lostcarnival | ⇨ 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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Irvine lurches a little, but maintains his balance. He's still impressed with the abilities on display here, but he's starting to get impatient. He'd hoped this would be a reasonably speedy affair where he could turn Greg and get on with his evening, and all these delays are beginning to annoy him a little.

Jamie, meanwhile, has lost virtually all control over himself. He's being compelled equally strongly by his sire's orders and the imperative to feed, and he's out of his mind with bloodlust, scrabbling at the shield with his claws, snapping and snarling while bloody spume sprays from his jaws. He's utterly mindless, but he might be a sufficient distraction.

While Jamie goes berserk on one side, Irvine bolts behind to Steven's unprotected back, where he squares up, draws back one booted foot, and swings at the boy's spine.

Greg's teeth grind, and he puts all his focus on Steven. He's here, they just got back together, he can't lose sight of that now. If he puts all his attention on Steven, all his awareness that the people who hurt him are trying to do the same to his son, it's easy to turn that pain into action.

"Get off!"

That's his kin in the middle, his blood under attack. Greg lurches forward, horns swinging to knock Irvine away.

Steven can be fast, sometimes, but consistency has never really been his strength. In the moments that he's turned to stare at Jamie's frothing assault with a look of horror, Irvine's managed to slip behind him and-

Get tackled by his dad, apparently. As relieved as he is to not get kicked in the spine, he's terrified of the idea of his dad squaring off with this guy - he gives Jamie one last glance, and then throws away his shield, complete with the vampire clinging to it. Then, he's leaping after his dad and trying to lock both of them into a defensive bubble, before Irvine has a chance to hurt him even more.

He leaps to embrace him, and hopes for the best.

Irvine is strong, but the sheer mass and desperation behind Greg's defensive attack are nothing to sneeze at, and standing one-legged to deliver his kick he's already off-balance. He staggers heavily to the side, slamming into the wall, and when he locks eyes with Greg again he actually looks angry for the first time tonight. This is proving far more difficult than he'd initially anticipated; it might be better to abandon this pursuit and go after less capable prey.

Still, he's a stubborn vampire. Commanding Jamie to follow suit, he lunges at the pair while they're close together. If he can sink his claws into the furry brat while he's unprepared and dispatch him, all he'll have to worry about is the already-weakened Greg - and the idea of cracking him apart one punch at a time is looking better and better the longer this fight goes on.

Greg's glare meets Irvine's for one heated second. Come near his blood again, you'll have to go through him. Again.

The moment breaks as Steven closes the distance between them, and Greg meets the embrace by curling his body around his son as much as possible, shell within a shield.

Adrenaline will stop the pain, but not the leak. Blood soaks through his clothes and splatters underneath him. Greg just clutches onto his son, holding him for the first time in days, in an eternity.

Steven holds Greg more tightly as the embrace is returned, shutting his eyes tightly as he takes in that moment. Spikes emerge from the bubble around them, spearing out towards the two vampires attacking. The message is very clear: stay away from us.

He can feel the blood, though, leaking from Greg's rocky skin. They hurt him! They hurt his dad before he could get here, and he can't tell how bad it is. But it doesn't matter - he can help. He knows he can.

Impulsively, instinctively, he licks the crack he can see emerging from the neck of Greg's shirt - it's a pretty weird thing for a human boy to do, but all too natural for an animal to care for a wounded companion. As the sparkle of his healing powers start to take effect, his buries his face against his dad's neck.

Irvine sees the bubble go up and turn spiky in ample time to halt his charge. He's tempted for a split second to compel Jamie to keep going and see just how sturdy the shield and its protrusions are, but he reins his neonate in; Irvine doesn't necessarily want him potentially incapacitated or killed so soon after he's been turned.

The older vampire narrows his eyes at the pair within the bubble, frustrated and annoyed but accepting finally that they're a lost cause. Jamie sidles up to his sire, meek and attentive once more, and Irvine pats his head absently.

"Go kill some people," he commands, in an off-hand sort of way, and Jamie slips off to ~~utterly fail to harm anyone~~ murder innocent party-goers. Irvine lingers a moment or two longer, slipping his hands into his pockets, and then shrugs at Greg and Steven before taking his leave as well.

The healing effect kicks in immediately, the pain giving one last throb of defiance before smoothing away to nothing. Cracks in the rock shrink and heal over as though they'd never been there but for the stains left behind. Greg's breathing evens out, and his grip on Steven shifts from desperate and defiant to grateful.

Only after Irvine's slipped away does Greg's skin begin to soften to flesh again, but he doesn't loosen his hold on Steven. His head tucked in close to Steven's, he breathes in his kin's familiar and assuring scent.

"Thank goodness. Oh thank goodness. Thank you." He murmurs it, again and again.

His relief is tangible as he sees the cracks smooth away, and as the vampires finally depart. They just gave up, he guesses. Usually it isn't so easy. Already lurking in his mind is the idea that they are just going to go and attack someone else now, that he needs to stop them before they can, but he doesn't manage to act on it. He's too relieved to have been reunited with his dad - and just in time, apparently.

"I'm sorry," he says. He's not really sure what happened here, but he's sorry that his dad got hurt and he's sorry that they got separated - he can't even really remember how it happened. "I got lost..."

Hearing about the enchantment later will explain a lot of things.

⇨ THE MASQUERADE

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