ORIGIN

Welcome one and welcome all, you most wicked and unlawful creatures, to the Lair of... or, well, the most frequent hiding place of... the catawampus!

While it is in no way safe to stash anything here for long, there is a great deal of things to steal and win and stash from here, so the beast seems to think of it and treat it as one big Hoard all on its own. Or perhaps something of a Hoard-in-law? I don't know how Hoard family structures work, this is a weird territory for me, but the catawampus seems to navigate it just fine!

Whatever this place is to it, the residents, attendants, and guests are treated all the same: with a great deal of anything from nonchalance to "playful" violence. And when I say "playful" I do mean somewhat kitten-like, although the kitten is 11 feet tall and rather thick and burly.

So, prey tell—I mean... pray tell, what is the catawampus doing here today? Well, there is a surplus of dubious food and snack stalls in this region of the caves, and the catawampus has always been a little bit of a bottomless pit. And by a "little bit" I mean a lot bit. Oh, the havoc it wreaked during puberty... those were the days. The days of very little peace for very many bystanders. Today was a pale imitation; the catawampus bounded from snack stall to snack stall, attempting to use its size and general demeanor to bully the vendors out of their stocks. Pounding aggressively on or against various stalls, staring deeply and wordlessly into the eyes of carnies, and allowing large globs of saliva to hang down from above like evil, hungry icicles seemed to work pretty well.

So many weird, awful smelling hot dogs... so much extremely normal popcorn... today would be a fun day for the mystical jesterly janitor, if there even was one.

@Tsetse

At some point it had become a challenge for Tsetse to push his way through the winding, bramble-filled path to a destination. That's what it was. Not that Tsetse had poked his head into the path, taken a few steps forward and then immediately realized he didn't know how to find his way out. No, he was merely exploring. Sating his own idle curiosity, is all. This was definitely very willing and intentional.

It would be worth it, though. Not for the glittering lights and colorful tents of the Carnival—though he certainly eyed the stalls up appraisingly, chaos-instincts singing about how easy it would be to destroy this place, to drown it all in a deluge of corrupted water, tent-poles going askew and fabric sinking in the darkened floodwaters...

...and then he spotted a—well, he could only call it a fellow beast. A creature of long, shaggy fur and intimidating wings, the fangs jutting from its slavering jaw doing a very good job of making the little imps at their stalls wide-eyed and puffy-furred.

Tsetse guessed it was there for the food. Food was an excellent motivator; he had used bait to lure Lessers out of their hiding spots before snatching them up uncerimonously for his experiments. This creature seemed sufficiently beast-shaped for that.

And there was a certain beauty to it, really, Tsetse observed as he watched it work. The flaring of leathery wings to make itself look bigger, the direct eye contact... clearly, a beast to be feared.

He admires it from the moment he lays eyes upon it.

It takes only a moment's thought before he's striding up to one of the opposing snack stalls himself, lashing tendrils of corrupt magic out to the nearest imp. Neon eyes lock onto beady ones, sharp and intent.

He knows as soon as the world warps displeasingly around him that the magic has decided to take a turn of its own. To—to humiliate this in front of this beast of beauty—is this chaos' will? Does the magic find this funny?!

It doesn't matter. Or maybe it does matter. Oh, Tsetse doesn't know—he feels his body sway awkwardly, but it's as if he's experiencing it from a distance, because the world is warping and collapsing and screaming, screaming melting through his ears, it hurts—

His knees hit the dirt, but that he doesn't feel, senses overwhelmed by raw, hallucinatory chaos.

Catawampus

Tsetse