#especially since the campaign begins with the circus and ends with the whole final arc leading up to lucien— 👀

[dent-de-leon]

every time CR talks about each animated series being an adaptation and how the plot changes to suit the narrative—and thinking of how Taliesin said that his favorite thing about the animated show is getting the chance to change things up and surprise old fans…….CR if you keep Mollymauk alive longer in animated Nein I would be,, forever grateful--

[the-idiot-party]

The Circus - Conclusion

Hooo boy, long post! Sorry it’s a bit clunky, but a lot happened since the last part of The Circus Arc.

After we all got nice and introduced to the performers, we decided to do some final touches, like getting snacks and balloons, before taking our seats and watching the show.

It started off fantastically, with colored smoke and lights filling the tent, our favorite ringleader’s voice echoing out to announce the start of the show and narrate the performances.

First, Angelica. Her scene was set with ice and frost, the air turned cold and snow fell, landing and disappearing rather than melting. It was the climate of the Arm Mountains, where Angelica had come from, and where all sorts of fighters trained. Angelica herself was putting on a fierce show, a coordinated fight that kept the audience on the edge of their seats until her performance was over.

Then, the ringleader welcomes the diametric duo, Hanny and Formaggio! Their performance brought a much more tropical climate to match that of the Malakas islands, forged in fire and water, dangerous and beautiful like the two actors breathing fire and bubbles. When their time was up, they made it off stage with Hanny a little late, but it was okay because she’s adorable.

The next performance was very, very different from the whimsical one that came before it. The stage was set in the homeland of most of our player characters, where the patterns of life and death had their strongest hold. There were old gods, new gods, sprawling plant life that came and went as it pleased, a measured chaos that became the heartbeat of the Clemented Capital.

So who else to present it, than the very son of a god? Giorno came first, the embodiment of light that soared overhead with a song from heaven trailing after him.

And then there was Cherri, the yin to Giorno’s yang, the inevitable darkness that precedes and supersedes the light. She had a melody of her own, in sharp contrast with Giorno’s, and despite that…

They fit perfectly together.

Two halves of a whole.

A harmony that disagreed with itself, fought with itself, until either side was at its strongest.

It filled the tent.

The lights cut out.

Fresh’s mom called.

We paused the campaign.

This happened at least one more time immediately after she hung up.

And when we came back, the song had ended much sooner than anyone had imagined it would, and Giorno was singing alone.

Something had gone wrong, and it wasn’t until the lights came back on that we saw Cherri lying on the floor, completely passed out, and a creature just a couple feet away.

It was horrific, a mockery of a man with appendage shaped flesh and a false face sitting atop the forehead of its real one. In its hand was a balloon, or at least something that looked like a balloon, with a fetus in it. Horrifying enough? Not yet, it’s not. There’s more.

Just that, though, was enough for the danger to set in and the stands to panic and leave the tent.

Immediately, we knew what we had to do. We had to fight this thing because everybody was in danger, especially one child that the creature had locked its sights on. Most of the cast members had opted to get the people out of the tent to safety, but Formaggio and Angelica stayed behind to help us. So we rolled initiative.

First up was Uce, who along with Lia, was feeling a burning sensation where she’d tied a balloon on her wrist and in her throat. She opted to cut the balloon off and distract the Balloon Man from the child, which worked! Fortunate for the child. Not for her.

Next was Lia, who decided to get the child out of dodge and identify the Balloon Man for what it was, a creature, and she also found a lot of illusion magic.

Cedar used his turn to get closer to the creature, but there wasn’t much to do.

The creature, distracted, went after Uce.

Angelica decided to throw an axe at it and subsequently discover that it’s nigh immune to slashing damage.

Formaggio, if I remember right, used the strongest fire attack he had and did massive damage while subsequently using up its use.

The fight went in that order from beginning to end, the highlights being:

- Uce figured out that the creature had a connection to all of the kids with balloons. Whatever pain he felt, they felt, and they were under some sort of trance. She decided to warn her teammates about the balloons and advised them to try and get those off of the children.

- Lia ignored the warning and did not remove her own balloon until her next turn, but helped Formaggio destroy the children’s balloons.

- The creature grappled Uce and tried to insert the children’s souls into these toddler sized dolls of the ringmaster they’d gotten, but Uce, in one of her darkest hours, remembered that there was a lot of illusion magic going on. She cast Dispel Magic. Potentially game breaking because of the nature of what the heroes were fighting, but because it was a clever move, it canceled out the animated dolls.

- The creature started eating Uce and knocked her out.

- That shady drow elf that showed up before made his second appearance and offered, because it was really his fault that this creature was here at all, to revive the near dead gnome.

- Lia and Cedar decided, while Uce was BEING EATEN, to have an argument with the drow elf over whether or not he’d monitored his creature well enough. (He hadn’t.)

- Lia cast a wicked Fireball and took the rest of the creature’s HP down to none.

- Because she’s a wild magic sorcerer, she ended up going into what was another realm, right where Uce was trying to fight for her consciousness. She was doing just fine, but Lia helped her up nonetheless and the two of them returned soon.

Once the fight was over, we were left to get our bearings. The drow elf had disappeared, so we were given medical attention (with the exception of Angelica, who decided instead to look for her axes).

Most minor wounds were treated, and Uce was brought back to stability before Armorus showed up. He was a mess - usually, he would be seen decked out in bright colors, fishnets, skirts, bows, a corset, and of course makeup to go with it. Usually, he would be flamboyant and full of energy to bother Lia and Cedar with.

Today, he was neither. He showed up in drab clothing, simple makeup, hair undone, and he looked worried. It only made sense, he was in charge of the entertainment center where all of this had gone down; the event was ruined and people were jeopardized.

And then he saw us. Most of us were fine, but Uce being a friend of his and very wounded, decided to try and hide her shoulder and arm where she’d been bitten to avoid freaking Armorus out. Turned out to be a wise idea because when she failed, the man broke down into tears and sobs. After a few attempts to reassure him that Uce was fine, he was sort of pulled away by guards and it kicked off a pretty casual end of the night.

We ended up deciding to grab a bite to eat with Hanny, Formaggio, and one other actor, so that Lia (On another episode of Lia + wild magic, she ended up unable to get drunk for about a month) could drink Formaggio under the table for all of the stuff he was carrying on his person.

We also heard June getting chewed out by some unknown person for playing a part in that balloon creature getting loose.

That was just about all we got up to, though. All we did after that was rest up and prepare for the next day.