♥ December (Ranir) Event Log

[hugtopiamods]

December (Ranir) Event Log
The end of the year is here and winter has arrived. The chilly fall weather quickly gives way to cold days and colder nights, perfect for snuggling and watching the first dusting of snow fall. It doesn't seem to stick for long, but it's certainly a beautiful sight to watch out of your windows. Ranir is the beginning of Rawna's time to shine, but the god of apathy breeds apathetic followers and priests - or he usually does. Maybe it's due to the influence of all the offworlders for the past year, but this year? Ranir is strangely familiar in its festivities...

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❥ PROMPT I: Bring Out Your Pens

No one is quite sure how, but over the past year, the natives have come to learn about a very particular figure in many of the offworlders' legends. He appears one time a year, shrouded in mystery, visiting in the dead of night, only to vanish until the next year. This godlike figure has piqued their interest to say the least and once Ranir is in full swing, offworlders who are aware of the legend of Santa Claus will start seeing some robots, especially Rawna's temple priests, wearing that familiar red and white outfit around town. They're carrying sacks on their backs and going door to door, electronics buzzing with excitement as they find anyone they can to shove an actual pen and paper into their hands.

"All hail the Santa of Clause!" they exclaim with glee. "Hail to your winter god! Nail your socks to the wall!"

Anyone who receives a letter set in person will then be told to write a letter to the Santa of Clause (and the robots ARE checking spelling. Who's ever heard of Santa Claus? Clearly you're mistaken and need a spelling software update) asking for a present, to a friend in town, or to someone back home. They won't leave until you write your letter, either. Whether it means they have to follow you all day, all week, or straight into your homes, they will complete their duty to the Santa of Clause and appease his great and terrible appetite for grammatically correct letters. For those who are lucky enough to avoid the robots in person, they may find a letter set in their mailbox one more with similar instructions about to whom they should be writing and a cheery announcement that someone will be by later to pick the letter up.

The sheer volume of letters being passed around town, however, is more than the robots alone can deliver. Soon enough, they start reaching out to the offworlders to help deliver the letters to their intended recipients, whether it's other offworlders, natives, or to temples to be placed upon the gods' altars. Anyone who is willing to help out will be given a small token of appreciation in the form of Dora, but more importantly, a larger gift of the Santa of Clause approved uniform. That's right: a Santa costume. If you're delivering letters, you must be wearing a Santa costume or you'll anger the Winter God, Santa of Clause! Or so the natives believe. So get into the holiday spirit and dress on up!

Those who wish to write letters to someone who is no longer among the city population or those who have never been here are more than encouraged to do so. In fact, Rawna's temple priests seem particularly interested in having people come by to read those letters directly at their temples to tie this offworld holiday into Rawna's typical purview. Read your letters to your loved ones or just read a letter detailing what you want for the holidays at Rawna's temple to unburden your soul as the year ends. Maybe you'll walk away feeling lighter than before.

❥ PROMPT II: This Isn't What I Ordered

At the end of the month, characters will wake up to light scratching at their doors. The sound is enough to get anyone's attention, especially if the scratching is at their bedroom doors, rather than their front doors. When people go to investigate, they'll find a little rainbow dragonling at their feet looking up at them expectantly. By the dragonling's side is a box of varying sizes, decorated and topped with a holographic bow. Once the dragonling has determined that you recognize the package is yours, it slithers off back to where it came from, escaping your house with surprising ease.

Opening the package will reveal one item from your character's life. That's right, it's a regain event! The item inside the box is familiar to your character and it might bring a smile to their face - or it would if it wasn't just....slightly? Wrong? For whatever reason, it seems this year the gift giving went a bit awry and all the items delivered by the dragonlings are off in some manner or another. For example, you might have gotten a box set of your favorite books from home! But they're all in a language you can't read. Or you may have gotten your favorite sweater back! But it's fourteen sizes too big and looks like it was sized for a T-Rex instead. Or your favorite gun from home is now bright neon bubblegum pink instead of that sleek and cool gunmetal gray. Oh and the bullets shoot flowers instead of, y'know, bullets. Whoops.

Whatever the problem, every gift received seems to have something wrong with it. As the complaints start rolling in, the temple priests will try their best to fix it by having all willing characters come with their malfunctioning gifts. A few trials and errors reveal that the best way to get things right again is? You guessed it: positive contact. Any temple will do for this, but Rawna's temple is naturally the busiest seeing as it's sort of his holiday and thus, sort of(?) his fault. Come with a friend or a frenemy or just a straight enemy if that's your flavour, place both of your gifts on the temple's altar, and just hold on tight. Once contact is initiated, the gifts will start to glow with a soft light; and the longer the contact is held, the brighter the light gets. It can take up to an hour depending on the level of wrongness your gift went to in order for the light to grow bright enough to flash and set the gifts back to their original forms. But there are rumours that talking about the gift you received and why it is significant to you makes the process far faster, resulting in a light that might flash as soon as you finish your story. Just be sure to hurry to correct this mistake. Some of the temple priests hypothesize that the corrections can only be made so long as Rawna's power holds sway.

OOC: These items from home must be approved by a mod. They cannot exceed the Medium Item regain limit. It cannot be a power or other ability. It cannot be something your character did not own or have knowledge of in their canon or their CRAU. Please post your regain request in the Regain Request thread before threading out the receipt or restoration of the item.

❥ PROMPT III: Ghostly Consequences

Toward the end of the month, people begin having dreams of Havenwell. That's nothing truly unusual, certainly, as it's quite normal for dreams to mimic one's daily life. What is unusual is that these dreams feel...real. Too real. And the people in the dreams are ones that may or may not be familiar to you. The faces of the dream people resemble those of the ghosts that took over Havenwell a month or two prior, and they seem to be going about their business as if they lived in Havenwell. In fact, they seem to be living your lives instead of you, living in your house, sleeping in your beds, working your jobs, talking with your friends. No one in the dream seems to notice the switcheroo and try as you might to interact with people in the dream, it looks like you've taken on the role of ghost. Thankfully, these dreams are innocuous and short, snapshots of your life rather than full length dreams and are over quickly.

However, before each dream ends, the ghost living your life turns to you and puts their hands together in a pleading gesture. What do they say? That differs for each person.

For most offworlders, the message is the same. The ghost puts their hands together and says:

"Balance must always be kept. Nothing shall die here that He does not allow. Your sacrifice is balance, and balance must always be kept. Some must die or all shall perish. These were their promises and their demise."

But, if your character touched a ghost in the previous event, you will receive a PM from the mod account soon with your specific message. Keep an eye out for your message.

The dream ends once the message is delivered and you'll find yourselves not where you remember - your bed, your sofa, wherever you went to sleep - but someplace new. Apparently the dreams have caused some minor sleepwalking and you may just find yourself waking up in someone else's bed or up a tree or about to buy that super expensive plastic model of Havenwell's latest holomovie starlet. Whoops.

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This event will run from 15 December to 31 December. 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. You can also use the Havenwell Status page or the General Plotting Comment to give you other ideas for original prompts!

Comments

[shroudedsecrets]

[ The simplest of priorities, and yet she'd already lived having those be horribly, almost irrevocably twisted, almost enough to flinch to, this weight she would ever yet carry.

Then she exhales softly, a little flicker of her ears. None of that is what matters, in the here and now; only the choice she makes here and now. She'd have to find her way around the symbolism. ]

Expert, indeed. Just like you to break it all down for me. Always asking the right questions to make me think, and to give voice to those thoughts.

[ Which seems to be just enough to dispel the lingering corruption from the image at last. ]

[necromanswers]

Sure. I'll help, but I'm not here to hold your hand all the way through it.

[She pauses, then chuckles.]

Okay, I guess I am here to hold your hand, technically. But we're still the instigators of our own disaster, gods be damned.

[shroudedsecrets]

[ She tilts her head, before chuckling softly as well. ]

I am well aware, though it is quite a disaster to navigate. I am only grateful to not to be doing that alone.

[necromanswers]

Uh-huh. You know where to find me.

[Even if she didn't, Lup is neither subtle or quiet.

Case in point: finished with Honerva's hair, she raises the brush and chucks it full-tilt at the statue.]

Hey! Fucking wake up already and do your thing! We've been here for ages.

[shroudedsecrets]

[ Something about that tone just takes her back to their time at the tree. Gods or whatever may have been at play certainly made them wait back then too. It just seemed par for the course of their experiences. This was just unnecessary anxiety. ]

I have already decided that I want it back. Now will you please restore it so that we may go?

[necromanswers]

[Lup stares up at the statue, waiting. Waiting. Waiting.

And then, loudly:]

Cover me, I'm gonna give the damn thing a bat-shit smile.

[shroudedsecrets]

You got it.

[ On the altar, the images peter out completely, as though someone had given a hard reset to the hologram and then neglected to turn it back on. ]

[necromanswers]

[She stands up, intending to climb the statue - with Mislead to assist, maybe - but as she approaches the statue, she pauses and glances over her shoulder at Honerva.]

Think it turned off. You wanna check it?

[shroudedsecrets]

[ She stands as well, prepared to turn around and wave off anyone who might be wandering by so that Lup could do her work, when her attention is drawn back to the statue.

Of course it's just -- off. Her ears flatten with a slight frown, but she moves forward to examine the item properly instead.

At first it just doesn't turn on. Hard to tell how old the technology is, and if it's just fidgety or if there's some other interference going on, she wouldn't put it past this place. ]

Come take hold of it with me. We'll see if it actives properly with us together.

[necromanswers]

[Lup shrugs, leaning in to bump her side against Honerva's, and grabs ahold of one side of the frame.]

Ready when you are, then.

[She knows how weird this place is; nothing ever seems to work properly the first time. She'll wait on Honerva to get it going though, since it isn't tech she knows.]

[shroudedsecrets]

[ And of course it's being especially fidgety. Like the world gets a kick out of making them work for it. It doesn't even turn on right away, before the data gathers together and the images being projected are far different than the ones originally there.

It still seems as though there's been some minor tampering with the way it holds together, that someone might have tampered or tried to wipe away it's existence that keeps it flickering, but this seems like the best they might be able to get from the gods by now. The important part is that the images in their tinted holographic form are no longer rendered incorrectly, no longer Emperor and High Priestess but Husband and Wife. It still tugs at something, the old longing for a life long gone but that was already anticipated. She exhales, softly. ]

... That might be it, then.

[necromanswers]

[Lup stands quietly for a moment, just looking at it, taking in the sight of the Honerva of the past, looking truly happy with her husband. A memory that anyone would dream of sharing with their loved one, the person they thought they'd share their life with. Things are different now, and it may only be a memory now, but... still. It's good to see it mended.

She gives Honerva a gentle nudge.]

Feel better?

[shroudedsecrets]

... yeah.

[ It hurts, as there's little doubt of the tightness in her chest, still heavy but stable, by having this moment present, in a physical way. And having Lup there, to witness it as such and yet be there to remind her of the future, is certainly a balm well needed. ]

It feels... right, to have it restored. And for you to have witnessed it. But now... we should leave this place.

[necromanswers]

Yeah, I don't wanna be here any longer than we have to. Too easy to invite trouble that way.

[She hesitates, then tugs Honerva in for a hug, brief but tight.]

Put it wherever you want in the house- hidden or on display, whatever you need. The offer won't expire, either.

[shroudedsecrets]

Lup...

[ The hug was sudden, but needed, and she was grateful for it, no matter how brief. ]

... thank you. I'm not yet certain, what I will do. I had the thought that it might be too... strange, with my seeing someone now.

[necromanswers]

[Only brief because they have an audience, and she doesn't feel like indulging the touch-obsessed priests; once they separate she takes Honerva by the hand and leads her away from the statue.]

Ardyn was engaged before, right? Pretty sure he'll understand. He's that kind of guy, it's honestly a little infuriating.

[She doesn't sound remotely bothered by this.]

[shroudedsecrets]

... He was, yes.

[ And she well knew how it ended, visually and emotionally from his perspective. She's more than happy to take Lup's lead out of there, those priests don't need any more out of them than what they've gotten. ]

And he is. I worry about that at times... but it seems so ingrained to his actions, to put all else first before himself, even if it did hurt him.

[necromanswers]

That sounds like a conversation to be had with him. You know, like functional adults.

[She believes in you, mostly. Y'all can figure this out.]

I do think it's important to do what's most comfortable for you in your own home though, regardless.

[shroudedsecrets]

He has heard it from me. Before we... began whatever we are, I wanted him to be certain that his care for me was not... for those reasons alone.

[ And he certainly will continue hear more in future. ] However I feel that him hearing it from others might be beneficial as well.

[necromanswers]

Believe me, an attempt has been made. We can remind him plenty, but nobody's gonna force him to be less of a dingus. Sooner or later the responsibility needs to rest on his shoulders.

[shroudedsecrets]

... Fair enough. We can only hope for his ability to realize that.

[ As much as she well knew how difficult it could be to deal with deep seeded habits. ]

[necromanswers]

Give him time, but give him grief. That's my usual methodology.

[shroudedsecrets]

So it is. Not a bad one, either, where results are concerned.