first steps to infiltrate the kiss factory

the first six rooms of a dungeon i've been running

if you've done your homework you shouldn't need to ask where this is from. >:((( how loyal are you?????

there's a factory where kisses are made and true love comes from. their manufacture is a trade secret and your boss wants it. they're also getting divorced and can't stop crying. they press cash and tickets to some sort of an arthouse production into your hands and the tickets are damp with their sweat and their tears to the point of falling apart but even wet cash spends so here you are. trying to figure it out.

0. the only people in a dusty theater

this is seriously so awesome idk just check it out

•  huge warehouse space. air thick with dust, sneezes echo. door was loosely padlocked, easy enough to slip in. a plywood stage with 3 different performances, already begun. metal folding chairs, nobody else in the audience.  
• the plays are an experimental sort of something. you actually about them before, from someone annoying. in a bar or whatever. they seemed confused, repeated anything you told them as if learning what it was for the first time. wore heavy jacket, sunglasses, gloves. 
• if you go up on any of the stages, there's a soft ragdoll thud as your imitation is dropped into a chair from somewhere in the rafters. long coats and gloves and hats and scarves and sunglasses conceal wire-mother bodies and paper mache features. they're confused, stupid, and answer to some bastardized version of your name. they want to leave the theater as soon as possible to fumble their way through taking over your life but need you to give them permission to leave the theater. 
• If you encounter your imitation and it survives, the next time you encounter it it is more lifelike, constructed from finer stuff. If you've encountered it three separate times, the fourth time you encounter it it will be utterly indistinguishable from yourself, and whenever you take action in its presence, flip a coin: on tails, the imitation takes that action instead.
•  if your imitation leaves the theater before you do, when you go to follow it you're in the Yellow City instead. Your imitation is there too, but better than you, more convincing. Your joints hurt and your insides are full of cotton. If you kill them, or if they kiss you, you get to return to the normal world.
  

1: gambling puppets

oh... to hold and behold...

• stage left. fake grass, paper mache gate.
• four marionettes, toddler size, in little guard uniforms. strings up to the rafters. up there, four puppeteers, hidden in the shadows, but identical in face and size to the puppets. 
• the puppets are drinking a jug of wine, actually sand but it's rude to refuse. they're gambling for their hearts desires, displayed on four pedestals
• a tiny puppet wife, murdered over and over in bad taste slapstick. this puppet hates his wife with an uncomfortable venom 
• tiny puppet cock and balls, swelling into a massive erection. this puppet thinks he's a lot funnier than he is.
• a human skull, chattering its teeth. her name was Cyra Nelms and this puppet is deeply, annoyingly, in love with her. 
• the Abyss Bloom, Sister of the Violet. meaty, purple-black orchid. makes your eyes itch to look at. If you smelled her, she'd rot you and herself into nothing in a joyful instant. this puppet is suicidal and poetic. 
•  they invite you up on stage to join the game. rhapsodize about your hearts desire and, if it's true, a pedestal will be winched up from under the floorboards displaying the desire in effigy. if you lie, nothing happens. the puppets know the truth, but don't want to embarrass you. 
• a cupid statue stands with an arrow ready. lose the game and it shoots your hearts desire and you will never ever in your life ever get it ever. if you win, you get everyone else's hearts desire. not yours though. everybody else gets that one.
  

2: false funeral

god i forgot how gorgeous

• center stage. unlit pyre, body atop it in a cardboard crown. five framed portraits like movie posters leaning against it. a fake window hangs from the ceiling showing a picture of a beach that looks like it was cut out of a credit card advertisement.
  
• circling, wailing, a crowd of mourners in black veils that trail to the ground. 
• each portrait is signed with the person's autograph and cause of death
• Klara Waldrep, burned and poisoned by the Wyrm
• Pia Dora, chewed up and spat out by the Wyrm
• Nolan Pennycuff, skinned alive by the petitioners of the Deerhide Oracle
• Germaine Talamantez, skinned alive by the petitioners of the Deerhide Oracle
• Clayton Gamarra, sacrificed by the Goldhead Cult
•  he dead king's actor is really bad at playing dead. itches nose, adjusts crown.
• the mourners haltingly recite this: he's King Kazuch and he and his best friends all went looking for the Dawn of Kisses, where true love comes from. all his friends died along the way, and only Kazuch returned, where he died of a broken heart 
• they forget their lines frequently and the king keeps prompting them in a stage whisper.
• they think you're doing it and get really fucking annoyed with you, ask if you think you'd do a better job. did you take acting classes??? did you???? get up here then, if you're so fucking sure about what happened.
  
• if you point out that the King is the one prompting them, they'll actually kill him for real. then they'll freak the fuck out and blame you for it.

3: the immaculate cow

a womans beauty is ideally measured by her collection of weird bald guys

• stage right. bloody straw and puddles of milk
  
• An immaculately perfect cow, surrounded by wretched, filthy, starving actors in cowhide costumes debasing themselves as they try to suckle from the cow’s teat. it's all a little hammy and overly dramatic. 
• they'll pause after a minute to invite you up on the stage; we're looking for a little audience participation. aren't you thirsty? have you ever had milk straight from the cow? from a cow as beautiful as this?
• if you drink the cow’s milk you take on the form of any creature or thing you are performing the shape of; the more convincing your performance, the longer lasting the transformation. the actors all imitate cows after drinking the milk, trying to evoke the image of their icon.
  
• those that do become cows themselves (though less immaculate) are promptly butchered and eaten raw by their companions. this is real. you can feel the hunger.

4: cereal the counterfeiter

i hate being in ur house why is your shit set up this way

• backstage, behind 1: gambling puppets. dingy corridor with scaffolding up to the rafters and pulleys to raise and lower the curtains and adjust the lights. absolutely stuffed full of props. 
• anything you can think of: wedding cakes, birds, flowers, guns, fruit. there's a whole prop ford f-150. almost everything is very obviously false and shoddy, but there's some real stuff here too. 2:6 chance for anything the PCs examine being actually real.
  
•  the realistic stuff is the work of Cereal the Counterfeiter
• he's the less successful twin brother of Cyril the Craftsman and horribly jealous 
• he's crawling around on the floor poking and prodding things to ascertain their reality. bemoans the loss of his goods: facsimile objects, stones, birds, coins, even people. All the real stuff is his work. he'll believe he made anything real though.
•  he made your imitations, but it was a rush job. if you mention how crummy they are he'll try immediately try to kill himself in front of you. he was in such a rush that he forgot what stuff he made and what he didn't.
•  If you help locate his goods or convince him you have found them he will kiss your feet and offer to fashion replicas of you: A source of new characters!
• he's got a little work station, under which you can see a trap door. he won't let you go down there though, it's where he keeps his works in progress.

5: fake beach real water

a pool is one of the worst things i know

• backstage, behind 2: false funeral. fake tropical beach, paper mache palm trees with packaged coconut water dangling from them. sawdust sand on the boards. curtains to the left and right as well as behind you. ahead, the real actual factual ocean.
• little children in monkey onesies scramble all over the place. they'll rob you and give what they steal to cardboard cutouts of dutch merchants, waddled around by more little kids, who, singing happily, load everything onto a real boat and sail away.

6: fragile forest

ughhhchhhhh yea

• backstage, behind 3: the immaculate cow. really big stage, almost can't see the curtains to either side and straight ahead of you. everywhere, hugely tall, fragile, fake trees made of balsa wood and newspaper and glue. it's cold, you can see your breath.
• the sound of clattering, gnashing teeth grinds over everything, making it incredibly hard to focus on what you’re doing and where you’re going; if you don't muffle your ears you have a 3:6 chance of bumping into a tree whenever you move. the sound stems from a single human skull high atop the highest fake tree. 
• It belonged to Cyra Nelms, a poet so in love with the Violet that even paralysis and now death could not stop her incredibly annoying odes of love
• if any tree is jostled, it falls, and if any tree falls, 3:6 chance it falls on you and 4:6 chance it knocks another tree down too.