hugtopia_logs | ♥ September Event Log

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♥ September Event Log

a wide green pasture at dusk with a red-leafed tree in the foreground

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

a farmer holding a bountiful box of vegetables

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:

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.

❥ PROMPT III: Sharing is Caring

a book open with images and words popping out

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.

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!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[>googletranslate.exe has stopped functioning
>reboot?]

Huh? No, no, it's a sandwich with stir-fried noodles in it.

[....What the fuck? Why would anyone call a sandwich a pan?]

....

[Or put noodles into a sandwich? This sounds fucking gross and also fascinating at the same time.]

Mkay, you're gonna have to describe that one to me because we don't do anything like that where I'm from.

[Word choices are hard and carbs are fucking delicious why not have a purely carb sandwich.]

Alright. So it's two things. [He holds up two fingers, scissor tapping them. He would gladly explain this, sir, its an important staple of his convenience store diet.]

You stir fry up some noodles with some veg and this sweet and salty sauce. Usually there's some meat in there? It's a regular dish on its own, real tasty. But it's not... convenient, y'know? You need utensils for that. What if you don't have utensils?

So you put it in a hotdog bun. Now you can hold it. The hotdog is optional but that's good shit too.

[Don't make him explain hotdogs.]

[While Kaito talks, Taako writes. He's got hoards of notes from other people, but this? This is entirely new - something unheard of in his world and thus worth study. Even if sounds like a festival food, some of the best food you could get was out of those rinky-dink little stalls and he knew better than anyone how the size of your kitchen wasn't necessarily inverse to the quality of your food.

If it were him, he'd cut the hotdog up and put it into the noodles, but he's going to need to know a lot more than just taste and generic ingredients to reproduce this thing. Hotdog bun was easy, but those noodles?]

When you say veg, what sort of things are we talking about here? Tomatoes, okra, carrots? This sauce, too - what color? Consistency? We looking at some sort of oyster sauce or more of a Worcestershire?

[That sure is a lot of notes happening here. Its occurring to him that maybe this is something along the lines of Magolor's questionnaire from a while back. He didn't have any good input for that one, but he can at least sort of help with this part of this one!

Sort of! Kai passed a ponderous hand over his chin.]

S'got cabbage, onions... carrots? Yeah. Definitely gotta top it with some pickled ginger. Maybe some seaweed.

I think the sauce is kinda both? I've never made it myself, so I couldn't tell you for sure. It's not super thick but it definitely coats the noodles pretty good.

[And there are going to be more. He notes the ingredient and frowns at the mention of seaweed. He has to mean dried, right? Who would put wet seaweed in food? Especially since it seems like these noodles are...saucy and not soupy? Fuck this is weird and Taako is absolutely loving it.]

Dried seaweed? Any particular style? Cut up, chunks, strips, uh...powdered? And what oolor is the sauce? We looking at just enough to cover the noodles or with some leftover at the bottom like uh...pasta or something.

Oh, yeah, dried seaweed. It kinda depends on where you go, but I've seen thin strips sometimes. Usually its more flakey and sprinkled on top.

[He's been giving the sauce a really intensive amount of thought.]

The sauce isn't too much, y'don't want soggy bread, y'know? Kinda ruins the convenience factor. It's usually not that dark, but it kinda varies? I'd say its kinda chestnut colored.

[As Taako thinks back on all the worlds he visited, all the different planes and different foods and cuisines and local delicacies, he thinks he might know a variation of something that might work for what this kid is describing. The vegetables and ingredients would be no problem. Pickled ginger root and dried seaweed might be hard to come by, but not impossible to transmute with the right base ingredients to begin with.

It's this sauce that he has to get right. That's the part he'll need- well.

Taako smirks.]

Might take me awhile, so I'll need a guinea pig to test it on. No one better than the guy who suggested it, right?

[Kai'd been putting it together that this was more than just a casual food improvement survey. It was that, but it probably wasn't one that was going to be delivered to the natives doorstep to make modifications for.

So Kai was a little more surprised by the offer itself than he is the notion that Taako was going to try making it himself. His surprise quickly phased into a considering look as he nodded.]

Yeah, I'm gonna have to double check your work there. You can't be putting weak yakipans out there and giving people the wrong idea.

[He holds a finger up as if to stop the kid from speaking.]

First of all? I'm Taako, from TV, one of the most powerful transmutation wizards in the multiverse and a former celebrity chef.

Second? You ever even hint at the idea that anything coming out of my kitchen could be considered "weak," and I'll set your head on fire.

[Kai looked at that finger and at Taako, and then he just grinned.

From TV, huh.]

Then I'll be looking forward to your rendition, Taako.

[Hm, so idle threats of magical violence do nothing to phase this kid, good to know.

Taako shrugs and drops his hand.]

Yeah, no doubt you will. Experiments don't count as actual dishes, so you better be ready to hone your taste buds and tell me how to adjust shit. And pay, by the way. If you want these yakipans [Gods, what a name.], you're gonna need to fork up for 'em once they're a finished product.

[What in the heck is a 'self-preservation' anyhow.]

Yeah, of course. Not like I can make 'em. [Or he'd already be trying!]

I take it you're starting up a thing?

Figured I might as well start up the Taako Brand again seeing as I have a whole new world of [suckers] customers to impress.

[He shrugs and snaps his fingers, magic sparkling harmlessly around them in a completely extraneous casting of Prestidigitation.]

And seeing how me and Lup are the only ones who can probably get the ingredients to whatever you want here? We kind of have the market cornered on that front.

[Oh. Hey. Sparkletown. Kai's not usually a guy to make a big reaction to things anymore, but his eyes did light up with a quiet kind of glee as he looked around at all this sparkliness.

Then he blinked, because he was putting 1 + 1 together and--]

Ohh, right! The food conscientious brother!

[That's you!]

I guess it would make sense that you have your own brand.

[....Oh. OH. Taako raises an eyebrow and shakes his head.]

The food expert brother - and honestly, if that's how Lup is introducing me, I'm going to start calling her the hopeless romantic pyrogoth sister.

I had, as I said, a traveling cooking show for years - so yes, brand management is one of many things I do.

Ha, it wasn't her that did it, I ran into your [...mom? momfriend?] housemate that mentioned you.

That's cool though. Lotta tricks up your sleeves then, yeah?

[His eyebrow raises a little further at that because he has two people it could be, since Kova can't talk.]

Gonna have to be specific here. The one with one eye and an itchy trigger finger or the one that looks like they might lurk out of a dark cavern and "riddle me these questions three?"

[Yes, that is how he describes the people he loves and cares about. What a great friend he is.]

[It's Kai's turn to raise an eyebrow.]

Wow, you're charming.

[Which wasn't a full on "wow you're a dick" since Honerva did seem fond of him, so. Charming! It was!]

The latter, your momfriend.

[He knows that's sarcasm, but Taako gives the kid a wink and a smile anyway.]

Oh, I know.

[But that answers that. He definitely wouldn't call Honerva the "momfriend" of the group, but she's probably the closest to it seeing how she's the only actual mom.]

She's only the "momfriend" by default. If it wasn't for me, she'd still be eating dehydrated vegetable chips and calling it a day.

[Kai rolled his eyes, but it was more faintly amused than anything else.]

That so. At least it wasn't just crackers, that situation might have been too dire.

I mean, if left to her own devices? It might have been.

[He has no idea what Honerva used to eat before he came along. She'd only just realized that salads were a thing and that? Gods. He could understand it in her case, but it was still a hard pill to swallow.]

I introduced her to soups and it's a very, very slow process.

Well if anyone's going to be successful with such a challenge it's probably a cool celebrity chef, so she's probably in good hands.

[Cool? Oh, you sweet talker, you.

Taako's ego is the easiest and most transparent way to get to him, but he honestly doesn't care and he'll eat up what little praise he can get. He tosses his hair over his shoulder with a grin.]

You're right about that. I'm her best bet to regain her taste buds.

But you? You might be in need of another of my considerable number of talents. [He gestures to Kaito from head to toe and back again.] Unless the monochrome look is what you're going for.

Me?

[Oh, the monochrome. Kai glanced up, as if he could see more than a few strands of the greys he had going on, reaching a hand up to lightly pass over it.]

Honestly, getting this shade on my own would be pretty impressive, but I can't say that's what I was going for no.

You got a color changing snack or something?

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