Lost Rambler

Update

The next chapter in Tales will be out tomorrow. It's a bit longer so it is taking longer.

In the mean time, consider heading over to Discord and voting on Antoine's Aspect choice. Give all of the options a fair shake please.

This Arc will feature a few chapters from his perspective. I've decided to give myself a little more freedom as far as that stuff goes. Might help to get to know him a little better.

-lost_rambler

Tales of Carousel: Re: The Chain

Zara Fitzgerald waited as the phone rang. This phone number was one of the weird ones. For whatever reason, you had to wait a good 14 or so rings before you got the answering machine. Most of the time you could get to that machine in less than seven.

She knew how many rings it took because she had counted them every time she attempted to call Tina Trammell for the past two weeks. She usually didn't have this hard of a time getting ahold of a woman with a missing child, even when that mi...

Tales of Carousel: The Guest House

It was time. Brent’s time to shine.

For thirty seconds, he was going to step in and be the hero. It wouldn’t look like it.

His new trope set him up to save the day in the most gruesome way. It was a self-sacrifice trope, one of the most powerful kinds of tropes in existence.

Curiosity Killed the Neighbor.

A Wallflower trope designed to attract all attention of the enemy, of the camera, and give his allies the perfect chance to escape, regroup, or go on the offensiv...

I found another poll

Understand that as Patrons, you risk being subjected to all sorts of spoilers and early reveals. That is a hazard of signing up. The following text is not what actually happens in the story exactly, but it does contain spoilers.

Anyway...

I need to get ahead in chapters, but I need your input first.

So.... 

You're standing in a dark room. Before you, an intricately designed table sits. A light shines down from high above. There is an array of trinkets distributed ...

Defunct Chapter 118

This was rewritten for the start of Arc II

~~~~~

When we got back to the bed and breakfast, we were beat. Even after being fully healed when the storyline ended, we still walked miles into the middle of nowhere, literally. We were all tired. Antoine had gotten especially quiet.

He and Kimberly found a bedroom upstairs to stay the night in. I think they wanted to use his nightmare trope to help him out. I didn’t pry, but I lent him my Out Like A Light trope as they were wal...

Quick Poll

The last post of the arc is tomorrow. I can't believe it. I spent every chapter until now just trying to get to this moment. Now I feel like I can breathe a little.

The schedule with normalize soon and may even speed up. I will be taking a short hiatus on RR after the arc is finished there. Only a couple of weeks. Things will keep going here, though, with some stories from Tales of Carousel before I move onto Arc II. I am thankful to all of you for being Patrons of the story. Truly.

Chapter 117: The Amenities

No one said anything for a while other than Antoine saying he needed to go for a walk to clear his mind, but then he never actually did.

I knew that we were being manipulated, but when I saw the plan written out in black and white, it still surprised me. My mind tried to go in so many directions, dissecting the journal entries and Project Rewind in a dozen different ways, but in the end, I didn’t really get much thinking done.

Eventually, it was Dina, I think, who tried to press...

Chapter 116: Back To Where It All Started

“This doesn’t feel right,” I said. “Are we thinking Carousel did this?”

I had a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach.

“What does that mean?” Antoine asked. “Who else would have done it?”

That was a good question. Carousel trying to kill everyone at the Lodge makes sense. It is an evil entity. But why now? Did we trigger it somehow? This couldn't just be a coincidence.

I had a renewed sense of urgency. “We need to see the rewards,” I said.

Chapter 115: As I Lay Dying

I was dying.

Dead Man Walking as a trope was starting to look like a real bust. I lay there on the ground barely able to move. My statuses were flaring constantly, including the one labeled, “Dead.”

And yet I did not die. My sudden boost of grit prevented me from blacking out. My adrenaline was still pumping so I did everything I could to try to get back to the action even though it was hopeless.

My legs weren't doing what I was telling them to do. My arms though, were a...

Chapter 114: Dead Man's Fall

Sorry this one was late.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I stared at the horrifying creatures before me. For a while, I was too terrified to even think about looking at their tropes on the red wallpaper. When I did, I was in for a shock. Usually, when I looked at the tropes of a high-level enemy, there were some that I couldn’t see. Trope Master was a Savvy-based ability, after all. Most strong enemies have enough Savvy to block the ability to some extent.

With the Avenging Dead, t...

Chapter 113: The Bigger Bad

I paced back and forth.

We needed to set the stage for Samantha’s trope to activate. How did we set up a shift that large? We weren’t just trying to invite in another group of criminals; we were trying to change the genre completely, shifting toward a supernatural storyline.

“I have a plan,” I said. “Samantha, can you explain to the audience that you were going to do what the men demanded of you, that you weren’t going to run away and the only reason you did try to run...

Announcement

Due to some unforeseen circumstances, I will be unable to submit tonight's chapter in a timely manner. However, I will be posting two chapters soon. I apologize for the inconvenience.

Arc 1 will be completed in a handful of chapters. I can't wait to show you what everything has been building toward and I am ecstatic to show you the next arc. Thank you for supporting the story. There is a lot of fun to come so stick around!

Chapter 112: The Damsel in Distress

Merritt paced back and forth, growing more distressed with each step. He muttered under his breath, cursing his brother, mostly. His hand never left his waistband where he kept his gun.

In the distance, I heard hounds howling and barking. I had heard them when we first arrived but had yet to see them. If memory served, I heard them on my first day in Carousel too when we passed Samantha.

The noises got closer.

Soon, Merrick’s attention turned to the large hound that appear...

Chapter One Hundred and Eleven: Red Blood Sunset

Dina didn’t waste any time escaping.

The larger man with the yellow bandana, who had previously not had any important information on the red wallpaper other than “Grave Robber” now had the name “Tank,” Plot Armor 18.

He grabbed ahold of Kimberly and, after a quick instruction from the fake sheriff, pulled her along toward the property down a long driveway that wound haphazardly back away from the road.

I could hear Kimberly screaming, "Please don't hurt me, I'm pre...

Chapter One Hundred and Ten: Permanent Vacancy

Don't forget to check out Discord to vote on Anna's Aspect and tell me what archetypes you would like to see more of.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Player Stats:

Players’ Tropes:

Riley Lawrence is the Film Buff.

"Trope Master" grants him the ability to perceive enemy tropes, but at the cost of sacrificing half ...

2023-09-17 09:47:14 +0000 UTC View Post

Chapter One Hundred and Nine: The Warning

“So, you’re going out on a storyline already, huh?” Bobby asked after Dina had tracked him down.

Antoine nodded. “Something we’ve got to do.”

“You lost two of your people. I’m sorry to hear that. The Final Girl was nice. She said some kind words to me after Jeanette… disappeared.”

“Thanks, Anna and Camden will be missed,” Antoine said.

“What do you need exactly?” Bobby asked. “A Wallflower is good for gathering information and some Finale ...

Chapter One Hundred and Eight: Planning a Run

Antoine went to find Chris.

“Has he told his brother anything?” Dina asked Kimberly.

Kimberly shook her head. “He really doesn’t like keeping secrets from Chris, but if there’s a chance this can get us out, he’s willing to. We just better hope this storyline is the right call.”

I certainly hoped it was.

Eventually, Antoine returned with Chris. Chris was carrying the Carousel Atlas.

“I hear you all can’t get enough of the action,” he said. “I...

Chapter One Hundred and Seven: closed fur renovations

Ever since I arrived, I could never really wrap my head around the idea that everything I was experiencing was real. I didn't deny that I was seeing what I saw or that I could feel what I felt. But in my head, I always divided things between the real world and Carousel. As I stared at the map, I started to realize how complicated that division might actually be.

No one who stayed here for very long thought that Carousel was actually a place located along some narrow forested street in t...

Chapter One Hundred and Six: In Plain Sight

Because of the Astralist skulking around, we had to take a much longer detour to get back in the direction we needed to go. Chris said that we couldn't risk going anywhere near him given the fact that the only way to beat him would be either using the chemicals in his lab or using his own machine against him. If we ran into him in the woods, neither of those things would be available.

We went as far west as we could until we hit the tree line where we finally found an omen. It was the f...

Interlude: In Time--Part Two

Note to readers: There is an intentional time skip. You didn't miss a post for Anna's Interlude. This is Part 2. I know it has been weeks since the last one so I thought I would give you a heads up. There will be a post soon to get us caught up and I have taken time off work so that I can build a backlog so there should not be any more delays.

Please enjoy.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Can he follow us?” I asked as we ran from the stampede.

Camden shook his head. I could ...

Chapter One Hundred and Five: A Bridge Too Far

My big fancy antique spear disappeared right out of my hands when we were about a mile west of the mansion. The pack that Chris had packed for me, a leather garment bag repurposed as a satchel, also got considerably lighter because other pieces of loot and weapons had disappeared from within it.

“It was worth a shot,” Chris said at almost the exact same moment. Much of his loot had disappeared too.

All that remained were a few of the less ornate weapons, some books Grace had w...

Chapter One Hundred and Four: Goforth and Prosper

We found Chris down in the same lounge where we had spent the night. He was arranging various weapons that he had found around the mansion. Most of them were antiques. He had a jewel-encrusted sword and a morning star among them.

“You're really going to try and take those?” I asked.

I knew that you couldn't just take anything after clearing a storyline. You could take most things but certain items like weapons had limitations that weren't quite clear.

“Oh, I'm gonna tr...

Chapter One Hundred and Three: Dearest Mr. Gray Amber

"Why do they go through the trouble of making all of these nonsense histories for each and every storyline?" Grace asked as she flipped through a leather-bound book from the vast collection of the mansion's library.

"What's that one saying?" I asked, leafing through a tome related to the magic system for the storyline we had just finished.

"Carousel is the capital city of Hesteria, which appears to be a continent right in the spot where North America is supposed to be." She showed...

Chapter One Hundred and Two: By the Fire

“I saw them…” I said.

It took the rest of the team a few seconds to realize what I was talking about. I was having trouble putting it into words.

“They’re in a storyline that was stronger than this one!” I said. “They’re alone…”

Grace started to protest, saying, “Reggie is wit—”

She stopped talking as she saw my new movie trailer trope on the red wallpaper.

“Where’s Reggie?” she asked.

I looked at her and she knew from the wa...