Xunzar

The Dark Carnival

No need to worry, dear Cas. *hides vivisection tools* Come out, come out. *childlike giggle*

The Dark Carnival

Baba paused and frowned. "I . . . can't. Not now, anyway." Her scowl grew dark at having to admit it. It was almost as though the mask of her old, terrible self were partially visible in the expression's cruelty and spite. "I could when it was properly a ghost. Now it is . . . something else. A ghost of sorts, but not right." She shook her head and growled out a curse from a time long past. "I can't even be sure of exactly where it is now. It's muted. Not quite alive, but alive enough to be just another soul. It bothers me," she admitted. "Souls aren't supposed to not remain properly dead." She laughed. "Or rather, it bothers me because I do not know if it is a sign of other problems or just an incident in Hag's cavalcade." She shook her head to clear it at gave Mortimer a sort of smile. "I will set some spirit-traps around. Anyone who becomes a ghost will have explaining to do to us. And so will whoever made the ghost, most likely."

The Dark Carnival

Baba nodded slowly, trying to decide how to explain what it was she'd felt. "I suppose that the best way to put it was that someone . . . died." She paused. "I realize that sounds normal, but this one didn't stay dead. Or didn't get absorbed or devoured, really." One hand drummed fingers on her table as she glanced at the crystal ball that was just a prop. "There was a ghost on the grounds. We don't get ghosts." There was a brief, cold laugh. "Which means someone was simply murdered on the grounds. Or maybe had some horrible accident without my aid." She waved it aside. "And then the ghost . . . disappeared. Or didn't. That's bothering me most of all. The ghost isn't quite gone. I can feel the presence on the grounds, but no longer quite a ghost. Dead and not dead." Her lips twisted into a frown. "All in all, I thought it best to tell you."

There was a sudden glow under her hood as her eyes lit up. Two of the mirrors woven into her cowl flashed for a moment as a young lover and her companion found out that it was possible to disappear into the forest and never leave it. Ravines were wonderful things. "Regardless, I leave it in your hands, Mortimer. Shadow." She gave the crow-beast an almost familiar smile. He remixed her of companions from long ago.

The Dark Carnival

Hehe. I decided to play catch up by posting once. It just was long. I saw other people doing long and so wanted to do one. It just kept growing, though. Good times. Mortimer is getting a visitor from Baba about the "ghost problem".

As for evil? I've gotten too lazy to bother with being as sadistic. Unless you catch me at the right moment. Then I'd be more than happy to be ^^

The Dark Carnival

The booth was a classic—mostly. It looked like a small tent draped in exotic scarves with little fake-gold edging and symbols that were usually meaningless but looked appropriately mystical. A few were not nearly so benign. The most important of the curses woven on the tent caused those who stole from it to die over the course of eight days, after which their soul would be trapped in one of the tiny mirrors that made up one of her gowns. From there, they could be questioned about the location of stolen items and then “encouraged” to make lovely music for her to sleep to. Those curses were spread liberally through the grounds.

Those who had impure thoughts in her presence—at least while she was working in her tent—would suffer the immediate loss of reproductive capability. The pain was delayed and linked to a hex that caused ill luck. It would cause some horrific accident that would see to an injury there.

Married customers who came in to buy products for someone other than a spouse got charms that caused compulsive honesty. And if the trinket were present while the spouse took a well-provoked revenge . . . souls for her mirrors.

Nearly every charm and bangle she sold caused some form of misfortune to rain down on the owner. Or sometimes on people around the owner. Just to keep things interesting. And the objects could act as a focus for her to scry. But that was more just to amuse herself by seeing how things went.

Of course, the booth had a few modifications to it. Despite her best efforts, it still walked on a pair of chicken legs when it needed to be moved. She had tried to at least get it to four; chicken legs were just not well suited for house-mobility. She had been much, much younger when she made it and she had not taken care to make it easy to be rid of. Besides, it had jumped on people stupid enough to attack her—that was always good for a laugh.

The mirrors, each no larger than a thumbnail, woven into her cowl reflected the ethereal light in her booth as a young woman came in. Baba smiled at her, revealing perfectly white teeth in a razor grin. One alabaster hand rose and motioned the female closer. “Come in, my dear,” the woman was instantly more nervous and more at ease—Baba sounded like a gypsy. It was familiar, yes, but legends said crossing one was easy and dangerous. “Please, sit.”

Fearing that to leave now would be rude, the woman sat, leg shaking nervously as she bit a thumbnail. The ancient beauty took in the sheen of the woman’s hair, brown, and the glimmer of tears in her blue-gray eyes. Unusual, but that just made things more interesting for her. Employing no magic but far more experience with young women seeking help than she’d like, she offered, “man trouble?”

The woman nodded, having trouble talking to a woman whose eyes she couldn’t see. There was warmth in the voice, but the edge there was icy and there were no facial cues at all.

“True love doesn’t pay attention to you?” The quick, razor smile appeared and vanished. “An old story.” Her hand passed over the cloth-covered table, leaving behind a single bronze charm the size of a human thumb and set with a reddish stone. “Love charms are popular,” Baba added kindly. “Wear this and when you confess, he’ll love you.”

She accepted the handful of coins from the woman. The odds were good that the young lady had been rendered sterile by her time in Baba’s tent. Not that it would matter, considering the spellwork laced into that charm. She did so love passing along bad luck saved up from others.

Baba cocked her head to the side and blinked when she felt a change in the fabric of the Carnival grounds. No one saw her blink in her empty booth, but she did. It was not usual for there to be ghosts on the grounds. Not at all. People who died tended to not have a soul to become a ghost. So what was a ghost doing here? She made a mental note to ask Mortimer to look into possible deaths on the grounds. Which sounded rather silly when she thought about it. Yes, she would wait until she had a clearer idea of what happened before telling him.

She stroked the mirrors and listened to the shrieks of the stored souls. As much as she enjoyed the taste of a soul, she enjoyed the tortured music more. And besides, they were useful. Sometimes. Well, they amused her anyway. Baba touched one of the flickering glass shards and extracted a long, winding thread of pale gray smoke. It trailed behind her finger to her lips, where she inhaled it.

The soul was a blacksmith who’d been a kind, loving man who had a fondness for the occasional bet. He’d made a wager in her tent and lost. But it was the screams of his twin daughters from the shards beside him that had flavored him properly. It had been so much fun when he’d found himself unable to avoid bashing their skulls in as they asked him why and he couldn’t answer. She had managed to pull that memory from him back when he’d first arrived and savored it still.

There was the tang of the forge and a sort of sooty taste under the sweetness of a loving father. The need for risk added a hard sensation to an incorporeal experience. Then the final moments with their sour-bitter taste of terror and horror and finally months of listening to his daughters’ torment had added a feeling of misery that tasted so bitter it reminded her of raw chocolate.

She was just finishing her meal when she felt the spirit vanish from the grounds and a . . . something . . . replace it. That was definitely odd. She tugged a random soul from her hood and slipped it into a small figurine of a bird. “Find Mortimer. Tell him something is wrong on the grounds. We had a ghost and now we don’t.” The wooden figure sped off, granted the moderate intelligence needed for its task by the soul trapped inside.

The Dark Carnival

Holy crap! I look away for a day and BOOM! Posts! Now I have to go catch up and send Baba out to have fun. Which in this case means long-term fun. She likes to sow cursed stuff around to trigger later. 'cause it amuses her. (Scrying is a wonderful thing)

The Dark Carnival

I figured I'd let someone post before I did again ^^; I can happily do so if that's what I should be doing.

The Dark Carnival

Baba frowned, the mouth visible beneath her coverings twisting into a perfect, cruel sneer. "Back into the cold and the dark. Joy." Her voice was smooth and alluring, though just as cold as her features. "It has been years since I have been in my homelands. Pleasant years." The accent was strange, mostly Romanian, but it had touches of most of the Eastern Continent to it. Hungary was in there and a strong dose of Ukrainian and Russian tones. "You may find women here, Vol, but they will likely be thin and worn." Delicate, pale fingers toyed with a blackened bronze coin hanging from her belt by black thread. "Peasant fare will get you peasant bodies. But they will welcome any distraction from life." Small motes of black fire danced over her fingers before vanishing in blue smoke. "Some might even welcome our attentions as a release."

Her head turned to Hag. Despite her resentment of his twisting her wish, she had gotten much of what she wanted. And she enjoyed doing what she did now far more than just sitting in a cottage in the woods, waiting for idiot maidens to come by. Now the maidens came willingly and offered themselves—unknowingly—to her clutches. "You might even be able to find one or two people to join the Carnival, Hag." There was a hint of disdain in how she spoke to her "employer". "People in this . . . country . . . would sell their souls gladly for an escape. Then again. At best, you might find a hedge witch." She spat the term. "No one with real talents. Unless we've found a particularly interesting town."

The Dark Carnival

Name: Baba
Age: Good question
Gender: Female
Appearance: Baba these days is strikingly beautiful. In fact, with rare exception, she keeps her face veiled to avoid making trouble. The result of her boon is that her beauty is often cold and proud or even terrible.

Baba wears a “traditional” fortune teller’s outfit much of the time. Swathed in scarves with dark locks tumbling from her head-covering. When she does not, she covers much of her face to prevent . . . issues.
Position: Fortune Teller
Powers: Hexes, curses, and items impregnated with the same.
Personality: Baba is not only cold and proud as her features suggest, but also cruel and spiteful. She is bitter about her bondage and shares that misery with as many as possible, devising new and interesting ways to cause torment as well as those that are old standbys.
Background info: Baba is old. Ancient. For as long as she could remember (which is a very long time indeed) she was old and withered and ugly. She was always proud and cold, but she was wretched. When she was offered the chance at beauty, she took it, knowing that there would be a cost and one she paid willingly.
Wish: Eternal beauty—it came out almost dangerously strong. So she can’t show off her new prize except in the rarest circumstances.
Bonds to other characters: None yet
Weapons: She wears a belt with talismans woven into it, each one storing a nasty effect easily at hand to be thrown at someone. She also has a dagger strapped to the inside of her wrist.