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ph_logs2023-10-29 07:54 pm
pumpkinhollow) wrote in ph_logs2023-10-29 07:54 pm
Halloween Special Pt 2 - The Nightmare Carnival
THE NIGHTMARE CARNIVAL
The Blood Moon Rises
Ah, Pumpkinfest. Pumpkin Hollow’s hallmark event.
The festival was created early on after the town’s inception, both in light of the abundant pumpkin harvest for which the town is named and to mark the Season of Spirits as having truly begun. It is one of the few times of year when staying out after dark is encouraged--- Jack-o-Lantern night and raucous merrymaking seemed to drive away much of the danger. And for just a few blessed days, all seems well. No monsters to devour, no horrors to haunt, no tragedy to endure. Just one week of food and music and joy, surrounded by warm light that the darkness beyond cannot seem to touch.
The light of the full moon is set as the indicator of the festival’s culmination, and the final night of Pumpkinfest is now underway. There is an air of bittersweetness today, the knowledge that this haven will dissipate tomorrow hanging unspoken over the festival. It is a blessing and a curse, encouraging more vigorous celebration from those with a fear of missing out, but also a layer of anxiety about what is to come. Things have been too peaceful for too long. What horrors lay on the other side of this temporary joy?
As it turns out, no one will have to wait all that long for the answer.
The festival was created early on after the town’s inception, both in light of the abundant pumpkin harvest for which the town is named and to mark the Season of Spirits as having truly begun. It is one of the few times of year when staying out after dark is encouraged--- Jack-o-Lantern night and raucous merrymaking seemed to drive away much of the danger. And for just a few blessed days, all seems well. No monsters to devour, no horrors to haunt, no tragedy to endure. Just one week of food and music and joy, surrounded by warm light that the darkness beyond cannot seem to touch.
The light of the full moon is set as the indicator of the festival’s culmination, and the final night of Pumpkinfest is now underway. There is an air of bittersweetness today, the knowledge that this haven will dissipate tomorrow hanging unspoken over the festival. It is a blessing and a curse, encouraging more vigorous celebration from those with a fear of missing out, but also a layer of anxiety about what is to come. Things have been too peaceful for too long. What horrors lay on the other side of this temporary joy?
As it turns out, no one will have to wait all that long for the answer.
Hail to the Prince
[ Content Warnings: Rot, viscera, blood and other bodily fluids, clowns. ]
When the orange light of October sunset fades to a deep blue twilight, the merriment is proceeding as they had each night previous. However, the moment the sun dips fully below the horizon, all its protection goes with it.The Sanguine Moon shines a brilliant orange overhead, looming close.
The clock tower chimes the hour of 7pm, but the bells sound sour. Too loud. The first hint that something is wrong, as if to get everyone’s attention before the trouble begins in earnest.
Once the seal is broken, the festival begins to change. Jack-o-Lanterns pop one at a time in a shower of black and red confetti, replaced by garish red and orange balloons wearing crudely drawn and monstrous faces. Food and drink are transformed in puffs of hideous chartreuse smoke, becoming other substances. These range from benign things such as clumps of peach jam, rotten fruit, or stagnant lake water to obscene things like unidentified offal, bile, and slimy filth. Carnival games inexplicably go up in flames, or are swarmed by bats or bugs, or simply turn to mud or sand and collapse. And the stage, which had been all prepared for Grace Holloway’s final festival performance, is briefly covered by a hideous theatrical curtain covered in chaotic patterns. When the curtain rises again, it has been completely redecorated.
The stage is now set for a harlequin act. A checkered-diamond drape now lines the back of the stage, framed by other swooping fabric swags in colors which are poorly matched. Unlit braziers are seated on either side, spilling over with copious handfuls of pumpkin guts in lieu of fire. Garlands made of foul-smelling seaweed, river reeds, strips of moth-eaten and blood soaked gauze and wilted poppies dangle in an intricate web from the rafters, rotten apples hanging from them like holiday ornaments. Animal bones and insect corpses hang from threads and litter the floor. And in the center, there is a vile and wretched mockery of a throne. It is constructed of more bones, bearing cracked halves of a broken skull on each armrest and draped in tattered silks and cobwebs.
On the throne, there sits a strange jester. His skin is a deep, dark gray, which stands in stark contrast against his gleaming white voids of eyes and enormous, crooked, toothy grin. He is wearing a patchwork costume of cobbled-together fabrics, some of which look more like thin strips of raw meat sewn to the velvet or brocade of the other pieces. His hat is enormous and seems to defy gravity, the bells jingling out abrasive and sour notes as he moves.
The jester stands, taking a bow and cackling.
“Hello, Pumpkin Hollow! Such a pleasure to meet you all at last. Do allow me to introduce myself--- I am Mendel, the Prince of Fools, and your Master of Ceremonies for this final night of Pumpkinfest! My family and I have had a special fondness for this place for many a year now, and as such, I felt it only right to liven up your party. I’ve added a whole host of unique games and a number of my helpful staff. I do hope you enjoy it! You won’t really have any choice. Ta-ta!” Reeling back, he tosses a smoke bomb onto the stage, releasing an enormous, choking plume of rainbow-colored smoke. He vanishes, and so do you. When next you open your eyes, you will find yourself in one of Mendel’s torture games now littered around town.
Welcome to the Nightmare Carnival.
TOPSY TURVEY TERROR
[ Content Warnings: extreme likelihood of character death by ice, fire, poison, crushing, physical or supernatural violence, or by accident. Mind/body control. Disrespectful treatment of the dead. General torture. ]
A procession, raucous and grand, pushes through town. Ghouls and infernal creatures from another world throw themselves into the crowds of people, snaring people in one-armed embraces, twirling them in energetic dances, tossing arms around their shoulders and swaying with joy.And what a joyous day it is, for the Carnival is to begin.
It seems in an instant that the colorful banners of Pumpkinfest begin to change, though whether through the light or the color itself was up for debate. Crimson torches dotted the streets, burning bright and crackling in the wind, and on the horizon, the Effigy was raised.
A mass of twigs, sticks, and foliage, in the shape of a person reaching to the sky. In its strange way, the pose almost looks almost reverent. With hair formed out of browned strands of weeping willow and a linen garment fashioned to look like the robes of the Temple, it seems to represent the late Merrick Gladwyn--- an act of further disrespect by the infernal invaders.
As it is lit, this reverence turns to a burning despair as its face is warped and distorted by heat, silent laments and pleas for aid to the Goddesses themselves that would go unheard.
Let the games begin.
The games in the carnival are all seated by unwilling participants, placed there by the Carnival Master, the Prince of Fools. The placement happened in a blink of an eye - one moment, the villagers were scattered about the streets, and next, they were randomly assigned to grim games with dire consequences--- and no escape.
Any unfortunate souls at the Nightmare Carnival will find themselves cast into one of the following games and spectacles to have their unfortunate souls:
Misfortune Teller Not all predictions of the future are particularly fortunate. The figure in the fortune-telling tent, hunched shoulders and face hidden beneath an ornate hooded shawl, slowly moves to begin drawing cards. They at first appear to be classic tarot cards, but drawing them reveals that they are… strangely specific. Do those depictions of people on them look familiar? They almost seem to shift as they're looked upon. How odd.
The misfortune teller will provide a reading that portends all manner of harrowing fates, seen below.
1. Death's Unwavering Grasp: You begin to wither at a rapid pace, losing strength with every passing second. At the end of it, you perish. This is (debatably) the worst possible outcome. 2. Visions of Plague: You fall ill, the severity of which is chosen by the player. Your escape is made more difficult by this, and it lingers beyond the carnival, as long as a normal illness of whatever chosen type would.
3. Once Frostbitten, Twice Shy: An unnatural hypothermia begins to set into you. Heat seems to do little to cast it away, but the rise of morning will thaw the curse. Can you manage to stave off the cold, or will you freeze to death in its wake?
4. Aching Hearts: An opinion of one of your loved ones has completely shattered, and you can't seem to understand why, nor shake the feeling. All you know is that somehow you are overcome with the notion that this person has hurt or betrayed you, currently feeling beyond repair. Drama!
5. Thousand-Mile Dash: You run. You run, and run, and run, until your legs no longer carry you. When your legs can no longer carry you, you crawl until your fingers bleed. (Think the dancing plague, but much... faster???)
6. Turning, Burning: In your eyes, everything is becoming consumed by flame. This doesn't impact anyone else, but if anyone is feeling skeptical, you'll receive actual burns from the invisible fires!
7. Crystalline Consumption: Starting at one small point, shining crystals in any given color begin to consume your flesh. If allowed to go on for too long, you will become a crystalized statue, and perish.
8. Stygian Awakening: The crimson flame burns in your heart. You find yourself hearing the true jubilation around you, instead of witnessing the horrors. You have fallen under Mendel's thrall. May the Goddesses have mercy on your fellow villagers you come across in this state, as you will take on both a demonic appearance and an infernal mindset.
9. Splitting Your Sides: It starts as a chuckle, a chortle, a snicker. Did the misfortune teller say something funny? All you know is that, now, you can't seem to stop yourself from laughing, growing more and more intense with every passing moment. Your lungs burn for air, your side hurts, your lips split, your face aches, but you simply can't help yourself. You laugh into the long, dark night. (Though unlikely, your character *can* die from this!)
10. The Path to Freedom: You abruptly learn the exact directions through the darkened forests to one of the abandoned cabins, isolated and away from the carnage. Congratulations! Now, just make sure you can actually make it there...
Hall of Mirrors
You find yourself in a complex maze made of mirrored walls, tasked with the objective of finding your way to the exit. As if this weren’t disorienting enough, there is an added, dangerous twist--- you are being followed. Not by any monster or specter, but by yourself. Indeed, one of your many, many reflections has gone rogue, and seeks to corner you too close to the glass pane which contains it and attack you. It cannot fully emerge, but its hands are capable of grabbing you and attacking!
However, in the distance, you can hear something. Perhaps a scream or the scuffling sounds of violence. There are other victims in the maze with you! It’s possible you can reach each other and put your heads together to escape, but beware: this doubles the danger by allowing your reflections to collaborate as well.
Knife-Throwing
A test of dexterity and skill, you are tasked with throwing knives at a slowly spinning round board with targets painted onto it. However, this game comes with a dangerous consequence: one of your fellow townsfolk is affixed to the wheel, and a lack of aim could spell their doom. Roll a D20 for one of the following results:
1-3: You miss your target. Instead, the knife has pierced a vital organ of your companion, and they die.
3-5: A miss, off the board. Your ghastly audience isn't pleased about this.
5-10: A miss, with impact on your companion, though non-lethal. Ouch!
10-15: A miss, on the board. A boring result that leaves the crowd in a grumbling huff.
15-20: You hit your target, and your companion remains unscathed! Success! The other person is released, and the two of you may attempt to escape the Nightmare Carnival.
You have as many rolls as you need to finish the game, which happens either when you hit your target or kill your counterpart.
Escape Room
You and one other resident have been placed into a room, decorated with assorted puzzles lining the walls and furniture within. An hourglass sits upon a table, counting down, and all the doors and windows are locked. Working together, you must solve the puzzles before the time runs out.
The puzzles within and their solutions are always randomized! Therefore, no guidance will give you any hints on how to get out.
[This means you can make up the puzzles and their solutions yourselves rather than relying on a mod or hidden secrets. This should make it flow a little easier for you. Enjoy!]
Those who fail to complete their challenge in time find themselves in an equally random peril that will result in their deaths if they don't take the last few seconds to escape. These things can include spikes dropping from the ceiling, the room being filled with smoke, flames, water, or noxious gas, or the walls closing in to crush those inside.
Duel to the Death
The Prince of Fools knows your heart, and has used it against you.
You've been placed into a combat arena, stone walls lining a dirt floor in a wide circle. Across from you is another competitor, but not just anyone - someone you hold dear. Weapons hang from imposing hooks scattered along the walls of the arena, and the horn has sounded. No words are needed to understand what is at play, in this horrible place: this is a battle to the death.
A few things are readily apparent upon entering the ring: both you and your opponent are feeling stronger, meaning that you can take far more licks than usual before falling. Many of the weapons dotting the walls are strikingly familiar, but there is something off about them.
Upon taking a weapon, the strange energy about the weapons becomes clear: they crave blood with a near-sentience, and your movements are no longer solely your own. No matter how your mind wrestles with them, they will charge into combat with reckless abandon with intent to kill.
Should you succeed in killing your opponent, you're celebrated by your monstrous crowd! A gate lifts, and you're given a few choice moments to escape the arena and attempt to escape the town entirely before you're dragged into a new terrible happening. Should you and your opponent try to refuse the fight, the crowd takes matters in their own hands and makes sure both of you suffer your fate together. Seemingly infinite and not felled easily, they rush into the arena, joined by warped beasts released from the iron gates, and intend to make your and your friends' blood spill one way or another.
| SPECIAL THANKS: Thank you, Harvey, for writing the games section! |
OTA
Who can say how long First Aid is trapped in that glittering maze? He finds the exit and turns away from it again and again, pushing friends and strangers to safety before turning back to chase down another set of screams, another sobbing civilian that can't fight off their phantoms alone. His own reflection dogs him the entire time, green and shining as a witch's poison-gift. The false First Aid hurls insults at him, denigrating him and the people he's trying to save, and whenever First Aid gets too close his double tries to grab, scratching at his paint, busting his visor, sliding shining needles into his neck --
This is how First Aid knows it must be a fake. He would never, Ratchet would never let him, but the fake injects viral code directly into First Aid's mind, scouring him like steel wool, sabotaging his joints and coolant lines, and every time First Aid has to stop and cry and scrub him back out. He leaks steam and stray sparks, systems beginning to overheat -- he'll have to be so careful now every time he picks up an organic, he can't let them get hurt -- but still he persists.
He's a Protectobot. He can't leave anyone alone in this horrid place.
Knife-Throwing
First Aid is half-blind and so tired he shakes, but there's a knife in his hand...and an innocent person chained to the wall. As soon as he understands that he's meant to throw the knife he groans and tries to drop it, but it sticks to his hand. No easy way out there.
"I can't," he begs, trying to press it back into the booth keeper's gnarled hands. "I can't, please, take me instead. Put me up there, you can throw anything you want, I can take it -- just please, please --"
Misfortune -- Once Frostbitten, Twice Shy
At first the cold seeping into his lines seems almost a mercy, foolish though it might have been of him to expect anything of the kind. He is tired, and every vent he has is wide-open, fans whirring as they try to diffuse the heat from his efforts. His engine chugs, nearly dry -- didn't he refuel just this morning? But then it seems as though his coding found a hidden pocket of coolant somewhere in his body, because the heat begins to fade...
And fade...
And his plating begins to clatter, fans whirring higher and beginning to struggle...
And he gasps, collapsing to his knees with his arms wrap tight as they can around his torso, as the cold begins to burn in his chest, just beneath his spark. His rubber components stiffen and turn brittle, his tires flaking away to nothing while his plating grinds against itself, desperately trying to generate heat. Kicking up sparks that flicker and fade as soon as they touch his plating, where already the metal has sunk to a temperature that will sting and stick to the skin, if anyone is foolish enough to touch him now.
Knife Throwing
"They're not going to let us go, not just like that."
no subject
Next to him, the carny -- dressed in rags like its demon-prince, with a wolf's snout twisted by what might be mange -- shrugs and picks up a torch.
It twirls the torch in one hand, fingers flying, the flame crackling as it moves through the air without going out.
All of First Aid's fans halt with a crunching sound before resuming at twice the speed.
"I'm sorry," he gasps. "Angel, I'm so sorry..."
He throws the knife.
CW, gore
...
...
...goes limp.
no subject
For a moment, First Aid completely loses control of his body. He tries to scramble over the divider, his only thought reaching Angel and trying to save him somehow, even though he can already tell, it's too late for that -- but he has to try, he did this, it's his fault --
Snap.
First Aid's vision glitches out, and when it clears he's sitting in the Misfortune Teller's tent, waiting for the cards to decide his fate.
Once Frostbitten, Twice Shy | CW Burning To Death
She touches his body with a fistful of hellfire, which spreads eagerly across the metal, and then she realizes.
A long string of musical swear words in her native tongue follows.
no subject
There's a video game that First Aid's brothers really like. It came out in 2000. In the game, there's a volcano level that's one half frozen winter wasteland, and one half lava and caves. And there's a cute little train station, which you can use to quickly access the overworld map.
But the train won't even enter the level unless you help him cool down. The temperature differential between the lava half and the snow half is too high for his boiler, and if he tried to force it he'd snap in half. They'd all gotten a good laugh out of the gross way the game uses to fix the problem, but -- it was only so funny because it was so affecting in the first place. Metal does that, when the temperature differential is too high. Cold makes it brittle, heat makes it over-flexible. Try to move from one state to the other too quickly, and it will break apart.
This, horribly, is what First Aid remembers when his sensors suddenly pick up on the wave of heat blooming across his back. He remembers his brothers laughing and elbowing him in the side, he remembers the damage projection his own medical module automatically conjured up and shoved into frontal processing before he could cancel the order, and he has a single helpless second to map that projection onto his own frame -- and then the pain begins.
The delicate joints and their housings in his neck and shoulders are first to go, tiny metal components snapping one after the other with bell-like chimes. His arms detach, pulling on his servo chains and fuel lines grotesquely -- the lines burst, the few remaining drops of ethanol he had left in his system going up in quick candle-like bursts -- his head starts to topple forward --
And then the bigger plates, back and chest, larger cracks bisecting the center while the edges crumble away like sand, pain like nothing he's ever felt before, his vocalizer popping and burning out with a shower of sparks to cut off his screams.
no subject
River is, normally, an upright and honest sort of person. She is, however, only panicking further on the realization that in attempting to save the new doctor's life she has succeeded in, you see, changing his cause of death - to say nothing of the gruesome state of it. As he starts to fall apart, she decides, in her nearly delirious state, that the only rational course of action is to cover up the crime.
A second handful of hellfire is hurled directly at the Misfortune Telling tent, and then River legs it.
no subject
The flames continue to chew on his metal for some time, but beneath their flickering oranges and reds First Aid's paint has already turned lifeless grey.
Hall of Mirrors (CW: mentions of cannibalism)
He was back in that noxious little room, hung with plastic and filled with--monsters no alien race could ever conceive of. Monsters that were singularly, uniquely human.
It didn't matter that death would not linger--he felt the same cold calm he did that night as he stormed in to find the source of the screams.
His reflections come for him pretty quickly, but to attack Ianto--they do not have to come after him the way they do others. When the grasping hands reach for him, they push him towards the exit. Their faces, twisted with sick joy, whisper to him about all of the unspeakable things happening to those inside the maze, and how he will be safe outside.
Dahlia will be delicious. Jack will be a feast. Nieve will be delectable. Toshikio will be flavorful.
You...you are not for eating.
He fights the hands that propel him towards the exit, tearing and scraping and clawing to free himself from his own reflection, hell bent on letting him know precisely how his people will be tormented and murdered while he alone survives yet again.
He fights not to escape, but to reach the screams that he can hear, not realizing that some of them are his--not until the horrifying snarls of his own voice describing the meals his loved ones will become finally collides with the hollow, shaking feeling in his limbs and the knots his stomach is in and he collapses to empty his stomach yet again, feebly fighting against the hands that reach through the mirror to try and haul him to his feet so they can continue to force him towards the exit.
So he can go mad, imagining his whole world being offered up as a very literal sacrificial lamb.
no subject
First Aid pulls and yanks on the arms coming out of the mirrors, until he's gotten Ianto free and pulled him into the narrow strip of floor going down the middle of each hallway where the arms can't quite reach. It wouldn't be much of a game if there wasn't a small chance at winning, right?
"Sir? Can you hear me?" He carefully lets Ianto go, watching to see if he'll be able to support his own weight or if he's having any trouble breathing. Not that First Aid is in much better shape, his visor broken as if by a large fist and scratches all over his plating...
no subject
It takes Ianto a full minute of struggling, being released, and nearly stumbling back into another mirror to realize--to realize that he's not looking into a mirror. His reflection is as wide eyed, fearful, and furious as he is, not that terrible neutral cold that can't feel anything deeper than mild disdain.
The smell of metal isn't blood, but scratched up...steel? A cracked surface of--of glass?
Ianto blinks and freezes, trying to catch his breath and focus on the robot in front of him. Trying to rescue him.
...well, at least he's not trying to bodily force him out of the maze.
"...you're a robot."
Okay, maybe Ianto should be bodily forced out of the maze if that's the best he's got...
no subject