⇨ ATLANTIS

[ringleaders]

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.

Comments

[puddingemote]

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?"

[dontpokethat]

"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."

[puddingemote]

"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.

[dontpokethat]

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.

[puddingemote]

"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."

[dontpokethat]

"...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.

[puddingemote]

"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?"

[dontpokethat]

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."

[puddingemote]

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...?).

[dontpokethat]

"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."

[puddingemote]

"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.

[dontpokethat]

"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."

[puddingemote]

That makes him feel better. He looks more relaxed now. Even if he doesn't know and will never meet these people, most likely, he's still glad to hear that not all hope was lost for them. He just doesn't like hearing about sad things.

"Then, that's good. I glad they'll be okay."

[dontpokethat]

"Yeah. Same here."

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."

[puddingemote]

"Are there a bunch of mushi masters?" He knows Ginko mentioned being one. If mushi can be that much of a problem, maybe it's important that there are plenty of people who can handle the mushi. Like firemen or doctors or something.

[dontpokethat]

“Sure are. ...Well, kind of; looking at the overall population, it’s not that common a job.”

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.”

[puddingemote]

"It sounds hard..." Traveling around, dealing with all kinds of weird problems... Tamaki's not sure he likes that. He thinks he likes his own job better; even if there's some annoying things about it, at the end of the day it's just about making people happy, and that's fun. It's not so scary as some of what Ginko is talking about sounds like, even if some of it sounds cool, too. "Is that why not a lot of people do it?"

[dontpokethat]

"Yeah, that's a big part of it. It's hard, and can be dangerous... the pay isn't great, either." He frowns slightly, ears flicking at some past annoyance, then shakes his head.

"--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.

[puddingemote]

Sounds pretty awful, now that he says all that. Tamaki looks thoughtful.

"What would you do instead? Work here?" The Carnival isn't too bad, he thinks, if a little dangerous sometimes.

[dontpokethat]

"That's... pretty much it." He laughs, quiet and somewhat wry. "I couldn't very well change jobs back home, so this is about the only other option I have."

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.

[puddingemote]

Tamaki thinks about it. At first he thought it was unfair, that the Carnival trapped people here, but now he's met people who would rather be here. It's good, for those people, that they have this.

"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."

[dontpokethat]

"...Yeah. Honestly, I can see why so many people leave."

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."

[puddingemote]

"Yeah. This is a lot less busy than my real job."

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.

[dontpokethat]

"It really is pretty nice, all things considered. How often are you working back home, anyway?"

[puddingemote]

"Almost every day." He thinks back. "Because we were getting ready for a giant concert, and doing lots of interviews, and me and Sou-chan were filming a drama. So I was really busy. But Manager-" He pauses, then corrects himself. "My manager back home, she made sure I had some time off. But then Iorin made me do homework!"

He sounds annoyed by this especially.

"The day after I came here was supposed to be a day off. But I'm here instead."