⇨ SAY UNCLE

[ringleaders]

Who: Everyone who isn't in jail!
When: Day 175, 11:30PM onward.
Where: The Realm that used to contain Heartstone Manor.
What: Team carnival has gotten what they came for, but in the meantime they have lost what they came with. With his ace in the hole gone, the Prince is tearing apart the Heartstone Manor and reshaping it into an impregnable fortress to lock away his new most precious commodities - the Ringmaster's captured followers. Welcome to a hostage situation, this could take a while.
Warnings: Violence, and etc.

AFTER THE BALL↴ Around 11:30PM is when everything starts changing - and for most in Heartstone Manor, the triggers will have remained unseen. In the ongoing thunderstorm it was easy to miss, and the Prince losing control over his realm only occured before a small group of workers intent on saving the carnival from a terrible fate. An ancient High Fae artifact called the Blue Rose was stolen from the Prince, and in reaction he is being forced to abandon his plans of controlling the Ringmaster, instead trying to hide away in his realm for the purposes of saving his own skin. His main bartering chip? The workers that he's been capturing up to this point. He knows that, unlike himself, the Ringmaster cares about mortals, and especially about the ones who follow her. He's willing to bet that she won't allow them to die for the sake of her own convenience, and he's right. Now that the Blue Rose is the carnival's, she's intent to take back what was stolen from her, as well as the lives of all the servants that the Prince has been stealing away for eons. By whatever means necessary. ► SPLIT THE EARTH: Characters all across the Manor will be treated with initial tremours that will soon escalate into a full-fledged earthquake, capable of collapsing buildings and rending the earth. The cause of this is simple: the Prince is using his powers of elemental earth to reshape his realm into something more suited to protect him. Specifically, he is changing what was a manor house into a fortress meant to defend, and allowing the rest to collapse into ruin. The Manor is still nothing but a castle floating in a void - as the earth breaks apart, it will be nothing but an endless freefall between the floating chunks of debris. Over the next twelve house that earthen debris will be reshaping and solidifying into a new layout, but having to be there while it happens is one hell of a ride! ► BREAK THE ILLUSION: It's as the world starts shaking that the last of the Prince's spell over the minds of his guests will begin to fade away. However, it may wear off more slowly than is helpful in an emergency earthquake situation. The ballroom trance may linger even as lives are threatened, and it will take a pointed effort to make sure that everyone gets out of the Manor's collapse safely. At the same time, the illusionary guests will begin to fade and disappear. The ones that remain are the ones that are real, but it may be a bit painful to realize which ones were simply a lie to begin with. ► SAVE WHO YOU CAN: Despite being knocked out by a surprisingly massive blast from the Prince's magic crystal, the Ringmaster will manage to gather herself up eventually. When she does, the last of the storm will finally come to an end. She'll be doing what she can to try to gather up both servants of the Prince and all of her workers, but it'll be impossible to get to all of them first. A large portion of the servants have undoubtedly been stolen away by the Prince into his newly built fortress, but with the effort of carnival members new and old, they can still save as many as possible. Of course, those held in the Prince's most secure prisons will remain out of reach... for now. ► WAKE THE SUN: As the worst of the earthquakes stop and the new islands of floating land begin to settle, the clouds from the thunderstorm will finally pass, as the Ringmaster seems to summon up a sun to light the realm for the first time since the carnival's arrival. In reality it's sometime in the early, early morning by the Manor's schedule, but whatever! It's easier to not die when the sun is out, don't you think? The Prince's security and gargoyle soldiers are still out and about, and they're clearly interested in capturing as many hostages as possible. ► SIGN A CONTRACT: This is when the Ringmaster will be taking those that were summoned to the Prince's ball aside to offer them contracts in order to free them from the Prince's influence. She'll do her best to explain that the only way to wipe out his control is to take on a new 'master', but they can take some time to think about it if necessary. The truth is, of course, that until they officially sign onto the Ringmaster's camp, there will still be the chance that the Prince will be able to control them. ► WALK THE RUINS: One Day 176 things will have settled completely, with the land now forming a massive fortress on the far side of several large floating islands. The ruins of the old buildings will scatter those islands, forming towers that will swiftly gain small colonies of gargoyles, ready to swoop down and attack carnival members. Further complicating matters is the fact that the rending of the landscape has resulted in bursting open the underground prisons that the Prince had been keeping his most bestial servants, which mean all kinds of mortals long since twisted into the forms of giant spiders, scorpions, monstrous beasts, and other terrifying creatures will now be running amock on the islands, desperate for food. Try not to hold it against them - they didn't ask to be this way. ► REGROUP: While the Ringmaster doesn't want everyone to just run back home (if they do that, the Prince will undoubtedly make them unable to enter again, or at least take over the landscape more fully) she will manage to open a portal back to the carnival in the afternoon of Day 176, formed between two freshly grown trees. This means that carnival members will be able to fetch new clothing, supplies, weapons, and whatever they need to prepare for the battle ahead. Right now, the chaos is still unfolding, but the battle to save the Prince's captives is still ahead. [OOC: Gargoyles and transformed servants from the underbelly can be NPC'd from this point onward. Gargoyles are the Prince's most deadly servants made of extremely durable rock and bearing scorpion tails with venom that can turn bodies into stone. They want to grab anyone they can, trap them, and then fly them off to the Prince's dungeons as collateral. Don't let them! Transformed servants are the beasts who were freed from the underground prison they were left in to rot. They are servants that were transformed into monsters by the Prince, and most of them have been driven insane with bestial hunger from months and years of starvation and atmospheric poison. The Ringmaster is interested in helping them, to see if there is way they can be changed back, so if you have the heart nonlethal methods are most appreciated.]

Comments

[stillwinningthehardway]

Scout hesitates and smiles. She's all kinds of aware that this, here, isn't a place touched by the Inquisitorius, that if they came to any place where the Carnival was they'd have a lot of other workers to be interested in, that even if they narrowed their focus right into the single Jedi here she could ask for help and be answered. She knows that, but she can't completely believe it. Scout has survived the past few years by learning to keep this part of herself secret, and it's a struggle admitting to it, even to people who've seen that she has a few, paltry abilities.

Almost shyly she says, "Um... maybe a little bit. I don't call it magic, but it's probably in the same category. Mostly I just know how to focus my energy." She moves on more loudly. "It's not like that for most people, the only efforts we can make are just to make it easier for our bodies. You uh... do you have a lot of cooking accidents?"

[spaghettimonster]

"Psssh, they're not accidents. I mean, they're a little bit accidents," Papyrus waves a hand, brushing the pedantry aside. "But I rushed into them with open eyes and a willing heart! As my cooking teacher once told me," and he pauses, thinking back to the wise words in question, then exaggerates his voice in imitation. "'Oh my god, this is taking too long. What good's food made in boredom?? Turn up the heat! ALL THE WAY!'"

By the end of his imitation, his voice is fond and a little bit strained. He grabs his shirt, dabs the fabric at his eyesockets, coming away a little damp, and laughs. "That was... my old boss, Undyne! A friend, too, I think. We got together and made a mess of her kitchen a lot, before... I became king."

[stillwinningthehardway]

Scout laughs at the imitation, touched that he's taking her advice about lost friends. "They sound exciting! And harrowing, but that can be good too. I didn't know you were a chef."

She has two things she wants to ask more but shouldn't, right now, she wants to be a friend instead of someone poking intrusively at everything. One is he was a king? He's got those head crystals, but that doesn't have to mean anything. The other is... she has no idea how Papyrus can cry. Does water circulate through his system, or is it a magic that resembles tears? Scout's had very little to do with his brother, but she's pretty sure she's seen that one sweating. Of course, she's seen them eat and drink.

Maybe there's an answer involving magic every bit as intricate and involved as her body's ATP synthesis and osteoclasts/osteoblasts and so on, or maybe it's all 'Magic!' and a shrug. Not for the first time she wonders if humans are as weird to dust-skeletons as they are to her.

[spaghettimonster]

"Master chef... of a single dish!" He laughs a little more, and explains, "Don't misunderstand, I wasn't really a chef. I was a sentry! And, in training, for the Royal Guard."

Even Papyrus has to admit to himself, there's not a whole lot of clear connection between these things. Really, there isn't any. Sentry, okay. Royal Guard as an extension of sentry, sure! Cooking, a little bit of a tangent, which only made sense because Undyne made a big fuss about how in anime, warriors needed classy skills to go with their fighting skills! So drink some tea and listen up!! And then King was the biggest leap of all, for all that he pulled on what he'd learned with everything else.

"Undyne was the Captain of... basically anything to do with watching for, or catching, humans. But it happened so rarely, she had a lot of time to burn! And pasta. And, one time, her house." It's hard for eye sockets to go misty as a skeleton stares into the distance with feelings, but he manages. Maybe it's the memory of all that smoke.

[stillwinningthehardway]

"That's quite a career path," she says. Lots of careers don't make a lot of sense to Scout, but of course, she's only ever wanted to be one thing, and the path to getting there was always clear and obvious.

And now, with no Knights or Masters around, it's blocked, perhaps forever. If everything could somehow be restored to what it was, the dead back to life or replaced by those who successfully hid, it would still be blocked. She's probably eighteen by now, isn't she? Too old, too long alone in these different ways, she could never catch up to Padawans who'd been Padawans continuously for years.

Well, this isn't about her right now. Scout's eyes widen. "Oh. Oh, I see. Was anyone hurt?"

[spaghettimonster]

It is quite the career path. A strange and winding one that will end in a abdication so quiet that hardly anybody will even remember he was king. But the shift to having no particular career goals won't be so bad. Even if he wasn't sure he'd find something else in time, the taste of 'popularity' that comes with kingship would have settled it.

"Oh, no, only our pride and dignity," he says. "It didn't even collapse! It was just on fire, for a while, and she lived between the inn and my house for... a few days? Weeks? I forget." Magic fire is different, like that, sometimes.