Episode description[edit | edit source]
Hey everyone! Welcome to another episode of Live at the Table! Today, we'll be playing Anomaly by Carter Richmond, which you can find right here on itch.io. Join Sylvi, Keith, Janine, and Austin as they put on their lab coats and examine the unexplainable: A mysterious fair that's popped up in a Bluff City mall parking lot...
(Because of Patreon's file size limits, we had to cut this one into two! Sorry for any inconvenience.)
Plot[edit | edit source]
In desperation to do something in order to get out of the funfair, the non-duplicated Agent Tinker sets a trashcan on fire (trying to create a danger within the funfair). The trashcan’s content’s changes, turning the greasy food wrappers into fireworks, which explode and create an impressive fireworks display. Tinker returns to the HQ in despair, only to find that the entry to their HQ has vanished, leaving them to wander the dark ride.
In response to people trying to leave the funfair, the Anomaly begins replicating people’s needs from outside the funfair - people who miss their pets find themselves being followed by local wildlife (racoons, etc).
Tinker and Barker figure out Maria Carvagal is attending to all garbage cans, and realise that the Funfair staff are connected to the Funfair itself. They focus on vandalising and destroying the funfair in small ways to see what the effect is on the funfair.
The Concern agents realise that they have been in the funfair for a full year, rather than the few weeks they previously believed. At the Concern office, they hold a team meeting to discuss this, and whether such a long-running phenomenon is even a danger to the community.
They then realise that the Funfair has been a constant in Bluff City through all time periods, but that if you’re there in 1900, you’re not seeing any future fairs and cannot interact with other years of the funfair. However, they discover someone within the funfair who says they have been before, meaning that they did manage to escape it when they were a child.
A giant hollow statue of Captain Kidd appears in the middle of the funfair, in front of the Adventure Galley.
As the Anomaly gets better at interpreting people actions it becomes aware that the Concern is investigating it. It begins to give the Concern agents small anomalies actions, giving them whatever results they most want to see. They hold a meeting, each of them believing that they have solved the mystery of the Anomaly (except for Barker, who has become trapped in an even smaller area of the funfair).
The Concern agents within the funfair regroup and decide to rope off their HQ, doing patrols of the funfair. The members of the public begin to get suspicious of the Concern agents, and the Concern agents become suspicious of the public in return. On the heels of this, the Concern set up a sting operation to catch Agent Snave in his scams (“somewhere Agent Trotter is very pleased”).
A small group of people try to escape the park by going through the inner workings of the Adventure Galley, although some people are injured by the machinery and turn back. Only one makes it out, temporarily forgetting that they have been trapped before they realise that the majority of people they know are missing, and remembering the funfair.
The Concern agents find a way to communicate with the Funfair in a way they can better understand - Maria arrives at the Concern HQ and hands them the keys to a staff-only area. The agents enter, finding a small tv set with an antenna which they can change to different channels to receive answers from the Anomaly via footage of John-Peter Foster Jr. They ask the Anomaly what exactly it is getting out of enticing people to/trapping people within the funfair, attempting to bargain with it to get some people out. The time loop shortens, making the agents feel more aware of doing the same negotiations over and over again.
In response to the high levels of stress within the part, clowns begin appearing within the funfair (some of which are “traditional clowns” and others who are more on the “contemporary mascot” side of things). Some perform small entertainment acts, while others help in more practical ways such as handing out bottles of water (“personal clown attention”). The Concern studies the clowns and where they came from, finally managing to catch sight of one walking away, getting smaller and smaller until it walks through a very small door in a very small building.
Snave returns to the park, although he now has the opposite attitude as previous (trying to “lowball the Concern in what they’re getting out of their conversations with the Anomaly”).
Some of the items that had been duplicated begin to disappear from the park, including food.
The Concern holds a high-level meeting, about either destroying the funfair and park 2 or keeping the funfair intact but using it as a prison. Trotter, after hearing about the plan, begins hiding the research (what has come out of the penny smasher, etc) the Concern has done on the Anomaly so it cannot be used to turn the funfair into a prison. He contacts “someone at the radio station” to help hide the information. The Concern does eventually use the funfair as a prison, dropping them in the funfair.
The Concern manages to alter the funfair’s radio ads, tuning them to limit the amount of people it’s pulling in (reminding people that they already went, changing the background music, saying that the Adventure Galley is out of order).
In response to the Concern’s radio advertisement tampering, the Anomaly becomes more active, trapping people in the Bosgov’s Department Store next to the Funfair.
The Anomaly kills someone, and the Concern agents quickly hide the body to study. They are spotted by Chris Tarot. In response to the extra energy gain by the Anomaly killing someone, the funfair grows larger, adding a new ride to the new space.
The high level Concern agents attempt to figure out the maximum capacity of the original funfair, somewhat helped by the Concern ramping up its use of the original funfair and Park Two as a prison (“send them to the fair”), as part of the Concern’s negotiation with the Anomaly. However, no matter how many people enter the park there is always sufficient room, as the funfair grows to accommodate those new people (“the size of the park is determined by the amount of the people in park”).
Some of the public trapped in the funfair begin to think of it as their home (“lifelong stanners”). They don’t dissaue people within the funfair from leaving, but do try their best to convince new arrivals to stay in the funfair. There begins to be a geographic split, with the Concern prisoners making camp and the “locals” to the funfair making camp in a miniature village.
The Concern extracts the agents, swapping the agents from the original funfair to Park Two and putting those from Park Two into the Original funfair. The extraction on the way to Park Two is interrupted as another car (implied to be the group Hector Hu forms) rams into the Concern’s car, pulling out Barker and getting her on their side.
With the funfair transitioning into being used as the Concern’s main black site prison, the Concern ceases their investigations.