Arc II, Chapter 48: The Murder House

Excerpt from a Carousel Atlas

The Soundstage

It seems strange that there is no entry on this despite the term being so widely used in the Atlas.

Most stories are set physically here in Carousel. If you aren’t careful and you ignore the NPCs trying to shoo you away, you can find yourself on the set of an active storyline that you aren’t a part of. It’s pretty surreal until you get chased off by whatever killer or monster is at the center of that story.

Some stories don’t work like that. After being activated, there’s no way to find where the players went. They aren’t physically in Carousel anymore, at least not the part of it we have access to. This place is called the Soundstage. If a storyline is set in a world that Carousel cannot portray in “real life,” like a dream, hell, or even the far past, you’ll find yourself on the Soundstage. Everyone learns that eventually.

It’s common knowledge.

The reason I’m writing this is because I found a storyline out in the Gourmand Housing district that acted weird. It was set in the past, maybe the 1940s. That much was certain. The entire district was still being built during the storyline. After we finished, I expected to find ourselves back in the modern neighborhood, but even as we left, the houses were still under construction. I went back there today. Still, the whole place is like it was during the setting of the story.

We were not on the Soundstage.

Carousel changed when we ran that story. I swear it did. I can’t figure out why for the life of me. Arthur thought it was interesting too and he hasn’t found anything interesting in a long time.

Why was this storyline not on the Soundstage? Running the story appears to have permanently changed this neighborhood. I wish I knew what was going on.

March 5, 2017

-AW

In the end, I could almost understand how a stubborn new player could finish this storyline without believing they were in another world. It was so easy to think it was all an elaborate prank.

Normally, we were supposed to have a Paragon who could help guide us through the first storyline gently after dropping us off at the original resort. The second time around, we didn’t even have the Stranger there to help us.

Still, I didn’t think it mattered. We didn’t need handholding.

As we hiked up the Overlook Hill and found the little resort we had been staying at, two things became immediately apparent.

First, we were in the past. The hotel we originally stayed in was being renovated to a more modern Scandinavian aesthetic. This version of the resort looked like it was last renovated in the early eighties.

Most of the buildings were still there; they were just uglier.

Second, it was clear that our suite, Jedediah Geist’s old manor, had not become part of the hotel yet. There were no paths to the other side of the hill, and many of the trees had not been trimmed back. We would have to hike to get around unless we could find the actual road .

“We might be on to something here,” Antoine said as he looked around the hilltop resort.

We must have been.

We made our way to reception. It was pretty similar except for the style change.

I expected to see Mandy, the same employee working at the front desk that I had seen every time we came by here for food or towels, but she was gone and replaced by an older man named Ned I didn’t recognize.

We didn’t have any money, and frankly, we weren’t sure if we were even supposed to be here.

“We were sent here for a room because of the Centennial,” Antoine said testing to see if the old story still worked.

“Stragglers, huh?” the man asked.

“Excuse me?” Antoine asked.

“I thought we already had everybody,” Ned said. “Guess you were the last to arrive. Stragglers. Let me get your keys.”

He turned around to a large pegboard, retrieved a large brass key with a room number on it, and handed it to Antoine.

“Sorry about the key. We still haven’t updated things to the keycards. Do you need help finding your suite?”

Antoine looked back at the rest of us before saying, “Is it on the other side of the hill?”

Ned shook his head. “All of our units are on this side of the hill. We don’t have any over there for obvious reasons.”

“Obvious reasons?” I asked.

“Yeah,” Ned said, looking for one of us to understand. “The old Geist place. It’s not somewhere people would want to stay, you know. You’ve heard the legends—ghosts haunting the place, murderers about, and whatnot.”

“That makes sense,” Isaac said. “Everyone knows ghosts and murderers stick to their side of the hill.”

Ned shrugged unenthusiastically. “Anyway, we have room service if you want to call from your room. If you need anything else, you can call me. I would be happy to help.”

“Thank you!” Kimberly said.

We left to find our new suite.

It ended up being the furthest suite from the office.

“If I were new to Carousel, I would never go play a creepy little game in an abandoned murder house,” Kimberly said.

“I doubt you’d have a choice,” I said. “Could be like the version we played where the Stranger has a trope to trigger the story before we even get here.”

“Could be the town just loops unending until you go over there,” Bobby suggested. “Or maybe Carousel uses mind control.”

I had no doubt Carousel had some foolproof way of getting a group of players into a creepy house for a game of murder Monopoly. Still, it was hard to imagine. How would you get someone like Jeannette in there?

Antoine unlocked our new suite. He opened the door, and we all basked in its visage.

“Oh my god,” Kimberly said.

It was not great. Two twin beds, a pullout couch, and a few old cots provided enough beds for all of us. The television was small, and the place smelled old and uninviting.

“They really should fix this place up,” Isaac said.

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

“If we had to stay here for weeks, I would be spending the night in the murder house within the first three days,” Cassie said.

There was very little space and only a tiny table for working out clues.

“I know Carousel only gave us the renovated Geist suite to throw us off the trail, but I am super thankful we weren’t stuck here,” Kimberly said.

We moved our stuff in. I stood outside to get mentally ready to go explore the Geist house while the others got unpacked inside.

I examined the game box.

Antoine was outside with me.

“Should we practice this game,” I asked. “Once we’re in there, playing the game will trigger the storyline. I don’t want to learn the game on the fly like that.”

“That’s not a bad idea, but there is like a 100% chance someone was murdered in that hotel room, so maybe we do it over at the picnic table,” he said.

And so we did.

Here is how the game was supposed to go when you weren’t trying to summon dead people in real life.

The game included:

· 1 Board

· 7 Player Figures (Film Buff, Eye Candy, Athlete, Wallflower, Outsider, Comedian, and Psychic)

· 25 Murder Weapons

· 1 Bell

· 200 Séance Cards

· 1 Rule Sheet

· 200 Ghost Scoresheets (which were just little pieces of paper you could tear off)

It was simple. To win, you needed to “capture” three ghosts. You captured a ghost by finding its name, the murder weapon that killed it, and a piece of important backstory.

You moved your character around the board, trying to land on special squares that let you draw a card. The cards might list a question you can ask, such as, “Spirit, were you killed for money?” or a collectible ability, such as, “Because of their training, the Athlete managed to run out of the room before the ghost attacked them.”

Occasionally, the card would say something like, “There is a strange presence in the music room that lashes out against all those nearby. Any players in this room must go back to the entrance and reset all progress on uncompleted captures.”

When you asked a spirit a question, you would wind the bell. If it rang, the answer was yes, and you would learn something about a spirit, be it its name, murder weapon, or backstory. Until the murder weapon is found, any player can try to capture a ghost.

Murder weapon questions stated, “Grab a murder weapon from the weapons cache.” And then allowed you to ask, “Is this the weapon that killed you?”