Editing The Carnival (section)

===The Twisting===
The '''Twisting''' is the most infamous attribute of the Carnival; those who stay in the Carnival's presence overlong spontaneously transform into mutants, physically warping into unpredictable forms. This effect has a lot in common with the [[Powers Checks]], in that it clearly reflects upon the personality of the Twisted individual (and often-times upon their morality in the process) - the differences are that Twisting affects all individuals, regardless of their behavior or attitude, that the Twisting only manifests once rather than steadily mutating, the Twisting will not turn a character into an NPC, and finally this: the Twisting is ''curable''... note that this doesn't make it ''easy'' to get rid of it. All of the Carnival's Troupers believe the Twisting to be irreversible, and in many ways it might as well be.

Basically, a Twisting gives the character a set of personality-base mutations, giving them enhanced abilities but at certain costs - most universally, the Twisted individual now looks like a freak, which isn't a good thing in the den of xenophobia that is the [[Demiplane of Dread]]. Some Twistings may even "upgrade" pre-existing deformities or mutations, though always at the cost of making them more noticeable. The one solid "rule" of the Twisting is that a Twisting ''never robs a character of their vital abilities''. For example, a Twisted [[wizard]] would never mutated in such a way that they can no longer cast spells.

Ironically, there's very few mechanics to the Twisting itself; it's largely a matter of the DM inventing a Twisting and giving it mechanical advantages and disadvantages. So the rules for how the Twisting is gained and won can be easily ported from one edition to another... which is good because they only time they were ever visited was in the [[Advanced Dungeons & Dragons]] 2e [[splatbook]] "The Carnival", with issue 3 of [[Quoth the Raven]] offering some example Twistings for [[Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition]].

How does it work? Well, the Twisting ''starts'' the moment that a character enters the Carnival's grounds, but it requires prolonged exposure to manifest. If a character stays in the Carnival for 5+1d8 days, they become Twisted. If they leave the Carnival, the Twisting will slowly fade... emphasis on ''slowly''. It takes a '''month''' outside of the Carnival for each '''day''' spent within the Carnival (so even leaving immediately after the Twisting manifests on day 6 will require ''six months'') before the Twisting vanishes, and it does so as suddenly as it appeared. A character can also brute-force the spiritual purification by casting Restoration spells - it takes one Restoration per ''week'' spent at the Carnival to remove the Twisting, and nobody in-universe is aware that this is even possible.

In AD&D, the freakishness of the Twisting results in a Twisted character halving their [[Charisma]] score when interacting with non-Twisted. In 3e, there's no official ruling, but a big boost to [[Outsider Rating]] - say, +5 at the least - is the most sensible equivalent.

Whilst the Carnival splat focuses on Twisted PCs and NPCs, the article "Growls in the Night: Creeplings, Fidgets and Crawlers" in [[Quoth the Raven]] #3 explains that the Carnival has developed its own ecosystem of Twisting-mutated small animals ], providing stats for them as creatures and even options for taking them as [[familiar]]s under the [[Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition]] rules. Creeplings grant +2 Hide, Fidgets +2 Pick Pockets, and Crawlers +2 to Fortitude saves.

The original source of lore on Troupers, as the Carnival's resident NPCs are known, was the [[Advanced Dungeons & Dragons]] 2nd edition splatbook "The Carnival", although its foreman Hermos was also covered in [[Champions of the Mists]]. Ravenloft [[netbook]]s have added a few fanmade Troupers as well.