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hugtopia_logs2019-09-16 10:00 pm
hugtopiamods) wrote in hugtopia_logs2019-09-16 10:00 pm
♥ September Event Log
September (Ohnir) Event Log
Ohnir is in full swing now and the weather, while still boasting hot days, is starting to cool slightly at night. The residents are recovering after the lightning storms from the previous month and, curiously, most of the robots that had been damaged in the storms are back. They don't look the same as before, but they seem to act the same, still happy, still thankful that the offworlders are here. A few even thank those who carried their bodies to the temples with small gifts of painted stones. Havenwell continues as it always has and welcomes their new arrivals with a few rather odd changes...
❥ PROMPT I: Robot Crossing
Now that all the new and old arrivals have mingled and met, the robotic natives start pointing everyone toward the VR cafes. The bright lights and cozy insides have been decorated with fake leaves and carved and painted plaster approximations of fruits and vegetables in odd colors. When an offworlder comes in, they explain that back when they were still in their flesh bodies, the month of Ohnir was one for harvest and celebrations of the summer bounties. Now, without any real farms or need to eat, they've translated the Harvest Festival into a game, so why not play?
Logging in with another character will net you a little farm and a variety of games to choose from:
As always, when playing the game, the picture and quality seems to increase as long as you're in contact with another person. Once the games are over and your scores tallied, the cafe attendant walks over and asks to see your communicators. To the winners, he or she attaches a little floating charm in the shape of one of Aellyn's weirder fruits. It looks like a cross between a blue rambutan and the hala aka puhala fruit, and it's called the sikheen fruit here. The sikheen are extremely rare nowadays, but their appearance is so unique that Havenwell residents still like to remember it for the Harvest Festival. Enjoy your prize!
Logging in with another character will net you a little farm and a variety of games to choose from:
- Pick and harvest as many Aellyn vegetables and fruits as you can before the timer runs out! The more you pick, the better your score. Work together with your partner to clear the field in any way you can. Strangely, once you finish clearing a tree or a field row of their bounty, they seem to magically refill when you turn your back. Oh well, at least you won't run out before the timer hits zero and with the sheer number of levels and combinations of trees and fields with obstacles in your way to make harvesting a little more challenging with each new level, you certainly won't be running out of things to do.
- With a partner, use the giant slingshot to launch comically large fruits into a garden patch of other colored fruits. Match a line of 3 or more similarly shaped fruits to clear it from the field. The more fruits you can clear, the higher your score - aka welcome to Fruit Crush. Stack lines of 6 or more to get shining clear diamond fruits that clear the entire row and snag yourself some bonus points.
- You and your partner(s) are given a magical golden pumpkin and it's your job to grow it into the largest pumpkin possible. Why? There's a county fair of course and the largest pumpkin wins! But how do you grow this pumpkin? Well, there are a lot of methods! You could gather up materials and work together to stick it to the pumpkin until it absorbs them and grows. You could do a song and dance routine together to encourage the pumpkin's soul to grow big and bright. You could hold hands and share stories and entertain the pumpkin until it feels encouraged enough to grow on its own. The possibilities are endless, so get to work making the best pumpkin that (digital) fair has ever seen!
As always, when playing the game, the picture and quality seems to increase as long as you're in contact with another person. Once the games are over and your scores tallied, the cafe attendant walks over and asks to see your communicators. To the winners, he or she attaches a little floating charm in the shape of one of Aellyn's weirder fruits. It looks like a cross between a blue rambutan and the hala aka puhala fruit, and it's called the sikheen fruit here. The sikheen are extremely rare nowadays, but their appearance is so unique that Havenwell residents still like to remember it for the Harvest Festival. Enjoy your prize!
❥ PROMPT II: Paint by Number
The new arrivals get to enjoy Havenwell in all its glory for about a week before suddenly, one day everyone wakes up to find the entire city has gone gray. And not a natural, nice gray either, but a strange dull, lifeless gray. Everything from the sky to the houses to the grass to the native people have all turned the exact same shade of graphite gray. Even the natives are confused and the devout flock to the temples while the science-minded head to the labs to study this new phenomenon. The only ones who seem spared from this strange color drain are the offworlders and the statues of the gods in the center of town. Or, well, at least most of the offworlders are spared. A few people might notice that their colors aren't as bright as they once were, or that parts of them are starting to turn gray as well. Those offworlders unlucky enough to lose some of their own can touch another player character to regain what was lost easily enough. Overall though, no one seems harmed by this sudden loss of color, but they're certainly perplexed.
A few days later and round silver platforms start showing up around the city, dragged out of storage by the natives. The first arrivals might remember these as the fireworks platforms that are activated by people standing and holding hands on them. The temple priests and scientists encourage the offworlders to stand on the platforms again and to hold hands or engage in some other sort of physical contact on them and wait.
When characters do as asked, the platforms shoot fireworks like they did before - in brilliant colors instead of the dull gray everywhere. And wherever the sparks fall, color starts returning to the world in splotches. The natives are overjoyed and move the platforms all across the city, asking the offworlders to find and use them wherever possible to return the color to their town.
A few days later and round silver platforms start showing up around the city, dragged out of storage by the natives. The first arrivals might remember these as the fireworks platforms that are activated by people standing and holding hands on them. The temple priests and scientists encourage the offworlders to stand on the platforms again and to hold hands or engage in some other sort of physical contact on them and wait.
When characters do as asked, the platforms shoot fireworks like they did before - in brilliant colors instead of the dull gray everywhere. And wherever the sparks fall, color starts returning to the world in splotches. The natives are overjoyed and move the platforms all across the city, asking the offworlders to find and use them wherever possible to return the color to their town.
❥ PROMPT III: Sharing is Caring
Ohma's temple is particularly lively during Ohnir and the priests are busy cleaning and sweeping, decorating it with rolls of parchment and digital inkwells and quills that write as if they were actually fountain pens. The natives, especially adherents of Ohma, start to make pilgrimages to the temple in little processions, some playing music, others flying banners. It would probably be far more impressive if the colors weren't still so gray and splotchy, but they're trying their best.
Anyone who chooses to follow can observe the natives going up to the altar and sharing stories with one another. They talk about things they did over the past year or things that are far, far in their past. Some of the stories are happy and result in the procession laughing and some are...well, not everyone came back from the lightning storms. The priests diligently write every story down on those parchment rolls and deposit them onto the waiting altar, where they're summarily lit on fire to the cheers of those present. The more emotional the story it seems, the brighter and bluer the flame that it emits and the louder the procession cheers.
As the file out, they notice you watching and urge you to go up with someone else in the temple to clear your heart and offer up your own stories. They can be stories of home, information about your worlds, or stories about your life. It seems the more personal the story, the brighter the flame though and the more Dora that will mysteriously show up in your account at a later date. If the priests are asked about this donation later, they're just as perplexed. No one they know would have paid anyone for an offering to Ohma, so where could it have come from....?
Anyone who chooses to follow can observe the natives going up to the altar and sharing stories with one another. They talk about things they did over the past year or things that are far, far in their past. Some of the stories are happy and result in the procession laughing and some are...well, not everyone came back from the lightning storms. The priests diligently write every story down on those parchment rolls and deposit them onto the waiting altar, where they're summarily lit on fire to the cheers of those present. The more emotional the story it seems, the brighter and bluer the flame that it emits and the louder the procession cheers.
As the file out, they notice you watching and urge you to go up with someone else in the temple to clear your heart and offer up your own stories. They can be stories of home, information about your worlds, or stories about your life. It seems the more personal the story, the brighter the flame though and the more Dora that will mysteriously show up in your account at a later date. If the priests are asked about this donation later, they're just as perplexed. No one they know would have paid anyone for an offering to Ohma, so where could it have come from....?
❥ PROMPT IV: Sleep Sweet
With Ainea's temple familiars finally back where they belong, quiet returns to the city at night. We're sure that first long uninterrupted sleep felt heavenly, right? Although there may not be color in the city, the world of dreams at least is fully technicolor and safe. Which might be weird for some characters in case they don't normally dream or remember their dreams because now everyone is dreaming at night. Most of the dreams are the usual variety that your character always has, but every so often in the midst of a pleasant dream about home or a funky one about flying pizza (whatever it is you usually dream about, we don't judge), there's a glitch.
Out of the corner of your eye or just on the edge of your vision, a person appears. Their face can't be seen and their arms are longer than they have any right to be, but they appear and stand there, watching. Trying to focus on this person causes them to flit away and it's easy enough to dismiss as a random event, until it keeps happening. And it keeps happening, and it keeps happening, and every time you see this person, they get closer and even less distinct. Waking up and talking to or holding someone might help calm that disquiet in your heart, offworlder, so hopefully there's someone around to help you.
Out of the corner of your eye or just on the edge of your vision, a person appears. Their face can't be seen and their arms are longer than they have any right to be, but they appear and stand there, watching. Trying to focus on this person causes them to flit away and it's easy enough to dismiss as a random event, until it keeps happening. And it keeps happening, and it keeps happening, and every time you see this person, they get closer and even less distinct. Waking up and talking to or holding someone might help calm that disquiet in your heart, offworlder, so hopefully there's someone around to help you.
This event will run from September 16th to September 30th. 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 on the OOC Entry.
Feel free to also use the OOC Plotting Post for planning what your character is up to!
[SHB spoilers here]
...Unfortunately, I fear, it is a tale that I will not be seeing the end of. I can offer you only the next part in the telling. In spite of whatever she might say to the contrary, the finale rests in the hands of that young woman.
In the wake of Hydaelyn's blow, the world was born anew, as shattered remnants of what it once was. Not only the world - for Sundered too were the souls of all therein, the living and the dead, save for three of those who were once the Convocation.
[He pauses, bringing a hand up to run along his own cheek, a dramatized gesture that might almost seem mocking were it not his own pain he speaks of. And that - sarcastic and detached as he might seem - that pain is a genuine one, visible in hs eyes and audible below all the layers of his voice.]
The world we found ourselves in was wretched, a feeble imitation of what we had lost. The people who were once of one mind had split into so very many races and kinds, some of them of natures that seemed even monstrous to us. And diminished, all, not only in stature but in the light of their souls, their minds, their very selves.
Our families, our friends, all that we loved - for the three of us, Elidibus, Lahabrea, and I, never held any great affection for each other. Even in the circumstances in which we found ourselves, it was only our common cause and god that held us together, for we had naught else in commonality. An Emissary, a researcher of the phantasmal, and I, who might of sorts be considered a keeper of what man now calls the Lifestream, whence souls go to be reborn.
[He closes his eyes, for a just-long-enough moment that you might think him regaining his composure. That speaking of that time is hard is no act - it is showing the difficulty of it that he plays up for dramatic effect.]
And around us, naught but shadows not even worthy of being calling ghosts. A mockery of life - and such was what we found, upon every shard created by that fateful blow. Where we were lucky, we might find literal fragments of the world we had known - or half-people who spoke of the story we had lived as though telling a legend or a dream.
And so we set about the only thing we could do. Restoring our world, our god, our people - for the process was, in effect, one and the same.
[A sigh, again almost honest.]
...We made mistakes. An entire shard lost, because we knew not what we were doing. That world fell into darkness so deep that it was broken, the soul-shards that resided on it twisted into monsters. They seek only to consume, even now, more than ten thousand years later, for in our folly we created perhaps the only creatures as immortal and patient in their plotting as ourselves. Fortunately, as powerful as many voidsent may be, most of them are also stupid and capable of nothing more complex than basic deception.
[A shrug! Thank Zodiark for the little things, right?]
But in time, we learned. And each successful Rejoining gave more to the Source, made souls brighter, made the land bloom with new life... Some of which was things unnatural that we had made for research or whim, now part of the natural world, which was no small bit unsettling, I must say.
[He waves a dismissive hand.]
The Source is now seven times Rejoined, and hangs at a tipping point. For now, the people of the Source have grown enough that they have begun to be surprising, for the first time in so many eons.
[A slight smile. His eyes fall over the crowd, looking for a few faces in particular, should they be present.]
Why, some of them have even learned to hunt and kill us - but that is, I think, a tale for perhaps another day. Or another year, should we all be here long enough. It'd be bad form of me to monopolize the stage.
[And then - almost as though intentionally withholding a conclusion from the audience - he saunters off, back to his preferred corner to observe anyone else who might have something to tell.
Of course, he's fully prepared for the possibility of people coming to question him. Such is the nature of the story told, after all.]
because I must
[In a sense, he can relate, and he knows he is not alone in this. How many others among them hold memories of losing everything they have ever known and loved? It isn't a story he would have painted for a crowd of those gathered, but it wasn't his story to tell, in the end. The two are nothing alike, but it is a pain shared all the same, and not something he missed even from his place in the crowd.]
[Tale ended, he watches the Ascian disappear off stage. Given time enough, the Exarch decides to seek him out, for once. There is no sympathy in the gesture - neither of them want for it, and to offer might be offensive - but he would stand there anyway and listen to the remainder of the stories told whether or not Emet stays.]
[Also not lost on him is the fact that they are both losing their color, though they seem to maintain more of it than the rest of the world and its natural inhabitants. He does not make mention of it. In fact, the Exarch says nothing at all, seemingly content to remain there in silence.]
c:
He does not need to look up to know who stands nearest. Even without the whole of his sight, the Exarch is heavy in the soul as only one other in the city.
Silence continues, until the next time there is a gap between the stories. Emet-Selch keeps his eyes on the altar flames until he finally turns to the Exarch.]
Something you wish to say?
no subject
[But it comes to an end, as do all things, and he can't quite tell if he has annoyed the Ascian or not. It might amuse him, had he still had the capacity to be so petty.]
No. But I did not think to see you up there to follow her part of the story.
no subject
[Shrugging off the comment, that's all he's doing. The best armor is showing that you haven't been struck. The illusion of nonchalance has so often served him well.
That the possibility of the Exarch seeing through him exists. It's even expected. But the man is political enough that he will take the comments as they are, and not dig deeper.
(Why is it that that fact grinds at his nerves as much as the opposite?)]
Truthfully, I don't think I've done it justice, in comparison to my past retellings.
no subject
[No, this is Emet's story, his very core on display in miniature for a few scant minutes. Thousands of years may have passed, but the Ascian's loyalty has not wavered. Perhaps the words find sound now as if they had been discussing the weather, but what lies behind them has not changed.]
[And in that tone, they will stay. The Exarch lapses back into silence then, nudging no further. No agreement, no disagreement, no question. It is all he will do for now.]
no subject
But then, finally - ]
And so what is it you make of her? That hero of mine.
[There's a subtle tell in those words that reveals something that would not mean anything save to them.]
no subject
[What might be subtle to some ends up reading as words on a book made within recent months to him. Emet knows the Exarch is not of Era's world, but she may, in fact, be from his. After a thought, it leaves him less troubled than upon realization - whatever else the Warrior is or has been in her life in her own world, her soul is the same, and that alone is a comfort.]
She is as I knew, and as her legend portrays. 'Tis a tale she may yet share with you, if you are willing to listen, but that is for her to decide.
no subject
[He is not, after all, trying to be subtle. It is the oblique of politics, in which everyone involved in the conversation knows exactly what was meant, but can pretend, to an outsider, that they do not.]
A curious layer added to the puzzle, no? That we two are of the same, but you a half-step out of sync. Were all three the same, or even all three different...
[A hypothesis that is contradicted is infinitely more interesting, to his way of thinking, than one that is confirmed. As another person steps up to tell their story, Emet-Selch falls silent again for a time, his gaze on the storyteller.
This one, it seems, is brief, and when it is finished, he looks back at the Exarch and there is something of...
To call it expectation would be giving it too much certainty. To call it a challenge would be too adversarial. But there are elements of both to his gaze, as he lifts a hand briefly towards the stage.]
I should find it interesting to hear of your hero sometime, if you were willing.
no subject
[One hundred years later, he had learned silence and stillness quite well, and that was what the Ascian received now as the Exarch seemed to consider the stage without considering any of it at all.]
Curious, yes. One can but assume that we hail from alternate realities of the same worlds, or perhaps different shards within our own. [Realistically, he didn't know and couldn't know. What had the Thirteenth suffered before it fell to the Void? Who had lived their fragments of a life there, and how could any of them save Emet be sure that where they had come from was not the First, or what the Exarch and Warrior knew to be the First?]
[Too many questions without answer, too many branches of possibility and no sure way to cross them.]
Regardless of which it may be, you should know the hero of my own time, in soul if nothing else. If we are not alive to you, as you said once before I do believe, why does an individual journey of such a soul interest you?
no subject
[Arms upraised, he shrugs and tilts his head.]
You've not the Sight enough to tell, and you're the only one fortunate enough to have met both parties.
[He allows his arms to drop.]
That the soul is the same does not mean the result will be, for flesh and circumstance both change a person. To see such differences is one of the few ways in which mortals do interest me. To compare lives in such a way... It is not the core of anything in particular I study, but I've picked up certain patterns regardless, in who steps forward to heed the call, and who remains behind.
no subject
[So many questions, none of which he thought he would ever know, but he couldn't help his mind's workings. His hands found quill and ink before they found the bow - it was who he was, as he was then and now. One example in a crowd, a single drop in the ocean from which all souls originated and to which all would one day return.]
[As much as it fascinated him on a purely academic level, to relate what he knew of a dear friend in the light of an object of research bothered him. That he and others spent literal centuries focused on research around the same man did occur to him, but to save the Warrior rather than carry on singular personal observations. Notes in a tome, pages in a history. It felt wrong, and yet he didn't doubt that whatever else the Warrior was, there was a part of the puzzle he himself was missing in all of this, some missing link, some transition in the tale yet untold.]
[Curious as he might be, the Exarch held no delusions that Emet would readily part with the knowledge, for as much honesty as he had put forward in their time on the First. Another question without an answer, but one that he held a part of the key. He had no intent to use it as insurance - the Ascian wouldn't care, and the Exarch would not defile his friend - but all the same, he was not ready to speak of it yet. If ever he would be. So he nudged the focus in another direction.]
I suppose not. Souls only have so much influence on a person. My past lives may not have any bearing on who I am now; I will never know.
no subject
And if you could, would you even want to, I wonder...?
[The words are phrased as mere idle speculation, but there are no words he speaks without purpose. Even idle wonderings remain in his head where they belong, unless he wants them to be seen.]
no subject
[So yes, the Exarch is curious about this Ascian, who he was and what his people had been. Making his way through the flames of Amaurot twice, once in a hurry, the second time in pain and soul weary, had not been the most educational experience. Had they not been so at odds, he wonders what they could have accomplished working together - truly - without limitation. But it does him no good to dwell on the what ifs. Not in his world. Not anymore.]
[And yet.]
To know who I once was, in another lifetime? My path was set long ago merely by virtue of who and what I am long before I was ever the Crystal Exarch. But it might be an interesting deviation to see if who I was is anything like who I am now.
no subject
A scholar of the aspects of life most people took for granted - but one uninclined to take credit for any achievement he could lay at the feet of others. A man of keen insight, who preferred to use that insight to shepherd others into the fulfillment of the potential he saw in them.
[A pause. The carefully manicured, almost passionless tone turns to something wry, a secret shared only with himself.]
And to mercilessly tease those unfortunate enough to call him friend, of course.
[It is too on the mark to be simply his observations on the man in front of him, and even if it were not, the wryness, wistfulness, exasperated almost affection... He does not need to say in what lifetime he knew this unnamed man, for there is only one he could bear such emotions toward as he is now.
But then - a tilt of his
head, and a smile sharp enough to cut.]
Might I ask a strange question? Were it not for the Allagan eye you bear, would they, perhaps, be green?
no subject
[Still, what would it hurt to humor the possibility? His resolve had never been stronger, and his heart was sure and steady. The past was past, and whoever he had been once before might have been a friend to him, could they meet in another life or another way, but the circumstances of that past life were not the circumstances of his current life. What that man had done then, the shape of his heart and mind might not be the same if he had lived the same way G'raha Tia did. What G'raha Tia did in his own time might have been vastly different had he lived as his past self had.]
[More than that, his curiosity had the better of him, triggered by a small but significant revelation within Ascian's words, his tone, his question. The moment was telling, perhaps misleading, but an opening all the same. Emet-Selch had once known him, whoever the Exarch had once been.]
A shade of green, yes.
no subject
A surviving snippet of a phrase, that the eyes are the window to the soul.
[At least in Amaurot, they were, eyes as many-colored as the strong souls within them. The light but distinct gold of Emet's own eyes takes the Exarch in, and then flicks away.
Like water added to dye, diluted but unmistakably the same shade. Once the colors were too washed out to interpret anything of meaning, and among the shards, of course, they remain so. But in those of the Source - especially those few, the Exarch, the hero, and the child of Hydaelyn's voice, who are eight times Rejoined instead of seven - the color grows more distinct, identifiable.
He would never claim to remember every color of Amaurot, and her sister cities housed people whose souls he had never even seen. But some he knows, in a deep way that no amount of second-guessing himself will shake off. As some might recognize their childhood lullaby does he know the color of the man before him.
Unsurprising, of course, that fate would throw the both of them together, into his path. And little as he may like it on the surface, there is also no one else that he would have succeed him at his immortal watch upon the affairs of the worlds. She was certainly never the type to observe.]
no subject
[He hadn't put much stock in it then, only finding it curiously relevant to his own journey on a passing note. Now, hearing it from Emet, he wondered how much of that might ring true somewhere beyond ages. What did it mean for Emet's eyes, as liquid gold? What did it mean for Era's with her startling blue, or his own Warrior's who held a shade of blue in one but green in the other?]
[Did it mean anything at all beyond mere coincidence?]
[It merits some manner of research in his idle time, when he has a quiet moment to spare and indulge the historian within him, but those are still moments few and far between, less so now that he knows what pillar will sustain his crystalized form - though not how - and can use that energy to his advantage to study the world around him.]
By your words, that must have been a truth long ago, before the majority of your people were split and sundered. Were all of their eyes the very color of their souls, I wonder?
no subject
[That liquid gold looks the Exarch over once more, before the man shrugs.]
Of course, in those of the Source now, the correlation is far from perfect. Genetics plays a far greater role for you than it did for us, who could use our own aether to reshape our bodies.
[Which explains at least how it is that he had a Garlean form in the First, but mortals are indeed far more limited by their flesh. Just another of the things that he finds sad about them, really.]
no subject
[After all, eight times rejoined now and a survivor of two calamities, he felt no different and neither had those with him on the Source before he left it. But would he have noticed? His memories remained intact, even the ones passed on to him through the Allagan blood. His body had not changed, and certainly his eyes had not changed, even while the world around him remained in pieces and falling farther and farther apart by the day.]
[In that lay a question, one he would not find an answer to now or perhaps ever. He could have asked, just to put voice to it, but knew he would not like the answer, so he remained silent after and gave his ears to the tales from the stage.]
no subject
[He had also not exactly heard of someone rejoining themselves, after all, in such a personal state, but Hydaelyn's Emissary and Champion both had proven him wrong on that account. He's no stranger to the unexpected, but that still caught him by surprise.
A pause to clap politely, as the most recent storyteller descends the stage.]
Cognitive ability has been known to do so, but being whole myself, I can only but speculate to how much. It is impossible even for an Ascian to crawl inside another's skull and know all of his thoughts, after all.
no subject
[They had, of course, more interest in stopping the events from ever happening and in saving as many as they could to make life worth living until the next thing arrived. Convincing people to hold out faith was still a daunting task, but his people believed in him and had since he'd been named the Exarch he was.]
We did not know then what caused such events, and even now that we do, I would not ask or examine any of its survivors for the condition of their soul. [Not when it was plain enough how much pain they were in, how miserable and deeply into agony they had fallen. He had a feeling Emet would, but didn't voice it.]
no subject
[Dragons are a strange matter in themselves, as the souls of Midgardsomr and his brood, being not of the Source, are in fact whole in their own right. A curiosity, but one the Ascians have generally been wise enough to avoid.
Or at least, Emet-Selch has been wise enough to avoid them. Lahabrea's trick with convincing Tiamat to raise a primal of her beloved did work out for them in the end, but it still feels supremely risky to him.]
It is something I rather cannot help but see, personally.
no subject
No, not with your eyes. I can only imagine what the world must look like to you, even this one. [Then, a pause. And a question.] What do you see in the natives?