[Open | Quest 1/3] The Freaks of La Carnival

[Miki Stalin]

LA CARNIVAL (1/3)

Welcome to the La Carnival, a carnival held secretly underground around the October month. This special carnival only happens in the October month making it a small mini quest event, it's open to the people who are willing to travel under London. If you can first find it, but that is the least of your worries. Once arriving they have many amazing acts that they wish to introduce to the public who come and watch their lively show. The FREAKSHOW of La Carnival, is their best act and only a few will ever get to actual see them as they only preform for the mightiness of players. It's such a killer show.... literally if you don't watch out.

Look for poster around the town that give little hints pointing in the direction of the carnival.

500 Words per post

Total Monsters: 4

Reward: 500g | People needed : 3 or 4

template by Sammy @ Adox 2.0

[Sophia]

Sophia awoke from her sleep when she felt the warmth of sunlight touching her cheeks through the opened window beside her. Sluggishly, she emerged from her cocoon of bed sheets and gave a great big yawn and then rubbed the corners of her eyes. Her long blonde hair was matted and tangled, and her pink pajamas with the pattern of red hearts she normally wears to bed, were wrinkled up with some of the buttons unfastened and exposing her stomach. She seemed to always have this disheveled appearance from her nightly habit of flailing around in her sleep. She doesn't know why her body does it, and since she hasn't receive any complaints about it from the other residents in the inn, she doesn't think much of it. Though she'd wished that her pajamas stayed intact, she doesn't want a repeat of what happened one month ago. Her face flushed red as she thought back to that moment when her eyes looked down at her exposed midriff. "I just wanted to greet the people outside that morning.." At least for right now it was just her midriff exposed.

She quickly fastened the buttons to her pajamas before inching closer to the window to get a view of the sun rising in the distance. She smiled at the sight of it, and then looked down below where she could see the brown and yellowed leaves cluttering the streets. Her blue eyes then noticed someone in the street right by the inn. After a moment of scanning them, she smiled when she could recognize their large burly stature, their yellow and purple kimono, and their wildly exaggerated and bushy topknot. "Mornin' Tobias!" she shouted cheerfully to the samurai from her window sill, which caused him to freeze up and drop his rake. A couple of seconds went by before he turned around and looked up to her window. "C'mon! I'm Kaminariryu!" he shouted back balling his large hairy fists, "In this world, I'm not Tobias, I'm Kaminariryu! The Thunder Dragon Samurai!!" he said, shouting louder than before. Sophia chucked at the samurai's reaction to being called his real name, instead of the name he had chosen for himself. He was one of her former students, back when she used to teach online courses about Britain's medieval history. And when Elder Tale was just a game, they played together along with some of the other students. It been awhile since then and so far she manage to find a handful of both her past and present students in this Elder Tale based world.

"I'm sorry, I'm just so used to calling you by that name. And that other name has way too many syllables to remember; you know how I am with Japanese." She smiled at him sweetly while she spoke. The clearly frustrated samurai closed his eyes and let out a heavy sigh. "It's alright, anyway, I think I found something that you might be interested in, professor." Upon hearing him said that, Sophia quirked her brow looked at him with questioning eyes, "W-what is it!?" She asked with excitement trebling in her voice. "You'll see, after I'm done with these leaves." and with that, Kaminariryu returned to part away the leaves in the street. "OK!" Sophia said with glee, before retreating back inside of her room. She would hop out of bed, cleaned herself up, hastily discarded her pajamas and equipped her plate mail. Ready to go outside, she went downstairs and to the kitchen and dining area of the inn. Sitting at one of the tables facing the window was one of her other former students. She was a dwarfven cleric, she had on a blue turban with a feather shaped brooch pinned in front of it, and she had on a matching blue robe that covered her entire body. "Morning Professor!" said the cleric. "Morning Ayva, how are you sweetie?" Sophia said, smiling warmly as she returned her greeting. She could easily remember Ayva's character's name, because after all, it was only four letters and was easy to pronounce, unlike Tobias Kaminariryu. 

"I'm fine. I slept well last night and I feel so energized! Might be this world's mechanics or something." Ayva then afterwards takes a swig from her glass of squeezed freshly orange juice, provided by the bartender, since it was too early to serve alcohol. And also on that table was a plate with some eggs and a big meaty slab of bacon on top. "I dunno, I don't think I had a good night's rest in a while." Sophia replied. "Ah! Don' worry about that! You won't be needing any tonight~" said Ayva, in a voice that was almost singing. But before Sophia could ask why, Kaminariryu came in through the door. He set the rake aside and approached the table where Ayva and Sophia were. "We have the directions to a carnival tonight." Kaminariryu said with a grin shot at Sophia, who was wide-eyed with excitement. "Really!? Where is it?" Sophia asked grinning ear to ear as the thought of going to a carnival ran through her mind. The music, the crowds, stunts and the most importantly, the carnival food! "You know those weird blank black papers all over town? I had a scribe look at it and apparently they're advising some event that happens only once during the autumn season." Kaminariryu said, taking the black posters out of his inventory, and along with pages of the decoded message. There were just enough for each of the adventurers at the table. "I would say it would  be crummy advising, if many people weren't already set on going to this thing." He gave a light chuckle.

"Alright! Let's get ready for a good night on the town." Sophia happily snatches up one of the decoded versions of the flyer from the table. With everyone holding the decoded poster advertisement inside of their inventory, they planned to meet up over at where it was being held. the entrance to the underground subway ruins. On that night, Sophia gathered her equipment and headed off to the entrance to the underground. The female guardian upon reaching the outside of the meeting spot, and realizing that she was the only one there, she walked over to that had a flat top, and sat on it as she waited for her friends to show up. 

---

Word Count: 1064
Tags: Miki Stalin

[Deleted]

The seasons are changing within the world of Log Horizon, and in the city of Londinium it was easy to tell. The trees were slowly changing colors, with leaves consuming the ground itself. The winds were more stronger and a lot more cooler, causing some of the players to put on more appropriate clothing for the up coming seasons, sadly Alice wasn't one of those players. Slumping her way through the cities main streets with her arms hanging outward, with her body hung over in disparity. Bags grew under her eyes, being quite unproductive, within the last few days, has gotten herself pretty bored on what to do next. She didn't really have many allies or friends in general within the game itself. Every time she thinks about going through her friends list on the interface, she gets disappointed and sits around mopping all day. But this day was different, for the most part she was actually outside but what her plans were even she didn't know what that would bring. But for the most part she was looking for something fun to part take in, that might be found around the city. Maybe some guilds were holding an event or maybe there were large parties hoping to go out of the city, either way something free of value would have been nice enough for her and her wallet.

As she continued forward she watched as the players that were around were in more larger groups then usual, maybe there was a event happening in the process. No one would take on events solo, especially with the higher possibility of a greater outcome with more people. She placed her hand onto her chin pondering at what the event was about, there didn't seem like anything new had effected the city itself and she wasn't notified directly of anything happening. She continued to walk through the streets being more observing the areas looking for anything suspicious. Walking around, she'd notice that most of the players had some kind of paper within their hand before walking toward the exits of the city and she didn't notice till now but the buildings surrounding the city were covered by black sheets of paper. She was curious as to what these papers represented, pulling one down she'd flip it back and forth, to find nothing on both sides, a plain piece of paper. It was pretty suspicious. She surmised that it might need a scribe to interpret this kind of paper, maybe they have an ability to see what normal players can't. With that a slight jingle that would pierce the ear drums, she couldn't pin point where it would have come from. The sound went by so quickly that she wasn't even thinking about it. She shrugged it aside as the importance was left to the special piece of paper. In a chibi form of herself, she'd raise the normal piece of paper in the air as her first part of the quest has now begun and she was off to find a scribe.

"So...you want me to check this out for ya, huh?" The slithering sound of a player who's crafting class was a scribe. Alice would stand infront of him focused more onto the paper rather then the scribe. A human from his outer appearance and a summoners insignia was placed beside his IC's name. He scratched his chin as his fishy eyes started to shift back and forth, toward  her and the piece of paper. "I'll do it for ya, forrrr...100g. How's that sound?" He said in a confident tone, holding up his index finger toward her and a smile. She puffed her cheeks outward as she scrunched her face. Feeling ripped off especially for something event related but events are usually the times where event items are worth twice as much, but the actual items gained, not something that....should help them get to the event. She doesn't even know if this piece of paper meant anything, it could be a normal piece of paper someone put up to trick newer players. She looked up to the human summoner with her puppy dog eyes beating down on him. He would slowly turn flush his face as he'd try to back away but it was to late before he gave up. "Al..Alright. You can see the message when held in darkness. It's glow in the dark text. Jeez" He said scratching the back of his head while handing the piece of paper back to her. "Wow, that was easy....I didn't even get to use the twins..." She said in a surprised tone as she looked down at her chest. Taking the paper from the man with his mouth hung open far enough to touch the ground, she walked away to the nearest building.

She entered a nearby inn and asked the landers permission to use on the rooms for free just to have the lights turned off as she read the message. They agreed with it as long as she didn't make a mess and she went into the nearest room. Closing the door behind her, she'd close the curtains and the darkness would slowly take over. She took out the piece of paper and watched as the text begun to shine on the piece of paper.

" For thou to take presence upon our happy little show,
First they shall take a trip or two,
Head through the gates toward the forest,
And down the hole of darkness,
There ye shall find, the Carnival of the Freaks. "

The door would open by one of the landers that owned the inn, curious as to what she was doing for so long. A she turned on the lights, she'd jump back from Alice's frightening face, Link. The message didn't tell her much as to how to get there, as it was pretty vague, it didn't even say which gate to go through let alone where the hole of darkness was. Leaving the inn, she assumed this was the reason why many of the groups were still inside the city, much more safer to walk through the city to get through the gates to find the cave rather then walking through the forests themselves and running into monsters that could make the search last longer. For now she headed toward the southern gate, to her she assumed it was the more logical place to go to start the search and hopefully she might find another that is also in the need of a party or help in finding the cave itself.

Word Count: 1101

[Tyonis]

Tyonis never attended a carnival in real life. There were always a myriad of reasons why. Work and school being chief among them. So when he caught wind of some secret gathering known only as the FREAKSHOW, he finally decided to push aside some time to watch at least one or two performances, especially when all of his leads hinted that the carnival came around only once a year.

But after gathering more information about it, the gamer in him realized that it was no mere celebration, but rather, a uniquely presented Quest of some sort. Upon that realization, Tyonis doubled his efforts. Not only a carnival, but a yearly Quest event? He was sold. The carnival might net him a few contacts to add, friends and allies were sorely needed.

His investigation led him to a trail of faceless posters. After dealing with a particularly shady Scribe, the Samurai to made for the London Underground by way of the southern gate.

The way was, surprisingly, bare of practically all life. The streets were empty and dimly lit. An alien silence pervaded throughout the air. The stagnation weighed heavily with every step. Every so often, the shadows would rustle and a chill wind would grace his shoulder. The darkness loomed over him at times and he felt very small in comparison to the shadows that quivered in the weak torchlight.

"I thought this was high-fantasy not the fantasy-horror." Tyonis muttered aloud, occasionally glancing over his shoulder. Eventually, he snapped and began collecting the blank posters as he strolled along. He rolled them tightly and thrust it into the very next torch he came across.

"Yeah, screw this, I have made fire!"

He palmed his face rather hard at his stupidity. This was October. And that meant all manner of horror and suspense-themed events. This carnival was no exception. He marched onward, his poster-torch lighting his path and keeping the darkness at bay.

After what seemed like an eternity, the Samurai arrived at the southern gate. Just in time, because his torch burned out only a few seconds prior.

But now that he was here, Tyonis hesitated to continue on alone. The Underground's mobs ranged from levels 5-30, discounting any randomly generated Elite monsters. In other words, it was best to stick with a party when venturing below the city. How a bunch of Landers managed to carve a niche of safety large enough to host a carnival baffled the Samurai. Or perhaps it wasn't all that safe to begin with. The more and more he learned about the carnival the more he began to think it was not all fun and games. Those damned shadows were getting taller again.

Unfortunately for him, there really was no one there, save for two women. One seated atop a chipped boulder. The other was just arriving, like him. Well, it was better than going by himself, Tyonis thought, smiling despite his recent spook. He emerged from the thick shadows, his hand raised to greet the pair and gain their attention.

"Hey," he opened his inventory to pull out a poster he still couldn't read. "Either of you interested in going to this carnival?" He asked, pointing at no particular spot.

(WC: 537)

[Miki Stalin]

Miki found herself looking for the location and starting place of a new quest that only happens, around the October season. It was going to be a once and a lifetime chance due to the fact that she maybe out of the game and back at her home town. She saw the black posters all around the city of London, she pulled one down it had no words telling where to find the starting location of the quest. She started to think that maybe using a selective skill you would maybe able to decode the starting place; she saw many people running around the city and talking about the black paper. She even heard that a scribe would be able to solve it, she had the scribe skill so she looked at it trying to uncover it's mysteries and after a hour some standing in front of a street lamp she decided to move. When she moved towards the dark area between each lamp, she started to see words. That is when it hit her, the only way to see the poster was in complete darkness. She walked in ally beside the inn and another irreverent building, she uncovered the words and started to copy them onto a clean sheet of paper. This took her about a few seconds before she was done, and on her marry way to the starting place of the quest.

The poster itself told about a carnival, this carnival was only going to happen once this year due it being a different act each year. Miki was not going to miss her chance to see some of the acts a long with maybe getting some nice items. She started to walk to the gate of London where you can reach the underground subway or what is left of the underground subway, it was going to be difficult trying to reach the carnival due to the random monster attacks in the subway. The range of monster level was five to thirty and if an elite was to spawn then Miki more than likely will die in the subway, this was a fear that most players had so it was going to be smarter to travel in a group. When she slowly made her way to the entrance of the subway she spotted a few players outside maybe waiting to enter the subway; they all seemed to have the black poster paper so they were also trying to enter the subway to do the quest for the carnival.

Miki came to the decision that maybe it would be best to travel with them if they where willing, she did not mind taking the lead and tanking. Two out of the three people where tanking classes so when push comes to shove they would maybe be able to get out of trouble and make it through the small challenges ahead of them.

" I guess we all are or were planning on going inside the subway. I think it would be best if we all maybe group up and go inside." Miki tried to give an supportive impression, with out trying to sound to too desperate for their help.

" I mean you don't have to if you don't want too, this is for the La Carnival quest which the first part of the quest has started since we all managed to make it here with out any type of trouble. This completion of the quest is going to take place in the subway into we make it too the carnival footing ground."

Miki started to send them group invites and if they accepted than maybe Miki could make a new group of friends. She needed friends and it's been while since she tried to make any new ones, so this was going to be a double bonus for them all "also I'm Miki and it's nice to meet you guys". Trying to sound as friendly as possible, with her introduction she started to walk to the stairs of the sub way, she soon started to here music. It was awkward do to the fact that it was below ground, it was carnival music. She did not know if she was the only one who could hear it due to her toggle ability so she decided to stay quite walk in the direction of the music and if they did join the group she could inform them of this toggle ability. That will come in handy when they are down in the dark subway tunnel.

Tag: Sophia, @saiichi, Tyonis

Word Count: 755

Relax god is in control watch the dot take your meds obey my demands trust my dog time for surgery. Last time was the last time, this time you're 100 percent.

(C) ELLIE @ GANGNAM STYLE

[Sophia]

While she sat atop of the boulder, Sophia tried to entertain herself by looking at the starry sky above. Since the technology in this world wasn't very advanced, artificial lighting was a rarity and thanks to that, she wasn't hindered from seeing the true beauty of the night's sky. From looking at the stars in the sky, she could  see that they shared the same constellations like the ones back in the real world. She brought up her finger and pointed up at each star and traced with her finger to another one as she tired to identify which constellations they belonged to. Through her method, she managed to identify some of them, and said their names aloud without knowing it. "Pegasus.. Pisces.. Um, Capricorn!"  whenever she found one and was able to correctly identify it, she would giggle softly to herself. When she got to Capricorn, she stopped and remembered back in the real world, they gave their son a telescope on his fifth birthday. On the same night they used it out on their balcony. She wasn't as knowledgeable in constellations as her husband was, but she learned from him, together with their son about them. They spent that night looking for as many as they could. It was one of the few times they let their son stay up late, mostly because it was his birthday and they were too immersed in the fun of hunting down the constellations.

"I hope you're doing OK boys." she said, while she stared up at the stars and gave a heavy sigh afterwards. She took a moment to look away from the sky as she began to feel sadden by the sight of the stars. But when she did, she saw from a distance that a humanoid silhouette was approaching the underground subway entrance. She took a second to try and determine who it was. But then noted that form didn't match either of her students. Tobias, or as he would rather called--'Kaminariryu', is much taller and wider and Ayva is smaller and squat . Either way form would be revealed by the light of the street light's lantern. The person appeared as a young woman she hasn't seen before. "Oh! Hello there."  said Sophia and gave a warm smile to the young lady. But soon Sophia would learn that she wasn't the only one, as more people stepped into the street lantern's light near the entrance. The next one was a young man in red with white hair. She nodded when she heard him asking if anyone had an interest in going to the carnival. "I'm here for it too." she said back to him and smiled at him. And finally the last person to show up was a young red-haired lady in armor. She, just like the others, wanted to form a party for this event. "I like the sound of that." She slid off the boulder she was perched on top of and landed on her feet; the plate mail of her armor clamored from her quick and sudden movements. She made her way over to the group of adventurers and stopped and introduced herself, "Hello and good evening. I'm Sophia and I would love to join with all of you. It's better that we group up. I don't think it's possible to enjoy a carnival alone." She said to them with a sweet smile.

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Word Count: 567
Tags: Miki Stalin @saiichi Tyonis

[Steel]

"What should I do today?" Steel asked himself as he walked around the town. He didn't exactly feel like hunting today so he decided to just walk around. At one point, he sat down on a bench and initiated a telepathy chat with a friend of his in Akihabara. (note: their conversation would be in Japanese)

"Steel, what's up? It's been a while since I've last contacted you." The friend said upon answering the call.

"Yeah it has. How are things in Akihabara?" Steel asked his friend.

"As you can imagine, things got chaotic at first. But things have gotten better now that some of these bad guilds are gone. Anyway, sorry for not being able to talk long but I gotta get going, I'm going hunting with some friends in a bit. See ya!"

"Yeah, talk to you later." Steel said before cutting off communications. He began to feel a little lonely since he didn't have any of his friends from the Japanese server to party with. It was then he saw a poster that caught his eye. The poster was talking about a carnival. "A carnival huh? This should be interesting." Steel said to himself as he found a flyer talking about the said event. Steel decided to take a closer look considering that it might be a good opportunity to meet some new people that were also going. He then frowned a little after seeing the danger part on the flyer. Looks like I'll have to find a group to go with. This is going to be hard. He thought to himself remembering how terrible he was with groups. Maybe somebody I know will be around. Well, that's wishful thinking. He then started off in the direction the poster indicated. For a while, he followed the directional hints the various posters pointed out and found himself running all over the place. At one point, he found himself next to what appeared to be a grocery store of some sort, probably recently built and just two minutes later, he found himself in front of some suspicious looking food stand. Looking at the strange looking food which seemed English in origin mixed with some other unidentified thing just reinforced Steel's dislike for English styled food. It was then he remembered when a classmate of his back in  the real world asked him to try a dish. Upon trying it, he fell unconscious from the flavor. When the man running the food stall offered some to him, Steel immediately refused and ran away. While following the path created by the posters, he found himself around even more weird things. I've never seen stuff like this in Japan or the Japan server. Steel thought with a sweat drop. Maybe it's just something from the game. But then, why do they need to put in such things. Then again, that makes things like underground carnivals interesting. It seems suspicious looking but interesting. Steel kept having these types of thoughts as he continued to run through the area trying to find the location. He was practically running through the whole city. How many of these posters are there!?! Steel exclaimed in his mind with some annoyance. Sure, he was more athletic in his avatar's body, but there were limits as to how much more he'd be able to run. A few minutes later, he found himself at a boulder. At the boulder, there was some people gathered. One of the people to his relief was someone he knew. "You guys also here for the carnival?" He asked the group as he approached them. "If it's okay, I'd like to join you."

OOC: I guess this takes place after that other RP Sophia