hugtopia_logs | ♥ November Intro Mingle Log

♥ November Intro Mingle Log

a house lit by sunset colours, with orange-leafed trees around it and a tiny pumpkin by the wall

November Intro Mingle Log
Welcome to Hugtopia, and to the city of Havenwell. This mingle is meant for new arrivals to get settled and meet the other inhabitants. New characters should be the only top-levels but everyone is free to tag around and make new friends. Who knows, you may find that Perfect Hug in here. You can use the prompts here, or create a wildcard of your own.

ICly, this takes place from the 2nd to around the 10th, with a proper event coming soon after applications are processed. The prompts below are optional, but are a way to get you started if you wish. To help you create your own prompts, please take a look through our Settings and FAQ. 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 below.

❥ PROMPT I: Awakening

When you awaken, you're in the last outfit you remember wearing, (up to) three of your belongings laid nearby or your animal friend curled up by you, waking as you do. A stone slab is not the most comfortable place to sleep, but once you're awake, a humanoid-looking robot comes into the room and explains that you're in Havenwell, then leads you out of the room and into the main portion of the temple where a welcoming committee of similarly humanoid-looking robots hand over a clear smartphone-sized tablet, some starting funds, and explain their dilemma. Then they release you into Havenwell to pick your new home from free housing in the city and give you the chance to settle. It might be a bit disorienting, but thankfully there seem to be a lot of robots and even some non-robots around. Maybe ask them for help? Strike up a friendly conversation, get to know your neighbours! It seems as if you may be here for the long haul.

❥ PROMPT II: Buddy System

two fingers together with smiling faces drawn on

With all the changes and the fear of a secondary attack lingering, the natives are a lot more protective of their newest arrivals. When new characters begin to appear at the temples, they receive the welcome speech, get their communicators and the simple map of the city, and a warning to stay away from the walls. Then they get taken to the front of the temple by a helpful robotic priest. Rather than turn the newcomers loose right away, they pull someone seemingly at random off the street and push the two people together with a cheerful, "It's dangerous to go alone, so please show our newest resident around. Please be buddies!" They wait until they're certain the pair is going to be moving off together before going back inside.

They try to place a new arrival with one of those who previously arrived, but who can keep track of all that, right? Characters may find themselves thrown together with an actual veteran or with another new arrival who only came here a day or even just an hour before them! Good luck helping each other out, offworlders, and don't lose your buddy!

❥ PROMPT III: Virtual Research

a virtual first-person view of hands reeling in a fishing rod

After the attack, every part of the city is on repair duty and the means the Entertainment District as well. As new arrivals wander the city, they might be called into one of the numerous Virtual Reality cafes. These cafes vary in layout, but most have areas for the natives to plug directly into the machines and other areas which have older looking virtual reality helmets that allow flesh bodied people experience the games. For those who need assistance with their sensory inputs, basic options like audio descriptions of visual scenes, enhanced audio and descriptive speech, closed captions, and crude mobility chairs are available. A handful of cafes have other options like direct visual or audio cortex stimulation to simulate vision or hearing, or suspension tanks to allow simulated movement, but these are currently unavailable due to damage.

All of these facilities are, unfortunately, under repair. The direct plug-in systems are easier for the robot natives to fix because they can do the most important part of it - testing - by themselves. But for the helmets and other interface systems, they need your help. Naturally, they'll pay you for the work, but they need the offworlders to play the available games and record any areas where they find glitches. Playing with a partner increases your chances of finding and fixing any issues, so feel free to log in for free for once and test any of the following games:

Big Bass Fishing

A (un)Familiar Experience

Robot Crossing

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. Strangely, when the timer runs out? It flashes 00:00 and the game...doesn't? Stop? In fact, the fruits and vegetables just keep multiplying and multiplying and if you don't hurry up you might just get buried in them all!
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. Or they should, but whenever you clear away a matching set, the fruits explode, sending fruit bits and juice everywhere - most notably on you and your partner. Still, the game is going on and it looks like it won't stop until you finish, so good thing it's all a computer game, right? Sure feels real though - reeeeeeally sticky.
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, for whatever reason? This pumpkin is already the size of a grizzly bear and it just won't stop growing! You and your partner better find a way to stop it from growing out of control or you might get (virtually) crushed! You could do a song and dance routine together to touch the pumpkin's soul to teach it moderation or calm its insane vegetable puberty. You could hold hands and share stories and entertain the pumpkin until it feels satisfied that it's grown enough. You could just hack and slash at it in an attempt to reduce its unwieldy bulk. The possibilities are endless and so is the pumpkin's growth, so you better hurry!

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So it doesn't matter who you're serving? Kind of a weird perspective for a king.

[His tone is more curious than judging.]

[Somnus lifts his head.]

You have seen the state of this world. What will you do next?

...What I can, I guess. I don't know why they picked me, I'm better at fighting than any of what they need here, but it's not like I can't roll with it.

[He gives their joined hands a lazy wave. Not like this is high-tech, he just needs to learn how to not be so... awkward?]

[That'll come with practice. Somnus readjusts his grip, lightly pressing his fingers into the back of Noctis' burdened hand.]

We were called upon by the gods to heal this world. What the city does not need may be needed elsewhere.

Outside, you mean.

[It's barely a question. The world beyond the walls has always been his calling back home; it may as well be that here, too. And the residents of this city seemed so ill-prepared for a breach, so it can't have happened often.]

There's... a lot of people here who can fight. And most of us came with our weapons, too. If their gods did that on purpose, there's probably more to come.

[Indeed. Somnus looks down at his unoccupied hand, which rests on his lap.]

This is the beginning of the end.

[Again. For a third time, the end has begun anew. Will this one span months or years? In the last world, he'd gone to the church—not to pray to the deities of a colorless town, but for the day that his brother will find peace. Now, here, he can only wait and pray once more.]

We must take care not to falter.

[Noctis grimaces, glancing off towards one of the looming dragon statues decorating the temple.]

Isn't one world enough? I've got plenty on my plate as it is.

[This is admittedly less tiring than fighting soldiers and daemons, collecting old relics, and exploring dungeons all the time, but it's not like he wasn't busy.

Despite his words he's not mad, exactly. There's just still too much they don't know.]

[One world alone far exceeds the weight that should be shouldered by one man. Noctis has been dealt a fate most heavy time and again, and Somnus' heart feels laden with that knowledge. Yet what else can they do?

He already burned himself once in trying to overthrow the gods' will. Somnus has no power to alter the weight on Noctis' plate, but he can share the load for as long as he's in Aellyn.]

There are others. The burden of a world is not yours to bear alone here,

Is that what you're here for?

[He glances briefly back down to their hands before focusing on Somnus again. The man's even more of a mystery now than when he was just a story from ancient history. His grim personality exists in stark contrast to the ease with which he wandered right over and held what is essentially a stranger's hand. Hard to make sense of that.]

[Somnus' gaze has risen to fix itself on the temple goers and animals in the distance. He's merely here to serve—to help in what little ways he can.]

Do you object?

Not really.

[It's the logical decision, and from the impression he's gotten of the man so far, logic is a big factor in how he views things.]

You can do more than that, though.

[Somnus falls silent as he continues to watch the sparse crowd. It's a roundabout invitation for Noctis to also continue, though he already has an idea as to what he's about to hear.]

[The pressure is on...! Or it might, if Noctis had anything particularly deep to say. Instead, he has questions, because he's tired of stumbling in the dark.]

What's your side of the story? Is Ardyn right?

[There's a beat before he asks, quietly:]

What story has he told?

That... he's a daemon, that you killed him and the Oracle, and left him in Angelgard. That he was supposed to be the king, but you took it.

[He hasn't heard as much of the story as other people, and to him the situation is more sad than infuriating - perhaps because it comes hand in hand with being a pawn of the gods himself, and the final thread of whatever tapestry for Eos that they'd been weaving for thousands of years, or perhaps because Ardyn himself was more distressed than angry any time he spoke of it. It's because of all this that his tone is somewhat neutral. Cautious, unhappy, but not lashing out. Just... confused. The words, joined with knowledge of their brotherhood, makes the whole situation unbelievable, but it never felt like Ardyn was lying, either.]

[He had taken much and more that day. The lives of his brother and his sister-to-be, his brother's identity and freedom, and the truth had been just three of many. The throne, however . . . ]

One tainted by the Scourge could not sit the throne.

[Thus was Ardyn rejected by the Crystal and forbidden to ascend. He was never meant to reign below, but to sacrifice all of himself for the world. While Somnus' answer is matter-of-fact, his voice is soft.]

[That falls in line with what Ardyn had said, too.]

The Crystal rejected him...

[But one thing is not the other.]

Why'd you have to fight, though? He knows how the gods are. If that was how it's supposed to be, couldn't he have accepted it eventually? There's no point in trying to kill each other over something like that.

[Because neither of them had known. Because Somnus hadn't been able to stomach the idea of passing the kingdom off to a dreamer who'd lost sight of reality. Because he hadn't trusted the gods and questioned their judgment. Because he'd been young, willful, and foolish. Because, more than anything, he had wanted to protect the people—no matter the cost.

Because the prophecy had required a green-eyed monster to spark the flames of retribution.]

I was merely fulfilling my calling.

[Just barely above a whisper, his voice regains some of its strength as he continues:]

What has passed cannot be undone. There is little else to do but to accept the consequences and push onward.

[Noct is quiet for a long moment, idly drumming his fingers against the temple ground. He wishes he could have the right answer here, snap his fingers and resolve two thousand years of family drama, pick a side. He wasn't there, though, he didn't see it. What Somnus did was wrong, but the result had been necessary for the sake of the world, or so he's been told by the destiny that has been pushed in his direction for his entire life. There ought to have been a better way to resolve things, but that's easier to say in retrospect. Had Somnus been pushed, the way the gods forced his own hand towards forging the covenants, clawing incessantly at his skull until he complied? Had he seen something in Ardyn that they all couldn't? Had it all been a horrible lapse in judgment, an unforgivable crime and nothing deeper than that? Impossible to know for certain, and hardly a subject either of them are completely transparent about. It's frustrating, but at the same time, he's not sure it would help anyway.

What Somnus says here is right: there's no going back. What matters is the future, especially now that they're all together, something that's never happened before in the history of their family. And they are family, all of them.

Eventually, the silence becomes intolerable, and he shakes his head.]

...This calling sucks.

[Somnus vividly recalls the day he became king and received his calling. It is a memory that both empowers and haunts him, and doubles as the day he realized the burden of bearing the gods' revelation. He bows his head. The calling bestowed on House Caelum is an unfair but necessary one.

It makes their collective presence here—so young and innocent—unsettling.]

Yet it must be done. Only then will darkness be dispelled from our world.

Mm.

[It's a non-committal acknowledgment and nothing more, at first. He knows that, of course he does. It isn't just that he's been told this or has expected it his whole life. The situation of the world has been growing increasingly dire for a long time now. Daemon attacks have intensified, nights grow longer, the sun rises later and later with each passing day. The war has reached a tipping point, and it's all that they've been able to do just to slow the Imperial influence all across Lucian territory. He grew up sheltered and lazy, but he's not stupid. He knows what's going on.

Not enough, though. And that part - the not knowing - is what makes him wonder about a lot of things.]

You know what I'm supposed to do, don't you?

[This man, impossibly alive from two thousand years ago, somehow still knows the future. He knows a lot of things he shouldn't. Is that the fate of the fallen Lucian kings? To watch and to wait? Like the Royal Arms, like the Old Wall? It's a little frightening to think about.]

I do.

[He looks down at their hands, then at Noctis. That doesn't mean he'll loosen his tongue.]

You have read the genesis of our line. For every tale, there is an end.

[The veracity of the stories recounting the Founder King's accomplishments is questionable, and rightly so. Those are meant to be achieved by another. Yet there is this unwritten truth: the stories will ever outlive the people of whom they chronicle.]

But I am no Oracle.

[So it isn't his place to tell.]

[Yeah, that's about what he expected. Based on even their small amount of interaction thus far, the man is cagey about most things, it seems.]

It's okay, I wasn't gonna ask. Everything I hear about the future is bad news- until there's something I can do about it, I'd rather not give myself more to worry about.

[With all of the truths that have come to light since his arrival, he's getting some seriously bad vibes about what's waiting for him up ahead, and he doesn't like it one bit. Surely if the future was good, people would be telling him that.]

[It is typical for mortals to linger on the good news while turning away from the bad. Noctis, however, isn't looking the other way. He's simply waiting for when the time is appropriate, and to that Somnus nods.

Waiting has ever been the game.]

Well spoken.

[It's also pretty much running away from the truth, a less kind way to describe it. Either way, Noctis shrugs his shoulders. The whole concept is making him uncomfortable.]

I should probably head back, but... thanks for not just brushing me off. I'll probably have about a million more questions, the longer you're here.

[Whether he gets answers to those is bound to be a mixed bag, but you know. It's nice to have people to ask.]

(no subject)

meridio - 2019-11-17 01:13 (UTC) - Expand

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