HELL OF A HANGOVER PT. 1

[ringleaders]

Who: The people who escaped!
When: Very early Day 66 to Day 67
Where: The Carnival
What: The Ringmaster brings everyone she can back to the carnival after getting kicked out the Celebration, a bit worse for wear. Those that have resolved their threads at the Masquerade can start trickling over here as they sort things out.
Warnings: Angst, mostly likely, as well as potentially graphic injuries.

RETURNING HOME↴ About 45 minutes after the conflict with the vampires begins, the Ringmaster will finally show her face at the Masquerade - and immediately be mortified by what she sees. Though initially mostly confused by the fact that there's been problems over the week, and characteristically obtuse about what's going on, as soon as she realizes the severity of the threat she will launch into action. If the Host managed to miss the combat already going on, they won't be able to miss the Ringmaster tearing up the joint and looking for her people. She's quick to scoop up those that have managed to gather in the dining hall - but unfortunately her arrival seems to be the vampire's cue to retreat. Her attempt to challenge the Host about this will result in the being finally losing their patience and banishing all the vampires and all of the carnival workers from the premises, forcing them back to the portals they arrived from and launching their remaining belongings out with them. The Ringmaster will be pretty fucking pissed off when they return (once again) and will tell everyone to take the time they need to recover, but to stick together and stay safe for the time being. She has a plan to chase down the carnival members that have been stolen, but it will take time. ► BEER PONG: Apparently the Ringmaster spent the entire week playing a nonstop game of beer pong, against several dozen of the Host's bodies. She hadn't quite won yet when the Masquerade began, so she was late. Whether or not she was caught up in the same spell as everyone else is up to interpretation, but the answer "definitely probably." She won, for the record. ► MISSING: Upon doing headcounts, it will turn out that all the supervisors are missing, as well as several regular workers - a few of which will have been spotted as freshly turned vampires during the fighting. Whether that was the point of the attack or not is unclear, but it's pretty clear that the Ringmaster is a little bit devastated about it - particularly about the supervisors. However, she will refuse to talk to anyone long enough to get into too many details. ► THE PLAN: The Ringmaster will announce that she intends to get everyone back - it's just a matter of figuring out their way back to the dimension they've been stolen off to. She guarantees that she will find it, but that it may take some time. In the end, the workers will have a total of two days to recover and plan - during the evening of Day 67, she will be leading a rescue mission to get them all back. You don't have to come, but lives do depend on its success.

Comments

[whattaprick]

Lambert fumbles with one of the potion bottles at his belt, then hands it over. It's a flat-ish glass flask filled with what's obviously blood of some
kind, sloshing around.

"Would've gotten more if I thought it was going to be useful."

[lordofthering]

The Ringmaster takes the flask and looks it over. A moment later, she pops it open and drinks it.

[whattaprick]

"What the fuck!" Lambert blurts automatically, watching as she swallows it down with his hands half raised like he wants to smack it out of her hands. But nope, too late! He is genuinely amazed the Ringmaster has managed to live as long as she has with that sense of self-preservation, blissfully ignorant of the irony inherent in that thought.

"You know that's poisoned, right?" Not that it'll probably make a dent in the Ringmaster, but, it needed to be said.

[lordofthering]

She looks at him frankly.

"Now, why would you poison vampire blood?" she asks, after smacking her lips a few times, like she's tasting something unusual.

[whattaprick]

"Poisoned the vampire to slow it down, killed it, then got the blood," Lambert says by way of explanation, still looking like he expects her to explode. "Standard witcher procedure."

[lordofthering]

"Ah, I see," she says. "Clever."

She smells the neck of the flask, gently at first, and then much more deeply, like a hound picking up the trail of a scent. Then, she burps a small amount of flame, patting her chest like someone who just ate something a little spicy.

"Hm," she says, capping the flask and handing it back. "Inconclusive."

It's still got about a third of the blood left. You're welcome.

[whattaprick]

"Now you're just fucking with me," Lambert says, plainly, but he'll take the bottle back gingerly, stowing it back on his belt. He'll have to do some experimenting of his own, then, but it will involve significantly less ingestion, thank you.

[lordofthering]

She crosses her arms, clearly offended.

"I am not!" she says, and then, without a trace of irony: "You can learn a lot about a person by eating them."

[whattaprick]

"How much of a person do you need?" Lambert asks, with apparently genuine fascinated disgust. "Because if I'd known that, I would've brought back a whole arm."

He doubts that technique would work for literally anyone else, but hey. You never know when it might be relevant.

[lordofthering]

"Usually just their soul," she says, and then appears to start hacking up a fur ball - only for it to turn out to be a small orb of faded blackness, caught in the palm of her hand like an evil ping pong ball. She wipes her mouth, and then straightens up, giving it a closer look.

"It's not much, but there is still part of the demonic spirit lingering in the blood..." she says. "I'm not completely sure what that means, but I would expect we'd at least have a little time to save those that have been affected."

[whattaprick]

Lambert doesn't touch it, though he sort of wants to, just because he's unlikely to get the chance to poke a bit of tangible demonic essence again. Is it hard or jiggly? Warm or cold?

"That's something." He frowns again. It's kind of freaky that there's so much in such a relatively small amount of fluid. "I've heard of demons possessing shadows, is this a demon that can possess blood?"

[lordofthering]

"It seems so," she confirms, her voice more level and serious now. "The security team observed the last time that the vampires only truly died with their hearts were destroyed... Presumably because that blood connection was no longer present to keep them bound to their host body."

"Of course," she says, closing her fingers around the bit of foggy demon spirit, "given that the body falls dead without that demonic life force, the mortal souls goes right with it."

[whattaprick]

"And we know beating the shit out them sure isn't the way to perform an exorcism," Lambert says, drily. That's a prospect that certainly complicates things, especially if there are turned members of the carnival. Lambert could personally give less of a shit about turned members of the carnival, but he has some pride as a professional to keep.

"I suppose it'd be too much to hope we could trick 'em out."