Ah yes, the Tri-Carnival of Ayzabin--the Party of All Parties--the Big Ménage-a-Tri! It’s the largest carnival monsters anywhere on the planet could go to celebrate the three full moons. Ayzabin itself was a prominent city to begin with, for it was not only the largest city in the world, but also the most influential and most up-to-date with trends, inventions, arts, and steam technology. And if you can’t remember the name “Ayzabin” very well, think of it as “I’z uh been drinkin’, so lemme be!”, which can pretty much sum up the general consensus of its populous. Yet this is one of those nights--the whole week, actually--where creatures of all shapes and sizes set aside their differences and party.

Every round paper lantern hanging on the wooden eaves of every zigzagging adobe building was either red, blue, or green in color. The curling black streetlights’ hanging iron lanterns tossed orange spotlights down on the partying creatures below. They were in their wild colors, clothes, masks, and accessories, and were off dancing, hopping, punching, or a combination of all three, with some sort of beverage in their hands and-or claws. Whatever they felt like doing, they did it, consequence being either an armful of liquor-filled beans or a punch in the mouth (wherever that would be) and then an armful of liquor-filled beans.

Hairy and slimy maidens threw confetti from the high, organically shaped windows, raining fluttery colors down onto the streets. Anthropomorphic beasts played jumping music with traditional monster instruments, as well as familiar human inventions such as accordions, trumpets and bongos. Noise blared, lights poured from every crevice, super-sized copper cogs worked overtime, steam spewed from many pipes sticking out of the skyscrapers high into the deep, black night.

What I tell yah? Creatures like to party.

Among the buoyant crowd were a Duo of sneaky hands: one pair rotten, the other pair of leaves, both of them being a shade of green. And these hands had a “shopping” list in mind. They snuck around market tents and snatched rope behind the vendors’ backs--I think one hand managed to pull the rope off a tent, causing it to collapse altogether. They plucked jewel-like fruits from stands, wide brushes from street artists, and buckets of paint from originally locked hardware shops. These pairs of hands especially took it as their duty to kidnap. Hapless paint grubs--sentient, bottle-sized imps of many colors with paint stored in their four conjoined eyes--were in the middle of partying among their larger friends, when they were stolen away without warning. A good collection of these grubs found themselves imprisoned in a crate and carried around, yelping and cursing.

Elsewhere, the scattered hooligans snaked through the dancing crowd for the rendezvous point. All except Graffiti, who had found himself a spot in the middle of a street.