Morbid Mayhem!!
"Morbid Mayhem!!" (yes, with the exclamation points) is a 'game show' that travels around the Nothingness, grabbing people from various Stories to use as contestants. This show is essentially a cross between Mario Party and Danganronpa, where the contestants play on a giant board game with themselves as the game pieces, and their lives on the line.
The goal is not necessarily to win, but to not lose. The person who 'loses' (i.e. is in last place at the end of a session) is killed off, and then the game continues to another session until one person has won. The person who wins doesn't get much of a prize, besides being sent back to their home Story with a lot of trauma and an unbelievable series of events. Basically this is all completely just for the amusement of the crew.
In Mario Party near the end of a game, the person in last place is giving pity help. Here, near the end of a round (before the last 5 turns maybe) the person in last place gets punished further to keep them in last place. Though to make it a little more fair, the game will also knock down the first place person a bit.
The Host of the show and Doña Sapphira are definitely at odds, with the crew constantly dodging the Janitor Menagerie in order to continue their cruel games. As such, the crew of Morbid Mayhem!! are considered Interlopers, even if most of the time they don't target characters related to a Story's Tales.
The Show's Crew
The following are the known members behind the "Morbid Mayhem!!" show.
- Edith Aldrich: A weirdly dressed woman who serves as the Host of the show and the leader of the show's crew. Edith is quiet smug and smarmy, especially towards particularly evil contestants. She makes announcements and give commentary throughout the games. Her name is meant to be reminiscent of the word "eldritch".
- Dan D. Lyon: A Payaph, he is one of the Host’s assistants. He likes to pull pranks on the characters, and acts like Bowser or Happening spaces in Mario Party. He is based around lion tamers while also being lion-like in appearance, with ears, a mane, and a tail. He also has a nightmarish lionman form for extra unlucky players. His name is just a pun on dandelion.
- Wyatt: A gunslinger Silhoub, he is one of the Host’s assistants. He is in charge of the occasional punishments (i.e. a player breaks one of the many bizarre and arbitrary rules that can change throughout a game). He is named for Wyatt Earp, often referred to as the most deadly lawman in the Wild West.
- Quatis: A Miran, acts as the hosting area for the show. His space looks like a hospital, though he is able to meld it into different shapes for different kinds of boards, and finds this very exciting since most Miranim don't bother to do something like this. He is named after Quaternary Ammonium Compounds (QUATs), which are very potent disinfectants.
- Xylo: An Obserity, its voice is xylophone noises. It give players a bonus if they find it, but most of the time the bonuses are negatives.
- Pappy Cyprus: A Scrivenion with an origami crane head, in charge keeping track of the games and their outcome. His name is a pun on Papyrus, though it's also not his real name. Rumor has it, he has a twin brother somewhere...
- Chausen Poxy, goes by "Nurse Poxy": A Caretue, she says she wants to genuinely help the players, though most of the time she ends up making things intentionally worse. In essence, making herself look good by saying "Oh, I tried to help these screwups, aren't I a good person?" Her name comes from Munchausen by Proxy syndrome, also "pox" as in disease/plague.
- Phillip A. Avarice: A Faemon. The A stands for Argyria, and the word “philargyria” is the Greek word for greed. He has a cat skull, goat horns, spider spinneret, beetle wings, yellow-green fire eyes, and bone scythe. He prefers to deal in money-lending and accounting for the show, and also runs an item shop in the game. He can lend money to players if they don't have enough to buy an item, but he will expect it to be paid back in full (plus interest) on a later turn. If the player doesn't have enough money by that point, then their hit points will be used instead.
- Misnanio: A Dreamer that Edith woke up to recruit onto her crew; deep down they wish they could go back to dreaming, but they will just play it cool and say they feel fine; during the games, they will create a temporary Story for the contestants to act out in a minigame; their name is an anagram of insomnia.
- Beelzelina: An Eldriathan, and the 'true' form of Edith Aldrich (in essence Edith is just Beelzelina's "humansona". She looks like a gigantic parasitic isopod (the kind that eat and replace fish tongues), and is very dramatic.