lostcarnival | ⇨ POLARIS AFTERMATH

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⇨ POLARIS AFTERMATH

Who: Everyone!
When: Day 115-118
Where: Polaris/Wyldlands
What: After killing the Mother of Invention, the majority of the carnival has decided to take some time and sort out the Polaris refugees before heading to the Summerlands. This log covers miscellaneous post-Mother Polaris drama, as well as some light camping in the Wyldlands down below.
Warnings: Idk, stuff, I guess.

ADAPTATION↴

After the battle, the majority of carnival members will opt to remain in the secured section to Polaris, hoping to spend some time making sure that the rest of Polaris is liberated. Many of the staff are not capable of coming to grips with the fact that the Mother is dead so quickly, and the remaining Alphas are doing their best to keep Polaris under their sway. It will be a busy few days of changing minds and exploring the remains of the station. Thankfully, with everyone's powers intact and allies at their side, they finally have the advantage.

► SHIFTING STATES: Right off the bat, about 10% of the staff will immediately change sides upon hearing whats become of the Mother. They are actively eager to get away from Polaris, and will do whatever they can assist the carnival. This is mostly Gammas and a few Betas, who were working primarily under duress. Over the next day or two, those numbers will grow to at least 30%, with some of the staff managing to convince their colleagues to join them. About two days after starting, one of the Alphas will surrender to the carnival, encouraging those beneath her to support their cause. That leaves four Alphas remaining, and staff cooperation at 50%.

► CAPTIVE ATTENTION: The loyalist staff's main tactics are trying to create defensive points within the various test group areas, using the prisoners as hostages. Luckily, the carnival (and the staff on their side) will be in a position where it's possible to push them out with a mixture of convincing and force. Once prisoners start being freed, there will be even more force backing the carnival's efforts, meaning that it will essentially become a matter of cleaning up the remaining staff rather than any uphill battles. Most of this is being left vague intentionally, as most of this action is being handwaved. However, you can play out parts of it if you want and NPC technicians and rescuees. Other test groups can be filled with basically whatever kind of residents you like, since they are grabbed from across the multiverse. Most of the test areas are similar to B7.

► THE JACKPOT: Alongside cleaning up the staff, some members of the carnival have expressed interest in convincing the staff to help them with armoury issues as well as hunting down some of the Mother's most private loot. This will be handled in investigations, mostly through summary, because I don't have it in me for another megathread right now. Post your plans, and I will respond! However, know that I also don't have time to generate five million special items, so loot drops will be limited to my availability. Also, the techs aren't really blacksmiths so they generally won't really be able creating weapons from scratch or anything.

Meanwhile, Ignatius is going to set up a camp ground outside of Polaris, mostly because he doesn't want to be there anymore. He'll keep a fire going and they can drag things from Polaris down there for camping purposes, and mostly Ignatius is just going to be chilling and making sure that the campground doesn't get assaulted by magical creatures. The Gilded Mark will create a portal between the campground and the station so that people can go back and forth as required. It also creates a handy escape route.

You can even see Polaris from here, floating up there in the sky. How picturesque.

► WYLDERKIN: Apparently not everything in the Wyld Lands is a full Wyld Fae - there are also a lot of less powerful creatures called 'wylderkin' - apparently lesser forms of the Wyld Fae, who are more akin to animal level intelligence. They can be a variety of expected fantasy type creatures, such as flower sprites, weird bugs, and general prey animals they probably spend most of their time getting eaten by bigger dudes. All of them are sort of weird and fantastical, and none of them are exactly like earth varieties, though they may resemble them. They are more of a pest than a major threat in this part of the Wyld Lands, and Ignatius will scare away any that cause too many problems.

► FLORA AND FLUID: There are some plants that you can eat down here, that Ignatius will tell you about. Mostly weird berries and roots. There is also some pools of clear water, thought hey are filled with weird fish. Try not to bitten by any weird leeches. You can safely make up some of the creatures you find as long as they fit the general theme of lesser faerie creatures. This is just a rest stop.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Well, this warrants serious thought. For starters- "...I don't think your tail normally moves like a snake, so you're probably right about why it didn't work. ...You'd have to move it like a tail." This is incredibly unhelpful advice!

As it is.

"Umnn.... I don't think I said anything other than making things float, but..." She blinks- and then beams. "...Could...you make your skull float?"

It is, regrettably, unhelpful. For starters, normally tails just drift back and forth, giving too many hints about feelings. A very different thing from locomotion.

The skull idea is at least workable, and Papyrus looks down as if expecting to look down from where his skull normally is to where it currently is. Then realizes his mistake, feels a little embarrassed, and coughs.

"Well! That's... not something I thought ever about. I don't have that bone with me... But, I wonder if maybe blue magic...?"

He holds his skull up a bit, again reflexively expecting to see what he's doing, then closes his eyes and focuses on grabbing at his own skull and tugging slightly up. Sure enough, his skull floats up out of his hands.

"Oh-!" Well, there's the good blue magic doing its work! Reira's patience through the emotions pays off, at least when it comes to seeing that sight. She quickly reigns herself in however, trying to at least somewhat shrink her smile.

"Umnh-! ...What does it feel like, to do that..?"

"It... Oh, this is very strange." Papyrus glances all around. "It feels... like it usually does, when I use blue magic! Except, I'm both floating, and not floating, at once. Which I suppose I am, I can still feel my body, over there. But I can't seem to reach the rest of me with the magic..."

As he talks, the motions of his jaw shift something about how he's balanced, and he slowly swivels back to look more upward then toward Reira. His body reaches out a little clumsily to try and adjust it back to looking Reira's way, and his expression and emotions get a little more queasy. This will take some practice.

"So it's like two places at once...." she repeats, only to jump as the body section starts to try and turn her way. "AH! And you can still move both!!"

Barely, anyway. "...You could be in two places.."

"And without one being very happy and one very sad," Papyrus says, a little cheerfully, with one hand just sort of cupping the back of his skull so he doesn't go drifting again. "In two places in a whole different way! It's a big improvement, even if it's confusing."

Plus, there's the complication of how he doesn't hear his voice coming from a strange direction, or anything. His body is there, no argument, but most of his senses are centered in his skull.

"Yeah!!" A vast improvement indeed!

"...Is it hard to tell where both pieces are right now though? ...Would part of you get lost..?"

"Umm... A little bit, ma... yes." Papyrus promised he'd try not to lie when he's feeling unhappy or scared, so he catches himself from prevaricating with maybes. That doesn't mean he knows what he wants to say, though.

To buy time, he shifts his head back onto his shoulders as it ought to be, tilts it back and forth to make sure it feels right, and considers.

"I couldn't see, or hear, or anything, except through my skull... It's scary to send my whole body off anywhere. I could try with something smaller, and tie a bell on it!" So even if a wandering hand gets lost, it could ring for help.

Ma...maybe? Ah- Reira likes the more direct answer anyway, and so she nods. Not knowing what to say is fine, as long as there's not any lying...

Also, that sounds kinda creepy. "Mnhhh...that definitely doesn't sound good at all...bells could help practice, but if you have to do it secretly, you wouldn't be able to use them then either..."

This is quite a dilemma. "...Could you tell where you had a bone that you made, instead?" she wonders, blinking. She doesn't know how this works. Is he aware of where his (Magic) bones are???"

"Bones that I made..." Papyrus pulls such a bone into existence, and holds it in his hands as he considers it for a long moment. Finally, he shakes his head. "It... I know it exists, but... I don't have a directional sense on it. Finding stolen bones would be so much easier, if I did."

It would have changed so much about his old rivalry with that one dog, or some of the other neighborhood dogs.

But this gives him an idea. Carefully, he removes his left arm down from the elbow, and tries pressing the magical bone against either half of the joint. It doesn't quite stick or flex the same way his own bones could, not suddenly a part of his body, but there's a little more something there than any other object would be.

"If only I thought to try this before I was metal?" Coated in metal. Same difference.

"Yeah!" Reira cheers, only for the cheer to fade a bit as Papyrus explains. "Mnnnhh...I guess it would," the girl admits. And yet, it's only ever hard to locate stolen ones. Darn!

Her excitement regrows though, when it seems Papyrus has an idea coming together. With visible interest she watches as one bone is swapped out with another, and quietly she gasps in awe. "Woaaaaah..." Ah- "Mnh...I guess it's sort of obvious now, yeah... ...But it's something you can do!" she continues, beaming.

Except wait hold on.

"....The problem was not being able to see though, wasn't it..? ...You can't make another skull..."

"Hmmm." Papyrus considers the half-attached bone, and guides it with his other hand into seeming to move around. It's connecting just enough not to fall off, but it's not tethered to his soul in whatever way makes a bone part of him.

"If I knew how to make a basic bone that connected, maybe I could make another skull... But, that's scary, too. What if it started thinking for itself, instead of being an extension of me, and then I had to dismiss it...? Unless."

They've already seen exactly that, haven't they?

"Sans' blasters became their own creatures, sort of. Maybe, if I ask him how he did that..."

"Mn.... ...They did?" Oh, hold on. She knows what he means, now- "Oh! The dogs? ...I guess if they were dogs that were connected, they'd listen to you, but still see..."

...

"...And then you'd have a dog head somewhere." Amazing. Amazing.

"That... Those are what I mean, but," one detail in particular rubs him the wrong way, and Papyrus shakes his head emphatically. "I wouldn't have a dog head anywhere!"

He turns away and gestures into the air, and a large single blaster forms a few feet in front of it. It's slightly more angular than Sans' blasters' heads, with long fangs, but no particular sign of personality or life behind it - it just floats there.

"These wouldn't be dogs," he clarifies.

"...Not dogs?" she repeats, blinking confusedly. The blaster is summoned quickly, and she blinks once more as she looks to it. Long fangs and... Ummmm...

"Is it...a cat then?" she tries, looking over the skull and walking around it. She can't be sure what it is or isn't after all.

There's a whole lot of things in the world that aren't dogs, thankfully. Though at least most wouldn't get much out of chewing his legs directly. An upside to all of this.

But he spreads his hands, staring at her reaction. He's astonished, Reira.

"I'm astonished, Reira! You don't see it...? In Eden! I had a very appropriate form, there." Mostly, it's the fangs in common. A floating skull, lacking all musculature, skin, and fur, doesn't bear much resemblance to the real thing.

Reira is only further bewildered by this.

She looks over the skull, squinting. And then back to Papyrus.

"....Your face was a lot rounder, and softer, and fluffier, Papyrus."

Also.

"...Those things are still cats."

So there.

"I'm always soft! Maybe not as round, or fluffy..."

He floats the blaster up to where he can consider its plain skull, compare it with his memories of his reflection in Eden, and realizes the truth - it's not at all obvious.

"They are still cats," he concedes a little more sincerely.

"Not that kind of soft!" Reira insists. "Soft like sweaters are- you're a different sort of soft."

So, he's at least still soft.

She definitely beams with that confirmation though. "Yeah! Just big cats. Like...umnh... ...Sora's 'saber' tiger..."

Except significantly less puns.

"Oh, well, okay." He accepts her concession - acknowledging his undeniable softness - with a smile.

Soft-hearted, for sure.

"I don't know Sora's 'saber' tiger... Is that the same Sora who was here for a while? But, that sounds right! They're 'saber toothed.'"

"...Did...they have blue hair?" she asks, blinking.

"Um! Yeah! ...His had 'sabers' through it too though..."

"I don't remember... He had water magic, and was from an oceany world, so! Maybe! But, uh."

Papyrus pats his blaster, which floats indifferently and uncaring about the whole thing, and dismisses it.

"Did I hear you right...? The sabers were through it?

"...Mnhh... ...I guess Academia had an ocean..." It's hard to imagine Sora with water magic though...

But hey. She nods. "Yeah- Sora's 'des-toy' monsters look like big stuffed toys, but cut apart with sharp things."

There's always the chance of multiple people with the same name. Sora is just two syllables, simple names like that can repeat all the time.

"Those... don't sound cuddly at all? The very opposite of what a stuffed toy is supposed to be..."

He hopes it doesn't need to be said, and that she knows that. But given some of the other gaps in proper childing experiences she's demonstrated before, well. Maybe it needs to be said.

"The cuddly ones were the Furnimals," Reira calmly corrects. "Des-toys were made by fusing the Furnimals with the Edge Imps- they're not supposed to be cuddly, I think. They're supposed to be scary." Well that makes a little more sense.

She could probably go on and on about card game logic and lore for quite a while if Papyrus let her.

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this thread keeps going nowhere i expected, a domino chain of brainstorming

lmao FOOD FOR THE MOMSTER I GUESS

yeah, likely that remnant is hopeful: at least he's willing to do experiments with reira

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fair warning the linked card is a rather disturbingly speared stuffed toy uh

the saber saber tooth tiger... somehow the eyes and mouth are the worst?

Des-Toys is terrifying yu p

I forget what changes the KH Sora had, and i think they deleted their info post

well i know he didn't have blue hair at least lmao

that's one thing we remember

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