lostcarnival | ⇨ ATLANTIS

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⇨ ATLANTIS

Who: Everyone!
When: The morning of D44 and onward.
Where: The ocean realm of Atlantis.
What: The carnival abruptly arrives at an underwater realm, and everyone is transfigured into merpeople just as suddenly.
Warnings: Body horror, I guess.

THE CITY OF ATLANTIS↴

The visit starts without much warning, but at least there is a full week of free time before performances start. In the meantime, your characters will be given ample opportunity to adjust their acts for an underwater audience, get used to their new fishy appendages, or just spend the whole time enjoying the sights and sounds of Atlantis city. King Triton will not be immediately seen, but it's possible to gain an audience with him if you get in contact with the ambassadors of the kingdom. Just, make sure that you're not wasting his time. He's a lot less patient with nonsense than the Ringmaster is.

► FISH FRIDAY: You fell asleep, whether or not that's something you usually do, and the next morning you wake up as one of the merfolk. A few last additions may grow in after you're awake, but for the most part everyone will have a method of swimming and a method of breathing underwater transfigured into them upon waking. Don't worry about your belongings - everything is waterproofed, and technology will work the same underwater as it does above it. That doesn't mean there won't be plenty to get used to, though.

► GREAT BLUE YONDER: The ocean realm where Atlantis resides is enormous, and the depths seem to be unending. Despite the fact that there doesn't seem to be any surface, sun glimmers all the way down to the ocean floor. Atlanteans use creatures like whales and dolphins as rides and beasts of burden, and they can be seen swimming in and out of the city as constantly as roadways filed with cars in earth civilization. Beyond that, there's everything you would expect to see on the ocean floor here - huge reefs of coral, both familiar and exotic, enormous ocean plants, deep ocean trenches, and all kinds of weird critters living in them. There are a mix of mythical and standard ocean creatures, and are likely a combined populations of many oceans worth of beings.

► THE ATLANTEAN MARKET: The Atlantean market (aka the "merket") is a long trench between rows of buildings in the middle of the city, lit with bio-luminescent plants and rocks, and filled with all kinds of weird mer stuff that you can buy. There are a great many individual booths, mostly with hand crafted wares and objects that have been salvaged from various sunken ships. The Ringmaster has already traded a large number of goods to the merfolk here, and has taken the profit to award each worker with 100 Atlantean Gold to spend as they please. One gold is worth roughly five USA dollars, for a comparison of how much that is. There is a top level set up below in which characters can make their purchases, and you can also handwave the purchase of random common, necessary items (food, drink, etc) at your convenience.

► TREASURE HUNTING: Right now, the only major salvage areas are a few left over sunken ships that have mostly been picked over by the merfolk. However, you are welcome to head over to them and explore, and see if fortune smiles on you when it comes to finding anything that hasn't been taken yet. The current options are three similar looking brigantine that all probably came from the same world. Merfolk do not seem to consider them to be anything extraordinary, though magical items and gold have allegedly been found within them. Whether or not anything is left, is the real question.

► LIMELIGHTING: Merfolk are curious and generally socially forward, as a species. This mean that they find the carnival's workers to be a fascinating novelty, and also are unafraid to make that fascination obvious. Given the opportunity, merfolk will demand your character's attention for bombardments of questions and for general socializing, especially if they are particularly unusual for some reason. Don't be surprised if you get invited to stay at total stranger's houses, or dragged off to a merfolk bar to surprise party with their friends. They'll let you say no, reluctantly, but they will also be pleased as punch to get up in your gill.

It's also possible to make some money, this way, if you're willing to do street performances, or are willing to sell your "skills" in a more private environment. Yes, there are opportunities to become a fish hooker if you are so inclined. Merfolk may also offer money to take you as arm candy to various public events, escort style. They don't consider this to be a particularly socially inappropriate thing to do, either.

You can ask general questions about this setting over on the event post. There are top levels below for buying Atlantean merch, and also for making dolla dolla, if your character is inclined to try.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Might not be in your ocean. So far as I know there wasn't anything like this in the one in my world - not that I could say for sure, of course."

"Maybe not. Magic and stuff isn't real where I'm from."

Ghosts, maybe (at least, Tamaki believes they're real), but not magic, and mermaids fall in that category, in Tamaki's opinion.

"Yeah; it's pretty interesting, seeing all the differences you get from one world to another. Strictly speaking, I wouldn't say my world necessarily has magic either, but we still had some things that other people seem to find pretty unbelievable."

"Like what?"

He's curious. If it's not magic, but it's unbelievable, it must be something really different.

"Well, like mushi, for example. See, mushi are a type of organism that function in ways that still aren't fully understood; the way they interact with the world around them is unlike any other creature. From what I've heard, most worlds don't seem to have them - though some have similar beings."

Of course, in all fairness, a lot about mushi is... pretty similar to what most people would consider magic. But Ginko doesn't tend to think of them that way, so.

Edited 2017-02-11 02:00 (UTC)

"Mushi?" An organism? Like a bug or something? Tamaki is pretty sure that's what "organism" means (sleeping through science class has worked well for him up to this point, clearly). "How do they interact?"

"It depends on the mushi. Some feed on sound, others on the lifespans or energy of other living beings... others are more mundane in their diets, but may have something odd about how they reproduce or simply their state of existence."

Feel free to ask him to explain, Tamaki, because if you don't he'll probably just keep going.

This is starting to sound a lot like school. Tamaki floats onto his back.

"So they're just weird things. Do they hurt people?"

Hah. He guesses that's not an inaccurate description.

"Some of them can, but most are pretty harmless. They aren't usually too much of an issue, especially if there's someone around who knows how to handle them."

"Is that what you used to do?"

It's just a guess, since Ginko seems to know a lot about them, and he handles animals here. Sometimes, Tamaki can put two and two together.

"Sure was. We were called mushi masters. ...I guess it probably goes without saying that it was pretty interesting work."

Of course, even if that can be inferred, it doesn't mean he isn't willing to relay a NUMBER of stories to demonstrate.

"What kinda things happened?"

And Tamaki is equally as willing to hear those stories! It sounds more interesting to him than the biology lesson, anyway.

"Well, let's see..." Oh, you know what, he's got a great one for while they're deep in the ocean.

"A few years back, I heard some rumors of an island where people could be 'reborn'. According to the stories, people hardly ever truly died there; instead, they were born again to a relative, and would grow up to be just the same as they were before, albeit without remembering their previous lives. It was seen as a place where people could stay with their loved ones forever.

"I was curious, so I went there to look into it. I found out from the locals who I stayed with that people who were dying were sometimes dropped into a particular underwater trench called the Dragon Shrine; every month, a bunch of small, bubble-like globules would rise to the surface. If a female relative of someone who had been dropped there in the past month swallowed one, she would give birth a few months later.

"My host's daughter was born in that way - the reborn form of her own grandmother. Her mother confirmed that, even now, when she was only a child, her personality and mannerisms were becoming more familiar all the time; meanwhile, the daughter was aware of her heritage, and seemed unbothered by it. But it didn't seem to have much of an effect on her sense of identity.

"As it turned out, my host could also see mushi, and pointed out something else interesting. On moonless nights, looking out over the water, we could both see dozens of tiny lights on the surface of the water, just over the Dragon Shrine. That was what made me first start to suspect that this really was the work of a mushi, and not just an unrelated phenomenon.

"I eventually managed to collect some of the bubbles from the trench to examine, and that was when the true nature of the mushi really started to come to light. Those globules contained embryos, probably from fish and the like that the mushi had eaten. More to the point, it seemed that it had eaten the time that they had lived for, reducing them to an embryonic state. If that was really what was going on, the same had happened to my host’s mother. So, her daughter would be genetically identical to her mother, and would keep becoming more like her - but her memories were all new, and she saw her mother as just that.

“In the end, it turned out the rumors were only partially true. The people who were reborn from the Dragon Shrine weren’t really the same people as before, since their memories would be so different. But the idea that they were seemed to give the people on the island some comfort.”

It's a pretty incredible story, and one that's a bit hard for Tamaki to follow in some places. It's difficult for him to wrap his head around the idea of embryos inside bubbles, but he thinks he understands the gist. The mushi did something to make exact replicas of people, and then they could be born again as babies.

For someone as uninterested as the study of human biology as Tamaki, this all seems pretty reasonable.

"So they were clones?" That seems like the most similar Earth concept he can apply. "Could they clone anyone like that? Dropping them in the water?"

"Something like that." That's probably about the best way to put it simply.

"In theory, yeah. I suppose the success rate probably wasn't a hundred percent, but it seemed to work well enough for them."

"It's still a nice story..." Even if it didn't work all the time, the chance that a loved one could come back, even if they wouldn't be exactly who they were before, sounds lovely to Tamaki.

"It'd be nice... if my world had something like that." He sounds a little melancholy, eyes on the bubbles that swirl around when he moves.

Ginko's attention settles on Tamaki for a few moments, almost studying him. By the time Tamaki looks up, though, he may have looked away, watching a crab scuttle along the ocean floor instead.

"You've lost someone?" Look, Ginko may be kind of stupid about people sometimes, but he can pick up on things like this with some accuracy. The question is presented quietly, not expecting any sort of elaboration so much as giving an opportunity should Tamaki choose to take it.

"Mm. My mom died when I was three."

It's said with a bit of nonchalance. It's not that Tamaki isn't upset about his mother's death, far from it, but it's been his reality for a long time now. It's normal to him, and it's often the first thing people know about him.

"She couldn't come back like that." His sister was only an infant, and he didn't have any other female relatives who could have his mom as a child again. "But my friend... maybe his uncle could have been cloned that way."

"...Sorry to hear that. About both your mother and your friend's uncle."

Ginko always finds himself a little bit at a loss for words about things like this, honestly. He can listen, he can give his condolences, but there's only so much to say about something that he has no way of understanding.

Sometimes choosing his words carefully just means choosing not to say anything beyond the minimum.

"S'okay."

Tamaki wonders if he's made Ginko uncomfortable now. Sometimes talking about these sorts of things bothers other people; one of his friends from home gets particularly out of sorts when he makes the occasional dark joke about it.

So what would Mitsuki do in a situation where conversation has gone somewhere it shouldn't? Change the subject to something lighter.

He straightens up a bit and smiles. "What other mushi did you find?"

Really, Ginko doesn't have any room to be uncomfortable with other people's dark jokes, given that those make up about 75% of his own sense of humor. More than anything, in cases like this, he's a little worried about bothering the other person.

Which is part of why he doesn't question it when Tamaki opts to change the subject. Instead, he thinks over that. "Hmm... that's a tough question, honestly; I've seen quite a few different kinds of mushi, but..."

He straightens up a little, his face brightening. "Actually, in terms of ones I ran into that hadn't been found before... there's a kind of mushi called kagebi that resembles a fire, but actually consumes heat. It lures people near it in winter, then saps away their body heat. I found out a few years back that kagebi actually have a larval form that hadn't been common knowledge previously."

So they just make people really cold? That sounds like it could be really dangerous. Tamaki's glad those don't exist where he's from. Being cold in the winter is already bad enough as it is.

"What's so special about larva?"

He doesn't mean it derisively (even if it might sound that way). He's honestly curious about why the kagebi having a larval form would mean anything.

Maybe he just wants to see all the forms it has (like Pokemon...?).

"Well, in the case of these ones, the fact that nobody knew they even had more than one stage of life. The larval forms resemble fast-growing weeds, rather than fire; they multiply rapidly, grow back within a day if they're pulled up, and release toxins that kill surrounding plants.

"I was visiting a village that had an infestation of them; when I got there, the villagers knew they were a type of mushi, and they had been testing possible ways to get rid of them, but nothing had worked so far, and they were running out of time. In the end, they ended up deciding to cut down the trees in the area and burn everything to get rid of the mushi.

"It turns out that that was exactly what the larval form was made to cause. See, by putting humans in a position where they felt the need to burn the plants, the mushi got enough heat to get the energy they needed to 'pupate'. It's really a pretty interesting survival mechanism, taking advantage of humans' use of fire, though it... obviously was less than ideal for the village."

"So they were tricked into burning everything down?"

Tamaki looks a little alarmed by that, his eyes widening. To give up and burn everything like that, just to get rid of some weird bug-things, sounds like a nightmare. You could lose everything you had and everything you'd made for yourself.

"What happened to them after that? Could they still live there?"

He definitely isn't finding this story as happy as the last one.

"They could," Ginko assures him. "It was tough for a while, especially with the adult kagebi living there, but they did just fine. Fortunately, the mushi had only reached the edges of the village; the main concern was the damage to the fields and mountain, but they recovered pretty well, too."

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cw for some weird reproductive shit?? also textwall, jfc ginko

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