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

Lil and Bud join Steven on the bed, flopping onto the bedsheets and watching Lambert warily. Lil lets out a soft and honestly laughable growl. Meanwhile, Bud starts trying to climb into Steven's hair.

"The part where you said that we couldn't just run in and try to fix everything without knowing what's going on," he says. "I don't want to get anybody hurt."

People admitting Lambert is right about anything happens so infrequently he literally doesn't know what to say to that, even the little growl passing without comment.

"Yeah," is what he settles on instead, eloquently, turning his head to frown at the door like it's going to give him any answers. He already knows Steven doesn't like people getting hurt. Trouble is, that doesn't tend to stop that kind of thing happening. In fact, his cynicism makes him feel pretty certain this trip isn't going to end without someone getting hurt. It's just a question of degree and how it happens.

"Neither do I, so we'd better play by the rules. Try to stick with Joker while we're here." Mainly because he's so much better at dealing with panic than Lambert is, and it's good to establish early on who Steven should be looking towards.

Bud manages to get onto Steven's head, but soon after he will pick her off and hold her in his lap instead. She's a little big for that, but she's retained the habit from when she was a tiny sprite in Portland.

Steven nods solemnly.

"I'm going to try," he says, hoping that's somewhat reassuring. "This... feels a lot like how it was in Portland. I was kind of the Rose Queen's servant when I lived there... even if she didn't have as many..."

The assent makes the set of Lambert's shoulders relax a bit. It's not perfect, but knowing there's at least going to be an attempt instead of actively fucking things up ... probably isn't going to change the odds of it actually happening, but at least they tried.

Unfortunately, it also looks like Steven's about to start talking about Sad Things, and Lambert doesn't nearly have enough energy for this (but if Celandine were here, he knows, she'd be biting him right now to shut him up). So he swallows the first sharp retort that comes to mind, and looks over.

"The fae are pretty lazy, don't you think?" Lambert snorts. "You'd think someone with the magic to make a whole world could also figure out how to use magic to do their chores." Instead, they decided kidnapping contracted labor was way more sensible!

Edited 2017-10-12 02:23 (UTC)

Luckily for Lambert, he actually gets a little laugh out of Steven for that one, though there is an edge of insecurity to it that comes with having faced real trauma.

"Yeah..." he agrees, fussing with his hair a little. "I think they just like having a reason to keep us around. It must be pretty lonely, not needing anyone for anything."

"Maybe if they stopped being jerks, people would actually want to stick around," Lambert says, without the slightest trace of irony.

"Don't tell the Ringmaster you think that," he adds, smirking. "I don't think she'd like being called lonely."

"Probably," he agrees, at least a little bit light hearted at the idea. "She seems to try harder than most of them to keep people happy. Like she really wants to be friends but doesn't know how?"

"It just... takes a lot of work to fix people's problems, you know? And if you try to force someone to be happy it stops meaning anything."

Edited 2017-10-12 03:16 (UTC)

Lambert doesn't actually know, because he's generally not in the habit of fixing people's problems for them, so his expression is mostly quizzical. Well, he is, but only the ones that 1. can be solved by stabbing it with a sword, 2. people pay him for, and he's pretty sure Steven isn't talking about those.

"Speaking from experience?" is what he'll settle on eventually, dryly. That's not a surprise. Steven seems the type. What's more surprising is that he seems accepting of the idea.

"Yeah," he says with a little laugh. "I guess so! Sometimes when a friend is sad you just really want to help them, no matter what... but then it turns out you didn't know the right thing to do at all."

He makes a little bit of a face, something embarrassing coming to mind.

"Or, I guess, sometimes you accidentally possess their body and try to do it yourself but that only happened once and I think it's okay now?"

There's a bit of a pause where Lambert turns, very slowly, and looks at Steven.

"You can do that?"

Forget the heartfelt deep lessons before that part, okay, this is the stuff that sounds a little more important than that.

Steven squirms a little, obviously uncomfortable and embarrassed about that reality.

"Um... yeah? It only happened once, but one time I was just thinking of my friend a lot before I fell asleep, and I thought about him so hard I flew right into his brain? And so I woke up in his body and... I dunno it was so weird I just kind of went with it?!"

He flushes in the face, looking away.

"I know it was really stupid and terrible to do that to him."

The idea alone makes Lambert grimace.

"Just a little." As if healing spit and shield creation weren't enough, Steven can fly into people's brains, too? "Definitely don't do that here."

And don't do it to Lambert, which should probably be a given that he doesn't need to specify.

"It was just the one time? You don't know how it happened?" After all, if he's telling him not to do it again, it's not very useful if Steven has no sense of how it works or how to control it. Maybe he can just tell Steven to absolutely think of no one before he goes to sleep. Or tell him not to sleep at all. No, neither of those options is actually viable.

"I think... it's part of this power where I go into people's dreams sometimes? Which... I know that isn't okay either, but... one time when I did it by accident, the friend I visited asked me to keep coming back, because she was having nightmares."

He scratches the back of his head, still looking away.

"So I figured out how to make it definitely happen. I just don't always know how to make it... definitely not happen. We visited this place called the Realm of Dreams in the carnival, that was kind of like where people's dreams go, and since the dream world was mixed with the real world I kept accidentally astral projecting out of my body and getting caught in dreamcatchers and stuff?"

That isn't actually all that relevant to his point, but he just sort of explains it anyway, in case it is.

There's a bit of a pause while Lambert digests that.

"You have the power to go into people's dreams." That, at least to him, is the most important part, and it's not phrased as a question, but a statement, his brow furrowing as he looks at Steven quizzically. It's somehow unfathomable that such a stumpy, soft-hearted mess of a boy has powers like this, but there's one thing that needs to be made clear here:

"I'd better not see you in mine," he says sharply, pinning Steven with a glare. Not that he has dreams, exactly, since he meditates more often than he sleeps, but on the off chance this place forces him into it, well. He might as well make that crystal clear. Not that he'll be getting much sleep here anyway ... which is also a subject that needs to be broached, eventually.

⇨ HEARTSTONE MANOR

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