lostcarnival | ⇨ CAMPING GROUNDS

Who: Everybody!
When: Day 64
Where: The Camping Grounds
What: While the Ringmaster attempts to purge the carnival of magical tracing spells and deal with the angry fire fae in her belly, everyone else is getting sent on an emergency camping trip with some unusual local fauna.
Warnings: Camping.

CRYPTIC CAMPGROUNDS↴

You're given about three hours to prepare, after the Ringmaster tells you her plans for the coming week. There is a vast selection of camping equipment at your disposal, and the means to take along enough food for the length of the stay. The wilderness of the planet you're left on is nearly idyllic, but some people just don't like the great outdoors.

► CRYPTOZOOLOGY: As it turns out, the carnival won't be alone here. There is a varied ecosystem of cryptids to be found as well, living in relative peace and mostly reacting to the newcomers with curiousity. More details can be found on the plotting post. You are free to NPC the cryptids as much as you need to, as long as you stick to the behaviours described.

► DREAMSHARING: There is a player plot going on which will allow characters to share dreams! These are specifically more dreams than nightmares, and the mushi-adept characters will be here to help.

► CHILLAX: There isn't any plot twist for this setting, so this is mostly an opportunity to decompress from the last plot and get ready for the future. The Ringmaster will show up occasionally to help with needed medical treatments and check on things, but won't stick around for long.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

It might take a moment to resolve Scout's image. Her clothing is rumpled and earth-toned, the coloring on her legs and tail isn't too unlike last fall's leaves, even the paler, goldish dappling on her face and throat might be sun through a gap in the canopy. She's here, anyway, sitting against a moss-covered tree with her long legs folded to one side, staring listlessly down.

Her dæmon is splayed across her lap, an open book laid over his back. He's more animated, heavy head raised to look back at her, speaking quietly, as ever, in this case laying out what sounds like a plan. "-remember how long it'll take to disable the other ships. If they come after us for theft that's troublesome. No, if we can just take Skirata's beckon call that'll mean a lot less running back and forth."

Scout blinks slowly, scrubs her hand over her face - it's grimy, she's grimy - and looks up, her gaze drifting in a vague way until she focuses, is visibly surprised to see someone. "Papyrus..." She makes a face, and stops to clear her throat; her voice is rusty. "What're you doing here?"

"Shouldn't have settled so close to camp," Tràkata opines in a mutter. He looks clean enough, but his mane and tail-tuft are clumpy, tangled.

It does, with her being roughly camouflaged against the backdrop of tree and leaves. But there's nothing wrong with his ears - besides not literally having them - and he hears the soft words before putting a face to the voices. He's hardly figured out where they are, starting to approach, when she looks up at him.

"I... am foraging," Papyrus answers slowly, glancing down between them. They seem unkempt in that way of not taking care of themselves, a familiar scene if he changes who's in it. At least they seem to have the attention to be peering over a book. Maybe they just went for a jog and didn't bother cleaning up after themselves. Rivers and waterfalls are different things from showers.

"You know!" He continues, brightly and loudly and chattering on like he hadn't hesitated for a few seconds. "Gathering supplies from the flora around us. Not for cooking, but, for other things... As I assumed you were doing. Hey, have you got a radio with you?"

Scout winces in the pause. Of course Papyrus rebounds from it, but still. "Oh. No, I left it behind, I'm... I've just been considering my options. For when I go back. It's not going to happen yet, I just never really made plans before. So I'm catching up."

She closes the book and folds her arms over her soul, a reminder that he shouldn't say anything compromising. He's silent now, as he typically is, but characteristically wary to Scout's uncharacteristic dazed.

Dragging more of her focus to the here and now, she tries to look brighter, sharper. "Something about mushi again, wasn't it?"

"Yeah, it's mushi again, something about naps being bad, but..." With what she did say, it's seeming a little less pressing to make sure she has all the info.

After all, Tanyuu and Ginko said it could take a week before anything goes really wrong. And it's a cureable sort anyway, so Scout should be fine for now. The question of her cleanliness, too, only warrants a brief, concerned/judging pause.

But going out with a radio is an entirely different matter.

Papyrus shakes his head. "Without Psi's helpful reminders... will everyone start up those bad habits? No radios, wandering around no buddies? Oh no! Imagine how much worse kidnappings will get then."

"I don't know why they aren't just banished from the grounds," Scout sighs. She suppresses the urge to tug her tunic straight. People get dirty sometimes, it's fine. Papyrus can deal.

"There's always been people ignoring Psi's rule. With what..." She has a pause of her own, just noticeable. "-we're facing, I'm not sure a buddy is enough. Anyway, this place is supposed to be safe. That's why we're here. Plus I'm not even actually that far from the camp."

Papyrus hums but doesn't respond about the mushi. The Ringmaster could probably cure even the most incurable infestations, like Ginko's and his, but... she's busy. Maybe that could be his contract another year. No sense fixing things out here so they're safe, fixing things at home to stop the loops, and then going home only to fall into an endless slumber or whatever.

"We thought the library was safe, too," he points out instead, unhappy about it. For all that it had a hideous 'organization' system, it had been nice to walk through the shelves, finding interesting stories, even hearing his brother find some proof of their past. And the Athenaeum would've been a better place to do this reading and planning... But maybe she had been. They did get interrupted. And the area people are camping in... isn't very quiet.

"But, I guess, the carnival isn't here, so there's nothing to follow us here," Papyrus grudgingly admits. "And if you're in shouting distance, it's close enough... This time. "

Scout flicks the spaded tip of her tail. "I didn't think the library was entirely safe, but this is the pattern. Maybe it'll collapse soon, but not while everyone's shifted out of the carnival."

Before the current run of misfortune, while serving out her first contract in those days when there had been more people in the Carnival, she'd heard about bad stops here and there that were followed by mellow stops. Scout doesn't really have a timeline of anything earlier than the bird stop, but she'd worked with people who'd been in the Carnival for years. Sometimes things went wrong, even before the vampires and the other fae showed up, even if that had been a smaller definition of things going wrong.

"Anyway I have my cloak of shadows, Papyrus. You don't need to worry about me," she adds wearily.

"Of course I don't! We don't get in danger every single outting," Papyrus says, bright and chipper and increasingly insincere. "Just most of them. And now we're being hunted. Nothing to worry about. A nice protective cloak is all you could need."

It's been a little different for him, coming in during a quiet time. His first few stops were places with some innate dangers, sure, but he'd been too preoccupied with the differences in his brother to focus on it all. It wasn't until the Celebration, and Hell, and the reveals that these were recurring vampires that things felt a little less infinitely large and fun.

⇨ CAMPING GROUNDS

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