lostcarnival | ⇨ HEARTSTONE MANOR

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⇨ 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

Unfortunately for Ash, the card game Strange is suggesting is a very basic, very bare bones five card draw version of poker. It's going to be just as boring as whatever game she was playing. But, at least it would probably be better for Ash if she was making idle chit-chat with Strange over a boring game of cards instead of making idle chit-chat with some of the other carnival members over a boring game of cards.

"There's a table over here we can use," he remarks, with an idle nod, as he starts to walk over to the table. "Do you know how to play poker? It'd be simple, a basic five card draw, but I'm up for implementing any house rules if the lady wishes—and if they're appropriate for the situation, of course."

Which probably cuts down on a lot of the house rules that Ash would suggest.

Hey, hey, Ash was behaving. In general, because Strange had made his boundaries and devotion to his wife quite clear, and here specifically, because she actually respected the phenomenal power of the fae and really didn't want to tweak the Prince's sensibilities. She was a performer by nature, and this was a performance.

But he was right -- this game would be just as boring, but the company would be so much better.

Ash rose, her surprising core strength going a long way towards overcoming the burdens of her dress, then offered Strange her arm before he could get too far away. She was pretty sure that he had to escort her like that? Better safe than sorry.

Taking Ash's arm, Strange escorts her to the table. And, once they've arrived, he pulls out the seat for her, letting her sit down before he walks over to the other side to sit across from her. Taking one of the decks of cards, Strange starts shuffling it as he talks.

"You're the music magician," he teases, giving Ash a wry little smile. "What did you think of the performances earlier?"

It's partly him asking her honest opinion, partly Strange giving Ash a bit of a chance to vent. After all, depending on her tastes, she might have a very different opinion of the performances than others.

"I'd have expected fae to have more, I don't know, spirit in the music," she said, sitting more gracefully than one might expect of a tomboy like her. She was, after all, feline in nature. "But then again, this whole castle is kind of like that. No heart at all. Clockwork motions, you know? The Prince doesn't care and it sort of bleeds into everything, that's the impression I get."

As he finishes dealing the cards, Strange gently pushes Ash's hand of cards towards her. Taking up his own hand, he starts to look though them. Strange's lack of a poker face extends to poker and there's a brief flash of annoyance across his features: his hand sucks.

"It is a bit like play-acting. Going through the motions, doing things but without putting any heart or thought into it. We're playing cards because that's simply what people do, or something like that." Strange pauses for a moment, as he discards two of his cards (a three of clubs and a five of diamonds) and picks up two more...before he realizes he didn't explain the rules to Ash.

"Oh, we're playing a simple five card draw, by the way. If I'm not mistaken, you have played poker before, correct?"

"You don't need to teach me," Ash said with a sly smile over her cards, calculated to leave him wondering just what kind of games she'd played in the past. (Spoiler: yeah, it was pretty much exactly what she was hinting at). To prove the point, she discarded three cards (seven and queen of clubs, three of spades), then drew three more with only a casual glance.

"You're right, though. That's what this whole thing is -- one big performance. Almost like an 'everything's normal' performance. So what on earth are we all telling this giant lie for?"

"Because the Prince wants us to," Strange simply responds. "I know I'd prefer listening to music and playing cards than suffering through whatever the Prince does to troublemakers."

There's plenty of options: being turned into a chair, stuck away somewhere else, getting shoved in a tree or a clock or something like that. And truth be told? Strange doesn't want to know those options. No, playing it safe and embracing the slightly soulless schedule is perfect for him.

Still frowning slightly, he discards a seven of hearts. "At least the food's good."

"Hadurrr," Ash said as she flicked down a three of diamonds, then drew again. You could dress her up, but she remained a thoroughly modern tomboy of a girl under that fancy gown. "I mean the deeper reason. Is it just because it's all How It's Supposed To Be? We follow the schedule because them's the rules? And if that's the case, is it because the Prince makes the rules, or because the rules make the Prince?"

"I believe it's the latter. The Prince is a Wyld Fae. From what I've seen and the Ringmaster's words, this obsession with rules, decorum, and etiquette is something most Wyld Fae look down on. He's an outlier among his kind."

Drawing one card, Strange looks over his hand, then sets it down, facedown on the table. "Well, I think I've got a hand good enough."

Though his expression betrays the fact that he's not so sure about that.

"So how does his attitude play into this all? Because frankly, dude seems miserable."

Ashs shrugged at her own hand. If there's one thing she knew she didn't have, it was a poker face -- and she had her anatomy to thank for that. Even if she kept her expression stony, her ears and tail flicked and perked and dropped without much conscious control on her behalf. None of which they were doing now, mind.

"Want to actually put some money down on this, or do we bet other things?" No, for once, she didn't mean anything salacious.

"It might just be that he's simply a miserable person." And Strange shrugs! Hell if he knows, some people are just jerks. Perhaps the Prince is one of those. But as for the money question...

"I'm afraid I don't really have any money in the first place," Strange remarks, with a sigh. One of the problems of that whole shifting between different worlds thing, not really any stable form of currency. Though, as for other things...he frowns, mulling that over. "What else could we bet? Admittedly, I brought a few things from the carnival to here, but I'd rather not lose any of them in a game."

Ash waved it off. "We're only pretending, we just play for score or whatever we want. Call it a little rebellion -- we make our own rules."

On that note, Ash tossed her cards down with a flip that sent them spinning upright. All she had to her name was a pair of sixes.

With a grin, Strange reveals his hand: three of a kind, all jacks. He's won this round. Setting the cards in a discard pile, Strange starts to deal out another hand.

"It still feels like we should play for something instead of imaginary points. What about favors or secrets or something like that?"

"Dude." Ash shot him a wry look that didn't belong on a girl in a fancy gown, rapping both sets of fingers on the table with muffled thumps thanks to her gloves. "What favor wouldn't I give you and what secrets do I have from you? I'm an open book and your friend."

Strange, the person who's keeping a few major secrets from Ash (and most of the carnival) in the first place, simply shrugs. "I wasn't thinking anything life changing. Just petty facts, embarrassing childhood memories, things like that."

"Oh." Well, she lost, so... "I broke a bra once, when I was younger, because I was too stubborn to admit I'd gotten too big for the damn thing. Force it on, told myself the discomfort was just part and parcel of growing up, then later when I went to stretch..."

She started to demonstrate, but her current outfit wouldn't even allow her arms to move back half as far as she'd need to in order to replicate that stretch from years past -- so she stopped before she endangered anything else, and gave him a little apologetic shrug.

"Had to go home from school that day. I actually got detention over it, for violating the dress code." Ash rolled her eyes, still irritated over the injustice of it all this time later. "Anyway, how's that for your victory reward?"

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⇨ HEARTSTONE MANOR

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