lostcarnival | ⇨ THE MASQUERADE

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⇨ THE MASQUERADE

Who: Everyone! Attendance is mandatory.
When: Late Day 65
Where: The Celebration
What: The Masquerade arrives, and so does the carnival's enemies. For more info, check out the Draculas 101.
Warnings: Further party hell. Also, vampire violence, mind control, etc.

THE HOST & THE HORDE↴

The time of the Masquerade arrives. You've been given free reign of the place up till now, but a few hours before the party commences the Host will inform you that your presence will be required, and will assist you (forcibly, if need be) to sort out any last minute costuming concerns you might have if you've left it until now. When masks and outfits are sorted, you'll be left to your own devices until you are summoned on the evening of Day 65.

The Masquerade will start off normally - relative to everything else in this place, at least. Everyone in the Celebration will be called in for this event, centered in a grand hall with side rooms offered to those that need them for whatever reasons might come up. The food and drink is especially ambrosia-esque this evening, and the music will stir your soul, even if you're not usually a music person. Enjoy it if you can - the peace won't last.

► MASKS: Though the masks seemed only mundane before, once within the Masquerade atmosphere, they will magically begin obscuring people's identities beyond what a normal mask should be able to do. When a person is wearing one, it would be supernaturally difficult to figure out who they are - maybe you forget what their voice should sound like, or maybe the other details escape you. Of course, it's possible to figure out if you look for it, based on general shapes and personality traits, but unless you know someone well it could be a challenge. Of course, you can just take your mask off and remove the enchantment entirely - though the Host will hassle you if they notice you going without. Stop ruining the party!

► TEMPTATION: Though it's felt easy to be whisked away by the draw of pleasure and luxury during the rest of the week, that feeling will seem to come to a head at the actual party. If you are aware of what needs to be resisted then it's possible to fight back and ignore it, but more than ever it feels all too easy to just dance your life away. Nobody seems to be dying from it, at least, or 'burning out' any faster as a result - it's mostly just extremely distracting from other concerns. Like vampires, for instance.

VAMPIRE: THE MASQUERADE↴
It's during the latter half of the party that things will start to go bad. Though it will go unseen by the carnival, the Masquerade has gained an additional set of guests - the vampire's of the demon lord that has been chasing them for the last several months. The Host doesn't discriminate, and anyone is welcome to attend the Celebration, provided they don't start a fight.

Right. About that.

► THE KINDRED: The vampires don't like to play fair, which means that they are going to be attacking with stealth and trickery - taking advantage of the way that the party has dulled the alertness of many of the carnival's workers. They'll be using that lack of inhibition to lure individuals into places they can be attacked or turned in private - their primary goals are to capture the Supervisors and to turn as many of the Ringmaster's workers as possible before escaping back to their dimension. Some of their targets will be gone before anyone has a chance to notice.

Remembering that they will be avoiding big public confrontations, so if anyone starts one of those it will probably by the carnival members striking back. This is going to wear on the Host's patience extremely quickly.

► COLD IRON: Oh, right, and they are definitely bringing iron weapons - as pure as they could get. They'll have things like iron collars or shackles to try to trap people with, as well as iron daggers and guns with iron bullets. They'll have to be on the down low with, but they are going to exploit that weakeness as much as possible. Those that have only been in the carnival a few months will mostly just feel discomfort at the touch of it - as if they are touching something that is slightly too hot or too cold. Veterans that have been around for years will find its touch to be burningly cold - the type of temperature that would threaten to destroy flesh after prolonged contact. Those that have been here for up to three years will take it the worst. See the Transformations page for more details!

► TURNING THE TABLES: Being turned is a mixture of pleasure and pain, and is often hard for mortals to mentally reconcile as it happens to them. Being drained by these vampires is simultaneously impossibly satisfying and extremely terrifying - once they've started in on your, the way it overwhelms your mind and body can make it nearly impossible to stop them without help. Once you are dead or dying, they will feed you their blood - at which point your body will go through a painful transformation as the demon spirit takes its place inside of you and your dead body is violently resurrected.

As soon as you wake up, freshly changed, the bloodlust will set it - it will be extremely hard to control, and at first all you will think about is wanting to sate that hunger. Combined with your sire having direct control if your mind through your blood connection, new vampires will be mostly incapable of doing anything but following the whims of the rest of the vampire pack and seeking nourishment. This blood lust will begin to fade after they've fed. Killing isn't necessary to feed, but it can be hard to stop yourself, as a neonate vampire.

► CLOSING TIME: Before the party is officially over, the Host will have had enough. Before you can pursue all of the vampires or take back the people they've stolen, the lot of them will have escaped back to their dimension, and the Host will have kicked the entire carnival out for participating in so much violence. If you want to make any final moves before you go, this is the time.

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Sherlock nods. He tilts his head slightly, but Strange seems to be adamant about it.

"It's us or them."

With that, he looked back towards the main crowd, blue eyes squinting as he did his best to fight the ever-present cotton wool in his brain. Blast, if he was only at 100%...his mind was still working, but he couldn't access everything he needed, or he got confused by his observations. It wasn't a liability exactly, but it forced him back down on everyone else's level.

"Do you see a place that we can ambush out of?" He didn't trust his own observations right now.

"One of them ambushed me in a private room." Strange stays in one place but he looks over towards some of the private rooms off of the main dance area. At least one of them has the door standing wide open, totally not in use. "That might be the best place for our purposes."

After all, it was quiet, off to the side, and they could actually close the door so that the other vampires wouldn't see it if they took one out.

"Those rooms usually have chairs in them as well. We could break one apart to use as a weapon." Or, at least, Sherlock could break one apart to use as a weapon. Strange is already going through a mental list of the best sort of magical ways one could kill a vampire.

Sherlock nodded. It was a sound plan, logical, provided some measure of safety.

This was a bit odd, considering his previous opinion of Strange, but he was proving to be an acceptable and helpful ally.

"Agreed."

The scaly detective immediately began to head towards the room, thinking it better if they didn't draw attention to themselves by sneaking off there together. Though the people here were too blitzed out of their minds to notice, the vampires might and could attack them before they were ready. Without asking Strange, he was already in the move. He did it casually, stumbling slightly, looking like just another one of the crowd, before slipping in.

And that's when a pair of hands grabbed him and threw him against the wall inside the room, and chomped down on his neck before he had a chance to yell.

Strange is a few feet behind Sherlock, trying to keep the man in his eyesight while also trying to find something that could serve as a weapon. If only they were outside. He's so much better with earth and fire, which are here in very short supplies. He casts another glance towards Sherlock, trying his hardest to not be distracted. Water might work, but do these things need to even breathe in the first place? It's entirely possible he could make one choke on a glass of wine, but—

And then Sherlock gets yanked into one of the rooms. Well shit.

"Dammit!" Strange is acting on impulse as he run towards where Sherlock was last seen, muttering under his breath all the while. He practically skids into the private room, gesturing at Sherlock and the vampire as he does so. A gust of wind, forceful enough to knock a man off his feet, slams into the two, throwing the vampire back against the wall. Thankfully, it's enough to separate Sherlock and the vampire before too much damage is done but it's entirely likely that poor Sherlock's getting hit by a bit of the spell as well. Sorry bud.

Sherlock can't do a thing--the moment those fangs hit his brain crawls to a halt, as the effects of the bite hit him. He can't think, his eyes glaze over when--

SLAM! Something hits his attacker and himself as well. The vampire goes into a wall, Sherlock is thrown to the ground, confused and bewildered.

A few seconds of blinking before his senses resume their existence and he can think quickly enough to pick himself back up. He looks over at the vampire, and back to Strange.

"That...uh, that was good. What you did..." he stammers, waving a hand over in the vague direction of the vampire. Who was likely not going to be stopped by a wall smash, as effective as it had been. Sherlock immediately tries to look for a weapon. There! A chair!

He leaves Strange to deal with it as he runs to the chair, smashing it to the ground and snapping two legs off.

Between the two, Strange has proven himself to be a bigger threat. As such, the vampire ignores Sherlock and rushes straight towards the magician. Kill this guy and get him out of the way then he can totally go back to snacking on the other man! Already Strange is muttering to himself, getting a spell ready. However, the vampire's faster. He charges at Strange who instantly puts his arms up as if to try and grapple with the vampire.

Unfortunately, Strange put all his metaphorical points in intelligence and the bare minimum in strength. The vampire has super strength. Strange is going to lose this fight. They grapple for a moment or two, Strange desperately trying to keep that vampire away from him before Strange loses the fight spectacularly. The vampire gets his hands on Strange's shoulders and just pushes him, sending him backwards with enough force for Strange to smack into a wall.

At least the creature's forgotten about Sherlock as he advances on the magician, who's starting up the spell again, muttering frantically under his breath in the hopes that he'll actually be able to send it off before he gets drained.

Sherlock's slower than he would be normally, the cotton wool in his brain from all the partying had seeped into his muscles. The fear and danger was helping to counter that, but it still made for delayed reaction times.

Better late than never, though, as the scaly detective suddenly slams the broken pieces of wood into the vampire's back, the pointy-end first. A growl escapes the snake-like man, he fights off the bizarre urge to instinctively bite the vampire. That would definitely not end well, and Sherlock tried to quickly suppress it.

He's far stronger than Strange, though, and the second after his previous attack he's already grabbing the vampire and wrapping his arm around its throat, and squeezing as hard as he could in a chokehold.

"I can't hold him for long!" He certainly wasn't strong enough to, this was only going to give Strange a chance to get away or possibly get one attack in.

Destroy the heart. That's what Joker had said. But Strange honestly can't tell just where in the back Sherlock's stabbed him. He frantically looks around as if to find something useful...before spotting the broken chair in the corner of the room. The chair itself is missing two legs thanks to Sherlock, but it has splintered ends where the legs were broken off in the first place.

That could work!

Still muttering the spell, Strange quickly shifts his position in the room before he casts the spell again, directly placing the vampire (well and Sherlock) between the chair. He gives Sherlock a bit of a panicked look that the other man hopefully interprets as 'let go' before Strange gestures towards the vampire. Another gust of wind knocks the vampire off his feet but this time? It pushes the vampire back towards the chair: the vampire and broken chair connect with a sickening squish.

Strange himself is white as a sheet and looks like he's about to faint. He's got no idea if the vampire is actually dead or not but hoooooly shit is he uncomfortable with the fact that he might have helped kill somebody.

Sherlock gets it, he lets go just in time--good, too, because he could not hold onto him any longer, he was far too strong--and the next thing the detective knew he himself had fallen to the ground, only to see the vampire get stabbed with the chair. His reptilian eyes widened, he was no stranger to seeing death, much less seeing death dealt at hand, but it still bothered him, even if he never spoke of it out loud.

"Erm," Sherlock said, as he slowly picked himself back up. "Well done."

He crept closer to the fallen vampire, not exactly knowing how to check for signs of life--no heartbeat right?

Sorry Sherlock, Strange is still a bit in the confused 'wait, I killed someone?!' phase of all this. Because he's been in a war, he's seen death, but being part of actually killing someone? Yeah, he's not all that good at dealing with it. That vampire deserved it. It was either them or him. Sherlock was annoying but he certainly wasn't going to let him die.

So when Sherlock says something, Strange just doesn't answer him. It's only a moment or two later that he realizes wait, Sherlock said something, as Strange turns towards the other man.

"I'm sorry, I—" and then he catches a glimpse of that corpse out of his eye and he feels a bit sick all over again. "I need some water."

Aaaaaand then he straight up tries to leave the room, attempting to head out towards the drinks table. Sorry, Sherlock.

Sherlock's still crouching over the body, somewhat mesmerized with fascination. Dead, and yet not dead--but killable, all the same. How did it work? How did any of this work--

"Strange?"

He looked up, a bit baffled by the empty room. Strange had left? He was focusing so much he could scarcely remember even...something about needing water, he'd vaguely heard. From what he put together it seemed like he did not take killing this vampire well. Sherlock grimaced, this was not something they could afford to do every time they managed to grab one. That was a quick and easy way to getting killed or turned themselves. Maybe this wasn't such a good idea--as capable as Strange was, if he didn't have the stomach for it, it was too dangerous for him to fight out here. He stood up from the body, and did his best to drag it to the other corner of the room.

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⇨ THE MASQUERADE

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