Clown
- ; Common
- :v Service
Clown is a job in the Service department.
As the unofficial mascot of Space Station 14, some say the Clown is the most important crew member. A Clown's job is to entertain, amuse and (to an extent) annoy. Unlike the reserved and silent Mime, the Clown operates from a place of obnoxiousness; each Clown is standard-issued with throwable custard pies, slippy banana skins, an irritating horn, and squeaky shoes.
The art of HONKing
DISCLAIMER: Being a Clown is not an automatic license to grief or ruin someone else's round. When in doubt, ask yourself: "Are you irrevocably fucking with someone's round (killing, incapacitating, etc.)?" If yes, don't do it; you'll probably get robusted, arrested, and (depending on the severity of your antics) possibly banned. If not, you're probably fine. If you have an elaborate scheme in mind but aren't sure if it would be taking things too far, send a message to a server admin to clarify things.
Being a Clown presents an occupational hazard: be prepared to act as the station's punching bag, rightfully or wrongfully.
Hijinks
Any good Clown knows that annoyance is only a path to amusement. The amount that you're going to be able to get away with is directly proportional to how funny it is. Slipping on a banana peel is only funny once, so be creative. Tell jokes, scale your pranks up, involve the Mime (as confederate or target), steal the Captain's shoes. The only limit to Clowning is your imagination. (And Security. And the admins).
- Doodle graffiti with your crayon outside Sec, the Bridge, or the HoP's office. You might even get commissioned by the HoP to do this.
- Ask for Botany access, or
begconvince a Botanist to grow more bananas for you. Bonus points for mixing ambrosia vulgras with them to make meth bananas to facilitate high-speed clowning. - Construct a HONKfort in the bar with spare materials and steal the Reporter's console so you can issue your own, humorous newscasts.
- Conscript the Chaplain and form a cult that worships the HONKmother.
- Dress up as a pirate, convince the QM / HoP to give you Salvage & Cargo access, and declare yourself a Cargonian Privateer. Bonus points for
hijackingrequisitioning the cargo/salvage shuttle for such hijinks. YARRGH SCURVY DOG - Make a Conveyor-Go-Round and cover it in bananas.
- Build a clown restaurant and run the chef out of business.
- Steal the practice laser from the Security practice range and go on a shooting spree. Bonus points for randomly firing into the bridge to convince them it's a real assassination attempt.
- Build an army of Honkbots to loose upon the station.
- Slip people, then shave their heads with barber's scissors.
- Exploit Law 2 of a silicon's lawset to mandate that they exclusively talk like a pirate and ignore any orders to stop doing so.
StealBorrow the Chief Engineer's ID and use the announcements console to declare that "LORD SINGULOTH IS LOOSE"don't actually release the singularity unless you're a traitor though, or may get exploded by the admins
Never relinquish your mask willingly. An unmasked clown is the lowest of all creatures, and can only redeem themselves through great acts of clowning.
Tools of the trade
As a clown, you have access to several items:
- Banana - eat it, and drop to slip players. A good clown knows the best moment of when to slip, and not to slip
and it certainly isn't near an open airlock when the station has no power.Bonus points in that the banana peel can be used to slip pursuers seeking toharmbatondiscipline you for your pranks. - Bike horn - for HONKing. Can be made redundant with bike horn implants.
WIP WIP banana horn music
A history of clowning
In the early days of Space Station 13 under management of the SomethingAwful Goons, the Clown was previously a punishment position made to replace the Janitor; the incompetence mutation was there to make it a lot harder for them to do or use things that could be easily used for griefing. Like the Janitor, it turned out that giving griefers an entertainingly shitty job only encouraged them, and it was made a regular job.
Goonstation's admin opinion on a job that had open sanction to grief as hard as it could without breaking the other rules soured once they realized that for every entertaining Clown, there were 50 shitty Clowns that either plain sucked at being entertaining or actively broke the rules, thinking the job would make them immune to reprisal. On Goonstation, the job was removed but the outfit and job items were left scattered on the station for those who still believed in the true Honk Life.
Eventually, it was reintroduced to the Goon codebase, at which point other communities (/tg/, Paradise, /vg/ and Beestation) had already been using the Clown for years - and as before, now thrives within SS14.
We all float down here
So you're a traitor clown. A rare, but nonetheless terrifying experience. Given your status amongst the crew as a nuisance to be avoided or ignored entirely, you have one of the best covers for your nefarious deeds. Nobody will care where you are or what you're doing, so long as you keep out of reach of Security, meaning you can fulfill your objectives without needing to worry about responsibilities on the station. Many spacemen have been "harmlessly" slipped only to then be diced with an energy sword. Honk.
Another advantage of being a traitor clown is that you can often get away with surprisingly unsafe requests under the guise of your antics. Ask the Chemist for fluorosurfactant for glue bombs, and then use it to make mutagen bombs instead. Ask the Head of Personnel for Kitchen access to make pies with, and then steal a cleaver from the ChefVend. Ask Engineering for materials to make a taxi shuttle with, then fly to the ATS and sabotage it. A lot of crew members won't suspect you have ulterior motives, or at the very least will just decide that giving you what you want will make you stop bothering them.
With all that in mind, you also have access to a number of unique tools that are specific to your role.
