♥ 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.

---

❥ 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.

---

Comments

[twistedempathy]

.....Uh. Did he lose him? Will is confused himself for a moment, until he realizes what Jinghuan is looking for. He's surprised by the lightbulb? So that must mean.....

Oh, Arceus. This is going to be even steeper a learning curve than he'd realized. Jinghuan is probably going to be unfamiliar with everything here, if even this level of technology is confusing to him.

Will rubs the back of his neck awkwardly, mulling over how they're even going to do this. "You..... don't have electricity back home, do you?"

[prince_yu]

Electricity. It's an unfamiliar word. He raises a hand to indicate the light on the ceiling.

"Is that what this sort of lamp is called?"

[twistedempathy]

"That's right! They're electric lights, fueled by..... well, people learning how to harness lightning, basically?" Hopefully that's an understandable explanation. No matter how different the technology may be, no matter what world Jinghuan may be from..... thunderstorms are universal, right?

[prince_yu]

Thankfully yes, he does know what lightning is. Though he does look entirely baffled for a moment, trying to understand how one can put lightning into an orb on the ceiling.

"How extraordinary," he mutters, looking up at the light. Then he remembers seeing Will move the switch to turn it on, and turns his attention to that instead. "And you used this to control it?"

[twistedempathy]

"Mmmhmm." Will steps aside, to let Jinghuan examine--and test out, if he feels the need to--the light switch.

For better or worse, though, he's no electrical engineer, so he isn't exactly the best person to explain this. Then again, maybe too many details would only confuse Jinghuan even more? "It's--I don't really know all the details of how it works. But once it's created, it travels through metal wires to get where it needs to go. The switches call it to the right places, and dismiss it when you're done."

He props his umbrella against the wall, and pulls out his tablet. "People use it to fuel just about everything here, including these."

[prince_yu]

He does test the switch, marveling over how the room gets dark and then light again. It's probably true that any more detail than Will just gave him would only make him more confused.

He gives the tablet a confused look when Will mentions it. "But there are no wires attached to that." He can't see any with the things in the room, either, but in that case, he can imagine they're somehow hidden by the wall. The tablet is clearly surrounded by empty air.

[twistedempathy]

"Oh--since these are meant to be carried with you, they don't have wires all the time. Sort of like how you only need to feed a fire once it starts burning low, you know? When you need to fill it with electricity again, you stick a wire in this hole here."

Will turns the tablet over, pointing at the charging port on the edge.

[prince_yu]

"I see," he comments with a slight nod. He is far from truly grasping how this electricity thing works, but it does make sense. He supposes that a device that's been disconnected from its wires might slowly become dim in a similar way to a fire burning out.

"From the way you talk, it seems as if this electricity is also used where you came from."

[twistedempathy]

"Oh, everyone uses it on my world, too. I guess I've always just taken it for granted, since it's been around my entire life?" Will laughs sheepishly, rubbing the back of his neck. This whole stay in Havenwell has been kind of jarring, realizing how drastically different so many other worlds are from his own, in so many ways.....

Even basics he thought were fundamental parts of life, like Pokémon, are missing from other worlds. At least a place not having electricity yet makes more sense than that..... "Although on my world, some Pokémon can just create lightning themselves, so electricity isn't always that complicated to explain."

[prince_yu]

"Pokemon?" he repeats. "I'm afraid that word is also unfamiliar to me." He can only imagine that it's something related to these electrical devices--a source for the power, perhaps, since Will has said they create lightning.

[twistedempathy]

"That one I knew you'd be unfamiliar with." Will laughs, faintly exasperated as he shakes his head. He makes a weighing gesture with his hands, like trying to balance a scale.

"Your world probably has animals, right? Mine has Pokémon. They're similar, but not exactly the same--most animals I've been told about don't sound like they can do things like create lightning or breathe fire, for example. But lots of Pokémon can!"

Have a little smile. "I'm about as unfamiliar with animals as you are with electricity. It's strange what things are different between worlds, don't you think?"

[prince_yu]

"How odd." Both that Will is unfamiliar with animals and that his equivalents are apparently endowed with such capabilities. Will there ever be a moment here when he's not surprised by every new thing he hears? "We have some tales of extraordinary animals where I'm from, but they are nothing more than stories."

[twistedempathy]

Probably not, honestly. Jinghuan will just need to get used to being surprised and confused at every turn. Now that Will has accepted he'll just be eternally clueless? He's pretty excited to learn.

"Really? What kind of stories do you have?"