lostcarnival | ⇨ HEARTSTONE MANOR

Who: Everyone!
When: Day 170 - Day ???
Where: Heartstone Manor
What: The carnival arrives at the Heartstone Manor. Do your best to play along, and try not to get too far ahead of the schedule with threading if you can avoid it, in case something that would affect your character happens early on.
Warnings: Individually marked! Could be a lot of things.

BEAUTIES AND THE BEAST↴

When the carnival arrives at the Manor, everyone will be taken into the Throne Room to greet the Prince for the first time. He will be lounging on his throne, and will take a look at the guests that the Ringmaster has brought before eventually dismissing everyone so that he can talk to her alone. After that, they will be given a brief tour of the Manor by some of the servants, and then brought to their rooms to start picking out clothes for tomorrow. On the first night they will be permitted to wear regular clothes, but starting the next morning the dress code will be enforced.

There will be a number of servants helping guests with clothing, and making alterations to suit the non-humanoid features they may have. The tailors work with fabric by hand, but their stitching is impossibly quick and accurate, with changes being made to complex clothing at unbelievable speed. Some guests may note while working with them that one of the seamstresses has wooden mannequin-esque hands instead of human ones, and another has two sets of arms. The arms are one of the most obviously inhuman traits that they'll see while first touring the building.

Come the morning of Day 171, the daily routine will begin.

⇨ THE DAILY SCHEDULE ⇦

► FIVE MEALS A DAY: Between breakfast, lunch, tea, supper, and evening drinks, the meals you are required to attend are frequent and long. Each meal (except drinks and tea) will have multiple rounds, and use all of the fancy cutlery. It will be difficult to keep up for those that are untrained. The food will vary greatly, but will generally to be palatable to those that are into whatever kind of food it might be. Some of them are odd delicacies that are very much an acquired taste, however. People who cannot eat will be given a pass once the Ringmaster explains it, but will be looked down on for it.

► DAILY ACTIVITIES: There are scheduled activities for every morning and afternoon,
and everyone is required to attend. Descriptions of each activity are provided on the "Event Descriptions" tab of the spreadsheet linked up above. There is only one hour of free time scheduled per day, after supper, and beyond that the servants will almost constantly have you on the go. The Prince and Ringmaster will not be present for most of the activities, but they will be there for every meal. If you character refuses to follow the schedule or makes a huge mess out of proceedings, make sure to report it here.

► AFTER CURFEW: At 11PM, everyone is expected to return to their quarters and spend the rest of the night there. Wandering after curfew is unacceptable by the Prince's rules, and if you do it there will be the chance of discover. Based on your character's stealth abilities, there will be dice rolling to determine if they are discovered or not, and by whom. Make sure you report any after curfew activity to the mod post here. This can also take place as an investigation if they are actually looking for something instead of just farting around.

► ROOM AND BOARD: The servants will remain upbeat for most of the time the guests are here, unless something is done to provoke them. They will be present at every activity, and there will be a variety of different individuals. One frequently spotted character will be the butler, a man with dark hair and small, sharp horns. He seems to be the main organizer of things.

► ODDITIES: Even beyond the obvious, there is something off about the Manor. Doors, windows, and other household objects will sometimes move seemingly without cause, and other times there will be banging sounds in the walls, or mysterious voices heard at a distance. It feels like you're being haunted. If you have a moment to wander the corridors, then you'll sometimes see open doors abruptly slam shut the moment you lay eyes on them, and wall sconces turn off or on. It's weird, man.

► THE HUNT: The Hunt activity will have its own event post, and some sign ups for those that will participate meaningfully. There will be some dice rolling to determine who hunts the most impressive game, and rewards handed out accordingly. Before that post goes up, however, you can do some investigations for the start of the event, if your character is interested in looking into the specifics of the contest and overall context.

MAKE SURE THAT ALL DECORUM VIOLATIONS ARE REPORTED HERE.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

It's true, Ash looks like a human who's been with the carnival a few months. And it's close enough to the right timeframe that newbies probably believe it. "Magic in your blood, huh? I'm magic, but completely bloodless. Maybe it's something to do with having blood!"

Ash rolled her eyes, ears twitching backwards. "Dude, I'm pretty sure more people have blood than don't have blood, and that's a saying anyway. I mean my species is inherently magical!"

"Oh, I hear you. But... how many people are all, you know," Papyrus gestures at all of Ash. "Physical, and yet also magical? It seems tricky to be both at once!"

"Good question, but I think there's lots of races like that. Elves, for example. Anything with demon or angel blood, or even elementals." She'd met all of that and more back home, to the point that it seemed downright common. If she thought about it, it was actually pretty weird how many humans there were here, compared to anything else?

"Oh. Huh." Papyrus tilts his head, considering the various terms Ash offered. They all sound familiar, especially thanks to the Portland thing. "Which means... almost everybody?? I'm stumped."

Ash giggled a little. "Not really. I mean, most humans are just human. It's harder to tell where people started out after they've been around a while, though, so you know... I don't know about some people here."

Then she motioned between the two of them, all conspiratorial grin. "Some of us are a lot more obvious, huh?"

"Yeah! Neither of us is human, that's for sure. There's no mistaking my boney handsomeness for anything else! Except for all the, uh, creepy reanimated corpses...?"

He makes a face, because the details are gross and not a great casual conversation topic. "I guess I should be flattered by all the imitation!"

Ah. Huh. Ash bit her lip slightly, hurriedly racing her mind to come up with a phrasing that did not come off as offensive. A tricky proposition, as she well knew, from how often she'd been on the receiving end of phrasing that was intended to be inoffensive and failed utterly at that task.

"To be honest," she finally said after a brief hesitation, "those are the only ones I'm familiar with. I guess that's a case of the copycat becoming so common they completely eclipse the original, huh?"

She was sooo curious, but asking flat out 'what the heck are you then?' was sooo wrong.

Papyrus' own perspective on rudeness, and what constitutes being offensive, are rather skewed. He would, absolutely, ask that question if curiosity became strong enough. Though he'd probably ask 'so what are you anyway??' instead.

"It must be!! But I suppose I can't blame them. Back home, monsters have been underground for so long... that I think humans have practically forgotten us?" He scowls and folds his arms, petulant and sure enough he's in the right to show it. "The one I saw sure didn't display the slightest hint of good manners about puzzles... but, that doesn't explain all the shambling corpses in other worlds."

"Well, that's all explained by magic," Ash said, far more interested in the skeleton in front of her than boring old necromancy. "So you're a monster? I mean, that's what your species calls itself?"

Some magic lends itself to better ideas than others. And whatever magic involves the undead... He's not a fan.

"Oh, yeah, I'm a monster. A skeleton monster!" In case that was still a mystery. "I don't know if we're a 'species'... but, something like that. There's loads of variety to monsterkind."

⇨ HEARTSTONE MANOR

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject