Arc II, Chapter 79: The Cynic (Patreon)

Ramona becoming a player was a curveball but a welcome one. I didn’t predict what Archetype she would be in the slightest.

She pressed the red button and grabbed the handful of tickets as they came out. Suddenly, she grew weak in the knees, and her sister rushed to grab her before she fell.

Silas disappeared, and I started reading her tropes on the red wallpaper.

The Hysteric

Minor Archetype

 

You are the Hysteric—a maelstrom of raw emotion and heightened sensitivity. In the face of terror, your reactions are not mere panic or willfulness but a powerful force that can sway the very fabric of the narrative. Your heightened senses alert you to unseen dangers, and your frantic energy can be harnessed in moments of dire need. You are not afraid to go against the consensus.

 

Where others see fear as a hindrance, you transform it into a weapon, steering the course of events with your visceral responses. Your stubbornness and strength of will are shields as strong as steel. But beware, for the line between harnessing your hysteria and succumbing to it is perilously thin…

 

Will your raw emotional power be the key to survival, or will it lead you and your allies to the brink of madness?

Base Stats

• Mettle: For Feats of Strength and Offensive ability | 0

• Moxie: To make your performance convincing | 3

• Hustle: To be Quick, Deft, and to always hit your mark | 3

• Savvy: For Intelligence, Planning, and Deduction | 3

• Grit: For Durability, Toughness, and Endurance | 1

• Plot Armor: Mastering all five aspects of plot armor will make you a master of horror | 10 (total of all stats)

 ~

Just Us Monsters

Type: Buff

Archetype: Hysteric

Aspect: Defiant

Stat Used: Moxie

Violence boils just under the surface of some characters. Others are better trained at keeping their darker tendencies and the trauma that caused them hidden from view. But if no one that matters is looking, where’s the harm in letting it out?

 

When the user is alone with an enemy, they may drop their civil façade and reveal a normally hidden violent or malevolent nature. Buffs Mettle and Grit.

 

Could you imagine if the other mothers in the PTA saw you now?

 ~

Afraid for Others

Type: Buff

Archetype: Hysteric

Aspect: Craven

Stat Used: Moxie

Fear can be a chain around one’s ankle or a sword in one's hand. It just depends on what you are afraid of and who you are afraid for.

 

With this trope equipped, a previously fearful or anxious character may channel their fear for an ally into the will to act. Allows the user to use their Moxie as Mettle in the pursuit of protecting a loved one until the character’s loved one is safe or dead. Requires a strong bond between the characters.

 

Sure, you’re still afraid, but the enemy should be too.

 ~

Pride Before The Fall

Type: Rule

Archetype: Hysteric

Aspect: Defiant

Stat Used: Moxie

Sometimes, to be brave is not but a simple lack of humility.

 

When the user triggers an Omen intentionally out of cocksureness or stubbornness, and this attitude carries forth into their character portrayal, they will guarantee themselves to be the target for Second Blood.

 

“How was I supposed to know what would happen?”

“We told you!”

 ~

Before you get us killed

Type: Rule

Archetype: Hysteric

Aspect: Defiant

Stat Used: Savvy

Many horror films would not have such disastrous endings if the characters in charge had made better decisions. A maverick's decision to diverge from the group or defy orders may be what keeps them alive.

 

When the user splits the party under the pretense of believing the current course of action is a doomed plan, the group without the main viewpoint character will go Off-Screen except to show their deaths or milestones until the two groups’ plotlines re-converge.

When one group “fails,” the other group will be guaranteed some limited success and longevity. Players can survive being in the failed group, though there will be consequences.

 

One of us just made a really dumb decision.

Well, that answered some questions.

Before I could discuss the tropes or the Archetype itself, the room went white with fog.

I couldn’t tell if I was falling or flying, but before I knew it, Isaac and I were alone outside in the grass, surrounded by an impenetrable wall of bright white fog.

~-~

~-~

~-~

Hours passed in that circle of fog. All I could see was light and a patch of grass under my feet. It was just Isaac and me and nothing to do. Unlike previous ghostly waiting parties, time did not pass quickly.

“I can see it,” I said. “I really can. A Hysteric is driven by emotion. They aren’t just scared; that’s just part of what they are.”

“I don’t care,” Isaac said. "It’s all part of the same scam. The details don’t matter. I don’t care if they give her an Archetype. I still don’t trust her. I still think this is all an exercise in misery. I still think the Paragons are bastards.”

“Trust has nothing to do with it,” I said.

Isaac didn’t say anything.

Where was this hostility coming from?

“Whatever the case,” I said. “It’s still worth thinking about. You don’t mind me thinking about stuff, do you?”

He didn’t answer at first. I expected some haughty answer, but he thought about it.

“It makes me nervous,” he said gently.

“How does it make you nervous?” I asked.

Isaac shrugged his shoulders. “I just feel like you are putting in more effort than this whole charade deserves. Makes me feel bad.”

This wasn’t the first time Isaac had brought this up, though usually, when he said it, he was just joking. He believed, as we all sort of did, that this whole exercise—everything related to Carousel—was some kind of trick. When I engaged in solving the Tutorial or pondering the reality of Carousel, he would go out of his way to be disinterested.

“Officially, when we find out this is all just some endless, pointless torture, I will tell whoever is involved that you were never fooled. Is that what you were hoping for?” I asked.

He started to laugh. “That works. If you believe it’s all a lie, you can never be fooled.”

If I had been alive, I might have been annoyed, but death, as I had learned over and over again, brought clarity (at least in this storyline). As a ghost, I was able to empathize with Isaac—mostly because I wished I was in his position. If Camden had been here to overthink things, I wondered if I would be able to lay back and crack jokes and act like I was too smart to be optimistic.

But Camden wasn’t here. I was the guy who had to think about everything from every angle and try to make sense of it all.

We sat in the grass, still surrounded by fog.

The Plot Cycle had not moved in hours. Even as ghosts, we were going insane. I worried that our confinement would have us at each other’s throats in the Final Battle.

I could feel the tension rising.

“It’s almost over,” I said. “That’s all I can say.”

“Yep,” he said with a chuckle. “The other shoe is about to drop, though.”

Probably.

I decided to indulge him.

“How about the big reveal? My money is on us having been in hell this whole time. You?” I asked.

“I don’t even want to guess,” he said. “Now that I’m thinking clearly, all I know is that the pursuit of understanding is a torture worse than hell. Whatever’s coming, I’m ready.”

Even though he was a ghost, I could still hear the crackle in his voice. He was afraid. We all go to different places when afraid. I tried to find answers. I threw myself into the Tutorial, into the Throughline, in hopes of getting through it and rescuing Anna and Camden.

Isaac ran from answers because he couldn’t imagine a world where this wasn’t a trick.

Still, it was weird that he waited this long to try to hash it out. Maybe ghost Isaac was bolder. Maybe he just sensed the end coming.

Who knew?

“Whatever the case,” I said. “I’ll be happy just to know what the answer is.”

Isaac chuckled. “Then maybe that’s what you will never learn. There will always be one more storyline. One more mystery. Another and another. I think you want to find a way to make the numbers add up so bad that you might never have just considered that you have the wrong numbers.”

We had avoided this conversation for so long. What if everything was a lie? Wasn’t that Jeanette’s thesis that had gotten her killed? In life, we were too afraid to face the worst possibilities. As spirits, we could finally talk about them freely.

So we did.

“The wrong numbers—you mean lies. We’re being lied to. That’s what you have to say?” I said. “The Throughline, Project Rewind, the Tutorial, all lies?”

“What does it matter what I have to say?” Isaac asked. “We die no matter what. That’s what I figure. The only question is, who’s going to be there laughing when we finally realize how pathetic we were for thinking we stood a chance? How many times have we used the phrase ‘rats in a maze’?”

Was he picking a fight?

Well, if there was ever a time to have this conversation, it was then. The Final Battle of the storyline and Tutorial itself was coming up, and Carousel seemed to have stuck us together, leaving us without anything else to do.

I took a deep breath. I was not some doe-eyed believer. I knew this whole place was some gruesome theater. Was he saying that I didn’t know how foolish it was to believe everything would be okay?

“Don’t confuse my pragmatism with optimism,” I said. “Somebody has to be the one to put our foot forward. The only thing I know to do is hope that I can figure this out. If the truth at the end is that the numbers don’t add up, we don’t lose anything for trying.”

“What if we do? This place is a nightmare. Now that I’m dead, I finally have time to really think about this place. You know, Cassie and Kimberly and Antoine—they talk about this place like it’s hell because of the gore and the misery. To me, it’s hell because my one defense in life—my misanthropy—is useless here. Distrusting everyone doesn’t keep you safe when trusting was never an option. We know we’re being tricked. We just don’t know the punchline.”

“Do you trust me?”

“No!” Isaac said. “How can I trust you? How can I trust anyone? Used to be, the only people I knew were on my side were Cassie and Andrew, but Andrew’s dead and I saw Cassie die too. How do I know the Cassie that came back is actually my sister? Don’t get me wrong, I ignore that question just fine. I decided to go along with you guys because when a person gets scared, they’ve got to cling to the comforting truths. Now I’m dead and I don’t need comfort right now. So I’m back to my old philosophy. It’s all a lie. I just don’t know which lie.”

Cassie and Isaac had it worse in so many ways than the rest of us. They never had one moment of normalcy. Camp Dyer had been our shelter in the storm. The Hughes siblings didn’t have that. They had nothing to anchor themselves to. They had no image of Carousel in their mind that they could hold onto and tell themselves they understood.

I laid back on the ground.

“I’m not naïve,” I said. “I feel like I am being led around. I get sick to my stomach just thinking about all the hours I wasted trying to figure out what secrets about the tutorial or the Throughline might be the ones that we need to know the most, only to find out most of that work was meaningless. The deeper truths feel so arbitrary that I start to wonder if I am just too stupid to figure it out. I kept looking for some fundamental thing to latch onto, something that would inspire people to sacrifice themselves for Project Rewind, but all we learn about are the Geists or Ramona and I just have more questions. Where’s the aha moment?”

He sat down next to me, and we stared into the bright fog that surrounded us. The Plot Cycle was still frozen. It didn’t budge a hair.

“I never said you were naïve,” Isaac said. “I just get mad when you take this obvious bullshit so seriously. I get angry that we don’t have an option to just not care. We can’t just opt out, you know? Wait until we know why we’re doing stuff. I don’t care what you say, the Paragons have been starving us for information. Even when they were pretending to be players, I’m pretty sure everything they said was scripted. Cassie told me not to say that, but you guys are just way too trusting.”

“It’s all a lie,” I said, lying back on the grass.

“Damn right,” Isaac said. “It’s all a lie.”

“I know the Paragons are sketchy, but they’re the friendliest faces I’ve seen around lately,” I said.

“The Paragons are full of it,” Isaac said. “When our heads are on the execution block, and one of those friendly faces is holding an ax, I am saying I told you so.”

I laughed. They weren’t the ones with the axe.

~-~

More hours passed. I was starting to think the Centennial was about to start any minute, but I couldn’t tell and the Plot Cycle never moved.

Why were we stuck there in the fog? All I could think about was the Final Battle. Carousel had decided to stick us in time-out at the worst moment.

I laid my head back and tried to sleep there on the grass. As a ghost, I didn’t feel like I was sleeping, but time passed, I thought. When I looked at the Plot Cycle, it was still stuck in the same place.

I started to think about what Isaac was saying. Everything was a lie. He really thought he got the exclusive rights to that sentiment. To be fair, he was a Comedian and Comedians had a Cynic aspect. Of course the truth was being hidden from us. That wasn’t a unique thought.

The Geists were clearly important to Carousel. They were basically normal humans being used as pin cushions. They were unique. They were important. So important that NPCs brought them up in conversation years after their deaths.

So important that you could find books about them on park benches. Just lying around.

And they were the subject of the Throughline? Did that make sense.

“If everything is a lie, then what’s the lie?” I asked.

“Hell if I know,” Isaac said.

“No,” I said. “Sit up. Listen to me. Assume everything is a lie and then guess what the lie is.”

“I’m there already,” he said.

“What’s the lie? What’s the purpose? What has been accomplished with this whole thing? I can grant that this is odd. The Ramona thing is out of nowhere. The Geists are interesting, but I’m not getting much to grasp onto as far as plots go. They’re dead and we kind of understand that Bart made a deal, but nothing is gripping me about them yet. And I have tried.”

Isaac got up and took a deep breath. “And you won’t be offended?”

“No. Maybe. I don’t know. Say it anyway,” I said.

“The way we found the ‘true versions’ of the stories was weird. They don’t make sense,” he said. “I’m not saying it wasn’t cool. The way you figured out what Jimbo Geist’s murder weapon was, Cassie thought you were a genius she was gushing. Then ten minutes into the next movie, we are told what the murder weapon was. How lame is that? We didn’t need that info; we would have found it out anyway.”

“It’s a tutorial,” I said. “I figure they want to reward detective wo—"

He held up his hand to cut me off.

“But, whatever. I can accept that. Then when we were looking to do the same thing to get the third movie, I was thinking oh god, oh god, Riley’s gonna do some National Treasure nonsense to bust this thing wide open and we’re going to figure out what the buzz is on these Geists and the founding of Carousel, and then you come up with some half-guess that Lillian Geist was at or near the original Centennial because you can put two dates together and bingo. You solved it again. A completely useless piece of trivia that we would learn later anyway. The first one I can grant kind of. The second one legitimately made me think you were in on the whole thing.”

How could I defend that? It was an odd trigger for the Omen of the third storyline.

“I didn’t say the Lillian Geist thing was genius. I just figured it was the clue that Constance was trying to get at and… it worked. It’s not like I’m going to look a gift horse in the mouth in our situation.”

He pointed at me. “Exactly. I’m not trying to downplay your accomplishments here, bro, I’m saying that if everything is a lie, that’s the lie. We were always going to figure out our way into the true version of the stories just in the nick of time. Guaranteed. It was all designed to make us think we had earned it. You try to fill in every blank you see. They tell you that you were such a bright boy, and of course, we believe them… Don’t be mad.”

It did hit my pride a bit. I wished I had said it first so it would have been “my idea.”

“I’m not mad,” I said. “I’m not. I… That fits as well as any theory I had. The game was designed to make us think we were progressing. I can buy that. I gotta say though. If the fix was in on this Tutorial, then why were the storylines so hard? We almost got flattened over and over.”

He nodded in agreement.

“I’m not saying the storylines were easy,” he said. “I didn’t really do much, so they were kind of easy for me.”

“Well, you’re new,” I said. “You get a pass.”

“What do you think?”

I shrugged my shoulders.

“Maybe they want… I don’t know. Speaking of ‘they,’ who’s ‘they’? Who is behind it all? Is Carousel pulling all the strings?”

He threw his hands in the air. “It’s at least the Paragons. I never trusted them. I liked having a face to go along with my suspicion though. That was nice.”

For a moment I stopped and laughed. I took a deep breath and thought for a moment.

“If everything’s a lie. Here’s the lie,” I said. “The ultra-secret Throughline, the hidden current running underneath it all. The story that if you even learn a fraction of it, adds itself to your quest log automatically. It’s about the Geists. The Geist family. Really? The most powerful and famous family in Carousel. How could the Throughline be about the most talked about people in the whole mythos? I learned about the Geists before Project Rewind. It was only a little, but still. That’s the subject of the big secret? How was anybody not ‘on the Throughline’ if it was about the Geists?”

Isaac nodded. “That’s a good question. I didn’t think about that. And a Mercer. And a Halle. All families from your war stories. Yet you weren’t on the Throughline yet.”

We sat in silence for a moment, our minds really beginning to race.

“If everything’s a lie, here’s the lie,” he said. “The Paragons pretend to be players. The Stranger was supposedly a player, but he was using tropes that were not on the red wallpaper. That trope that made it so you couldn’t remember what he looked like? That was equipped the whole time.”

That was true. The Stranger was a player in The Ten Second Game storyline. Even when rewatching the movie on the red wallpaper, I couldn’t recall what he looked like from scene to scene.

“So maybe it’s a little flavor,” I said. “They say those are the only tropes they have, but it’s a white lie they use to play their part.”

“Still a lie. If they can fake what’s on the red wallpaper, why would we ever believe anything we saw on it?”

I didn’t like that. Filling in the blanks usually didn’t involve making new blanks, but we were having a thought experiment. Assume it was all a lie and go from there.

“I’ve got another,” I said.

“Let’s hear it,” Isaac said.

“If it’s all a lie, here’s the lie. The Ten Second Game storyline was not actually made just for us,” I said.

“Who said it was made for us?”

“The Paragons either directly said it or implied it, I can’t remember. Maybe I said it, and they confirmed it. It was supposedly punishment, you know, for cheating or something. To balance the game.”

“So that’s why it went off the rails. It wasn’t a real game?”

“Well, maybe. I meant because the ritual, the ten-second game ritual for talking to ghosts, that definitely wasn’t just for us. Ramona used the same thing with the bell in the flashback. That flashback supposedly took place in a previous game from the current one before any of us got the Carousel. I kind of dismissed that because maybe Carousel built the storyline around the ritual. I don’t know. Anyway, that’s the lie.”

“Oh, yeah,” Isaac said. “It was also used by other players. I mean, The ghost man, whose name escapes me, said other players visited him. That meant previous players also had the ten-second game ritual.”

I couldn’t remember how true that was.

“Well, they might have used the Reply, The Departed board game to communicate with him instead. That one would work, kind of. It’s just more luck-based.”

“Nope,” he said. “Everything is a lie.”

“Of course. That’s the lie,” I said. “But why lie about the Reply, The Departed storyline being rebooted? What does that accomplish?”

I looked up at the sky and thought for a moment. What was achieved by the introduction of The Ten Second Game storyline that wouldn’t have been achieved by the original Reply, The Departed storyline? We did end up playing both, after all.

“If we never got the Ten Second bell for the updated ritual, we probably wouldn’t have gotten to speak to Jedediah Geist directly. We would have missed out on the flashbacks,” I said.

“Which one is Jedediah?” Isaac asked.

“Jimbo,” I said.

“Right. The ghost. So, what did we learn that was so important? Wait,” Isaac said. “He told us about Ramona, right? Well, he told you about Ramona while I hid in the other room, but I saw the flashbacks.”

I shook my head. “No, we were first told about Ramona by Madam Celia, the Psychic.”

“Would that be the Psychic Paragon?” he asked with a grin.

“You’ve got me there,” I said. “Those Paragons are behind it all.”

“I’m serious,” he said. “It never sat right that they used tropes to manipulate us. They could have just asked us nicely. Why use tropes? They knew we would play along.”

At the time, I marveled at how the Tutorial forced us along with those tropes. It made sense for new players. That’s what I told myself.

“The Team Leader Paragon—the one who worked for the government—she used a trope to make us do what she wanted, yeah. Unnecessary. The Stranger. He met us at the Diner. He used a trope there, too, didn’t he?”

“It was a weird one, wasn’t it?” Isaac asked. “Made my head feel funny.”

It was a trope that Antoine and I immediately deduced forced us not to believe whatever the Stranger said. If he said water was wet, we wouldn’t believe it. We told ourselves it didn’t affect us because we already knew what was true.

What had he told us all that time ago?

As I remembered that meeting, a dam burst in my mind.

I started thinking that his trope didn’t work on ghosts because as I remembered what he told us, I started to think that much of what he said was the truth.

How much of what he told us was actually true?

We thought he was just doing a normal bit performance.

That was the lie.

~~~~~

Here is the link to the Stranger chapter on RR.