Now that we had decided we were using Antoine's rescue trope—and I say "we" very loosely—we could bring up some of the other players to join the talk since the subject of Antoine's mental health was no longer on the table.

Should we have kept that a secret from them? I had no idea. I was done thinking about it.

Cassie was now in one of the lounging chairs, doing her best to focus. "On a voice."

"No," she said, "voices. I think they're lovers quarreling. Two women. I hear growling. I can't tell what they're saying."

"How can you tell they’re lovers if you can't tell what they're saying?" Isaac asked.

"I'll tell you when you're older," Antoine said.

"One of them is very angry, but now all I hear is roars. I think it's the werewolves. I hear the word 'curse,'" Cassie said. "One of them is very angry at the other, but it's like I'm hearing them through a wall or something."

She was using her I'm Blocked trope, which allowed her to eavesdrop on the enemy, so to speak, until they eventually shut her out. So far, we hadn't gotten much content from the trope, but it still held its clues.

If we didn’t already know this was a werewolf storyline, we could probably guess from the way she was describing it. And the two women arguing were interesting, although I didn’t understand the context yet.

Suddenly, Cassie let out a bloodcurdling scream.

"One of them noticed me and just screamed in my ear," she said. "That's all I got." She was actually physically pressing her hand against her ear. Could her psychic eavesdropping cause her physical pain in her ear? Who knew?

"That was useless," she said. "I'm sorry."

"Don't be sorry," Antoine said. "We learned plenty."

"Like what?" Isaac asked. "What did we learn?"

"We learned that there is psychic power in this storyline, so these aren't strictly biological werewolves. Their curse is probably magical in nature," I said. "If there wasn’t any magic, her trope wouldn’t have worked at all. And we know that a fight between two women—who Cassie somehow knows are lovers—is somehow important, but it's not clear how."

"Maybe one of them is Serena," Ramona said, holding up the VHS copy of Stray Dawn: The Mark.

The back matter of the VHS talked about an enigmatic and charismatic troublemaker who was most certainly a werewolf.

"We'll see," I said.

Meanwhile, Andrew had his nose buried in the Atlas in a section about werewolves.

I thought he was wasting his time because, frankly, that section, which described different archetypal enemies, was often lacking.

It could never give spoilers, and trying to generalize enemies based on cosmetic similarities seemed dangerous.

That wasn’t to say there weren’t nuggets of good knowledge in that section of the Atlas; after all, there were some good rules of thumb about different movie monsters that a lot of players might not be familiar with.

"It would seem that a weakness to silver is universal, although the potency of silver changes from film to film," Andrew said.

Yes...

"It says that Carousel likes to add a mystery to werewolf stories about the identity of the werewolf if possible, and the person who wrote this note suggests that you really spend a lot of time building up that mystery because it'll take up screen time and take the place of physical altercations."

"That's a really good insight," I said, genuinely surprised. I had read that section, but it had been a while.

"So we try to exaggerate the mystery elements so that the big reveal is what's important, and the actual fights get less screen time, and we’re less likely to die, right?" Antoine asked.

"That's how I took it," I said.

There was one resource that Carousel had in limited supply, regardless of its omnipotence: runtime. A storyline, or at least the movie made from it, could only have so many minutes in it. So, if you could fill up that screen time with stuff that won’t get you killed but that is interesting to the audience, then there would be less time for all the things that can kill you.

"It says that one of the first things you have to do," Andrew said, "is determine the mindset of these werewolves—whether they are aware of their transformation, whether they're hiding it, or if they have the same mental faculties as a human and as a wolf. This determination," he read, "could be the single most important piece of insight in any werewolf story."

He continued to read through the hints and would read them out loud when he found one he liked.

"Look at this," he said. "It says that any betrayal trope can act as a blood control trope because in order to betray allies, a player would have an opportunity to be turned into a werewolf, and players should use this to help propel the story forward."

That wasn’t just true about werewolves; it applied to vampires and zombies as well. Anything that converted you into a monster would work with a betrayal trope to guarantee that that person became a monster—or at least give them the opportunity for it.

He continued reading and didn’t find any more pieces of advice that he felt were worth reading aloud until he got to the end.

"It says here that werewolves are really good for pursuing a Monster Hunter advanced archetype because of the nature of investigating lore, werewolf identity, and eventually hunting down the werewolf… This one mentions a conversation with Arthur C.," Andrew said.

"Arthur?" Kimberley repeated. "So that’s how he did it—how he got his advanced archetype."

"It would appear so," Andrew said. "Of course, this was back before the archetype tracker, so they were just guessing, but it seems they understood the basics. Try to get cast as your desired AA, and then do well in that role. Rinse and repeat."

"Maybe I'll go for Monster Hunter," Antoine said.

"That probably wouldn’t make much sense," Andrew said gently. "A Monster Hunter is a Savvy-based melee fighter; you’re already a Mettle-based melee fighter. If anything, this would be a downgrade for you."

"I can put points in Savvy if I need to," Antoine said. "I find the Athlete to be too generalized. Yeah, I'm a melee fighter, but I feel like I just get assigned to roles without much bite to them. Security guard, cop, jock… I feel like I’m not living up to my potential."

"That might change once you get your Aspect," I said. "I feel like most of my roles ever since I got my Aspect have been pretty specific to my skill set."

"Sport, Stud, or Health Nut," Antoine said aloud, leaning back in his deck chair and drinking a beer. “What grand opportunities lay before me."

The conversation continued but took a much more practical route, as we had to discuss builds and team composition.

Luckily, my I Don’t Like It Here trope could do a lot of the thinking for us.

The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

For instance, Dina and Bobby appeared to be of little benefit in this storyline. We determined that by seeing if the difficulty went up and down with their presence, but it simply didn't—whether they were on the team or not, I couldn't even feel the difficulty change at all.

"Sal did say that this was an ensemble movie, right?" Kimberley said. "So Wallflowers and Outsiders don’t get a lot of screen time because they are minor archetypes, right?"

"That’s more or less it," I said, "but that depends on their Aspect and tropes."

The more meta they were, the less substantial characters they could play, but again, that was true with Film Buffs, too.

Unfortunately, we could never get a measure of how difficult the storyline would be without me, because I was the one taking the measurement. And unless I was included on the team, we would never know how tough it was. Of course, I could have given my trope to one of them to use, but I didn’t mention that.

"Well, that means we don't need Lila either," Michael said. He had kept quiet for most of this, but I could see him over there doing push-ups and sit-ups as he mentally prepared for the fight ahead.

Lila, who had also not been talking much, was finally roused out of silence by that comment.

"I have to go," she said. "I have to make it up to them… If you take me, I'll be one of the blood sacrifices. I can guarantee my death—or at least it'll look like it," she said.

She did have a trope that allowed her to trigger her own Off-Screen death, similar to mine, although it took her less work because all she had to do was let out a bloodcurdling scream. I, on the other hand, had to come up with some convoluted scenario where it looked like I died but didn’t.

To be honest, that was a very strong offer. Even if she did nothing else, taking first or second blood for the rest of us was a huge benefit.

Kimberley, feeling a sense of duty or something like that, said, "Well, that means I can be first blood. My Looks Don’t Last trope guarantees it."

Normally, I would be on board, but this wasn't a normal circumstance.

"The thing is, you’re a Celebrity," I said. "Keeping the story revolving around you with your Hall of Fame aspect trope could be really useful to us. And Looks Don’t Last doesn’t guarantee your death—it guarantees that you suffer the fate of that particular storyline, which in this case might mean turning into a werewolf. And if you're a werewolf combined with being a narrative-hogging Celebrity, it might make you a pretty strong werewolf, depending on how those two things play together."

Lila's trope guaranteed that she would get the "dead" status, which meant she would not turn into a werewolf. It was a huge benefit.

"So, what are we talking? Lila as First Blood?" Andrew asked.

"That would be hard to guarantee," I said. Unlike Looks Don’t Last, her trope Dying Last Scream did not guarantee that she would be first or second blood; it just guaranteed that she would get the dead status when she let out a bloodcurdling scream while being attacked.

"What if she had a little bad luck?" Antoine asked.

"Well, there’s a thought," I said. Now where could we get some bad luck?

"Bad luck?" Andrew asked.

Antoine reached into his pocket and pulled out his Bad Luck Magnet trope. He had been awarded this in the middle of the Campfire storyline in order to guarantee he was attacked and to ensure he could not run from it. It would give the rest of us a lot of invisible bonuses on everything we tried as long as she lived, but it would guarantee she was targeted first, regardless of anything else.

Andrew grabbed the trope from Antoine and read over it.

"Yes, you told me about this," he said. "It looks like it could work. Any thoughts?" he asked, looking over at me.

"Well, assuming that there is no enemy trope that allows for early deaths unrelated to First Blood and assuming that there's not a scripted First Blood, it would likely work," I said. “If there is a scripted First Blood, that would be even better.”

Whatever objection Michael or anyone else might have had to allowing Lila to run the storyline evaporated at the prospect of giving her Bad Luck Magnet. In all likelihood, she would die pretty quickly, but if she didn’t, she would make us a little bit better at everything we did.

It was a win-win.

"All right, so Lila comes on as general support and potential blood sacrifice. Antoine is in as a fighter and for his rescue trope," I said. "Kimberley is in for narrative control; because she's a Celebrity, we can ensure that the story will circle around her in some manner that’ll make it predictable for us. What else?"

Andrew nodded his head. "What has me particularly confused is that the story seems to respond so well to high-Savvy players. You and I are both high-Savvy," he said, talking to me. "We won’t do very well in a fight, and yet our presence seems to make the story easier. I’m curious as to why that might be."

He was right. Whenever he left, the storyline did get a little harder, but I had chalked that up as just the benefit of having a healer. But it was true—the team did have a lot of Savvy, and it wasn't clear why that was beneficial from anything we were told.

Until I thought about it for a moment.

"Well, werewolves go hand in hand with monster hunters, right?" I said. "And monster hunters are Savvy-based. So, is it possible that this storyline benefits from Savvy because werewolves have to be researched and have to be hunted, which are things that Savvy is good for?"

Now, we were onto something.

"So we have a Doctor and a Film Buff covering it from both a lore and meta perspective," Andrew said. "And I must say that, in addition to being Logan and Avery’s teammate, Michael also has many tropes that could be useful for fighting werewolves."

He certainly did—his ability to know the terrain alone would be priceless.

"Hell yeah, I do," Michael said.

"So that's it," I said. "A soldier, a doctor, an athlete, a celebrity, a blood sacrifice, and a guy who watches too many movies."

"Sounds like a team to me," Antoine said.

There was a nervous excitement in the air as we all talked about what tropes we were going to bring. We let Antoine talk about how well we were going to do and give us a pep talk.

But the truth was, we were at a big disadvantage. It was true that this storyline was not as hard as Post-Traumatic, the storyline that Anna and Camden were trapped in, but it was a difficult storyline, and we were not going to have an easy time.

Even though Antoine’s rescue trope also had that same little safety net that Dina’s had—where if you weren’t killed in the storyline, you would survive it even if you failed—this one would be different because, unlike in Dina's trope, we would not be background characters or nonexistent characters. We would be the focus, and I had a hard time believing that too many of us were going to survive if we failed, regardless of a safety net.

More than that, I believed we had to throw away the safety net in our minds because our goal wasn’t to struggle through and grind out levels over the decades. Our goal was to beat this in one shot and gain enough experience to beat the game at Carousel before we died of old age.

I knew that the smart thing to do was to abandon our hope of this rescue for a time, go out, train, gather more experience, and level up until this rescue would be easier.

But to do that would take months, and it would defeat the purpose of having all these rescues available to us. We couldn’t be safe. We had to be exceptional.

The goal was to reach a high level with the fewest storylines possible. That way, we could maximize experience without building up too many residual spoilers.

And we were going to succeed at that because I had no intention of letting my friends rot in Carousel for the rest of their lives.

----------------------------------------

I wanted to bring Dina along, or maybe even Bobby. According to my difficulty rating abilities, they might not help that much innately, but having them around to level up would be great. Unfortunately, having them stay behind might have been more critical.

After we had planned out a run of Stray Dawn, Antoine, Kimberly, and I got Bobby and Dina together and we went over the plan.

"We need you to stay behind with Isaac, Ramona, and Cassie," I said. "As much help as I would think you might be on the storyline, we need you to stay behind in case we fail."

Dina seemed to have already gathered that.

"I'll have to get my rescue trope back," Dina said, "but that shouldn't take more than a few months, and it'll take a long time to be able to rescue you."

"We've been thinking about that," I said. "We think what you need to do is find other storylines where you can be awarded rescue tropes—storylines that have innate rescues built into them. That's where you have to go. Get as many rescue tropes as you can find and find one that works really well to come to save us. I think that’s your best method of attack," I said. "I suspect that the rescue tropes we have right now are not perfect, but they’re good enough. When you come to rescue us, you need one that's perfect."

I handed them a list of storylines we had found that had a high probability of rewarding rescue tropes.

"Of course, you'll also keep the Atlas."

"You really thought this out, didn’t you?" Dina said. "I knew you've been looking into this, but... I didn't think you were this far."

"All I get to do is plan. That's my whole job," I said. "And about going to Bobby's place—you'll probably want to go directly there when we leave, on second thought, just in case. If the Writ of Habitation suddenly stops working while you're asleep one night, well, you'll probably be hit by an omen really quickly."

Perhaps I was being a little too nonchalant about all of this, but they were taking it in pretty heavily.

They let me explain it and seemed to take it well enough, heaviness aside.

"One thing," Bobby said. "Before you go on that storyline, I want to see The Grotesque."

Of course, he did.

"I'll show it to you," I said, "but I'm telling you, she's only in one scene and barely—she's mostly just referred to."

"I want to see it," he said. "I'm sure of it."

Who was I to deny that request—the last glimpse of his wife he might ever see, and it was a background shot of her standing outside of a home while the rest of us did our jobs and played our characters.

And then she was gone, but we watched the whole movie through, and Bobby was closely attentive, watching everything.

She wasn’t even in it enough to trigger heavy breathing. There was no hint of the axe murderer.

I thought he would be angry and demand more, but Bobby wasn't the type to get angry. He was the type to get sad. Sad but resolute.

"I'll find her if it's the last thing I do," he said through tears, "no matter what."

I hoped he would find answers, though I had no idea what those answers would be.

Now, all that was left was to throw our chips in against Carousel’s terrible beasties and see if we lived to see the dawn.