⇨ THE ATHENAEUM

[ringleaders]

Who: Everyone!
When: Day 47 - Day 58 ish
Where: The Athenaeum
What: The carnival arrives at book world. First week, they'll be performing for magical manifestations of book characters. Second week, it's time to hunt (for books, in the library.) Around Day 58 some stuff will occur.
Warnings: Reading is mandatory.

FAERIE TALES↴ Though the carnival will be performing for its guests in the first week, they are welcome to search the Athenaeum while they are off duty during that time. The manifestations of story characters will be out in full force during performance week, with animals, people, objects, and even locations growing out from various tales. Most are distracting at worst, and will be curious to check out the carnival. Some, however, can be as dangerous as they were in their stories of origin. You know what to do. ► IT'S TIME TO ROLEPLAY: The best way to deal with book ghosts is to follow their narrative to its logical conclusion - turn the tables, work the story so it ends in your favour! Naturalistic and narratively satisfying plotting will have the manifestations following your lead. However, push too hard and introduce too many plot holes, inconsistencies, or illogical plot twists, and they will reject your reality utterly, becoming quite aggressive in the process. You can also use your natural abilities and powers to fight them in a traditional sense, but in the Ringmaster's experience, it's best to fight reality benders by bending reality right back at them. If you aren't careful, it's possible to be dragged fully into a story's reality, and then things get really messed up. ► IT'S ALSO TIME TO READ: The carnival came here for a purpose, and that purpose is to research. Specifically, the Ringmaster is looking for information on the Queen's Miracles - the set of ancient fae artifacts that the Blue Rose is one of. The carnival needs these artifacts to defend itself, but nobody knows where they've been for thousands of years. That's what the books are for. However, nothing is stopping you from pursuing knowledge for personal reasons. The halls are open to your perusal, and only your heart can guide you to the book you truly seek. Check the plot post to see what's allowed, and sign up to find plot info or other important game information below.

Comments

[prazerbutterfly]

This conversation is giving him a little bit of information though. A secret war, one that Sans is likely swept in as well. It makes sense but the problem is he doesn't know their enemy. Papryus doesn't seem like a killer either. It's hard to put that kind of thing to his face. Either he has, his hands are bloodied and he needs redemption, or he truly was some sort of ill and misguided pacifist.

Tyki was just a firm believer in the fact that 'you can't save everyone.' It's just not possible. Eventually someone has to be sacrificed or someone is left behind. The carnival has just gotten lucky and every time they left a location they lost someone to time itself.

"It's not possible. As I said, even if we stopped hunting them, they would hunt us. The lower ranks perhaps. The ones that do the fighting, but not those in the higher ranks that sit in their ordained chairs. They will always find a way to brainwash and coerce those to do their bidding. That's just how things are. Angry, strife, revenge. All fuel for war. A never-ending, never ceasing battle, Papyrus. That is how humans are."

i'm sorry, it's an essay of introspection with a tiny angry reaction

[spaghettimonster]

"What...?" Papyrus pulls away a little, less from being unnerved (though that's part of it) than confusion as he squints searchingly at Tyki's face.

It would be naive to think that everyone can be saved, that everyone can be friends to the point that nobody would kill or get killed. Papyrus was that naive, once, and still by and large tries to believe it. Even when he threatens and blusters, people tend to realize he's not the sort for killing. Those who know him best know how deep his pacifism goes. But he hasn't been that naive for a long time, and his experiences with the Carnival have furthered it.

There's tricky situations like with the prisoners-turned-beasts, in the Manor, where inaction meant letting people die and action meant (temporarily) killing them. Papyrus told himself, then and later, that it wasn't really death when they'd come back... but he knew better, and Julien reminded him so.

There's the occasional demon or fae, so ancient and powerful and stubbornly self-assured that the only way for employees of the carnival to survive a violent encounter... is for the Ringmaster to eat the source of danger. Where maybe, if they'd been clever and lucky they might have thought of a way to avoid that situation, maybe it could have been different... but they weren't lucky, and the powerful entities chose to attack, and, well.

But those don't seem to be the sort of thing Tyki's talking about, though. He seems to be saying something much sillier and transparently untrue - some notion that all humans can get all murdery, and stay there forever. Papyrus stomps a foot, irritated enough to push past the nervousness, and points imperiously at the book Tyki's pulled away.

"That's not true at all! Even the human in that story didn't want to fight anymore... Humans give up fighting all the time! Especially when they know there's something better to do! Like, like puzzles!"

It's not the most proactive solution to violent humans, but it's time-wasting and an opportunity for them to learn to be not-violent. Truly the kind of expert solution one could expect from King Papyrus.

you also add in a lot of physical reaction so it's quite alright. I enjoy it!

[prazerbutterfly]

His hand spreads at Papryus intimate reaction and he allows the book to open once more, his other hand sliding across the pages until the book reaches its very conclusion. He understands his frustration, he gets the pain and suffering her feels, and the confusion that comes with a heavy weight of such a story.

He loved humans for their simplicity, their need to love and ultimately destroy. He looks away from Papryus to the book itself and reads over what is actually there in detailed depth. He has to be careful now. He's far too deep into the conversation and he cannot allow his own carefully crafted poker face to ever slip. "Humans give up fighting when they can no longer win. When they feel they are at a true loss." Like Suman Dark did, "There are those humans that do try beyond their own ability to do so. I will admit to that. But these humans, these beings bent on fighting, that have taken upon themselves 'God's gift' called Innocence... there is no going back for them. They will always fight."

He turns the page he's on until he reaches that point and then gently holds the book out towards Papyrus, "Just like Suman Dark did. Begging for his life, for mercy, for redemption. I gave him that choice, to betray everything he loved in order to go home. He took it without hesitation, giving up all the names of his comrades. You're right... he stopped fighting at the cost of killing everyone he cared about. Everything he worked for. Everyone he worked with." What the book doesn't tell Papyrus is that around 105 people died that day. "He wanted to go home so badly, that he gave me every name on my list and every one of their locations."

[spaghettimonster]

Papyrus still frowns, but subsides to merely fidgeting as Tyki agrees that some humans do stop fighting. This talk is about something else, something that pressures and commands the humans of his war into never ending. And as Tyki continues, Papyrus rereads the open pages with only glances back up. It recounts much the same scene as he's describing: Suman Dark, begging for mercy and wanting to leave the fight; Tyki, offering to grant it - only at a price. Answers to questions, locations where to find the others still fighting. And on later pages, Papyrus remembers, there's a strange ending where Suman's powers turn on him and turn him into an egg.

The story doesn't say whether Tyki knew something like that would happen... But, maybe it wouldn't have mattered. Tyki's experiences with humans seem entrenched in the sense of war. Maybe that's why he's been talking like this. For Papyrus - for monsters overall - war with humankind was a distant dread, a distant hope for freedom. One that effectively ended when the souls went missing. It wasn't like living with each other in active fighting, where people on both sides could go looking for each other. Humans weren't - usually - around, or making people disappear. They were distant jailers, the source of most monsters' supplies and entertainment. Capable of anything from murder to friendship. In the Carnival there's humans even more opposed to fighting, or killing, than most monsters.

"I'm... sure he loved his home, too. Wanting to go back so badly..." Papyrus slowly offers in contradiction, but with a lot less heat than before. There's another question bubbling in his mind. With another glance at the opened pages, he looks at Tyki's face again. "So, what's that Innocence stuff? The story mentioned it too."

[prazerbutterfly]

Tyki's holding open that story at that exactly moment for a reason. He wants Papyrus to focus on it instead of the part where he was involved directly. There is a give and take to this story, a good and bad relation between Exorcist and Noah. As far as he was concerned, there was no 'good guy' in this story. Both were dirty, got their hands wet with blood, and used each other for their own twisted reasons.

"So the story goes," he says in confirmation to what Papyrus offers in contradiction. "In simplistic terms, it is a holy weapon or so they would tell you. Mostly, it hinders those composed of Dark Matter and/or use that power. Like myself; the latter option." He snaps the book shut. How much he wants to destroy it very much knowing he can't. "It chooses humans as Accommodators. Either within them or in their weapon. Suman was the form. It inhabited his arm and synchronized with him in a bond. When it felt betrayed, it took over his body."

[spaghettimonster]

It works well enough - Papyrus doesn't forget that detail, but it's overshadowed now. The idea that Tyki did at least take Suman up on the request, and try for a little bit of peace, when he felt so strongly that peace wasn't possible... That it didn't all go terribly wrong until the Innocence felt betrayed... Well, that changes things.

"And turned him into an egg..." Papyrus shakes his head at the idea. It's probably better if the story's taken at face value, that Suman really died as he was turned into an egg, and wasn't aware of... hatching. But if his powers did that to him on purpose, maybe it tried to make it awful on purpose. He resolves not to ask right now, and maybe not ever.

"What a messy way to go. And so short-sighted! Anybody might have regrets about fighting, but it's hard to drop an arm, and so much easier to drop a weapon. And anybody could pick a weapon up? It could have gone back to fighting with someone who wanted to... Which, maybe you wouldn't have preferred. But almost everybody would have been happier."

[prazerbutterfly]

He's not going to give the book back nor is he going to allow anyone else to find it. He'll put it back eventually when time presents itself for a better opportunity. Right now, he was more focused on Papryus and not allowing him to touch it again. It's tucked under his arm with the other book placed there concerning a Heart.

It's an odd take on it but Papryus is right. It made him into something horrid and there was no turning back from there. Suman was long gone by the time Allen had pulled him out. Separation from Innocence was never a good thing. "Maybe," he responds with the agreed disapproval that he would prefer Innocence destroyed instead of salvaged, "The only problem with that is that Innocence is never chosen. It chooses you, whether you want it or not."

Innocence was cruel. It didn't matter how much someone fought it or synced with it. Death was the likely outcome of an Exorcist's life. "Once it chooses you, it is only a matter of time until the news gets out somehow. A story of a boy with a strange ball on their head. A man with an odd arm. It hits the newspapers, spreads from country to country. Then it reaches the Black Order. It doesn't matter if you are young, old, a child, two years old. They will collect you and you will never see or know anything other than fighting again."