Lost Carnival Mods (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ringleaders) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
lostcarnival2017-01-13 04:11 pm
ringleaders) wrote in lostcarnival2017-01-13 04:11 pm
Entry tags:
⇨ 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.
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. |
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And Tamaki is equally as willing to hear those stories! It sounds more interesting to him than the biology lesson, anyway.
cw for some weird reproductive shit?? also textwall, jfc ginko
"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.”
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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?"
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"In theory, yeah. I suppose the success rate probably wasn't a hundred percent, but it seemed to work well enough for them."
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"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.
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"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.
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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."
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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.
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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?"
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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."
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"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...?).
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"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."
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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.
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"Then, that's good. I glad they'll be okay."
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It was bad enough that he couldn't keep things from going wrong to begin with; he doesn't know what he would have done if the villagers had been driven out of their home even after they'd done so much to try and protect it.
"Fortunately, they'd been working the land there long enough to know what they were doing - and they had a great mushi master living among them, too."
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Probably because most of those who know mushi exist in the first place know better than to get too involved with them if they can avoid it.
“But there are a good number of us spread over the country.”
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"--Sorry, I don't mean to start complaining." But, also, yeah. There are a good few reasons he's never encouraged anyone to become a traveling mushi master.
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"What would you do instead? Work here?" The Carnival isn't too bad, he thinks, if a little dangerous sometimes.
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In a lot of ways, he did enjoy being a mushi master. He was content with how his life had turned out, but... the carnival was certainly a welcome change of pace.
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"I wouldn't want to stay here forever," he says, thinking of his home, his friends, his sister who is closer than ever. No, he can't stay here longer than a year. "But I'm glad you can, if you wanted, Gin-san."
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He knows this is dangerous, compared to where some people are from - and even besides that, the... lifestyle isn't really for everyone. Sometimes it doesn't feel like it's for him.
And, frankly, lots of people have more reason to go home than he does.
"But I... definitely do appreciate the time off, if it can be called that."
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They get a whole week of downtime before performances - sure, he has to rehearse during then, but it's been awhile since Tamaki's gone so long without jam-packed days of performances, often rushing straight from school to get on a bus in time to make an afternoon talk show or on a plane to go across the country and perform. It's nice, that the Carnival itself travels without Tamaki having to do anything.
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