⇨ POLARIS

[ringleaders]

Who: Everyone!
When: Days 102 - 109
Where: Polaris
What: With the Ringmaster kidnapped and the rest of the carnival imprisoned, characters find themselves at the mercy of a Winter Fae called the Mother of Invention.
Warnings: Graphic experimentation in places.

TRIALS & TRIBULATION↴ After a day of cleansing and processing, where all the belongings and attire of their old lives are stripped away and replaced with something newer and more form fitting, the former members of the carnival will find themselves let loose into the Farm for the first time. A sizable green area, filled with orchards growing inorganic looking fruits and field ready for tending, the Farm is where they will be spending their days for the forseeable future. Food and drink are no longer needed, and so every day is an endless cycle of work. Technicians are seen only when necessary, and when being taken from your place of work to your lonesome cells at night. Every day, there are new postings on the "Production Board", where various dire sound scientific trials ask for subjects. The majority won't be forced, at least not yet, but the system is at work to push its participants to the brink and force their hand. After all, volunteers make the best subjects. ► PRODUCTIVITY: As explained elsewhere, characters will be forced to compete to attain enough Productivity Point to be considered Satisfactory. There are literally not enough points to go around for everyone to attain this, which means that at least some people will be deemed "Below Expectations" by the end of the first four-day cycle. What this means has yet to be discovered, but the Technicians have grimly warned against it. Productivity involves many tasks, including orchard picking, tilling, planting, harvesting, watering, maintenance, and more. Any task you can think of that would take place on a plantation is applicable here. Beyond that, the Production Board awaits you, offering precious Productivity Points in exchange for your cooperation. How you become Satisfactory is up to you, but it's every person for themselves. Only one person can turn in the credit for harvesting or preparing fields, and while you can certainly try to help others by letting them take credit for your work, it's a sure fire way to fall behind the herd, especially if you are already in a low Classification. Fruits and fields will miraculously grow overnight, and will be ready for a new day when you are. You've been told not to eat anything you harvest, but right now you aren't hungry anyway. ► POLARIS BY NIGHT: During the night, you are left alone to your thoughts and maybe an annoying roommate. Solo or in pairs, the entire night will be spent in small sleep pods, as shown on the locations post. Is it possible to sneak out? It doesn't seem like it is, but who is to say? The real question is if you want to dare to try. There is one hour of rest before and after seven hours of darkness. Even if you don't usually have to sleep, you'll find yourself oddly weary and inclined to rest. Supernaturally, almost. ► PARTICIPATION: Sometimes participation in experimental trials is manditory, sometimes it isn't. You are free to handwave your character having been pulled aside for minor examinations, such as blood tests or aura scans. Each time, you will be pulled into a separate part of the station and analyzed by a Technician and heavily automated machinery. Anymore more complex than basic check-up level tests will be posted about in a section called "TRIALS" in the body of the post below.

Comments

[pipers_son]

Well, that's one reassuring thing, at lest. Whatever nonsense they go through while here, not all of it will stay hurting. Not all of it. That's better than he could have expected, honestly.

Joker hops down to another branch, and glances at Papyrus curiously. Without the pain, the exhaustion is more worrying. "Do ya think that has somethin' ta do with, ah.... Ya gettin' dusted? Ain't familiar with that sorta thing myself..."

[spaghettimonster]

Papyrus nods at the idea, having arrived at the same conclusion himself. Everyone knew that monster souls shattered on death, and couldn't be used for breaking the barrier... it can't have been good for him, to die multiple times.

"I'm not familiar with dying either, even though it happened a few times... And more times that I don't remember. But it stands to reason. Dying takes a lot out of you. Pretty much all of you?"

There is a terrible pun to be had in here, he just knows it, but it needs a little more workshopping.

[pipers_son]

"Yeah, I know how that feels." He never did take the Ringmaster up on her little 'free resurrection' offer, but Joker never needed to. Before even that, he'd died and been brought back- just as something different.

Fucking vampires.

After a second, Joker prods in another question. "What'd it feel like?"

[spaghettimonster]

His hand drifts to the center of his chest where the killing blows had been struck.

"It... It's hard to say. My body just wasn't there, at all? And my soul... I've felt magic on my soul, before, but not like that, cutting it up." So strange and uncomfortable just remembering it, let alone the experience. He switches gears to ask, "you died before too? You're... surprisingly two-armed and two-legged for that."

At least half of the people he knows of who've been egged returned with extra limbs; Gongenzaka and Sans in contrast to Strange and Yuusei. The notion of reviving some other way hasn't occurred to him yet... and maybe he's dodging the question by asking one of his own.

[pipers_son]

Cutting up the soul... What a horrific and eerie thing. He's been burned by iron plenty of times. That much cuts to the quick of him in ways he never could have imagined before- and he'd lost his arm and suffered from fire inhalation. Going deeper than that, to the soul...

"Ha. Not in the traditional way." One fruit after the other, and who knew that juggling skills would come in handy here? One hand is more than enough for multiple fruits. "But I did have ta drink blood for a while after that."

[spaghettimonster]

"Oh no!" Papyrus startles, recognizing the reference. "You mean... was it the vampires out here? When they first startled hassling the carnival?"

That, he knew, could be cured in some way. A fair few of the carnival had survived some problems... was it back around the Celebration? Sometime back then. Back when he was new to the carnival, and things still seemed so much brighter than the underground. But Joker might mean vampires wherever he's from, operating by some other rules.

[pipers_son]

"Second time," Joker corrects. By pure luck, he'd gotten out of their first encounter relatively unharmed. His ability to fly really had pulled him through that one... He'd gotten that change just in time, even if he hadn't been the most graceful yet. "I still kept tryin' ta work, so it might not have been obvious." It had been a struggle, with his aversion to sunlight as it was, but, well. Not doing anything had been inconceivable.

Better to work his fears and pain away than anything else, back then.

Although now that he's thinking about it... He adjusts his balance on a branch, not wanting to go tumbling down like a jackass. "I haven't talked much about it either, y'know." He laughs a little bit, dry. "Although I guess that's unfair when I'm askin' ya all these questions on yers."

[spaghettimonster]

"I don't think I realized... But then, I don't think we spoke much before then." Hardly at all before the Manor, except maybe on the most work-relevant topics. Far from enough for him to have down everyone's appearances or sleep habits, let alone their work ethics.

It's an intensely relatable motivation for working hard, anyway. At least 50% of surveyed skeletons in the carnival swear by it.

"If you'd rather not talk about it, you don't have to! This isn't a trade," he reassures Joker. "I... I want to, about my trouble, because... it's very recent, and how I think about it will steer my near future? Yours is longer ago. It still helps, to think about things well, but! You might already be doing that?"

[pipers_son]

"I mean, it wasn't that long ago, when ya think about it." Another dry laugh, and he pauses to make sure that his container won't spill over from an unsteady hand. "All of this mess, why, it's only been a couple of years. This is just the latest in a string of really wretched shit." So wretched that a part of him wonders if he shouldn't have done what so many other veteran workers in the carnival did, and take off after that first initial run in with the vampires. But, instead, he'd stayed, because he had thought that maybe it had been a single bad incident, and nothing would be worse than failing in getting his family out of England.

Well, he hadn't accounted for dying. Or getting stuck in a place like this. Or, even worse, having Doll being dragged along through it all.

That's what he get for not being more creatively pessimistic.

"Although yer right in that it wouldn't be much helpful, except for me musin' over how maybe bein' a vampire would be more helpful around now." Or maybe he'd suffer horribly under artificial sunlight. Who knows! He can practice his creative pessimism thinking about it later. "So what ways do ya think it'll steer yer future?"

[spaghettimonster]

"...It feels longer than a year," Papyrus says quietly, hands fidgeting on the water pail's handle. "I know it hasn't been even that long, I... haven't even started a second contract yet, but... so much happened."

There's a pause, as he decides the difference between haven't and hadn't and goes with the one that expresses some stubborn optimism of returning to the carnival, getting the Ringmaster back, and continuing with some version of events as they had been. It's not with the same frantic refusal to spend long thinking about the less-wanted outcomes, more because it's only been days, not even two weeks, since they got here. Far too early to think of this as a place they might be in for the rest of their lives.

"I imagine it's felt longer for you," he points out, shaking his head and moving on to the next set of fruit bushes to water, talking all the while. "I think it'll take me to a little more introspection. It... hurt, but it didn't injure me anything as much as everything Harbinger did. I've been in pieces physically and emotionally, and, I'm still here? It really makes me feel a little more capable of making it through anything. But, maybe I won't sign up for more trials."

It seems like sometimes they might be mandatory, on top of all the little check-ups, but he can do the physical labor. Is it better for him to do enough labor to stay steadily at the comfortable rank, letting the less able take the painful trials so they spend the rest of the time recuperating, or is that just an excuse to get out of doing the trials...? Heck if he knows.

[pipers_son]

"A lot more has happened in the past year," Joker muses, "then in all the years I've worked with this place." That sounds right, doesn't it? That isn't to say the years he spend working almost not-so-quietly under the Ringmaster was boring or repetitive or even necessarily 'peaceful'. How could any of those apply to a carnival which hopped across so many more worlds then he ever could have imagined in the restricted confines of England? All of it was so very, very grand.

But he never feared for his life in those years, even when there was threat of his neck being under a guillotine. He never had to fear for the lives of his family, his poor Snake and fragile Doll. Whatever danger there was, no matter what risk there was, in the end, it was nothing more perilous to him than all the various performances he'd witnessed and taken part of in his own circus.

Dark thoughts, those. Thoughts he'll have plenty of time to dwell on when night comes. For now, instead, he hops to the next tree, following along with Papyrus. He can manage this much, after all. "Well, that's good, isn't it?" he says, even if it isn't necessarily true... but he can see where Papyrus is coming from. Even when he had to come to terms with what the Prince had done to him, well, he could still look back and say At least it wasn't Hell. Some things pale you to future suffering.

That's probably not a good thing, now that he thinks about it.

"Just do the work that ya need ta, then. Take care of the matters at our feet first and all that, yeah?" At least until they have a better idea of what they can work with. "Just remember that yer still here, no matter what else has happened."