⇨ JAILHOUSE ROCKS

[ringleaders]

Who: Everyone who IS imprisoned, brainwashed, or infiltrating.
When: Day 175, 11:30PM onward.
Where: The Prince's shiny new fortress.
What: Those that have been imprisoned by the Prince languish in their underground cell, while those that are under his control continue to do his nasty bidding. Also, Foster might be here? We'll see how that goes.
Warnings: General fuckery, maybe torture.

THE LAIR OF THE BEAST↴ As the fortress comes into being, the Prince has been reaching far across his realm, beckoning his servants back to him and corralling as many helpless hostages as he can manage. In the case of the unfortunate carnival members who made the mistake of crossing him during their stay, they are being locked away in the most secure inner sanctums, held as collateral against their former master. Those freshly captured haven't yet been bent to his will, but they can certainly be neutralized. Carted away by security and pulled deep underground, there feels like there is little hope of them escaping on their own. ► GROUNDED: The Prince's dungeon is a simple one - in place of cages and manacles, there is only natural stone. A claustrophobic cave somewhere deep in the earth, those within it will soon be completely cut off from the outside world. All the prisoners will have been injected with manticore venom at some point or another, which will be slowly turning parts of their bodies to stone, and if that wasn't enough they have also been partially encased in the stone walls and pillars, as if phased halfway into the rock and left there in various positions. It is an enclosed area, and all the prisoners are within talking distance of each other - which is a good thing, because there isn't a lot else to do with their powers mostly bound and their bodies becoming less and less capable of movement. ► CONTROLLED: Those of the brainwashed that manage to return to the fortress will be set to work guarding and attending to these hostages, along with the help of some of the long term Manor servants. They still need to eat, right, and that can be difficult when you arms are stuck in a cave wall. Otherwise, there may come a time when the Prince calls upon them to do something more specific - and there's also the chance that the new prisoners will fall victim to his power and succumb to his control as well. With the poison in their bodies, it's only a matter of time before they lose themselves.

Comments

[osteothropy]

Sans flinches when Lambert speaks to him, though even he isn't totally sure why. There's a bizarre mix of repulsion, anger, and shame at being forced to acknowledge the Nightrider's presence - not least due to the fact that they'd almost killed each other.

"I dunno..." Sans mumbles, a more subdued response than some of the other things he's been saying so far. The truth is that he really doesn't know. It's not even as if he failed to defeat the Nightrider... he'd won the fight, and brought down a major figure from the enemy side. What else was he supposed to do? His confusion over that subject has been eating away at him all night.

"I did... I did what I was supposed to. I dunno what I did wrong..."

He doesn't sound resentful about the fact that he's apparently being punished for no reason, just earnestly bewildered. Maybe it's because he got injured, or because he didn't win cleanly enough. He wished that he knew.

Then again, given who he belongs to now, he guesses the Prince has the right to do whatever he wants with him, for any reason at all.

[whattaprick]

So whatever enchantment the Prince has him under, it hasn't fully broken yet. That means Lambert still can't afford to trust Sans, though he knows how little that counts for anything right now -- even if the skeleton was on their side, how much can he really help? Lambert knows exactly how helpless his transformation makes him, which could be good or bad, under these circumstances. He can't be used as a weapon against the rest of the Carnival again, but he >is more vulnerable than ever.

"He set you up to fail," Lambert answers, shrugging. "Don't take it personally. None of us were supposed to win from the start." It's absurdly obvious now, of course, what was only a suspicion at the start. No doubt some of it is because the Prince genuinely wants to live this way, but the rules on rules, the schedule that did its best to leave no time for thought, everything was just a trap, after all. Even the Ringmaster must have known. Yet they'd stepped into it all the same.

[osteothropy]

"I already know I don't matter," he says, as if Lambert was implying he didn't know that somehow. "None of us... mattered, so it doesn't make a difference. What they do to us. That's what I realized."

Let him tell you a thing he learned from being brainwashed into subservience, my friend.

[whattaprick]

"I'll have to let Papyrus know he doesn't matter, then," Lambert answers sarcastically. He doesn't have patience or compassion to humor this kind of delirious navelgazing. He's a little repulsed at the possibility that's where they could be headed next. Just what did the Prince do to them down there...?

Between this, Tyki, and Strange, it's fairly obvious fae brainwashing isn't something to take lightly.

[osteothropy]

"He's not special," Sans growls, eyes narrowing at Lambert as if that was a stupid snipe to make based on outdated information. "He doesn't matter more than anyone else."

"Also... you won't let him know squat, because you're stuck in a wall with your butt hanging out, you jackass."

[whattaprick]

"Hey, at least I still have an ass," Lambert answers, entirely unrepentant. If Sans can sound pissy about something instead of totally apathetic, that's only a good thing, in his opinion.

"I remember when you got a sword rammed up yours."