lostcarnival | ⇨ GREYSOL

Who: Everyone!
When: Day 155 - Day 169
Where: Greysol
What: The carnival resumes its tour, this time heading to Greysol, a city tied deeply into the fabric of the multiverse. Here, everyone has an animal companion from birth that is the second half of their soul - and thanks to the Ringmaster, so do you. (Remember,

joysweeper is our guest event runner for this location, and location specific questions should go to them.)
Warnings: Individually marked!

THE CITY OF GREYSOL↴

The carnival arrives in a manicured park in the center of a big city that sprawls out along where the river reaches the ocean. It’s spring, early enough that nights are chilly, warm enough in the days that people and their souls savor the weather, and sometimes shelter together from the rain. Greysol was designed from the bottom up to accommodate the human-dæmon bond. Go out and see!

► THE SHAPE OF YOUR SOUL: The dæmon-forming spell kicks in at about four in the morning. Most characters will wake up with their souls in some small form, curled against them. Even if they were awake, they became dazed and unfocused while their souls were being drawn out of their bodies and have little memory of how it happened.

Until that evening every character's dæmon is able to change shapes, and children and some teens will continue to do so. Most will settle on their permanent forms by evening. Characters without dæmons will just look on, and the few who are thousand-pound bears have to handle being really big.

► IT’S GOOD TO SETTLE: Elaine Tavis Aracari, sixteen-year-old daughter of two actors and a moving pictures sensation herself, just ‘settled’ - her dæmon Tavis stopped changing shape - as a stunning blue peacock. Settling is a major coming of age milestone and celebrated as such in different ways all over the world. She and her family are throwing a massive party in the central park and inviting the public to join in! Enjoy easy access to free catering, live music and showings of moving pictures, and displays of mostly trivial magic. There are also form readers from across the country setting up booths, happy to accept a small fee to inspect your dæmon’s settled or most favored forms and tell you what they mean. Is there anything to these analyses? Eh, maybe, but they’re flattering and fun.

► WITCHING HOURS: Characters who are clearly witches for this event will often be assumed to be in town for a lover, and people, witches and not, may want to know who that is. Humans usually regard them with wary respect and interest. Real witches living with their human families or on business quickly suspect that something’s up, but without clear and present danger take a relaxed wait-and-see attitude. Wait for long enough and any possible decision will come around again, they believe.

There isn’t time to learn much witch magic, but witches, real and carnival-made, have an inherent power: the ability to fly using branches of “cloudpine”, an attractive soft-needled tree common in the park. Witches usually ride large branches as if they’re steeds but can use even short sprays, and you’ll probably see the few witches in the city coming to the park to do so. Why not try?

► BEAR PUN: Human-panserbjørn relations have historically been troubled, but have warmed in the past century. It’s the 65th anniversary of the breaking of the Siege of Bertin, a much-mythologized time when Spectres flooded Greysol and a company of panserbjørn arrived and directed efforts to get the survivors out of the city. A statue is being erected and many florid accounts of the story are being told. If you’re in a panserbjørn shape for the duration of the visit you will probably get thanked and celebrated by people trying to hide their nervousness of you. Expect someone to ask if your dæmon would be a human - it’s a common supposition.

► KERNER ISLAND: From the harbor you can see a wooded island. Although there are no rocks to speak of it sports a tall lighthouse, and nearly all boat traffic avoids it carefully. On a clear day someone with binoculars or a particularly sharp-eyed soul can see loads of trash, birds and various other animals that don’t seem local, and… children? Adults and settled teenagers will see tall vague shapes moving about too.

When asked about it the most important thing adults will tell other adults is don’t go there. They’ll hold their dæmons close and tell you that on that island are things that eat souls. They may also admit with mixed pride and shame that it’s been a source of wealth and innovation for the city. There’s a facility there that can open windows into other worlds, and the children who can reach it can cross through and bring things back. Many of the children are recruited by research and development teams on the lookout for items they can use, but there are also kids out to have adventures or who’ve run away. More on this later.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

A - It’s Good To Settle

Parties are, basically as a rule, pretty great in Miko’s opinion… except for the boring super-formal ones. So it’s pretty great to see that this isn’t one of those.

Of course, Miko could think of some ways it could be improved. She’s standing off to the side with a small parrot perched on her shoulder, occasionally leaning down to snatch bites of snacks from her fingers. Screamo, looking like a grey lop-eared rabbit - much as she had in Portland - is cradled in one arm, also snuffling at any vegetables within smelling range. Honestly, she’s the main reason Miko is bothering to pick up veggies in the first place.

“Man, is this really the music the soul-birthday girl went with? Or does this place just not have anything better?”

Hatebeak only pauses long enough to swallow a chunk of strawberry before speaking up. ”Gotta be the first one. Don’t think people could live here if this is all they’ve got.”

B - Kerner Island

Miko sits at the edge of the harbor, squinting out at the distant island. Asking around has revealed some pretty interesting stuff, but… apparently, with Hatebeak having ‘settled’, nobody will take her out there. And she can’t find any obvious way to sneak out, either, unless she wants to try stealing a boat.

“Maaan, this sucks!” She flops back on the ground, and Hatebeak hops off her shoulder to stand next to her instead. “There’s gotta be some way to get out there. Imagine what we’re missing out on.”

Her daemon looks a little less sure, and ruffles up his feathers for a moment. ”I mean, I’d rather not get eaten… but it does sound exciting! Too bad about the monsters.”

C - Wildcard

(( OOC: Hit her up somewhere else, or message me here or at

omixgirl10 if you want to do something specific! ))

"What's wrong with the music?" Strange can't help but ask, with a frown. Granted, he hasn't been paying as much attention to the music as he should. It's pretty obvious what Strange came to the party for, as shown by his plate loaded with as much food as possible. He'll pay attention to the music eventually but right now, there's food to worry about.

Idly, he picks up a finger sandwich from his plate, holds it over the head of his daemon (Siobhan the seal) and drops the finger sandwich right into her mouth. She scarfs it down as well.

"It's boring," Miko replies, with the kind of tone she might use if he had asked what color the sky was. She guesses it makes sense that he wouldn't get the problem, seeing as how Strange is like sixty years old or something.

Like sixty years old and super old-fashioned to boot. Strange's frown only deepens as he looks to the band, then look back to Miko. Boring? Really? He actually takes a moment to listen to the music and from this quick and dirty five second listen, it doesn't seem boring in the slightest.

"In that case, what would the music need to make it not boring?"

He's got a feeling this is just going to be two different people having vastly different tastes in music...but he is honestly curious as to how Miko would answer him.

"Well, it'd have to be faster, for one thing. Louder, more drums..."

As she ticks off 'problems', Hatebeak gives his helpful input - "Do they have guitars yet here? This place seems pretty old, they might not. They should fix that."

"Drums? Certainly not," Strange remarks, with a little scoff. Oh, there was some merit in percussion, but whenever did a song need more of it?

"You're supposed to HEAR the music, after all," Siobhan chimes in, rolling her eyes slightly. "More drums would make you go deaf."

"Uh, drums are part of the music," Hatebeak supplies helpfully, ruffling up his feathers for a moment. "And it totally needs more."

Miko nods in agreement. "You can use drums to get people's attention - and this sure as heck needs more of that on, like, any of it. I'm fallin' asleep over here!"

"Then why don't you tell them that yourself?" said with the confidence of someone who's certain that Miko telling the musicians their music sucks 100% won't work. Sometimes it seems Strange likes to stir the pot simply for the sake of doing so.

"'Cuz they won't listen," Miko huffs. Sorry to ruin your fun, Strange, but she already thought of that. "People who make boring music never wanna hear that their stuff is boring."

"Oooh, you're hair is a different color." It's the only warning Miko get's before yet another parrot finds it's perch on her shoulder. The unoccupied one, thankfully.

"Is it magic?" the small bird asks, before stretching her neck out to look at the colored strands more closely. Lauren is only a few paces behind and shows up looking a bit out of breath by the time he finds his daemon. He see's her about to nip at Miko's bangs and panics.

"Don't eat her hair!"

Miko jumps a little at the sudden, small weight on her shoulder, and Hatebeak leans over to peer at the other daemon.

"--Uh, nope, just dye! Hey, cut that out." She reaches up to scoop the parrot off her shoulder, and looks over at Lauren. "So she's with you?"

⇨ GREYSOL

Miko Nakadai | OTA

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