lostcarnival | ⇨ THE GAME CUBE

Who: Everyone who gets caught in the game.
When: Day 97
Where: Hellbound Hallows, the game inside of a cube inside of a city inside of a computer.
What: On Day 97, a massive Game Cube drops on the city of Mainframe, forcing those caught inside to fight against the User for their lives. This log is 100% Hellbound Hallows gameplay. Plotting deets are here.
Warnings: Diablo-esque violence, characters dying, and edgy video game aesthetic gore.

HELLBOUND HALLOWS↴
The Game Cube drops close to the entrance of the carnival - so much so that it will end up pulling a lot of people from it in, out of sheer terrible luck. Alternatively, your character may have seen it coming down and understood what allowing the programs to fail would mean, dashing in to be caught beneath it out of sheer heroism. Maybe you entered the game for some reason in between.

Either way, once the walls of the Cube have passed you, you'll find yourself in a new reality. You find yourself somewhere in the levels of a dungeon crawling game with a dark aesthetic. Some binomes and sprites from the city have been pulled in with you, and all oft them know what to do. It's time to Reboot.

Use the icon button the Ringmaster gave each of you. Tap it twice and say "Reboot", and you'll be able to assume your new form. Maybe it's useful, maybe it's not, but it's probably better than nothing. Probably.

Now, figure out where you fit in to the structure of setting, and wait for the Game to begin.

► LEVEL ONE: Level one is where the Users will enter. With a cold blue aesthetic, it appears to be some manner of underground fortress, filled with many hallways and grand archeways. In a standard game, the enemies here would be theoretically the easiest to defeat, but you are under no obligation to follow those rules. Level one is ruled over by Sora, rebooted into the form of a vampiric overlord. He must be defeated in order for the Users to gain access to level two.

► LEVEL TWO: The colour pallet shifts to purple here, the corridors becoming darker and only lit with scattered braziers and the occasional stream of lava. Banners and tapestries depicting some hellish god line the walls. The traps here are primarily fire based, with lava traps or geysers of flame becoming more common. Level two is ruled over by Yamato, who has rebooted into the form of a fiery hellbeast. He must be defeated to access level three.

► LEVEL THREE: As the colours shift into a sickly green, the Users will reach the final level. The architecture is shaped based on the screaming faces of the damned, and the rooms are large and dramatic, filled with vast obelisks and deep chasms. Subterranean plant life haunts the floors and shadows of this place, and poison traps become deadly and common. Level three is ruled over by the man Gongenzaka, the final boss of of the game. If he is defeated, the Users have won. Do not let this happen.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Extra chirpy and sweet it is, then! "Okay~ Take it easy and enjoy the view!"

She's being sarcastic of course. Scout extends the equid head at the mudsdale, trying to keep the jagged discolored teeth hidden under the thin scaly lips, but doesn't try to pet her. Or reach for anything really, she hates these awful long hands. "Easy, Pig, it's just me. I want to help."

She's noticed that neither mouth moves when she talks. Actually the upper head doesn't really appear to have a tongue or a jaw, it's just decorative. Possibly there to make this body resemble her more.

Don't be a butt, Scout--! Though honestly, Lambert would be pretty resigned to be getting left behind if she did. What a life. Pig sniffs curiously back at the equine head, her own jaw filled with much too sharp teeth she keeps absently snapping. It's a very menacing effect, but really, she's just trying to adjust to having so many things in her mouth. Her breath is a little too hot, but she isn't puffing fire yet...

In any case, Lambert utters one more wordless grumble from the vicinity of the floor before he relents. "I can't move unless one of the Users is around. It's a pain in the ass." But also, at least he isn't some insane-looking man/horse hybrid. He loves Pig, but he has exactly zero desire to be Pig. In fact, you could say he's adamantly averse to the idea.

She probably smells, more than anything else, like saltwater. Somehow this body is supposed to be a sea faerie. There is absolutely nothing aquatic about it beyond the smell of brine.

"Oh. That sounds fun! Me, I'm just ugly! And resistant to everything but magic and holy stuff, but they'll have both. Of course." She can probably do this without Pig freaking out, now. Scout turns that upper torso and grabs his wing in one clawed, spidery hand, one of his horns with the other. She starts backing up slowly, placing her surfeit of feet deliberately and with care. These arms are wiry and long as anything and he's got a pedestal but, also, she's extremely strong.

He should get back upright in a moment unless he does anything incredibly stupid, like point out that her reboot didn't come with an outfit. In fairness, it didn't come with the need for one either. Her upper body looks like some kind of lizard creature trying to look like a skinned human.

If Lambert had all his proper witcher senses, he could pick up on that, but alas, stone isn't so good at smelling things. Still, as he always has when encountering another monster, he's already running through the grimoires and bestiaries he's skimmed over time, trying to think if he's ever run into a monster with a description that fits what Scout is now ...

But, he's being helped up, so the matter will have to wait for the moment. Having no desire to bang down on the stone again (it's amazing how much of your health you can lose that way) he's quiet until he's properly upright again, Pig happily nosing at his stony cheek again.

"Thought you were flayed, at first," he says, squinting at her. Probably. His eyelids aren't actually moving, but he's pointed at her, at least. "You figure it'll count as losing if you scare them into running away from you?" It's a compliment! Sort of?

Scout suspects something of this form is going to stick around. That's how it tends to work. If it's being hugely, carelessly strong, that wouldn't be so bad. She lets go and with care and caution folds the terrible arms one over the other in that space between the upper torso and the lower neck.

"Well, you look like a really hard man now," she says helpfully, almost managing to say it straight. Scout is not in the business of hiding her emotions except very obviously. "You should pretend to be a statue and try for a jump scare. I'll be visible from pretty much any distance. The fog I can make won't float up enough to hide me, I tried."

Even in this incredibly annoying situation, that bit of humor is enough to make Lambert smirk. Or it would, if he could make any expression right now, but since he can't, he'll have to settle for it being audible in his voice.

"It was a rocky start, but I think I've finally got the hang of it. Guess I can try that idea whenever the next one comes around." He doesn't know what the hell a 'jump scare' is, but he can guess from context. More interestingly, though...

"You can make fog?"

"I can..." Her firey eyes can't look more distant as she reads off something, but her voice can change a little. "'Breathe toxic fumes that wilt crops, cause drought and plague, and infect horses with mortasheen.' Whatever that is. I think my bestiary entry is describing something that's a way bigger problem than I can actually cause."

That's irritating. If she has to be this screwed up she should be more dangerous! "I'm something called a nuckelavee. They're demon fairies that come up out of the ocean when they're mad. Because this is a practical shape to have underwater."

"Huh. Never heard of them. Too bad there aren't any crops to test that theory on." Since they ended up in death dungeon simulator and not farming: the game. On the other hand, what kind of farming game would have fae-induced disaster anyway (though Lambert would argue that to be more realistic).

"Try not to plague Pig, though." The horse snorts at the sound of her name (the sound effects make it sound like hissing flame) and tosses her head.

"Any luck offing the players yet?"

"No? I think they're only supposed to be found in a place called Scotsland." Her bestiary entry is just not that helpful. Scout's pretty sure it was just written to sound 'cool'. "And that's a really obnoxious power and it'd better not stick when we get out of here."

She's not sure what the Mudsdale is supposed to be, beyond 'an ominous fire type', but Scout will readily admit most monsters are ones she's only heard of through Carnival workers, so it wouldn't mean much to her to hear about it.

"I haven't seen them yet. You picked up on how there's three levels, right? We must not be on the first one."

"I've heard of it. Somewhere north of England, apparently." Surprise geography knowledge, between two magicians that won't stop harping on about English magic, he's picked up a few things.

"Guess it's a good thing if they never make it down here. Means they've lost the game, right?" And that means they win, and nobody gets turned into mindless slugs today.

'England' means almost nothing to Scout. She sighs and the slightest puff of smoke leaks out between the lower mouth's big jagged teeth and drops to the floor, exactly the way real smoke doesn't. "You keep knowing things I don't expect you to know. Should I stop underestimating you, do you think, or is it more fun to be surprised?"

"It'd be anticlimactic, but yeah. I know how things usually go here, though." Her first contract had been a lot less exciting - until the vampires, nothing too big had ever invaded the Carnival itself - but it had by no means been free of disaster.

⇨ THE GAME CUBE

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