hugtopia_logs | ♥ October (Lasohm) Fourth Wall Log

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♥ October (Lasohm) Fourth Wall Log

kool aid man crashing through a wall then nervously stepping out again

October (Lasohm) Fourth Wall Log

❥ Speaking of Wall Breaking...

The ghosts in town sure are weird, huh? But they're settling down, as the month draws to a close. They're becoming less anxious and random, their behaviour growing sort of… focused. As time passes some of them begin to develop features. They can interact with the world more consistently. You can… hear their voice.

And then suddenly they are people, real and physical and just as confused to be here as you are. They could be anyone, from your world, someone else's world, a place you've never heard of… some of them could even be you, from a different universe, a different timeline, an unknown reality. What does all this mean?

IT'S FOURTH WALL, Y'ALL. Tell your friends, people interested in apping or just playing around in the setting, anybody! Time to break the wall down and have some fun.

This post serves as a replacement for the usual Test Drive Meme, in order to consolidate the chaos a bit. Though it is being posted now, timeline-wise, this shift will occur ONLY during the weekend prior to applications opening: October 30th to November 2nd, after which point characters will either disappear or become permanent residents via the application process. This also means that the rest of the event effects will have worn off, and characters will be their normal selves through the duration of this prompt.

Some ground rules for the 4th Wall event:

For characters/accounts not in-game:

a character does not have to meet application qualifications to post to the 4th Wall Event, except in cases where there is an intent to apply when applications open. Duplicates, CRAU, AU, etc. are permitted for the event.
we do ask that crack shenanigans are reasonably limited, game rules are followed, and that the event involve characters only, not players or real people.
anyone can toplevel! It'll be a free for all. Go wild, have fun.
characters will be given a temporary, low-tech communicator for the duration of the event with limited network access, due to limited availability of the real deal.
you will not arrive with any items/companions beyond the clothes that you wear
check out the Setting or FAQ pages for location details! Also, have a look at the October event log, to see what else is going on these days.

For characters/accounts currently in-game:

players can decide for themselves at the event's conclusion whether or not memories of certain visitors remain, and to what extent; memories could become fuzzy, faces or communication obscured, they could disappear entirely, or they can remain fully intact whether the person apps into the game or not.
network communications with 4th Wall visitors that don't (or can't) app in will be wiped, with the locals citing a data error related to the older communicators being used. Technology can be unpredictable, huh!
any communication exchanges that you WANT to keep can remain with some discretion; for example, if a spouse visits and you happen to take a selfie with them, and they do not (or cannot) app but having that photo of them would give you comfort, feel free to keep it.
Similar to the TDM, 4th wall threads cannot be used for AC or AC Reward purposes unless it is between characters already in-game.

Click the above prompt to expand for details. Timeline-wise, this occurs October 30th to November 2nd. For players currently in-game, if you have any questions, please direct them to the FAQ or to the Mod Question thread on the original plotting post.

On this post, we've created both another Questions Thread and a Toplevel thread (see below) for visiting players, the latter so that anyone can track and see who's posted! When you've made a toplevel, feel free to comment HERE to let everyone know.

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His reassurances do ease her mind a great deal, and she quickly begins to settle.

"Things you must do... There are a great many things to be done first," Hemera tells him. "There will be time for children when you're grown. Enjoy these years while you can, my dearest Ardbert. Fill them with stories and adventures to pass unto your children when the time comes."

Ardbert truly wants to tell her that he's very much grown, but he's certain it will fall on deaf ears. "I've already got plenty of stories, and I plan to fill them with more. ... but honestly, how old do you think I am?"

She gives him a scrutinizing look—one that runs far deeper than the surface. It is intimate and invasive, yet somehow not. Perhaps it has to do with how her soul reaches out to inspect his ever-so-gently; a warm, featherlight touch against his, like the brush of her hand against his cheek.

"Older than a century, but less than three. Scarcely more than a babe..." Hemera glances at his face again, then can't help but give his jaw a quick, playful stroke with the tips of her fingers. "...And yet look at this little beard on you!"

Ardbert waits patiently, letting her soul make its inspection with a smile on his face, chuckling when she touches his tuft of chin hair. "I'm an adult by our measure, believe it or not."

While he could survive a week with her believing otherwise, Era would hate it too much.

After letting out a long and very dubious 'hmm...', Hemera decides that this requires a second opinion.

"One moment, dearest Ardbert," she tells him, taking a few steps back to hold her hand palm-down between them. "I shall call for a consult."

The steady, rhythmic tick-tick-tick of a metronome rings softly through the air as dots and lines of golden aether form a circle around her, spreading outward to the space between them to make another matching circle. A simple pattern of blue dots hovers around each circle, radiating a soft blue to match her aether. This is the simplest version of her trademark spell, summoning only one nearby companion to her rather than multiple, but she has ever enjoyed the simpler spells—they're much easier to cast in the heat of combat, should the need arise.

After the first time he'd been summoned to his old friend's side, Emet-Selch should perhaps have expected to be summoned again. Or at least, should have been aware of the possibility of being so. He had not, and if pressed, will absolutely blame the fact that it's been several millennia since he'd last enjoyed her company.

Even so, he doesn't resist the summoning. There's the faint echo of something like resigned irritation in his aether as the spell finds him, but nothing more than would normally be there when he'd been summoned out of the middle of doing something back in Amaurot. It does, admittedly, match the expression of mild annoyance on his face once the light of the teleportation fades, but this too isn't anything out of the ordinary - surprise though it might be for Ardbert.

"Again?"

The tone of his voice is more one of fond exasperation, rather than annoyance, and is addressed to Hemera rather than Ardbert. Who he has noticed, even if he isn't opting to address the matter.

(Or the fact that he's surely been summoned for some manner of purpose. She'll get to that, he figures, and so there's no immediate need to ask.)

"Can you truly say you expected any different?" Hemera arches a brow at her friend, feigning exasperation with him in turn, though there is a smile in her eyes and her soul that burns brightly at the sight of him.

The smile broaches her lips now, spreading across her face like dawn over the horizon. She crosses the distance between herself and Ardbert again (scratching the underside of Seto's maw in one smooth motion as she does so), then pulls him into a hug and maneuvers him to show him off.

"Look, Hades!" Were she in possession of a tail it would be wagging with delight she cannot contain. As it is, she bounces a little on the balls of her feet, practically quivering with the joy she feels. "A child! My child! My son!" Ardbert is subjected to another firm (gentle) squeeze. "Look at how perfect he is! My greatest masterwork! Isn't he beautiful?"

Ardbert watches the lines across the ground in awe. So this is the spell. He's never seen it until now.

The mild irritation would be surprising if he hadn't already seen this softer side of another Emet-Selch. Instead, it's familiar, almost comforting. (Even being ignored for the moment is comforting.)

Hemera ends that moment abruptly when Hemera marches over, gives Seto a brief scratch, and then envelopes Ardbert into a hug. Ardbert stumbles as he manuevers him around so that Emet-Selch can see him and his new spike of embarrassment properly.

Seto doesn't help him, of course, finding it all amusing. "I-I'm not perfect, to be honest...."

Edited (I forgot icons existed for a moment and didn't pick one OOPS) 2020-10-26 13:33 (UTC)

"No. I cannot."

Nor has he missed the sheer joy in her soul, both at the sight of him and when she moves to stand by Ardbert. (Nor, for that matter, the gentle moment of attention she offers the amaro, as she passes.)

"Is that what your masterwork was going to be?"

In retrospect, he shouldn't be surprised. It would have certainly gotten around the matter of her travels, and it's never been a surprise that she'd cared a great deal for not just children but other similarly young creatures. And it might even have managed to circumvent the matter of required the star to offer up a new soul, if she had given her own to her creation.

(Though he has to admit, if only to himself, that it would have been a shame to lose her, had she done so. Even if he's merely looking at that with the clarity of hindsight.)

"Although I feel obliged to mention that he and I have met previously."

Edited 2020-10-27 05:44 (UTC)

She falters, squeezing Ardbert closer as though the action will somehow shield her from how flustered Hades has made her. "I— Um— I was— " Hemera splutters, still clutching her 'son' close, drawing strength from his presence until she can respond with blushing indignance. "Well. Yes. But! Even if I hadn't been, he would still be the greatest of my works! He is compassionate, has such kind eyes, and I daresay he has my nose."

She huffs softly, then sees fit to add: "And you and I both know full well that any petitions I made would have been denied. I've been censured too many times for approval in this lifetime... I imagine I'll have another to add to the list once I'm home, won't I?"

Ardbert's face is starting to turn red—out of embarrassment and, thankfully, not due to lack of air. Gods. She really does think he's a child.

"Full glad I am for the compliments, but—" Ardbert clears his throat. "Emet-Selch, if you would be so kind to tell her that I'm an adult...."

Seto gives a loud snort of amusement. "Oh, hush, Seto."

Edited 2020-10-28 00:57 (UTC)

"Surely they wouldn't add another for merely getting lost."

It's plain it's none of her doing, after all. Loosing Ifrita might well be more worthy of censure, but he's not yet willing to give her up for lost. Merely surprisingly difficult to locate.

Still, that is a lesser concern. Or is at least now that Ardbert has made a direct request of him.

"He speaks the truth. His kind live shorter lives than ours. Dramatically so."

A century, at best; a life fleeting and fragile compared to what she will have known.

"Although... were one to take that into account, I daresay he would be at least your equal in age. If not older."

"There is no such thing as merely getting lost when you're me." The roll of her eyes is practically audible, though her complaints of the Convocation are suddenly the last thing on her mind as Hades affirms something incomprehensible.

"W—What?," she squeaks, horrified, and clutches Ardbert more firmly to her breast, arms tightening around him protectively as if that might spare him from his mortality. "He's not even three centuries, Hades! He's just a— He's a child! He wouldn't even have finished his primaries yet!"

Ardbert doesn't like the idea of Hemera being unable to get approval to have a child, but he can't really address that properly right now. He's distracted by his face basically being shoved into her bosom. Then she grabs him tighter.

"It's all right; that's just how it is," Ardbert tries to reassure her, muffled, the heat of his blush slowly rising up to his ears.

There's a shrug at Hemera's initial objection, as if to say that matters of the Convocation are something that can be dealt with later. By her standards at least, and given that he hasn't made any objection to the general concept of her needed approval to have a child that might well be telling of the society they'd both called theirs, once upon a time.

Still it's her other comment that he answers, when he does.

"He doesn't have three centuries. His kind have but one, at best."

It is how it is, and while he can't - and won't - say it's been easy to be one of a small handful of immortals in a sea of such short-lived beings it's something he's long since grown to accept at least.

"No," she vehemently rejects what she knows must be truth (Hades would never lie to her), trembling against her most precious creation. "I refuse. I'll give him more years! I—I'll just— I've more of my soul to spare. He can have it!"

Ardbert returns her hug a little more fiercely, feeling her trembling against him. "It's all right. We're all right. Instead of one life, we have many lives and many adventures. I wouldn't know what to do with myself if I lived as long as you."

He's telling the truth. There's both something wonderful and terrible about living a shorter life. You have to grow and continue moving because there's no time to stagnate for long. The future is never far from the present.

"And you mean to give it to him... how?"

He has been born of her soul, yes. And in theory her idea isn't necessarily a bad one. If it would work in any case it would work here. But working in theory and working in practice are two very different things. Even leaving out the part where Ardbert has already lived out his allotted span of years - and then some, should one happen to count the time he seems to have spent as as a wandering shade besides.

Hemera continues clinging to him, pressing her cheek solidly to the top of his head. He is solid and alive in her arms, and she treasures the feeling.

"You would have the time to figure it out," she tells Ardbert, gentle and soothing as though she weren't the one in need of comfort. To Hades she adds:

"And I have seen enough sacrifice themselves to their creations, dearest friend. Knowing what you do now, do you honestly believe I wouldn't have already engineered a similar concept?"

Ardbert just sighs and slumps forward a bit in her arms. This might as well just happen at this point. She's not going to listen, and the conversation between the other two is more interesting.

"Of course not." If it's something she'd planned, it stands to reason that she'd have thought of that aspect as well. It's not something that he can say is comfortable to think of, in the wake of the Sundering - and some measure of that unease may be present in his soul - but that she had considered it is certainly not too surprising.

"However, engineered or otherwise, have you given thought to whether or not he wants it?"

He may be but a fragment of her soul, yes. But Ardbert is none the less his own person, with his own desires. Even if his life is - has been - one that is one that Hemera will see as all too brief.

She is not deaf to the uneasy shift of his soul, though she hasn't the presence of mind to ponder it now. Not as Ardbert sighs and resigns himself to her firm embrace, leaving her to stroke his hair distractedly.

"I've known for a thousand years that I wished to be a mother one day," she responds with no small amount of embittered defensiveness. "And now that I've been blessed with a son you tell me he'll die within a century of his birth? Seven hells, Hades, I've spent longer appealing my rejection!"

Who thought that Emet-Selch would be arguing for him, let alone giving him another chance at arguing for this. "It's my life, and I'll live it as I see fit! Why would I want immortality? Why would I want to watch all of my friends grow old and die? I can't do that again! This is how it is, and this is how it has to be. And I wouldn't change it for anything."

Firm, but not harsh, at least.

"I was there," he points out, something almost like frustration creeping into his words. And it's not that he blames her, either. Not really. But there's a tangled knot of anger-grief-despair-loss under that frustration, and one that's far more recent than anything that simply meeting her again had prompted. More recent, indeed, than the mere century that Ardbert would have had, though he doubts that her ability to sense such things will be that precise.

Still, the argument is Ardbert's now. He might certainly step in again if he needs to, but the fact that he has watched those he has loved grow old and die is not immediately relevant either.

Hemera inhales a sharp breath between clenched teeth; a quiet hiss of discomfort and frustration. She was aware her friend's soul was different than she remembers (from both that odd tainted note, and from age), but right now it sounds even more foreign than familiar.

It bothers her enough that her own soul recoils reflexively, drawing closer to her as opposed to radiating outward, lessening the intensity of his soul to her senses and allowing her to focus more astutely on the matter at hand. Her fingers twitch in Ardbert's hair as she debates withdrawing from him as well.

"With such a small portion of soul to your name, why would you outlive them?" She then looks from Ardbert to Hades, brows furrowed, eyes steely, and lips pressed into a thin line. "What aren't I being told? Why am I dead?"

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casually yeets a bff to her

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sneaks a tag in

I SAW THAT

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