Derry Ballooons [sic]

Founded: October 1995

Derry is not the sort of place you'd visit twice, not because it's unpleasant, but because the first visit usually involves some form of temporal dislocation or mild existential crisis. Nestled between here and there, a little to the left of reality, it’s a town with a flair for the macabre and a taste for theatrics. You see, Derry had grown rather bored of its reputation for unsettling fogs and odd clowns that appeared at inconvenient times—such as during breakfast. So, in a fit of uncharacteristic mirth (which in Derry involves a lot of unsettling laughter and possibly an eldritch chant or two), the town decided it needed a team. And thus, the Derry Ballooons [sic] were born, or rather, they floated into existence, as one might expect balloons to do.

Now, some say the Ballooons [sic] were summoned by the town's collective imagination, which, in Derry, has a bad habit of becoming reality after midnight. Others insist they were always there, lurking in the corner of one's eye, waiting for the right moment to drift into your nightmares—er, dreams. Whatever the truth, they emerged, and they've been inflating and deflating the very concept of sportsmanship ever since.

Leading this merry band of mayhem is Harlequin. He isn't so much a captain as a force of nature in a luridly patterned suit, floating through the game like a particularly well-dressed weather anomaly. Running and jumping are for mere mortals; Harlequin prefers to drift. Sometimes sideways. His real name? Lost long ago to the archives of Derry—or perhaps it slipped under the sofa and never found its way out. But that doesn’t matter. What matters is the grin—a grin that would make a Cheshire cat look like an amateur. It’s a smile that slides into one's subconscious like an unexpected pun, leaving opponents blinking and wondering if they just heard the rules change. His tactics are described as 'psychologically disconcerting' and 'borderline illegal'.

And then there's Halflequin. 'Aspiring' suits him the way wings suit a tortoise. He gazes up at Harlequin with the kind of optimism that borders on delusion. If Harlequin is the maestro of the absurd, Halflequin is the eager apprentice always a beat off. His name was gifted by Inkblot who saw the spirit of Harlequin in his heart, though his execution often tripped over its own feet. When mimicry proved too complex, he took up balloon animal-making with the zeal of someone who’d never seen either. His creations twist and quiver, resembling nothing in this world—or even balloon-world. Somehow, they warp the playing field itself. A match with Halflequin is more surrealist event than a game, involving shifting dimensions and at least one player transformed into something that defies physics, biology, and decorum.

Eloise Inkwell