Carnival of Doom
May. 6th, 2006 06:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
terryclothBut what other kind is there?
So, we finished up characters for the new Friday game I'm running, and did the first session.
Murdock is playing... er.... Zed? I think? Z-something, a coyote-styled ranger who can teleport.
Lazar is playing Den, a 'fairy armadillo'-ish kid (the blacksmith's son) with strong subconscious telepathy, making him (slightly) skilled in absolutely everything.
Snowwy is playing 'Gray' (nickname determined quasi-randomly), a raccoon-morph shopkeep with the ability to hack into the world's gods. An ability which he has yet to use.
One summer, in the small village of Alma, located in the middle of the forest, ten miles south of the old road, near a stream, a few days' travel east of the mountains, the trader who usually came by once a year to maintain some semblance of connection to the rest of the world failed to show.
Now, this wasn't a *total* disaster, but it meant that the shops would be empty of everything but the few locally produced goods and produce, and the blacksmith and other craftsmen would have to shut down most of their work due to lack of raw materials. So the rangers were sent out to try to find some sign of what happened to him.
They didn't get far before finding a strange caravan travelling west along the old road. Now, going into the mountains, road or no, was suicidally dangerous due to the rather vicious and very very old and powerful cougar god who ruled the mountains, so the rangers brought the carnival to the village, despite their disturbing use of the sort of technology that the villagers shunned.
The villagers and the village dogs (the local gods that most directly protected the people of the village against outside threats) were angry at first, but the giant panda-looking guy in charge of the caravan mollified them, and after talking with the (somewhat senile) village elder, convinced him and Gower (the village's oldest dog god) that it would be okay for them to stay a few days and set up their entertainments. The creepy looking identical black cat-people that made up the bulk of the carnival crew (along with some creepy-acting black cat gods riding along in the largest metal-skinned, tread-propelled 'wagon') took the caravan to the center of the village, where the square just outside the ancient town hall would be large enough for them to set up their tents.
The hired some locals to help with crowd control and with running some of the booths. Den tried to sign up, but he was told he was too young. He did get to see the villagers who hired on quickly turned into nearly-identical black cats with some high-tech disguise stuff. He tried to get close enough to steal it, or to get inside the wagon, but there were too many people watching, and the cats chased him away.
The next day, attendance was decent, at first, until Den won a stuffed animal in one of the games of skill. The stuffed animal *talked* -- which freaked out the villagers, and most of them kept their distance that day. He traded in the suffed animal for some 'rainbow fur spray', which (after a bit of experimentation) did indeed turn his fur rainbow colors. He also got some 'x-ray goggles' which let you see through peoples' clothing -- everyone looked totally naked when you put them on.
Zed looked in the 'world of tomorrow' exhibit that seemed to be a fairly transparent propaganda piece for technology over living in harmony with the gods. Afterwards, he ran into someone freaking out and hallucinating after winning or buying some of the carnival's 'Dream Candy'. He confiscated the rest, for the guy's own safety.
Gray checked out the 'freakshow' which had some large animals (obviously just elder gods) and deformed humans in cages -- not too interesting to him.
Den went to a fortuneteller, but although the old ferret had some pretty clever tricks with cards and with the apparently well-trained cats (which was unsual -- cats didn't usually like to follow peoples' orders -- it was usually the other way around), he could tell that she was a fake.
That night there was an angry meeting in the town hall, with the villagers who'd been spooked by the talking bear demanding that the carnival be run out of town. The village elder got up there with Gower and with some of his supporters, and explained that he'd talked to Gower and the other gods, and they said everything was okay. In fact, the carnival had been sent by the gods to entertain them, since they were having to deal with the inconvenience of missing their regular trader.
Zed got up there and talked about the dream candy, and how it was really kind of dangerous, and convinced the people to at least keep the kids home. Still, it *was* fairly boring in the village, and there were plenty of people who found the notion of random hallucinations interesting instead of scary.
With the elder's and Gower's glowing endorsement, a lot more people showed up the next day. The kids were grounded, including Den, but they snuck out before their parents came to wake them, and hid in the safe part of the forest (inside the village boundaries). The rangers were sent out to find them (in particular, the lowest ranking trainee ranger, Zed) but they head him coming and skeedaddled right into the fair, where they ran past the protesting attendant and hid in the World of Tomorrow exhibit. Gray, curious about the commotion (or something), followed them in, while Zed decided to hang out by the exit and get them once they came out.
But they didn't come out. After far too much time had passed, Zed looked inside the exhibit, but saw no sign of Gray or Den or any of the kids. Most of the village was distracted by the carnival, but the other rangers decided to go do a wider search of the forest to look for the kids, outside the boundary, while Zed and the parents whose kids were missing searched inside the town.
Of course, the first thing they did was go into the exhibit to look for any sign of the kids more carefully, where they were ambushed by cats. Zed caught a dose of poison, but got away with only a little memory loss... he remembered they the parents had come to ask him for something, but not what or where they went.
Searching around, though, he eventually figured out that there were more townsfolk working for the circus than there had been the day before -- no one remembered another hiring session, though. As it got on towards night, he noticed that the new workers were the parents of the missing kids. The heck?
He did go to attend the main event, though -- a full-scale circus performance for all the interested villagers. Having been accidentally exposed to the hallucinogenic dream-candy, he recognized when the strange illusions presented to the audience through enhanced-reality goggles wandered into hallucinations induced by some sort of drug, and left the show early. The cats weren't happy about that, but he teleported away from them, into his house, where he frantically worked at blocking all the exits while the hallucinations built around him.
Eventually, though, the cats -- and other carnival workers, including Rocco the giant panda himself -- got inside and overwhelmed him...
Meanwhile, Gray and Den and the kids floated for a while through a sea of white mist, after deciding to walk through the supposedly fake 'door to tomorrow' at the end of the world of tomorrow exhibit (which Zed saw and poked at, but didn't step through). After a few rather boring hours, they were dumped onto a slide and slid down to the other, much more detailed section of the exhibit. While Gray tried to keep the kids together as they gawked at the more extensive, interactive exhibits, Den wandered off down the hall, trying to find the end of the place.
He found it -- it ended in a door locked with a combination keypad lock. Which he recognized, thanks to his telepathy-power thing. And managed to figure out, since it wasn't a very good combination lock. He opened the door to the rest of the building...
last session, different campaign | next session
I told Zed that he was captured, but I'm not sure whether or not to have that actually be the truth (as opposed to a hallucination). I guess it really depends on what Gray and Den do. In theory, they could get back to the village really quickly... the whole reason to have Zed swarmed was to get him back together with the rest of the group. }:/
But, at any rate, we probably won't be playing again until June, thanks to Lazar's schedule. I talked with Murdock and Snowwy about maybe playing somewhere else for those weeks, but they didn't really seem interested.
So, we finished up characters for the new Friday game I'm running, and did the first session.
Murdock is playing... er.... Zed? I think? Z-something, a coyote-styled ranger who can teleport.
Lazar is playing Den, a 'fairy armadillo'-ish kid (the blacksmith's son) with strong subconscious telepathy, making him (slightly) skilled in absolutely everything.
Snowwy is playing 'Gray' (nickname determined quasi-randomly), a raccoon-morph shopkeep with the ability to hack into the world's gods. An ability which he has yet to use.
One summer, in the small village of Alma, located in the middle of the forest, ten miles south of the old road, near a stream, a few days' travel east of the mountains, the trader who usually came by once a year to maintain some semblance of connection to the rest of the world failed to show.
Now, this wasn't a *total* disaster, but it meant that the shops would be empty of everything but the few locally produced goods and produce, and the blacksmith and other craftsmen would have to shut down most of their work due to lack of raw materials. So the rangers were sent out to try to find some sign of what happened to him.
They didn't get far before finding a strange caravan travelling west along the old road. Now, going into the mountains, road or no, was suicidally dangerous due to the rather vicious and very very old and powerful cougar god who ruled the mountains, so the rangers brought the carnival to the village, despite their disturbing use of the sort of technology that the villagers shunned.
The villagers and the village dogs (the local gods that most directly protected the people of the village against outside threats) were angry at first, but the giant panda-looking guy in charge of the caravan mollified them, and after talking with the (somewhat senile) village elder, convinced him and Gower (the village's oldest dog god) that it would be okay for them to stay a few days and set up their entertainments. The creepy looking identical black cat-people that made up the bulk of the carnival crew (along with some creepy-acting black cat gods riding along in the largest metal-skinned, tread-propelled 'wagon') took the caravan to the center of the village, where the square just outside the ancient town hall would be large enough for them to set up their tents.
The hired some locals to help with crowd control and with running some of the booths. Den tried to sign up, but he was told he was too young. He did get to see the villagers who hired on quickly turned into nearly-identical black cats with some high-tech disguise stuff. He tried to get close enough to steal it, or to get inside the wagon, but there were too many people watching, and the cats chased him away.
The next day, attendance was decent, at first, until Den won a stuffed animal in one of the games of skill. The stuffed animal *talked* -- which freaked out the villagers, and most of them kept their distance that day. He traded in the suffed animal for some 'rainbow fur spray', which (after a bit of experimentation) did indeed turn his fur rainbow colors. He also got some 'x-ray goggles' which let you see through peoples' clothing -- everyone looked totally naked when you put them on.
Zed looked in the 'world of tomorrow' exhibit that seemed to be a fairly transparent propaganda piece for technology over living in harmony with the gods. Afterwards, he ran into someone freaking out and hallucinating after winning or buying some of the carnival's 'Dream Candy'. He confiscated the rest, for the guy's own safety.
Gray checked out the 'freakshow' which had some large animals (obviously just elder gods) and deformed humans in cages -- not too interesting to him.
Den went to a fortuneteller, but although the old ferret had some pretty clever tricks with cards and with the apparently well-trained cats (which was unsual -- cats didn't usually like to follow peoples' orders -- it was usually the other way around), he could tell that she was a fake.
That night there was an angry meeting in the town hall, with the villagers who'd been spooked by the talking bear demanding that the carnival be run out of town. The village elder got up there with Gower and with some of his supporters, and explained that he'd talked to Gower and the other gods, and they said everything was okay. In fact, the carnival had been sent by the gods to entertain them, since they were having to deal with the inconvenience of missing their regular trader.
Zed got up there and talked about the dream candy, and how it was really kind of dangerous, and convinced the people to at least keep the kids home. Still, it *was* fairly boring in the village, and there were plenty of people who found the notion of random hallucinations interesting instead of scary.
With the elder's and Gower's glowing endorsement, a lot more people showed up the next day. The kids were grounded, including Den, but they snuck out before their parents came to wake them, and hid in the safe part of the forest (inside the village boundaries). The rangers were sent out to find them (in particular, the lowest ranking trainee ranger, Zed) but they head him coming and skeedaddled right into the fair, where they ran past the protesting attendant and hid in the World of Tomorrow exhibit. Gray, curious about the commotion (or something), followed them in, while Zed decided to hang out by the exit and get them once they came out.
But they didn't come out. After far too much time had passed, Zed looked inside the exhibit, but saw no sign of Gray or Den or any of the kids. Most of the village was distracted by the carnival, but the other rangers decided to go do a wider search of the forest to look for the kids, outside the boundary, while Zed and the parents whose kids were missing searched inside the town.
Of course, the first thing they did was go into the exhibit to look for any sign of the kids more carefully, where they were ambushed by cats. Zed caught a dose of poison, but got away with only a little memory loss... he remembered they the parents had come to ask him for something, but not what or where they went.
Searching around, though, he eventually figured out that there were more townsfolk working for the circus than there had been the day before -- no one remembered another hiring session, though. As it got on towards night, he noticed that the new workers were the parents of the missing kids. The heck?
He did go to attend the main event, though -- a full-scale circus performance for all the interested villagers. Having been accidentally exposed to the hallucinogenic dream-candy, he recognized when the strange illusions presented to the audience through enhanced-reality goggles wandered into hallucinations induced by some sort of drug, and left the show early. The cats weren't happy about that, but he teleported away from them, into his house, where he frantically worked at blocking all the exits while the hallucinations built around him.
Eventually, though, the cats -- and other carnival workers, including Rocco the giant panda himself -- got inside and overwhelmed him...
Meanwhile, Gray and Den and the kids floated for a while through a sea of white mist, after deciding to walk through the supposedly fake 'door to tomorrow' at the end of the world of tomorrow exhibit (which Zed saw and poked at, but didn't step through). After a few rather boring hours, they were dumped onto a slide and slid down to the other, much more detailed section of the exhibit. While Gray tried to keep the kids together as they gawked at the more extensive, interactive exhibits, Den wandered off down the hall, trying to find the end of the place.
He found it -- it ended in a door locked with a combination keypad lock. Which he recognized, thanks to his telepathy-power thing. And managed to figure out, since it wasn't a very good combination lock. He opened the door to the rest of the building...
last session, different campaign | next session
I told Zed that he was captured, but I'm not sure whether or not to have that actually be the truth (as opposed to a hallucination). I guess it really depends on what Gray and Den do. In theory, they could get back to the village really quickly... the whole reason to have Zed swarmed was to get him back together with the rest of the group. }:/
But, at any rate, we probably won't be playing again until June, thanks to Lazar's schedule. I talked with Murdock and Snowwy about maybe playing somewhere else for those weeks, but they didn't really seem interested.
