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

"HyyYYEEEHHHHH!!!"

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA-"

Meet Carly and Iskai, you two. Upon being met with the sight of two 'things' blasting out of the trailer they were passing, one more or less exploded with light, and the other just started wobbling around like the oversized scaled noodle she is. Carly is a figure literally forged from solar-light, a dancing aurora with only a few portions trapped in white marble-like skin. It leaves the clothes to appear almost as shadows, blots against the figure, her wings spread back and her tail fluffed out so much that it could seem she's trying to bury whoever is behind her (fortunately, no one).

Really, most of it is just instinctive feather spreading where she no longer has 'feathers' by definition. Bits of light stick up and 'fluff' out, and it's basically a screaming choir here.

At least until the wardrobe manager regains herself. "HhHHhaAAHHH- W-what what wh... Hey!! What's going on here..!!" she sputters, doing her best to calm back down.

(It does not work)

Both Alphys and her new 'friend' immediately forget that they were afraid of each other, and hug each other tight at the sight of this new... thing. Until it dies down, and she can see that it's a human of some kind.

"She scared the daylights outta me!" The other critter yelped, pointing at Alphys accusingly.

"W-what! But you snuck up on ME!" Alphys insisted.

"HEHHHHH!!!??!?"

"Hey hey!! How does that happen, you're the same!!!"

Carly seems equally baffled at this point, lokoing from the pangolin to Alphys and then back between the two. "I...Isn't that supposed to be your daemon or something?! One of you is the other's soul!!"

"My SOUL...?" Alphys stammers, glancing at the other critter. "SOULs don't look like that!"

She's also pretty certain that if her SOUL had gotten outside of her body somehow, she would have fallen down. What is going on here?

"They don't!?" The pangolin almost sounds panicked. "Oh, no, there's something wrong with us!"

"I'm so c-confused." Alphys rubs her eyes.

"W-Well, obviously normally your soul isn't...out like this..."

"It's just here!! Everyone's souls are outside!"

That makes it sound quite terrible, so Carly quickly adds on to that statement. "It's just how things are here..!! Everyone is born with a part of themselves as a companion, representing their soul-it feels what the other feels, stuff like that..! Though..." She frowns at the snake. "...Attitude wise, they seem to be more of a 'compliment' than a mirror...."

"You need to loosen up then!!"

"I-it's not permanent?" Oh thank god. This is already too much for her. "J-jeez, having your SOUL separate from your body seems kinda dangerous, doesn't it?"

"Tell me about it!" The critter exclaims. "I'm defenseless! All it'll take is just one human with a little bit of LV and-"

He doesn't get to finish that sentence, because Alphys scoops him up and clamps a hand over his mouth. "I c-can't believe I have to tell someone else to ch-chill out!"

"Isn't the entire location inhabited by humans???"

Because that's exactly what they needed to hear. "EHHH- H-Humans here wouldn't be attacking us, we're here to entertain them after all..!! In any case, the daemons should be fine-the people here have a 'taboo' about touching someone else's, because they're all in the same situation right? No one wants their soul touched by a stranger..."

The pangolin just outright faints.

"Uhh..." Alphys nudges him with one foot. He's still breathing at least. "S-sorry, it's just that I've never been around so many humans before. I guess the same goes for him."

.... Oh dear. Carly blinks a little worriedly at the creature, and then at Alphys, with just as much worry. Eventually, after clearing her throat, she has to ask-

"....Ahh....d...Do you not...like humans?"

This could be Very Awkward for reasons standing Right There.

"W-wha- n-no, that's not it!" Alphys waves her hands frantically. "The thing is- where I'm from, humans and monsters don't...really... get along that well...? I like them just fine! They make all sorts of neat stuff! B-but I don't think they like me all that much."

"What, seriously..?" Now she seems quite surprised. "...Why wouldn't others like you? You seem pretty great right now!!! I definitely don't not like you, at least..."

"YEAH and Carly's super human!!"

Thank you, Iskai. "AH- W-Well, I mean I don't look like it right now I guess, but....yeah I guess..."

⇨ GREYSOL

A is for Arrival bc shit these two would be perf- fyi she has no glasses tho

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