PLOT FAQ (NEW)

[ringleaders]

METAPLOT FAQ↴ What’s the deal with the plot in this game? It seems like there’s a lot of backstory. There is a lot of story, it’s true, which can be overwhelming for new players. Lost Carnival has been running for a year and a half now, and it’s been getting more and more plot heavy as it goes. There are several recurring NPCs and a lot of new plots will reference back to old ones, at least in part. If the plot of Lost Carnival were a book series, we’d be on about book 4 or 5 out of 7, to give some perspective. The hope for this Plot FAQ is that it will make it a bit easier for new players to tell what’s going on, and to better know how to get immersed in the situation. What kinds of plots happen in Lost Carnival? Lost Carnival used to have a much more “monster of the week” focused plot, with the carnival travelling to different worlds each OOC month and interacting with whatever opportunities existed there. The carnival members would have a chance to explore the setting, and then would perform for the locals. This included some overarching plot progression, but it was more optional and off to the side. By now, things have developed to the point where the metaplot is inescapable, and is also the primary focus of what goes on. The metaplot, for the most part, has all focused around the carnival being chased by various enemies – some new and some old. There have been a few different major plot arcs, and new arcs are usually triggered by something the carnival did in the past. Which, if you weren’t there for that last arc, it can take a bit of OOC and IC catching up. Can you describe the metaplot in as few words as possible? The Ringmaster is a creature called a Wyld Fae - a variation of the High Fae species, which were allegedly the first beings ever created in the multiverse, and the source of all worlds. In the days of her youth, she combined forces with the Summer and Winter Maidens in an attempt to defy the tyranny of the Summer and Winter Queens. After this failed horribly, the Ringmaster fled, and spent the next incredibly long time exploring the multiverse, and eventually created the carnival. The carnival was her way of trying to allow the beings of other worlds the chance to seize the same freedom she'd taken for herself - by leaving behind all the troubles and responsibilities of their homeworld. Unfortunately, then plot happened, and things went to hell for everyone involved. What plot arcs have there been so far? ► THE VAMPIRE WAR: Two years ago, the carnival was actually a pretty chill place. People would be recruited by the Ringmaster to work, and would come along on the tour to perform in new and strange places, and generally just explore. There was some drama about the ethics of the recruitment process but, beyond that, plenty of people would renew their contracts willingly. Unfortunately, that changed when the carnival got into a fight with a race of vampires native to a world they visited. After the carnival sent the Nightrunner team to assassinate some key vampire political figures in an effort to free the local populace from their tyranny, the vampires struck back, invading the grounds and killing several carnival workers. Given how people dying wasn’t the kind of thing carnival members had come to expect, many found this demoralizing, and after the battle had finished many chose to return home instead of renewing their contracts. Because of this, the Ringmaster did a mass recruitment, which was OOCly the first app round of the game. Filling out the ranks with a bunch of newbies, the carnival went on to tour several worlds without much trouble, all while the Ringmaster and Supervisors worked on ways to keep the vampires from following them. Unfortunately this didn’t work. In the end, the vampires attacked the carnival while they were visiting a place called the Celebration. There, they kidnapped a bunch of people, dragging them away to Hell for either torture or turn them into vampire neonates. The Ringmaster took a team of workers into Hell to rescue the people taken. After scouring the castle where they were being kept, the carnival came upon the vampire’s evil overlord: the demon Morningstar. The fight with her concluded with the Ringmaster turning into a giant dragon and eating the demon’s heart. They then returned to the carnival, and many of the people involved were left traumatized. ► PORTLAND: This event happened during the OOC summer of 2017, and is often referred to ICly as simply “Portland”, which does little to explain the complexity of the actual event. The short version of this: after doing a few more months of relatively benign touring, the carnival attempted to visit an urban fantasy earth dimension – only for it to get caught up in a reality bending spell cast by the local wizard population, which rewrote any invading forces to believe they’d lived on that earth their entire lives. The spell interpreted the carnival as transdimensional invaders and, as such, they were all rewritten into urban fantasy versions of themselves and most lost their canon memories. There were dozens of plots going on during this event, including drama between various supernatural factions and the High Fae generally being assholes, but I’m not going to get into the details here. The two most important take-aways were this: 1) High Fae of the same breed as the Ringmaster had been trapped on this earth a well, and were very mad about it, 2) the reality bending barrier spell that trapped everyone here was also destroying the magical essence of the planet, and had to be broken. With the help of some NPCs and the hindrance of even more NPCs, the carnival eventually managed to destroy the barrier spell that had stranded them in Portland, restoring everyone’s memories and their regular physical forms. The High Fae escaped at the same time, but not before they had developed grudges against most of the carnival. ► THE BLUE ROSE: Interactions with the other High Fae in Portland started to suggest that the rest of Faerie had a problem with the Ringmaster. The Ringmaster, deciding she’d had enough of the bullshit, went about attempting to acquire an ancient fae artifact called the Blue Rose. She hoped that, with such a powerful weapon, the other fae wouldn’t dare threaten her belongings. Said magical weapon was in the possession of her ‘uncle’ the Prince – another Wyld Fae that was similarly estranged from Arcadia. She attempted to bargain for the Rose peacefully, but the Prince insisted that she bring the entire carnival to his home and have them entertained while the he and the Ringmaster negotiated. This went badly very quickly. The Prince had set very strict rules for the carnival to abide by, and any violation resulted in him taking the perpetrators as slaves in punishment. After kidnapping a few carnival workers this way, the Ringmaster was forced to cooperate with him, as she was unwilling to allow him to kill her followers in retaliation. While she played along, the Acquisitions team had been given orders to retrieve the Blue Rose on their own. They eventually succeeded during a Grand Ball the Prince threw while attempting to force the Ringmaster to marry him. Everything went to hell, with open war breaking out between the Prince and the Ringmaster as everyone attempted to rescue their kidnapped comrades. After several days of siege, the Prince was lured out of his fortress with a hunting game, in which the prize would be the return of the Blue Rose. Fortunately, the carnival managed to trick him, and as a result the Ringmaster took the upper hand and killed him, consuming his essence. This was starting to become a bit of a pattern. ► THE SILVER MIRROR: This is the arc the carnival is in, currently. As it turned out, the High Fae of Arcadia didn’t appreciate the Ringmaster taking the Blue Rose for herself, and sent out operatives in an attempt to steal it back. Unfortunately, this included the fae they’d already pissed off during Portland. In an even more desperate attempt to dissuade faerie attackers from threatening the carnival, the Ringmaster suggests to the carnival that they go after the Blue Rose’s companion artifacts – an item of Light and Shadow, and an item of Wood and Rot, according to faerie legends. The carnival workers were surprisingly in favor of this plan, and so the carnival travelled to a place called the Athenaeum, a giant library with recordings of true events from all over the multiverse. The plan was to find the names and locations of the other two faerie artifacts, and they succeeded – the only problem was that they’d been followed by two teams of High Fae, who went about trying to steal the Blue Rose from the Ringmaster and scolding her for daring to threaten the faerie Courts with the acquisition of these weapons. In a shocking reveal, it was discovered that the Ringmaster had actually killed the Winter Queen of Arcadia eons before, which was why the Summer and Winter Court hated her so much. The circumstances were complicated, however, and seemed to imply that the Ringmaster had been manipulated by the former Winter Maiden - the next in line to the Winter throne. Eventually, the carnival managed to fight off the fae and retrieve the captured carnival members. Then, the only thing left to do was to go after the next artifact, and object called the Silver Mirror. What are the Faerie Courts like? There are two Faerie Courts: the Summer Court, and the Winter Court. They have the expected elemental associations (Summer is mostly Growth, Light, and Fire focused while Winter is mostly Decay, Darkness, and Ice focused), and together they consider themselves the defacto rulers of the multiverse. Unfortunately, that doesn't stop them from fighting constantly, and since the beginning of time the two Courts have been competitively trying to claim the multiverse as their own. Each Court is ruled by a Maiden, Queen, and Crone. The Summer and Winter Queens are the primary authority, while the Maidens serve as a next in line to the throne, and the Crone is the previous, now retired Queen, who is mostly seen as a source of wisdom and guidance. The metaplot contains a lot of drama about how the Ringmaster helped assassinate the Winter Queen a long time ago, and both courts have it out for her and the carnival as a result. What are High Fae like, in general? Awful, in short. There are two kinds of High Fae: the Court Fae of Summer and Winter, and the Wyld Fae. The Courts fae are essentially Olympian style gods with tremendous elemental powers, while the Wyld Fae take the form of the great beasts of myth. Wyld Fae are mostly considered wild animals by the Court Fae, despite the fact that they have the capacity to be equally intelligent. Court Fae are known for kidnapping mortals and twisting them with magic to serve as their slaves, while otherwise acting like the multiverse is theirs to crap upon. Wyld Fae mostly just eat people and each other, when given the motivation. I'm interested! What's the best way to get involved? It's possible to make any character work, but there are a few different traits that make it easier than the alternatives: 1) Play a character that has unique skills or abilities. It is possible for mundane characters to learn magic over time with activity rewards, but having something specific to offer the team is a faster track towards relevance. 2) Play a character who is invested in the well being of others or will be able to develop an attachment to the carnival, or an attachment to the metaplot. A lot of plot opportunities can be easily avoided by disinterested characters. Rescue missions and the like are almost never mandatory, so it really helps to play someone who wants to make a difference. If your character is passive and just waiting to go home, they'll probably be more successful at avoiding the action than is practical OOCly. 3) Play a veteran character. Veterans are characters who have worked for the carnival in the past, and are returning to complete a contract or start a new one. This means you can pre-existing CR with other veteran characters and with the Ringmaster herself. It also means you can come in with more physical changes than you could otherwise. 4) Get in trouble. The easiest way to get involved and invested in the metaplot is for your character to get victimized by the fae. There are plenty of opportunities to stumble into this - the key is to make sure your character isn't acting so reckless as to frustrated the rest of the carnival in the process. What is a Megathread and how do I interact with it? A megathread is a way of threading that is commonly used in Lost Carnival metaplot events. Essentially, a megathread is one big group thread with no tagging order, usually dealing with NPCs or an immediate threat. Most often, they are a free for all, meaning that any present characters can join and tag as much or as little as is required of them. These threads tend to move fairly quickly, and usually won't be able to wait up very long for individual players, though we do try to be courteous when necessary. Most megathreads are boss battles of some kind, where everyone's actions must be counted at the same time, as there is only one primary target or center of focus. NPC tags happen at all times of day in an attempt to leave space for people with different schedules. Megathreads can seem intimidating, but they've also created some very memorable and exciting roleplay experiences. What is an Investigation Thread and how do I interact with it? Most event posts will have an "Investigations" sections, where is essentially where characters can express their intent to find out additional information about a setting, as well as have interactions with NPCs. Most investigations are written in summary form, meaning that instead of writing tag by tag actions and dialogue, the player and the mod write back generalized descriptions of what is said and what happens. Sometimes these threads will evolve into fully articulated prose when it focuses in on a scene of particular importance. Investigations will sometimes involve dice rolls made by the mod that helps decide how successful an action is. Typically this is done with the d20 dice commands on Plurk, either in the mod plurk about the event or in a mod plurk made specifically for event dice rolls if there are a lot. You are welcome to spectate dice rolls there. Tell me a bit more about how dice rolls work? Most rolls are done with a twenty sided dice. How high of a roll is required for a success depends on how lucky the character needs to be for an attempt to work out in their favour. Generally speaking, a result if 2-7 is a bad result, 8-12 is a mediocre or baseline serviceable result, and 13-19 is a good result. Rolling a 1 is considered to be a critical failure, which means your character will fail in their attempt in a way that is often radical enough that a plot event triggers as a result. Said plot events are usually quite bad for your character, though, and may put then in significant danger, depending on the riskiness of their action. Rolling a 20 is considered a critical success, and usually involves the best possible results of an action, and often some kind of 'bonus' advantage gained by the excellent roll. Sometimes this means your character will find a special item or piece of information that would be otherwise unavailable. The more risky the initial roll, the higher the potential reward with a critical. Dice rolls are used in situations where luck plays a major role, to see how accommodating circumstances are to their efforts. Characters are not made to roll in circumstances where success seems obvious due to raw skill or power. Why are some player characters half fae or angel? Why do they have Pokemon and Daemons? I'm pretty sure that shit ain't canonical. Everything you do in game has the potential to permanently affect your character. In past events, characters have visited places like the world of Pokemon and His Dark Materials, and in the end, some of them have remained Pokemon trainers or have retained spirit animals. Even more esoterically, some characters have undergone reality bending experiences that resulted in them being partly infused with the essences of other species. Stuff like this happens all the time. LC doesn't shy away from having changes to characters last, both good and bad. Aspects gained through events remain as plot hooks for your characters, and help to draw them into the setting.