New Carnival NPCs

[Jimsolo]

So, Tindal mentions in Carnival that there are far more attractions than have been listed in the book. Have you made up any interesting ones yourself?

I recently saw this, and had to add a bee bearder NPC into my campaign's Carnival.



And I've also included a human worm, as a nod to the immortal Prince Randian. I once saw a video of him rolling and lighting a cigarette with his mouth, (a feat he performed in the movie Freaks as well) and it was one of the coolest things I've seen in my entire life!

What have you guys felt compelled to add to the travelling show, if anything?

[Gonzoron of the FoS]

I haven't made any myself, but I wanted to make sure you know about "Carnival: the Ballyhoo" from the Book of Secrets. More Carnival members by the author of Carnival, John Mangrum.

Also, "The Freak Show" and "The Sideshow" in QtR#3, "Sideshow Games II" in QtR15, and "Carnival: Boss Canvas Man" in USS2002 had some more fan-made Troupers.

Actually, that's not true, now that I think of it... I did make one long, long ago, when the Kargatane had a contest, before Carnival was even released. The contest entries were archived at Gryphon Hill, which is now archived here:
http://fraternityofshadows.com/GryphonH ... /index.htm


Love the bee-beard guy. Of course, due to the twisting, he can control the bees, right?

[The Giamarga]

Nice list of articles & links ron. I was aware of only one or two of those... Have to hunt the down and read them.

The Carnival novel should also yield a few more NPCs that are from the old Carnival de Morai.

After statting out the Carnival as a settlement here, I created a list of acts/roles that seem to be missing from the Carnival so far. (Note that the Carnival has probably around 150 members, I derived this number from the number of wagons and number of occupants per wagon note in the supplement. Of course it could have grown a bit since then...)

Also browsing the wikipedia articles on Sideshow, Freak Show, Geek Show, Circus and sideshow attractions was really an eye opener. Mangrum sure did his homework.

As for the missing roles/possible additional trouper ideas:

midgets
trickshooter (preferably female)
trick-rider
dancing bear, bear wrestling
swordswallower
bearded lady (the half and half from Mangrums Ballyhoo fits this type though)
wolfman/wolfgirl (pf lunar oracle with the wolf-scarred face curse perhaps?)
musicians
more barkers (Tindal is head barker after all)
acrobats, tightrope walkers (more circus)
stage magician (charlatan/sleight artist or a real wizard?) Though Tindal could of course take up this act easily posing as a sleight artist/charlatan, and like a pinnacle illusionist hiding even his ability to cast spells...
mind reader
bare knuckle fighter/boxer
yogi
perhaps a voodoo priest(ess) (synthesist summoner?)
quacker/snake oil seller (a slightly advanced version of InVinoVeritas' the great swami Ranjan could do well for the quacker and/or yogi)
a caliban or two maybe?
a bow-legged dwarf barker

[Gonzoron of the FoS]

Nice list of articles & links ron. I was aware of only one or two of those...

Same here. I went to the Mistipedia Netbook index to find which BoS the Ballyhoo was in, and when searching for "Carnival" on that page stumbled on the others.

[High Priest Mikhal]

(a feat he performed in the movie Freaks as well)

"One of us! One of us!"

Freaks is one of those cult classics that should be mandatory viewing for Ravenloft fans. Need a better idea of what Carnival is like? Watch the movie. Maybe not as sinister but still the gathering place of the outcasts of society.

[Ryan Naylor]

Mangrum also had an idea for Pharaoh Rottentop, a living human who looks like a mummy. And was suffering from mummy rot, I think.

I can't remember any more of the details.

[Mortavius]

midgets

Correct, although the Familiar is close.

wolfman/wolfgirl (pf oracle with the Wolfscarred Face curse perhaps?)

I would say the Hideous Man-Beast fills this role nicely.

musicians

The Skurra, and the Organ Grinder in particular are said to play music throughout Carnival; it's one of the ways they communicate.

stage magician (charlatan/sleight artist or a real wizard?) Though Tindal could of course take up this act easily posing as a sleight artist/charlatan, and like a pinnacle illusionist hiding even his ability to cast spells...

I always thought this is one of the things Tindal did.

mind reader

Madame Fortuna, in a way.

[Jimsolo]

stage magician (charlatan/sleight artist or a real wizard?) Though Tindal could of course take up this act easily posing as a sleight artist/charlatan, and like a pinnacle illusionist hiding even his ability to cast spells...

I always thought this is one of the things Tindal did.

He claims that he does, but I kind of assumed this was one of those things that lots of the carnies (especially the Skurra) did.

mind reader

Madame Fortuna, in a way.

Also the three Skurra ladies. Still, someone with a mentalist act would be pretty sweet.

I've also thought that someone doing chapeaugraphy would be cool.

I've been thinking about a bear performer. A man and his wife who own a bear. They offer rides to children, and offer to let adults fight it, with the offer of a large reward if they win. In reality, the man is a ranger who's been infected with werebear lycanthropy, and his 'wife' is his animal companion, a brown bear. They take turns being the performing bear. (Although a canny observer might notice that while the bear always has roughly the same size and color, its gender changes.) ((The bear's shapeshifting ability is a result of the Twisting.))

[Mortavius]

Well, the Fates Three don't really do a mind-reading act. They just have an ESP (or Detect Thoughts, depending on your edition) ability. They are actually described as the closest thing to clowns that the Carnival has. They just sometimes use their ability to shine a light on evil acts that their patrons have caused.

[Jimsolo]

Good point.

My plan for the Bee Bearder, by the way, was to make him a lumberjack. That way, in addition to the bee bearding, he could do a lumberjack act. (Including speed chopping, match splitting, tobacco spitting, and other sorts of events you see at lumberjack games.)

The Bee Bearder was always a team player. So much so that he was almost unable to function on his own. When he joined the Carnival, he welcomed the Twisting as tangible proof that he had finally found a 'family' to belong to. The bee beard he did for his act (actually very simple to do: just put a queen bee in a box tied under your chin, and then don't make any sudden movements) became semi-permanent, but he gained some measure of control over the insects.

He doesn't have to have the bees on him, but they do have to stay within 30 feet. In combat, they can either form a 10x10 swarm (4 squares) or surround the Bee Bearder in a whirling nimbus of insects. Either way, anyone inside the cloud of bees must make a DC 15 Fortitude save each round or be nauseated, except for the Bee Bearder himself. Everyone, including the Bee Bearder, so surrounded also gains concealment (one quarter concealment in 3.0).

What do you guys think? Seem balanced? Appropriate, from a thematic standpoint? Normally, I wouldn't be so hung up on an NPC who isn't going to get a whole lot of screen time (I'm only doing a single Carnival game) but I'm such a rabid fanboy of Carnival that I want to do it justice.

[Cam]

I think Bee Bearder is great! Clearly you could have him be from any domain where lumberjacking goes on. But I am trying to remember if there is anything in the canon about beekeeping being big in one location or another. If so that could help flesh out his background even more.

Would you have the Twisting effect the bees? If they are basically mindless creatures that just run on instinct, maybe not -- not enough brain activity to twist. (I have no idea if that describes bees in the real world.) Or even if they are Twisted, perhaps they have all maintained their essential capabilities as bees, and just have different numbers of legs/wings/antennae/etc. that you would only notice if you looked up close. But regardless there should be a queen bee somewhere in a hive under his vardo that has been turned into something extremely weird because of the Twisting.

And, adventure hook: there could be some useful or secret item hidden inside the bees' hive/around which they built their hive. The PCs need it for a good, legitimate purpose. But they've got to destroy the hive to get it out! Do they do so and ruin the Bee Bearder's life to achieve some other objective? Or do they find a clever magical way to shrink themselves to enter the hive and extract the item without damaging the hive?

[The Giamarga]

Mangrum also had an idea for Pharaoh Rottentop, a living human who looks like a mummy. And was suffering from mummy rot, I think.

I can't remember any more of the details.

He could be a wasting curse oracle in PF. Did Mangrum reveal anything more about him?

[Gonzoron of the FoS]

He could be a wasting curse oracle in PF. Did Mangrum reveal anything more about him?

He's left some crumbs over the years. If you google "Pharaoh Rottentop" you'll find some posts from John on the Ravenloft-L list, the wizards boards, etc.

The only thing I wrote for Carnival that never made it into print in some fashion was a trouper called Pharoah Rottentop, a fake mummy I cut early on for space. However, Rottentop's central adventure hook later beame the basis of Jameld of Hroth's Dread Possibility in Van Richten's Arsenal.

In earlier drafts of Carnival her [The Vampiress's] act was linked to another pucked-out "undead," a fellow called Pharoah Rottentop. (I had to cut Rottentop because he was taking up *way* too much space; I still hope to find an opportunity to use him at some point.)

[Mangrum]

The backstory for Pharaoh Rottentop was fairly involved, and was designed as a method of seeding a linked set of cursed artifacts called the Seven Scarabs of Sakkaramon, which ultimately ended up getting a brief mention in Van Richten's Arsenal, I believe.

The short version of the Seven Scarabs is that they were funeral regalia suitable for an Akiri pharaoh. They granted powers and imposed curses to enable and compel their owners to collect all seven artifacts, and then, with the full set, activate a sarcophagus capable of restoring the dead to life.

The short version of Pharaoh Rottentop is that he'd been an Akiri tomb raider who acquired one of the Seven Scarabs, in this case a rod that aged its owner at the rate of a year a day, but also granted its owner the ability to drain the youth from others to sustain their own, theoretically indefinitely. Discovering to his own shock that he had a conscience, "Rottentop" refused to use the rod, consigning himself to the curse's rapid wasting. Within a month or so, the Carnival came through, and Isolde allowed him to stay. Once the Twisting took hold, he continued to age, but never fatally--he just keeps on aging. Physically, he's about a thousand years old now, and well on his way to shriveling into a cricket, so to speak. Being quite feeble, his act is to lie still in a real Akiri sarcophagus, wrapped up like a mummy, then "come to life" when the audience is allowed to come up and closely examine the corpse. He still has the cursed rod.

[Joël of the FoS]

Interesting, the link with the Seekers of the Seven Scarabs, even if he has no link to this cult.

Indeed I remember you once wrote he was a "decent fellow", by refusing to use the rod.

Joël