We had planned things out. Antoine had a whole "Welcome back to the land of the living" speech prepared. While we had discussed the possibility that there might be some trouble with the rescued players, we had not anticipated it coming from Andrew's team. As far as we knew, they had not been touched by Project Rewind because they arrived too late. We were wrong.
Luckily, after those few moments of confusion, we did manage to get back on track.
Antoine even managed to deliver part of his speech, explaining that rescue tropes were back and that Andrew, Michael, and Lila were the first to be rescued.
Of course, Andrew's team was a failed Party of Promise, so they weren't exactly starting from scratch.
The whole time, I was scanning our surroundings for Omens because we were still standing at the entrance to the KRSL Powerworks Pavilion. Abandoned industrial parks and power plants were creepy enough. Add in the crows and the occasional howl, and my "I don't like it here" trope was driving me crazy. Luckily, I could rely on Antoine and Kimberly to be the welcoming party.
I zoned in and out of their conversation. Cassie was happy now that things were going well.
I kept to the perimeter and kept my eyes open. Lila, whose motives we had not yet ascertained, watched me from the dirt, leaning on one arm with her heels tucked to the side as if she were at a picnic in an old painting. Her eyes were red, her hair black as coal, her skin pale except for the dirt from the ground she sat on—a little porcelain doll who could never hurt anyone, you'd think. But she had blood on her hands.
Everyone was so tense because of her. They were trying to be civil. They were trying to be logical. Her presence made it difficult. Everyone spoke in slow, careful sentences like they were afraid of waking a tiger, all for a woman who could not have done physical harm to any of us, not unless we trusted her.
We were getting to know each other during what felt like an air raid, but we were pushing forward. Panic and confusion had already wasted our first few minutes with the new players.
I half-listened to the conversation. My attention was on safety.
As far as I could tell, Andrew and his team were just like us, but they had arrived a year earlier. I wanted to question what had happened, what had gone wrong that they had never found Permanent Vacancy, but that was just one of a million questions I was going to keep to myself until we were in a safer place.
They were supposed to be the Party of Promise. They were the Highrollers, but they failed.
"I assume that you guys know some anonymous person who said they were your friend or something and that they were going to help you?" Antoine asked.
Andrew nodded. "Yes, in the text messages, Logan's fiancée had communicated with someone who called himself a friend on the inside."
"The Insider," Kimberly said. "That's what the original players called him."
It wasn't the original players. It was the second, third, or fourth generation. I wasn't sure.
"Or her," Cassie added, if only by instinct. It was true. The Insider was a complete mystery to us. He could be a she.
We didn't get past that in the conversation because it soon came time for us to hit the big red rewards button, as indicated by the jingle that appeared out of nowhere and the robotic voice that said, “Congratulations! You won a ticket!”
Somehow, Silas the Mechanical Showman had found a spot where he could show up, and everyone had to turn their heads to look.
We had almost forgotten him. Almost.
I didn’t want to waste time, so I just walked up to him and pressed the button.
I got two stat tickets, two tropes, a handful of coins, and two enemy collector tickets.
But I also got something else.
It was a ticket like the one I had read information about Narrators on during the fake tutorial. It did not have magical properties but was simply there to give me the good news.
Dear Visitor,
We hope you're enjoying your stay in our charming little town of Carousel! To help you make the most of your time here, we’re excited to announce a new feature on our popular Red Wallpaper: the Advanced Archetype Tracker!
This handy tool fits right into your Throughline Tracker and lets you monitor your progress toward unlocking exciting new roles, like the Adventurer or Ghost Hunter, with ease! As you explore our scenic streets, brimming with exciting stories of their own, you’ll receive friendly updates—keeping you engaged and motivated every step of the way home.
Want to hunt monsters in the darkest forests? Give it a shot. The more you do it, the closer you will get to being a Monster Hunter. Want to experiment with science that defies your previous notions of reality? Try your hand, and we’ll track your progress. One day, you can be a Mad Scientist!
Sometimes, you can be seeking something and not even know it!
Simply check the Red Wallpaper at your leisure to track your journey. We’re sure this will make your visit to Carousel even more delightful!
Sincerely,
The Office of the Mayor of Carousel
The Town of Carousel—Everything is here.
Of course, the first thing I did was present it to my friends. It was new, and new was exciting. Actually, new was mostly horrifying, but it was also exciting.
Eventually, Andrew got ahold of it and it clearly threw him for a loop. The level of familiarity Carousel was showing must have been alarming.
With a glance at the red wallpaper, I could see that there was indeed a new section labeled Advanced Archetype Tracker, and on it was what appeared to be an archetype that I was already halfway through achieving.
That blew my mind—there was something that I had apparently already been working toward without even knowing it.
What advanced archetype could it be? Perhaps something meta, something even more related to filmmaking than Film Buff was. Director, perhaps? Was there such a thing?
I racked my brain for an explanation of all the things we could be doing at Carousel. I had put zero effort into obtaining an advanced archetype—there was just so much going on that it wasn’t even at the front of my mind.
That was not true anymore. It would be one of my new obsessions.
The fact that I had obtained 2 Stat tickets was the next thing on my mind.
It wasn’t bad; it just wasn’t the plan. If anything, it was about the ordinary haul I would expect from a story as difficult as Itch. We wanted something better. The goal was to power level.
We spent around three weeks on this one storyline, which tracked pretty well with the normal rate for most storylines, if you include the break we took after running it.
That wasn’t good enough.
We were about to hit the doldrums—the plateau where leveling up was slow, where players would spend years or even decades. If we didn’t get our act together and find a way to grind levels quickly on the fewest possible storylines, we’d be stuck in Carousel until we went gray, if not longer.
I had to push that out of my mind. I looked at my tropes.
Undeniably, it was a useful trope—fear was a mind killer, after all—but it was also a luxury trope that I would only get to employ in the most extreme circumstances. It didn’t have much function and was purely a perk.
It felt like Carousel was trying to tell me something. Perhaps when we were clunking around on the large metal ship, its audio had picked us up—or maybe even the audio over the radio we were using to communicate had somehow seeped its way into the final cut.
It couldn’t have been too bad, or else we would’ve gotten worse rewards. This felt like Carousel was teasing me. I didn’t hate it. Back in the Die Cast storyline, I was able to see the film as it was being produced on the red wallpaper. It was quite convenient, even if I had to be dead to be able to do it.
Even with only the audio, even if the quality was bad, this was useful.
I read over my enemy collector tickets.
There it was—my souvenir for killing a willing robot. Was this the entire purpose of that strange request IBECS had made? We had always wondered what these souvenirs were for and what they actually accomplished, and from the way IBECS spoke, I began to believe that their purpose was not merely as a collector’s item.
Only time would tell.
I liked this one because I made it myself—or at least helped.
The other players had similar rewards. They were good for a hard storyline but not the bounty we expected from a rescue. That was predictable because we had been spoiled; this was merely a rerun. We had some new tropes and a little jingle in our pocket.
Cassie got one Stat ticket, perhaps because of her work in psychically connecting to the clone machine, even though she didn’t do a lot of interacting with the surrogates.
She got two tropes, though, so she must have done pretty well.
Isaac didn’t help much in the final run. He had contributed to some of the failed runs and the planning, but ultimately, in the finale, all he did was make a few comments over the intercom—and that wasn’t enough to secure him a stat ticket. That was an unfortunate downside of reruns. It didn't matter how helpful you were in prepping, you had to help in the final cut.
He did get a trope, though—and a darn good one, I reckoned.
Antoine only got 1 Stat, and my theory on that was that our plan was really my plan. When we succeeded with it, I got the credit, which wasn’t really fair because Antoine was there helping. But it was my stats, my Savvy, that made it all possible, so I ended up getting more credit than he did.
I wasn’t sure if that was fair, but it was consistent with what we knew about experience.
He got 2 tropes and the same mutant bed bug collector ticket that I did.
Bobby was as much a star of the show as any of the surrogates, and his rewards reflected that. He got three stats and three tropes—he really stepped up, and he earned it. It was fortunate that his character's motivations aligned so well with his real motivations, and his character’s frustration with the surrogates mirrored his own. The result was actually a pretty compelling performance. He was the plucky character everyone should have listened to.
Kimberly was essential in planning and motivation as we ran rerun after rerun, perfecting our plan. But in the end, she wasn’t really a big part of the final execution. She was our backup. She buffed her Mettle in case we needed to fight bugs, but we had been cautious and taken care of things ourselves. She used Convenient Backstory to help us understand the artificial gravity machine so that we could get rid of gravity as a contingency. Still, we ended up not even needing to use it.
It was just bad luck, but she was still very appreciated. She didn’t get any stats, but she did get a trope and a bedbug collector ticket.
Her trope was actually really cool, and it was the kind I had heard about—one that allowed you to enter a storyline with a team and then leave. That was special, even if we didn’t yet have the tropes to really make it sing.
Ramona, like Isaac, mostly contributed to the final performance by being a voice over the intercom, helping guide us around. However, she was much more serious about it than Isaac, and because of her much lower level, she actually got rewarded.
That was great. The rule of thumb back at Camp Dyer was that low-level players rarely got rewarded when they were carried through high-level storylines by more powerful teammates. My experience with The Grotesque was an obvious exception because I pulled my weight. Heck, I literally lit myself on fire just so my teammates could win.
Ramona got one stat and one trope. Like many of the other tropes won by me and my teammates, it was vaguely related to what we did in the storyline—which was sneaking around.
Dina was solid. She was essential for getting through the doors we were able to access and incredible at sneaking because of her ability to see which areas were Off-Screen.
She was everywhere, helping everyone, and she got rewarded for it. She got 300 dollars for rescuing three players in addition to the money she got for her performance.
Dina received two stat tickets and two tropes, the first of which was a really cool concept—similar to, and perhaps even better than, Oblivious Bystander.
I wasn’t the only one working my way toward an advanced archetype. Kimberly, Bobby, and Dina were, too, although they were nowhere near halfway, having only one or two notches checked off on the progress bar.
I had to question what I had done that they hadn’t.
Dina had actually gotten another ticket from Silas, and it was devastating.
It read simply: Due to previous player misuse, there is a new policy on Rescue Tropes. To reinstate, "You don't know me but..." the user must obtain Plot Armor level 30. The user may still use any other Rescue Tropes they possess. Variety is the spice of life and, you'll find, of death.
We just looked at each other. No section in the entire Atlas told us to expect this. Andrew seemed to piece together what was happening and showed the appropriate concern.
The "30" was a fill-in-the-blank. It would seem that every time we used a rescue trope successfully, we would not be able to use it again until some number of Plot Armor had been gained. Dina was Plot Armor 21 when we entered our final rerun. With her new stat tickets, she was level 23.
Seven Plot Armor. She would have to gain seven Plot Armor to get her trope back. That could take months. Once we got to the mid-thirties at our levels, it could take years.
We needed to grind like crazy.
Dina dug through her pockets, trying to summon her Rescue Trope—to no avail.
Carousel had just put limits on Rescue Tropes. And all of our plans might have just been ruined.