♥ September Intro Mingle Log

[hugtopiamods]

September Intro Mingle Log
Welcome to Hugtopia, and to the city of Havenwell. This mingle is meant for new arrivals to get settled and meet the other inhabitants. New characters should be the only top-levels but everyone should feel free to tag around and make new friends. Who knows, you may find that Perfect Hug in here. You can use the prompts here, or create a wildcard of your own.

ICly, this takes place from the 2nd to the 16th and then we'll have a shiny new event post up for you all soon after that date range. The prompts below are optional, but are a way to get you started if you wish. To help you create your own prompts, please take a look through our Settings and FAQ. Click on each prompt's title to see the text. If you have any questions, feel free to direct them to the FAQ or to the Mod Question thread below.

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❥ PROMPT I: Awakening

When you awaken, you're in the last outfit you remember wearing, three of your belongings laid nearby or your animal friend curled up by you, waking as you do. It's not the most comfortable place to sleep, a stone slab, but once you're awake, a humanoid-looking robot comes in and explains you're in Havenwell and leads you out of the room and into the main portion of the temple where a welcoming committee of similarly humanoid-looking robots hand over a clear smartphone-sized tablet, some starting funds, and explain their dilemma. Then they release you into Havenwell to pick your new home from free housing in the city and give you the chance to settle. It might be a bit disorienting, but thankfully there seem to be a lot of robots and even some non-robots around. Maybe ask them for help?

❥ PROMPT II: Buddy System

With all the changes going on, it might be hard to be a new arrival to Havenwell. The natives understand! Sort of. When some new arrivals begin to appear at the temples, receive the welcome speech, get their communicators and the simple map of the city, they get taken to the front of the temple by a helpful robotic priest. Rather than turn the newcomers loose right away, they pull someone seemingly at random off the street and push the two people together with a cheerful, "Here's your guide to Havenwell! It's dangerous to go alone, so be buddies!" before going back inside.

They try to place a new arrival with one of those who previously arrived, but who can keep track of all that, right? Characters may find themselves thrown together with an actual veteran or with another new arrival who only came here a day or even just an hour before them! Good luck helping each other out, offworlders, and don't lose your buddy!

❥ PROMPT III: Weather Wildcard

Havenwell's weather is generally so well controlled, with beautiful blue skies and temperate climes that it's hard to remember that there's a whole world out there that might not be so nice. Every so often, however, the controls break and something not so nice and temperate comes through. Pockets of unpleasant weather happens all over the city at random intervals and new arrivals might find themselves and others caught without warning. Is that a snowstorm with green snow? Sure is. A windstorm that only seems to affect three streets? Yup. Did a deluge of rain just pour the equivalent of an Olympic sized swimming pool of water on you? Uh-huh, sure did. A deep cold fog that suddenly rolls in and blankets your entire area? Yeeaaah... hopefully there's someone around to help you get about and find shelter or just dry off and get away from it all. Good luck, offworlder.

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Comments

[carbungle]

That doesn't make it any less weird.

[A millennia is too long, too.]

[scourgingstars]

I do apologize if I am not full of boundless youthful energy.

[carbungle]

Something to work on then, I guess.

[Not like they don't have time here, apparently. He finally gives up on the slow route and shrugs off his jacket entirely, twisting it around to deposit half a puddle on the ground at his feet.]

Anyway, not like we don't stand out here. The city's big, but not that big.

[Considering most of the population are robots, the fleshy-folks are considerably noticeable.]

[scourgingstars]

Something this size truly deserves ‘not that big’ as a description? I shudder to comprehend what the kingdom must look like for that to be the case.

[Sure, there were a few flashes of foreign memories, but Ardyn hadn’t grasped much of the scope of things.]

[carbungle]

...Right, you didn't get to Insomnia yet, did you.

[He doesn't have much of a frame of reference either - most of the settlements he passed through on his journey and even Lestallum paled in comparison to his home. It made sense, though, with it being the capital.]

Prompto's probably got a photo of it somewhere. I can ask him, if you want.

[/tentative... olive branch...?]

[scourgingstars]

...’Insomnia’, right.

[Ardyn looked for a moment like he just heard a particularly bad pun, but quickly brushed it off for propriety’s sake.]

I...might like that, actually.

[carbungle]

[Whatever it was, Noct's probably heard it already. He did grow up with Ignis.]

Okay.

[Already half-regretting this. Can he get away with telling Prompto he just wants a pic for nostalgia's sake? It might be incredibly awkward to go "Hey, you know that creep who does horrible things to us in the future? Well..."

Also he's horrible at smalltalk, but now they're stuck here together under this awning, so... ugh. Let's give that puddle a few more drops.]

[scourgingstars]

[Awkward appeared to run deep in the bloodline, Ardyn falling silent for a short while as well.]

It’s been some time since I saw rain like this. Niflheim was naught but frigid mountains for as far as one could imagine.

[carbungle]

[Noctis glances up at the sky, brushing a bit of lingering water out of his hair. Is that why the Imperials end up stealing all the land around them? Because their own is so miserable? Not that it matters or justifies anything, but he wonders, sometimes.]

We got plenty of it in Lucis, what with all the humidity. More than usual lately.

[Thanks, Ramuh.]

[scourgingstars]

It sounds as though that much hasn’t changed. It rained fairly often, more so the further one went from the capital. I could likely say I’ve been caught in worse than this a time or two.

[carbungle]

Everything else's changed, I bet. All the wires, and towers, and roads-

[A beat, and then,]

You've seen cars, right?

[scourgingstars]

Have I what now?

[No.]

[carbungle]

[omg.]

You had to walk everywhere? I might actually end up feeling sorry for you.

[Not for, like, the family betrayal or the thousands-of-years-imprisoned thing. No. For walking.]

[scourgingstars]

Of course not, whatever do you think chocobos and carriages are for?

[carbungle]

You had chocobos back then too?

[Have they not changed in thousands of years? Because that's pretty cool.]

[scourgingstars]

Obviously, it would be mad to cross the kingdom solely on foot. And no one’s fool enough to domesticate spiracorn herds, so naturally we use-...used chocobos.

[carbungle]

Still do, at least on our side.

[He gives his chest a light pat to check, and- yep, he still put it on out of habit. He reaches down to pull a necklace up, holding it up for Ardyn to see- the "pendant" part is a whistle with a tiny yellow chocobo silhouette carved into it.]

There's a lot of places that the car can't go, so we got used to chocobos pretty quick.

[scourgingstars]

[Congratulations, Noctis, that’s legitimately the best thing he’s seen in two thousand years.]

Oh—that’s quite the charming thing, I used to whistle for mine as well. Wearing one might have made it a bit easier.

[carbungle]

[Your bar is obscenely low, dude.]

I guess they just like the sound of it.

[He gives the whistle a little blow, mostly out of habit, and then hastily tucks it back into his shirt, slightly embarrassed at having done something that transparently... silly. No chocobo comes, of course, but he hadn't expected one anyway.]

[scourgingstars]

[it was a very bad two thousand years]

Perhaps so. [Ardyn almost smiled at that, a general look of 'less miserable' seeming like the best he could do at the moment.] Are there not any here?

[carbungle]

[It's such a weird contrast to the smirk of Ardyn: Izunia Edition. He's not sure if this is a thing he can get used to.]

Doubt it. I haven't seen any, and this place barely has any animals at all. If they exist here they're locked behind some research-and-preservation walls.

[That's what the robots have said when asked, anyway.]

[scourgingstars]

That's a terrible shame. Then again, if people are to keep appearing here like this, perhaps eventually animals may yet follow suit.

[he would hug a chocobo long before a person at this point]

[carbungle]

Maybe, but I hope not. They'd hate being stuck in a city all the time.

[He loves and misses his birb, but he wouldn't want her to be trapped and miserable, either. She's too much of a free spirit for that.]

[scourgingstars]

...A fair enough point. Perhaps that was just my own wishful thinking for a moment.

[carbungle]

Not like wishful thinking's gonna make it happen, so it doesn't matter. [Still, it would suck for them.] ...Maybe a chick would be okay.