Crossover: Fallen London
Class: Rider
Alternate Classes: None
Alignment: Chaotic Neutral
Attribute: Man
Aliases: Mrs Plenty's Most Distracting Carnival
Strength: -
Endurance: -
Agility: -
Mana: -
Luck: -
The Starveling Cat is gone- a single, lone candle awaits in your hands. You walk to the address in the note. You rush down the last stretch of the path to the Carnival, sleeves dusted with crystal-shards. Are you in time?
Smoke and mirrors. Light and shade. Bright paint and squealing children and the roar of lions. Music, as a great man once said, that is like electric sugar.
But the music is still. There are no cheerful performers, no laughter. There are only horrors and nightmares.
It's time you scraped acquaintance with those monsters.
Chances are you'll be joining them soon enough.
Class SkillsRiding: A+
The carnival's big wheel lowers brave customers into the earth. It almost always brings them back, too.
You realise that the sign has changed; and that the wheel now ascends. It would bring you to the stars above, and you know the sunlight would shrivel you like a slug.
For fifty-five carnival tickets and the surrendering of fifty great possibilities in your future-
You may enjoy this fate.
Oh, don't worry. You'll return.
Personal SkillsSomeone Following You: A
You will always be in this Carnival, even when you aren't. The specters and apparitions you gather here will follow you until you find the crossroads. Even if you leave.
Perhaps you'll have need of them.
Snuffer's Gratitude: E
There is a creature awaiting in the sideshows. Its head is a squirming mass of muscle, red tendrils coiling on themselves. It would ask to borrow your face, if that's quite convenient. In return, it'll follow. It's quite strong. It's quite fast. It's quite resilient.
It won't be here forever.
"You didn't understand me."
It shakes its borrowed face sadly, and your eyes roll in their sockets. "I'm a complicated creature, certainly. But you might have made the effort." You do not part as friends.
Procurer of Savage Beasts: E
The monsters and creatures of the swamp sleep and wait in the tents. They turn their eyes at you. Give them of your flesh, and they will give of their strength.
"So many chains, still," a slavering dream-hound growls. Its voices is the rasp of file on iron. "I will gulp them like sausage-links. You may watch me if you wish."
A fungal tower looks at you with a single eye, sadly. You pat its flank affectionately, and it tilts its upper torso. It's offering to eat you. Spare you the suffering that is to come. Accept it, either way it makes no difference. You'll be back soon enough.
Unnacountably Peckish: A
The more you eat, the more you need. Your belly gnaws at you as you gnaw at raw meat, fungus, tent-poles, fresh cats, childhood memories, your own limbs. Perhaps you should continue.
Clairvoyance: E
Madame Shoshana is not here just now, but you can read your own future perfectly well. Tear a carnival ticket to fragments and bend over your own palm.
"North."
There is no hope. None.
Noble Phantasms
Rank: C
Type: Anti-Unit
"Looking into the mirrors is the prerogative of the foolish."
Somewhere in all this darkness, a mirror is waiting. If you remember the light behind mirrors - if you are close enough and not too close - then perhaps you can find it.
Your reflection blooms in the unlight that leaks from your eyes. In one mirror, the reflection is pale, angular, leaking blood from the eyes. In another, you are heroically muscled, glowering, snorting like a bull. This one is all maw: a mouth like a hole in the world, but a mouth you have seen in window-glass as you pass, a million times. But this reflection here – this one is not yours. It's hard to be sure of the form of the one reflected, but you think it is a woman. A woman of substance.
A voice says: "About bloomin' time."
Silence.
"You've come a long way," the shape in the mirror observes. The air is scented with blood and tobacco smoke. "Not as far as I came, back when I was Looking, but then I 'ad certain advantages. In me upbringing. And anyway, you might go further."
She leans closer, and her ear-rings jingle. "Free advice for yer. Don't."
Personality"Why d'ye want to know?"
Mrs Plenty is originally from Mutton Island, which is where she gets her charming accent. Some of the Mrs Plenty's Carnival's attractions, like Rubbery Lumps, are imitations of Mutton Island's traditions.
"...heh, then. Yer, I'ma Mutton gel."
She campaigned for Mayor of London in 1897, under the slogan "A moment's peace!"
"They 'ready forgot all about that. Didn't work out that well. Didn't accomplish much. Heh. Moment's peace. You won't have any, ever again, you know. If yer path keeps on goin'."
Her genteel, rather bohemian appearance belies her profession.
"Ain't too polite to say that sort of thing 'bout a lady, you know."
She was once a Seeker of Mr Eaten's Name, and never truly left that path; she now guards and guides others to a particular candle in this warped version of her Carnival that exists only at midnight. She is not very happy with her duty, however.
"Yer right about that. They says I 'asn't got an 'eart. They're wrong about that. I 'ate to see you chuckin' yer 'ole self away like this. But, more'n that, I got certain duties I can't get out of, even with wot Jervaise and 'Imself did fer me. You can take the gel out of the Mutton, but you can't take the Mutton out of the gel. Not all the way. So what about you? Why're you chasin' yer doom so 'ard?"
DialogueThe woman in the mirror wants to know why you are so hell-bent on your own dissolution- why do you continue on Watcher's road. She's waiting for an answer. And your mind is clearer than it's been in a while. Perhaps that's the cigar-smoke.
"I'm going to be a Hero of Justice."
"Heh. Go on a walk. Yer going to find at least twelve worse sins to go correct. This it ain't enough of a cause."
"For Rin."
She laughs, sadly. "This'll end with 'er dead too, ye know. Dead and buried."
"It was the Holy Grail."
"This war... No good fing' can come of it. But yer still not right."
"There's people I need to protect."
"Yer not going to protect a single person with this."
"Sakura. She- she..."
"Yer think ye failed. I think yer cam stop somefink worse, way worse."
"It was... Kirei Kotomine."
"Rotten men of cloth..." She spits. "Don't be a fool. Yer want to be empty, too?" A pause. "Again, huh? Empty again."
"It was Angra Mainyu."
She is silent for a while. "Some people are awful little fings. Doesn't mean yer 'ave to be one, too."
"Mr Veils. I'll end it. I'll end it for sure."
"Revenge, eh? Don't 'ave much to say about that. Foolish, anyway. That one 'ready met its end. What ye gonna do, kill it again? Yer don't even got a stake in that conflict, what yer on about?"
"The Mage's Association. I'll destroy them."
"Eh. I takes yer point. I really do. That one's brought a lot of 'orrors and pain. But you're an 'arsh surgeon, to want to carve it all out like that."
A pause.
Silence returns.
"So I never went all the way North, "Mastah." But I never what you might call formally resigned from bein' a Lady of the Well. So I get to play crossroads, 'ere.
"Listen. You fink you've given up so much? It's only begun. From 'ere on, it gets rough. So I'm goin' to offer you one last way out. This might be yer last chance. And it's certainly yer best one. I'll even pay what I can scrape together from me savings. It'll cost me more than I can easily pay, even in a dream, but whoever you are, you don't deserve what's coming."
"So there's that. Or if you insist – if you insist – you can pay for the next Candle. Don't. But if yer want to give away your 'ome, or your friends, or your flesh, I can't stop yer."
She touches your sleeve in the dark. "Last chance. Don't let me down, now."
Rank: EX
Type: Anti-Unit (Self)
Give up one of four precious things.
"Yer 'earth and yer 'ome. I'll toss yer out in the streets. It'll all go up in flames."
"Yer connections, yer friends. They'll wake up and all that respect will be gone. All that work, for nothing."
"And... that 'ealth of yers. Yer flesh and yer mind. Torn apart."
"Or ye could give up a precious fing. I can't know 'hat it is. But I know if yer speaking the truth. Somefink fated. 'and it over."
"Fank God for that. At least one of you has the sense God gave an ape. When you wake up – and you're about to wake up – throw the candle away. Let your scars heal. Forget all this stuff. For good. Right? Now then. I invoke the Spires, for the price. I invoke Salt for the cleansing. I invoke Stone, for the light..."
And then she is gone.
The command seals in your hand are gone. A purse full of pearls in your hands.
The Name is gone.
You're home.
"Well, I 'ope you trip and fall down a well. Lookers. It's like trying to chase a fly out of a window." And you wake. Here, in your hand, a candle.
St. Beau's Candle
This is the candle whose flame lights the feet of gallows-hung Hecate. It is the colour of spring leaves in firelight.
Midnight.
