⇨ 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

[whattaprick]

Lambert lets Gongenzaka struggle through the rest of it. He can't see their condition, but this whole sunk into their souls talk doesn't sit well with him, as much as Gon had told him of it before. He's already had his soul bleached through once; he doesn't want to consider what else could happen to it.

"Then that's even less reason to wait, isn't it?" he asks, eventually. It's not as if he doesn't feel the strain -- Sans bashed him around heavily during the fight; he doesn't know what he looks like right now but he knows he's lost feeling in -- quite a bit of him, actually. He isn't merely trapped in the rock; he is rock. The sight of Sans helpless has been enough to regalvanize his flagging energy, but who knows how long that will last? Lambert remembers being trapped in a cave, listening to screams of other boys being crushed behind him; remembers being strapped down to a table terrified out of his wits as poisoned flowed through his veins and magic remade him from the inside out. There was nothing to do but move forward or die trying.

He survived that. He'll survive this, or at the very least, he'll make sure the as many of these other assholes as he can get out of here do.

"Rita can see magic. She says the rock's at least part of the reason the magic's getting dampened." She might be wrong about that, but... "Confirming it one way or another's still useful. Anyone trying to come here for us is going to run into the same problem. We might as well see what we can find out while we've got our strength."

[wild_magic]

Susan barely even looks at Lauren when he gives his suggestion. He may have shouted at the others when the Prince was here, but as time goes on he's become even quieter and more shut in on himself, if that was even possible. Normally he probably would have been one of the more upbeat ones here, would have been able to try and push through this in any way possible... But normally he can use his magic. With his magic missing, it feels hopeless, like when the Ringmaster blocked his magic before.

Still, though, he can't stay completely quiet, especially when there's at least an attempt being made by the others.

"But... How are we supposed to find something like that out or confirm anything? We can't use magic to test it because it or something won't let us use it to begin with." He just can't see any other way around it.

[pipers_son]

"Maybe not us, then," Joker says suddenly, speaking at least. What he'd seen with-.... Well. He doesn't have to tell any of the others about it. They all saw. They all have that gap in their minds and that silence on their tongues. There's a lot of feelings churning inside of him, worse than any sickness, but he does what he's always done. Joker shoves them down into the deep, out of sight, and tries to focus on other people.

"The Prince still has some of ours, doesn't he?" And, unlike Sans, he can't see them stuck in the stone too. "I know Sora is one of them. Before everythin' went ta hell, we had a chat. He was willin' ta talk with me, although he didn't like it if I spoke bad about the Prince. Maybe we can convince one of them ta look inta this."

Joker looks around at each of the others that are stuck here with them. "We'd have ta lie and twist things around a little.... But maybe it'd be worth tryin'?"

[anti_nonsense]

"I'm sure of it," Rita confirms. "The rock’s a sort of magic insulator. Problem is, there’s no telling whether the effect will persist after we get unstuck, while we’re still effectively surrounded by the stuff." In other words, hacking off limbs to get free won’t get them far if the rock can still interfere from nearby.

"There's no answering that question unless we either get free and see for ourselves, or see a servant attempt to use magic." But Joker brings up an interesting point. Rita talked to Sora too, and the experience was similar. "That could work... We could trick someone into showing us whether their magic works, maybe even get some idiot to blab about the other security features this place has." The Prince might have their loyalty, but that doesn't mean they won't still be careless from time to time.

[whattaprick]

"Anyone who disappeared could be around, if they're not down here with us." The only one Lambert himself spoke to was Tyki, and he'd seemed... pretty deeply under the Prince's control, or at least convinced he wasn't something that belonged to the Ringmaster.

"We need to get them down here first, though." He pauses, frowning. "The ones who look most like animals are the servants he kept invisible, away from us. Maybe there's something we ... one of you can work with there." Persuading people without magical inducement or threats isn't his strong suit.

If the butler's still around, maybe he'd be willing to help them. Steven had made it sound like he was interested, before. But Lambert will keep that thought to himself, for now. It's hard to imagine how the hell he could possibly help them trapped here when he couldn't move freely before things went to shit.

[wild_magic]

"I'm... I'm in the treasury department. I'm good at talking to people. I could try and see if I could talk to them." Probably not to the brainwashed Carnival members though. He'd talked to Reira after all - he doesn't think they're going to get anything useful out of them.

"We just need to ask about security or magic?" Even without feeling his best, he should be able to do that much... he does have max charisma after all

[whattaprick]

"We need to ask them about security or magic, but we can't let them know we're doing it unless we think they're not loyal to the Prince," Lambert confirms, then frowns. "I don't even know if the servants have magic themselves, honestly. The nightrunners didn't report anything like that, so if they use it, they hide it well. Before the ball, we spoke with some of the servants who'd run away -- they said some of the others are too scared of the Prince to do anything, but others might want to help."

Of course, that had been before they were trapped in a rock prison with no obvious form of exit. Whoops.

"The next time a servant comes around near you, just take a good look at them. See if they look like someone who might want to get rid of the Prince just as much as we do."

[pipers_son]

"I think me and Susan can definitely manage that," Joker says, adding himself into that little area of responsibility. What he doesn't say is that this all relies on them being conscious and not completely sick... But hopefully things work out for them.

If anything else, it's better than sitting around waiting for nonsense. He has to agree with Lambert on that one.