Far off in the dark came a faint laughter just above the late-night breeze,
When they looked closer, beyond the shadows, they saw their lost children, their bones hung on the strings.
The Black Carnival unfolds along a forgotten dirt road deep within the Black Woods, where four weary travelers and a watchful boy rest beside a dying fire. As night thickens around them, an old man reluctantly recounts the tale of a sinister traveling carnival led by a witch and her grotesque troupe of beasts, actors, and one figure more terrifying than all—the gaunt puppeteer whose marionettes once delighted children… until children began to vanish. With each word, the forest seems to lean closer, listening. The old man’s story spirals into the dark truth of missing children, a burning confession, and a puppeteer that was never found. In the haunted quiet that follows, the travelers must question whether the legend remains only a tale—or whether something unseen now stirs between the trees, laughing softly on the wind.
Character Spotlight
Listen to their Stories
Dudley Din — The Elder Wanderer
Dudley Din is a man carved from years of hardship and haunted memories. His voice is gravel, his bones tired, yet he carries the kind of fear only someone who has seen true darkness can know. Though gruff and unwilling to revisit the past, his reluctant stories reveal a deep wound—one tied to the wandering carnival and the horrors it left behind.
He is a survivor of something unspeakable… and every word he speaks about the Black Woods feels like a warning.
Roddy — The Gentle Giant
Roddy is the warmth in the cold. Broad-shouldered and good-natured, he attempts to laugh off the fear creeping into the group’s campfire. But as Dudley’s tale deepens, his humor fades, revealing a man who may be braver than he gives himself credit for.
He is the first to ask questions others avoid—and the first to sense that the night around them is listening.
The Puppeteer — The Laughing Man
A legend, a phantom, a warning whispered to restless children. The Laughing Man is said to lure the young into the deep woods with a sound so strange and hypnotic it bends the will. No one has ever seen his face clearly, yet everyone knows the grin they imagine in the dark.
Some say he is only a story.
Some say he is the Puppeteer, transformed into something worse. And on certain nights, the forest seems to laugh back.
Caden — The Boy with Emerald Eyes
Caden is quiet, observant, and far braver than the others realize. His watchful green eyes catch every glint of danger in the firelight. Beneath his hood, he listens with the intensity of someone who senses the world is far stranger—and far darker—than adults ever admit.
His innocence pulls him toward the unknown… and toward the very mysteries everyone else fears.
The Witch — Keeper of Carnival’s Secret
Gaunt, hollow-eyed, and draped in a robe black as ash, the Puppeteer is the figure children once adored… and parents feared. His long, bony fingers moved marionettes with eerie grace, telling stories of monsters and lost worlds. But something inside him was twisted, ancient, and hungry.
When the villagers found their missing children’s bones hanging from strings, the Puppeteer vanished into the woods—leaving only laughter behind.