hugtopia_logs | ♥ September Intro Mingle Log

♥ September Intro Mingle Log

a park scene in autumn with a lake, trees, a bench, leaves on the ground

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.

❥ 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

two fingers together with smiling faces drawn on

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

a vertical slice of several different weather conditions, from sunny to storms

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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Believe me, I'm certain reservations are harbored on all sides except apparently His Majesty's. I have yet to determine if it should be compassion, foolishness, or both on his part.

...That, or an elaborate lie in which he's going to stick a very ineffective knife in my back to try and be rid of me. But that's a distant third possibility.

[Ardyn, please.]

[Noctis narrows his eyes at that.]

That's something a Niff would do. We're not like that.

[His dad isn't the one who breaks peace treaties- he just sees it coming ahead of time, apparently. Hopefully he'll see it coming this time, if Ardyn's the one lying.]

[Flatly:] You'll have to forgive my apprehension, when the last of our bloodline I interacted with before this blatantly murdered me.

...But that said, the situation's preferable to going back to deal with Verstael. That much is abundantly clear.

Yeah, and you're aligned with the people who destroyed my home where I'm from, so the feeling's mutual.

[Like circling cats all over again.]

...I did meet that guy, though. Not a fan.

[Ardyn bristled slightly at that--it was an accusation he was none to thrilled about, but given what he'd heard so far it wasn't one he could argue against.]

...He's exhausting at the best of times. I might advise you to stay away from him for your own sake.

Not like I went looking for him. He just showed up to be creepy in my face.

[About the rodent problem rather than the expected prince stuff, admittedly, but still unpleasant. What'd been more unpleasant was his interest in Prompto.]

He does that.

[uuuuuuuuugh.]

I'm a bit glad to be rid of him, as much as one can be in a place like this.

Why didn't you just leave Niflheim?

[If he's so immortal it's not like they could kill him, and he must be powerful if they wanted him that badly, so imprisoning him wouldn't go very well for them.]

...When you awoke in this world, what did you truly know of it?

[That sounded more an honest question than biting sarcasm, Ardyn back to staring out at the rain.]

Lucis was the only home I ever knew, and I could hardly return when the royal guard had a clear policy of 'kill Adagium on sight'. Besides that...much as I know very well Verstael only kept me around as some manner of weapon, the laboratory and his documentation were all I knew of the modern age. This land is a foreign one to you, surely, with unfamiliar gods and unknown cultures. So has Eos become for me; a world unrecognizable from the lands upon which I once walked.

Even were I to leave, it would mean getting lost for gods only knew how long in Niflheim's frozen wasteland and eventually finding my way out in a world I knew even less of than we did of this place upon waking. Where would I ever have gone?

Anywhere but there, in my opinion. [Noctis shrugs his shoulders.] I think you overestimate how much Lucis can do outside of Insomnia. Guess I can't blame you- I thought there was no way we could lose until we did. The war's... done a lot. Taken a lot.

[He leans back against the building behind them, hands shoved into his pockets, idly tapping the heel of his boot against the ground. Droplets flick off his laces.]

If you don't know the world anymore then get out and learn about it. Take it from someone who spent the last few months doing that- no matter how recognizable you should be, there's tons of places where no one would know you. Give it ten, maybe twenty years and you could walk right into Insomnia and nobody would know what "Adagium" even means.

[No one knew Ardyn as anyone but the "chancellor" when he'd delivered the terms of surrender, so he'd heard, and neither he, or the guys he traveled with, or anyone they saw on the road or in Lestallum seemed to recognize him at all. It's not as hopeless as Ardyn makes it sound.]

If only it were so simple.

[Ardyn just sighed and shook his head, hands in his pockets.]

I can't go home again. Not in ten or one hundred years.

Didn't think you were the sort to give up that easy. Guess you are different.

[The Ardyn of his time oozed smugness and self-confidence it was practically slime on his boots. It betrayed any humble words he spoke. That man made it seem like he could go anywhere and do anything he wanted.]

Why bother trying?

[And unlike the chancellor's smug and audibly punchable tone, Ardyn's voice was practically flat for how exhausted and despondent he sounded.]

The world as it is now is not mine. I've no place to belong, no calling to fulfill, the only person I ever loved is dead, and my entire purpose in life was all for nothing. I see no reason to care for the world or anything within it.

That's stupid.

[It's perhaps a little callous, but what does it matter? They're essentially strangers, and it won't do him any favours to call it anything else.]

When you lose something, you don't just give up. You start over or you take it back.

[....

oh. Maybe that's why he's--]

...A-anyway, the world's a big place. Find a corner and make it your own. Go raise chocobos, I hear that's fun.

[Oops, accidentally motivation.]

Not interested. I'll outlive them all anyway, what's the point?

So what's your plan, then? Just gonna bum around Gralea and listen to that guy monologue about science?

[That sounds so unbelievably boring.]

You'd outlive everyone there, too. At least chocobos are better company.

I don't know. I don't want anything to do with the raving madman, but my choices in what actions to take are--or perhaps were--limited.

[Noctis is quiet for a long moment, lost in thought. He's not going to come up with the perfect answer, here - he's not sure such a thing is possible - but if there's a chance of turning the tides in this way, of drawing the man away from the Imperials, maybe... maybe something could change. He doesn't know how, but there's a lot he doesn't know, apparently. Can't hurt to make an attempt.]

Did my- [dammit.] ...did the king know you were "Adagium"?

...No. Or if he did, he's an astoundingly good actor, which I find slightly less likely. I know not what my brother passed down as the origin or nature of Adagium, but it sounds rather as though having a human level of sense and reason was none of it.

I don't know about that, but I'd never even heard of it until you told me.

[Between that and Noct's admission that Lucis has fallen already, it might indicate his chances of eventually going unnoticed increase over time.]

So maybe stop telling people about it?

And if I did? I would still be a monster regardless.

You don't look like one, so unless you tell people that too then they'd probably never know.

I fail to see how that matters. Why don't you just go about denying being human while we're at it?

No one's ever asked if I'm human, so I've never had to say one way or the other. I don't tell people I'm a prince, either- doesn't mean I'm denying it, just means I let them assume otherwise so they don't try to stab me for it.

[If it's safer for him, and it doesn't hurt them, what's it matter if they don't know?]

And maybe some of us deserve to be stabbed for what we are, have you considered that much?

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