better to leave and wait for security to take care of it in the event of offworlders behaving violently, or other unexpected accidents. Safety first! DANGERS↴ ► YOURSELF: The specifics of this will be revealed along with the event posts, but the main thrust of this event is the opportunity to have your character split in half - that is, having them divide into a Light Side, and a Dark Side. What's important to know is that this isn't a matter of 'good' and 'evil'. These are subjective traits, that Light and Darkness as metaphysical elements are only tangentially related to. Light is the element of spiritual clarity, focus, and the pursuit of your most 'perfect' self. Dark is the element of insecurities, vices, and self loathing - Darkness is everything that holds you back from success, while Light draws you towards your ideal self. Unfortunately, what a soul perceives as its ideal self is incredibly subjective, and Light abides by that. Light is what you, personally, want to be. Which may, in fact, be less of a good person than what you leave behind. The Dark half will be made of everything your character dislikes about themselves, that they would like to purge if they had the chance. This could include things like fears, negative traits that make their life difficult, or inconvenient attachments. The Light side is everything that survives that purge, everything that a soul perceives as their best traits, or the traits they should be striving towards. If a trait is gone form one side, it will appear in the other. IMPORTANT NOTE: This does not mean that it inverts traits a character has. Your morally good character keeping their morality in their Light half does not mean the Dark half becomes 'evil'. It simply means they would be 'amoral', in that they would have no particular inclination to abide by morals. A trait being gone means that it defaults to neutral, not that it becomes the opposite. Love leaves behind apathy, not hatred, unless that hatred already existed and was merely being suppressed. Only traits a character already has can be split between either half. This splitting is OPTIONAL, and will only happen to a character if their writer wants it. It is triggered by your character having a significant moment of doubt, or of wishing that they could get rid of some aspect of themselves. Then, it will become all too literal. There will be a method of rejoining revealed along the way, but there are also a lot of reasons the split halves may want to resist this. Who needs all this baggage? ► SOMEONE ELSE: As it turns out, the carnival is being pursued, once again. At the end of the first week a new plot will start where everything gets fucked up, as is customary. REWARDS↴ You can keep a couple sets of clothing for yourself, and can also buy tourist knickknacks of little practical value. There is not much in the way of weaponry or items of significant magical potency here, so don't waste your time looking for them. If you want to buy some bath bombs, however, go nuts. Any little items that don't really affect gameplay can be freely acquired at various stores, including food, accessories, and cosmetics. CHANGES↴ There are no assumed changes being offered as part of this location. 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! I've made an attempt at updating the calendar, but things are still in flux.