♥ September Event Log

[hugtopiamods]

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...

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❥ 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:

1. 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.
   
2. 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.
   
3. 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.

❥ 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....?

❥ 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.

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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!

Comments

[shroudedsecrets]

If there is energy that is being used to pull us here, it could have caused a change. A reaction, to that sudden lack of energy and perhaps an uneven distribution of any it may gain from our presence. And given how they are continuing to pull others here, such changes should perhaps, be anticipated...

[She makes a very slight gesture, indicating the rest of the city around them.]

This location was already presumably built and isolated for the sake of preservation, before we were brought here. Perhaps the use of these machines is from a time before the natives had given up their bodies. It could have been intended for some forgotten ritual that they were unable to perform in their current state.

[flawed_immortality]

Ah... that is a good point. I hadn't considered the expenditure of resources required to bring us here.

[He's not used to such nebulous resources like "energy". Certainly light was a commodity back in Eos and the power to run lights bright enough to hold back the daemons but that was all just machinery not some mystical force.]

I would really like to know what purpose these platforms served initially.

[shroudedsecrets]

There is always a cost.

[Even when it's something nebulous like energy. Or perhaps especially because it was.]

Given the transformative effects it has on the areas around it, there must be receptors involved with regulating what is transferred to the surrounding areas. Perhaps if they were used more frequently in the past, with the change to their forms, they would not have exhibited the same results, if any, so the meaning of such rituals might have been lost...

[flawed_immortality]

Mm... we had something similar in the Crown City, amplifiers that helped ease some of the burden of maintaining the wall from the King.

[He can't help shifting to look around the surrounding area for some sign of such equipment.]

Such things tend to be fairly obvious... in Insomnia they were always heavily guarded as well.

[shroudedsecrets]

If there is technology for the energy to interact with, then perhaps the main receptors are connected to the temples, given the fact that despite the input of such required energy comes from the same source, the flow is then dispersed to these gods separately.

[And unevenly, apparently, given what had already occurred.]

The city was likely built and reinforced with all of this in mind, if it is considered to be the last haven standing in these times.

[flawed_immortality]

But what are the odds of them actually letting us see, never mind interact with, those receptors. It's a good thought. Likely true enough.

I wonder, though, if the answer is not something a bit more magical and less technical... or worse there's magitek involved. [And that would require bringing at least Prompto into their theorizing. If not... no whatever answers Besithia might be able to offer he absolutely will not collude with him.]

[shroudedsecrets]

[Even if the likelihood of such things being discovered were slim, at least they had the time to organize the questions they had. The technology, too, could differ from anything they were personally familiar with.]

I suspect that it is a combination of both. Magic and technology being combined is not... an unusual method. We know that this power is reliant on an outside source of energy that cannot be generated by technological means, but as we have already seen, it can be converted.

[She might be a little too familiar with such things. She pauses for a moment, thoughtful.]

... Given the state of the city, perhaps mechanisms that were more reliant on such a means will become more accessible. It is possible they were able to have the energy stored in some way before they were unable to generate more.

[flawed_immortality]

We have magitek on Eos as well but it is not something I have ever seen used for anything but destruction. There are forms of power storage, things generated from... life force if you will. If you want input on other forms of Magitek there's a man here named Besithia.

[He can't even say his name without dropping to a bit of a growl, shaking his head and scowling.]

He's slightly more sane here than when I met him... about 7 years later I think it was? But the man is an absolute terror, brilliant but psychotic. He is very good with magitek, if you can get him to work within any kind of framework of morality.

You'd recognize him... Prompto looks exactly like him. If you're willing to make a deal with the Infernian himself to get more information he might be useful. I cannot bear the sight of him though.

[shroudedsecrets]

[Well this was... something, all right. The more Cor speaks, the more familiar it all sounds, uncomfortably so. It's almost a distraction, moreso than Cor's obvious feelings toward such things.

Quite a lot to take in, but she nods as he speaks, as the layered understanding sets in.]

In other words, you consider him a potential resource, even if one you are... unwilling to deal with yourself.

[She was more experienced in such areas that Besithia would only dream of, but universes were different, maybe he would know a different angle. Though if he dealt in information, that might be more difficult to negotiate. Morality, too, was a thin line...

And it wasn't as though she hadn't faced such things herself, from the other side. Of people being unwilling to deal with her, directly. So she could not judge. More importantly, however:]

Prompto is connected to such a person?

[flawed_immortality]

A potential resource so long as one can decipher the usefulness from the madness.

[He'd happily deal with Verstael but the natives get a little tetchy when violence happens. His way of dealing with him would be to end him.]

Prompto... Besithia created Prompto. Grew him in a lab from his own DNA. There were... 20 in the first... batch.

[Cor is not a man easily shaken but his tone drifts, something far away and distant, something haunted and empty all at once. A careful report with no emotion tied to it.]

Infants he proceeded to experiment on and when the trials were not going according to plan he intended to... destroy any loose ends until he could perfect the process. I was only able to get one of the babies out with me when I returned to Lucis. My position, even then, was too prominent to suddenly have adopted a son, especially one that would grow to look like a carbon copy of the Imperial Chief Researcher. He was placed for adoption, led a normal life.

All the while Besithia used that same process to grind out an army of mindless soldiers, millions strong, tainted by the scourge and programmable just like any robot. From children made in his own image.

He's a monster. However useful his knowledge might be here, never forget that.

[shroudedsecrets]

[Perspective sure was a wild ride, once one had it. Certainly there were major differences in such approaches, the reasoning behind it, but the similarities were all there as well. Side projects, to strengthen the empire, to gain the emperor's favor, re-purpose anything defective. She'd hardly been a person, then, but did that matter? Honerva could only listen on, as he spoke.]

... I am not unfamiliar with... such monsters.

[She murmurs, even if her own disgust is aimed at herself, but it is not as if he knows. Besides, he seems far too distracted now, given the nature of that report. This conversation had delved further into territory it had not intended to be.]

What matters is that Prompto is Prompto.

[And that such plans were... apparently thwarted, but now he was cursed, perhaps, with the fate of bearing that likeness.]

[flawed_immortality]

Yes. He's a good boy. I honestly fear what might have become of Noctis if not for Prompto's presence. For all his creator is mad Prompto is a gift. A ray of light our Prince sorely needed when he was at risk of delving too deep into his own mind.

[Translation: Ignis is not the only one that noticed Noct was suffering from some pretty intense depression. Not that it's any wonder, really.]

All of that aside... Besithia may well have some insight into this whole mess that would be beneficial, at least to see if we can consider things from the perspective of those that brought us here.

[shroudedsecrets]

Yes, he does seem... rather suited to such tasks.

[Prompto, that is. She'd certainly witnessed his ability to be a ray of light on multiple occasions, even when she hadn't been aware she'd needed it.

As for the rest of what's said... well. There's rather a lot to that, isn't there. She certainly didn't need to speak to this Besithia on topics which she was wholly familiar with herself. And yet she could only sense that Cor was trying to point her in that direction, anyway.]

It is ... important to have different perspectives on such matters.

[Rather than commit to what he's implied, she keeps her responses... neutral.]

After all, we do not know the true aims of the forces that brought us here, what they may hope to achieve currently, and what last brought them to their desperation in the past. There are still many aspects to consider. We hardly even know the circumstances of what once passed for leadership in this world.