[Artifact] Carrol Goes to Wonderland

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gaia_crown [ Day 1 - The Tulgey Woods: ]

Finding the location of Wonderland is something which happens by accident.

The forest itself is seemingly unending, perpetually dark but with the grass and trees lit from within by strange ethereal light. The sky overhead where glimpsed through the branches is an impossible black and there is no moon.

Everything in the forest itself is not quite right. The flora and fauna are not like anything Carrol has seen before...

gaia_crown [ The Mushroom Patch ]

You come to a grove of strange mushrooms interspersed with signs which state EAT ME. There seems to be no way forward until you do just that.

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10. A brilliant white mushroom that glitters like stars, it tastes like nothing ever tasted, it makes the eater relive a time when they felt wonder. Minimum of 800 words.

He knew it was the most predictable reaction he possibly could have had to this place, but Carrol was still so ******** jazzed to be here that he didn't care. Amityville was apparently his happily ever after, where he was meant to be and s**t. He'd found something new to see every day, but never anything like this. No, this forest was just... weird. And on top of that, he couldn't actually remember how he'd gotten here.

Carrol supposed it was pretty enough, all glowy and dark at the same time. In spite of his many eyes, the boil was having trouble making out his surroundings, which certainly wasn't helping him stay out of the way of everything that seemed keen on smacking into him. The mosquitotters and lionightengales in particular were hell bent on buffeting him as they flew past, as if they didn't know how to use their wings, with the trees and vines getting in on the action every so often as well. It was a wonder that he noticed the mushrooms at all.

They were intermittent at first, more of a smattering than a carpet, but he hadn't wandered very much farther past the first when he noticed the a half-buried sign. EAT ME. Carrol snickered.

"Eat me. Heh." His voice was muffled and the number of animals smacking into him had decreased, but the mushroom count only grew. So did the number of little signs. There was no end to them.

"Hey!" he said to no one. "How do I leave?"

Predictably, all was silent.

Carrol tried to keep up a calm facade. He made the distinct effort to chill. Nothing worked. Soon he was kicking down the signs, throwing rocks, anything to alleviate his crushing boredom.

"DO YOU WANT ME TO EAT THE THING?" His shouts were only slightly more audible than his normal voice had been, but he kept at it anyway. "WHICH ONE?" He took a seat, tugging one of the signs out of the ground and using it as a shroom excavator. There were blue ones, purple ones, red ones, green ones, and...

"Whoa."

The mushroom he had just unearthed looked like it had stolen all the stars that were no longer in the sky. For a kid whose attention was so easily grabbed by anything and everything, it was a surprise that one little fungus was holding it so effectively.

"Gotta be this one they want," he muttered, closing his fingers around the glow. Carrol squinted as he brought it to his lips and jammed it past them, an expression of curious distrust narrowing his features further. It didn't last. The flavor that burst across his tongue was better than anything he had ever put in his mouth over the course of his relatively short life, and for once, Carrol could find no words.

He fell into a dream within a dream, slipping past rage, despair, and love to land in a world of wonder. It was perhaps fitting that he bypassed the baser emotions that weren't rooted in 'inappropriately ecstatic', considering he rarely felt any of those other things anyway.

Carrol stood and brushed at the seat of his pants when it finally felt like he was no longer moving, but instead of finding himself in a forest, he was buffeted by a wave of nostalgia instead. This was his corner of the RV he'd grown up in, his thin, hard mattress strewn with half-melted action figures and saltine crumbs. And there, sitting at the fold-down table between the fridge and the driver's seat, was his mother. She had her back to him, but he would have recognized that wig anywhere. It was blonder, longer, and scragglier than his own hair, and from this angle it seemed to cover her entire scalp. The chinstrap gave her away easily, however, at least to him.

"Mom?"

"Mm? Carrol? Hey, kid! Come here, I've got things."

Things. Stories. Carrol loved his mother's stories. He flopped onto the chair across from her and rested his chin on his hands.

"I've been with the humies. Here." She pulled out a tallish cylinder that crumbled to dust on the table as she set it down.

"What was it?"

"Not what. Who. People called him Thomas. He gave his life so other humans could live. They pulled his head right off and sucked his juices straight outta his neck."

Carrol leaned forward, captivated. He dreamed of the day when he too could become a Trick-or-Treater, when he would venture out into the human world and bring back great treasures that would warp and melt under the pumpkin sun, leaving behind a thin layer of dust they could never quite clear away.

"What else?"

Mom grinned and rummaged in her bag. She rummaged for a long time. And just as Carrol was about to lose interest, she—  

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gaia_crown [ Day 2 – The Winding Forest ]

After a lot more wandering through the forest, following endless winding paths, Carrol ends up in a darker, more sinister part of the woods, the path once again blocked by gnarled trees and thorns making progression difficult. In the forest, it is impossible to see the sky and any glimpse of it is pitch black. Already claustrophobic it only becomes more so.

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2. Cat - You end up on a wildly twisting path through the forest, seeing the same sights over and over. You are certain you are lost and that no matter what direction you turn you always find yourself back at the same place. Before you appears a large smile, followed in turn by a striped and sinister looking cat. No one else in your group can see him but you and he speaks to you about one of your deepest secrets. You find yourself temporarily driven a little mad by the aura of the creature and you turn upon your teammates or self. This is mercifully temporary and after several minutes sanity returns once again. Minimum of 500 words.

She disappeared.

Carrol was alone.

He sat at the center of a perfect circle of tilled earth, the sky above him as empty as the eyes of a corpse. For a breath or two he was hollow, scooped out and ready to be filled with misery, but the feeling fled with the taste of the mushroom on his tongue. Mom would be back. He hadn't spent the last four years telling himself that for it to be a lie now.

The monster pushed himself to his feet, sweeping his hair back into a gravity-defying wave as he walked forward. Backward. Whatever. It was lonely here, cold and twisty and oppressive. Carrol didn't like it. He continued plowing along in the direction he had deemed 'out', moving slower and slower as his tiny feet navigated roots and brambles and his tiny hands cleared vines away from his face. He hummed, making up songs about pie and ghost dogs and classes he was fairly certain Amityville would never teach.

"Boobs 101!" he shouted as he nearly tripped. "Wiggly, jiggly, all day every daaaaaayyyyy! Girls, guys, ghost dogs n' pies! Everybody's got 'em rock 'em sock 'eeemmmmmmmmmm!"

Carrol fell silent quite suddenly. Somewhere in the world, someone was grateful. He squinted three of his four eyes at a nearby tree, noting a knot on its trunk that struck a familiar chord. He continued on a little farther, and sure enough, he came upon the sock that had previously been dangerproofing his tail, half buried in the dirt. He didn't remember taking it off, but there it was, and here he stood, one tail cozy short. He'd been here before.

"Ha ha ha. Very ********' fu—"

He took a step away from the floating... teeth... that appeared in front of him, sharply pointing at the glowing smile as he let out an involuntary giggle.

"H... hey!" The space around the disembodied grin solidified into a small, blue-violet cat, a Cheshire he thought, and Carrol's own smile widened to match the animal's as well as it could. "What're you doing here, man? Do you know the way out?"

"The way out is either forward or up."

"Up?" The boil looked to the sky, unable to see anything but oppressive darkness.

"Or forward. You are almost to the castle that way. Up would be much more difficult to reach."

"'Kay." He was still focused on the sky. "I could see that." Carrol's attention shifted back to the Cheshire, his grin firmly in place. "So, I guess I'll get on to the castle then. Right?" He wasn't the best at reading people or puzzling out their intentions, but even he could gather there was something the cat wasn't telling him.

"You... touch yourself at night." The creature's signature smile was gone, impossibly consumed by its lips. Instead of appearing sinister, it just seemed confused and mildly put out.

"Um. Yeah, okay. I 'touch myself' during the day too, prudester. What's that got to do with anything?"

The Cheshire sighed. "Look, kid. I'm supposed to drive people crazy by being spooky and revealing their biggest secrets, but all your biggest secrets are hella dumb. So, just... go on then. You'll probably have enough trouble up ahead to excuse me not causing you any."

"Trouble? What kind of trouble?"  

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gaia_crown [ Day 3 – The Red Queen’s Castle ]
Route 1 - Painting the roses red
You come across a group of people sized playing cards frantically trying to paint white roses red. They enlist you to help.

Roll 1d20, if you roll above 7 then you are successful in helping them and they approvingly let you pass into the castle out of gratitude, if you roll below this then you must choose one of the below two tasks to complete to proceed.

He turned to where the cat had been, but it had gone the way of everything else around here. Clearly, this was starting to become A Thing.

"Hey!"

Silence.

"CAT!"

Nothing.

"I'M TOUCHING MYSELF RIGHT NOW!"

He wasn't. Carrol wondered if the Cheshire would come back if he really did start jackin' it, but he wasn't quite curious enough to find out. Besides... castle. That'd be fun.

He continued walking, the features of his surroundings barely diverging from ever-present trees, vines, brambles, more trees and vines, brambles, and vines... until they did. Between one footfall and the next, the space in front of him opened wide, revealing a sprawling castle that reached high into the gloom. A trio of very large playing cards stood near the heavily barred gate, each brandishing a paintbrush stained red. Miraculously, he managed to approach them without being noticed. It probably had something to do with the intensity of their bickering.

"Maury! If you don't stop dripping on the stems, I swear—"

"Ho s**t, you guys! You're cards!"

They turned as one, and even though they didn't have faces where they were meant to, Carrol still felt like they were looking at him funny.

"Yes," Seven of Hearts said, his voice slow and sneery. "Who are you?" Instead of a proper mouth, the card had a cynical horizontal slice in its place that was only visible when it spoke.

"I'm Carrol! What's in the castle? Can I get in there, or...?"

"Don't answer him, Lysander."

"The Queen is in the castle. And you might earn a way inside if you help us paint."

Carrol glanced between the cards, their brushes, and the crimson-spattered flowers.

"Nah."  

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Route 2 - The castle maze -
Another way into the castle is via the castle’s enormous hedge maze, this way is perilous and difficult but can have hidden rewards. You need to roll twice successfully to pass.

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6 - Success - You hear arguing around a corner which leads you in the right direction.

Carrol hadn't anticipated that finding another way into the castle would be so difficult, but as it turned out, it totally was. He had figured the cards were holed up in the back because they were jerks, so all he had to do was go around the front and, being that he was not a jerk, he'd be welcomes with open arms. Instead, there was a maze. Of course.

He sighed at the sight of it, then half a minute later shrugged slightly and headed in. Carrol heard voices almost immediately, a muffled argument that reminded him of the cards, and he continued moving toward them, ducking around a corner just as something large and hairy entered the corridor he had just left.  

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1 - Success - You mentally map out the maze as you go, successfully remembering the path you need to take.

In hindsight, he wasn't quite sure how he did it. He didn't think much about this part at all once it was done, beyond blurting "and then there was a maze!" when he told people about it, so any further details were lost over time anyway.

Somehow Carrol made it through, taking mental notes when he found dead ends and losing himself in the monotony of left right left left right right left until he was free. He still didn't know what his goal was here, but he knew forward progress, and the doors in front of him were definitely that.  

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gaia_crown [ Final Day - The Queen’s Throne Room. ]
gaia_angelright The red queen’s throne room is enormous and is linked to a vast network of guarded rooms and corridors, at the end of these rooms is the treasure room where the valuable and often stolen treasures are stowed away by the selfish queen.

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4 - Success

They looked too heavy to move, but Carrol managed the doors easily enough once he put his back into it. Unfortunately, getting inside did nothing to clarify where he was meant to go next, and he wandered the hall for a time until he barreled into an angry young woman in a full suit of armor. She shouted an alarm and the boil ran, faster than he ever had before. Whatever his goal, he knew it wasn't to get caught by her.

He ended up ducking into a dimly lit space, gently closing the door behind him and waiting, breathless, for someone to follow.

No one did. He was alone.  

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The monster spun to face the room itself, all of his eyes going wide at the sight. There was treasure here, not just silver and gold, but odd little trinkets too, each singled out on an elaborate pedestal. He passed a crown, a pipe, a weird, spiky bracelet, before he paused near a bell, of all things. It was small, filigreed, like something a fancy cat would wear, and as soon as he touched it...

He woke up.

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4. Jingling Bell: A neat little cat bell on a collar.

Status Effect A clear ringing bell which calls forth a ghostly cat for twenty minutes, this can be pet but cannot be hurt.
Battle effect: Heals 5 HP to all friendly participants per battle/ per RP.