♥ November Intro Mingle Log

[hugtopiamods]

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.

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❥ 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

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

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
The beautiful lake has blue-green waters surrounded by forest and rocky, reedy shores. You and your companion are on a small single-motor fishing boat and you have fishing gear - two poles in the water. As the game starts up a read-out announces the objective: Catch the largest fish before the time limit ends. What's the time limit? ...Well, that's your first glitch because it reads as static. Might as well start fishing though, right? It doesn't take long to catch a few regular sized fish, nothing too exciting, and then? You get the big one - it bows your fishing rod nearly in half as you reel it up. The fish leaps into the air and you realize this is your next glitch because the fish hangs there - the size of a minivan - and yells, "BIG. BASS. FISHING. ATTACK." The fish slaps its fins and tails at the boat and now you and your fishing companion better fight this fish or you'll end up in the lake or worse.


• A (un)Familiar Experience
Jump into the life of the temple familiars and see life from their perspective! Choose the temple, any temple is fine, and be transformed into a fledgling rainbow dragon, a purple mouse, a white raven, or a blue feline. You're free to move about the virtual confines of the temples and, in fact, you can even interact with other familiars in their temples - who may be other players in this game. Play, climb, try to get your fledgling wings to fly, tumble about with the other mice, enjoy your simple life as an animal! --or you would if you weren't an insane size. Rather than being a small mouse, you're the size of a horse. That fledgling rainbow dragon? About the size of a fly. The building sizes are off, too - one might have door that's 30 feet tall, but a ceiling that's only 12. Everything else seems fine, but those sizes? Well, you better figure out how to get around that.


• Robot Crossing
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. 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!
   
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. 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.
   
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, 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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Comments

[yallstupid]

[Hey, everyone starts somewhere! He can (probably) figure it out eventually with a bit o wandering. And if his previous experiences have taught him anything, it's that nothing explored, nothing gained. Results take direct action to achieve.

Though, what is he trying to achieve? He takes a deep breath, making a ew faces over the map that's being pushed out from under him, then gives himself a once over.]

Well, if this place's got more amenities than what I had 'fore, then some new threads, a decent shower and a proper bed, and mother o Mew do I need a haircut. I look like some scrub right rom the 70's with this mullet what's tryin'a come in.

[SOBS, His undercut needs to be seriously touched up like crazy, and his clothes certainly need to be replaced. He's done well to get new tings, and alternate them and wash them as he could, but Enso wasn't exactly...upscale in its quality and design. Plus, sneakers and regular footwear were way more rare than clothes.]

[iustaegis]

[ "Mother of Mew"....

She's noticed that he appears worse for wear, his clothes weathered, his shoes worn in, and his hair a tussled mess of black and white. Her eyes roam, taking in the unkempt state of him as a whole, and it's then she realizes that one of her prior assumptions had been wrong about him: his style is not a mess on purpose.]

...There are a few shops just a block or so away. [ The fashion here is nothing like his own, naturally, but she's certain they can find something suitable for him.

Pyra extends her hand. ] We can go shopping together.

[yallstupid]

[Absolutely not on purpose. Guzma, astonishingly, has a reputation. It's not a good reputation, by any means, but it's a reputation nonetheless. He keeps up his appearance, and is shockingly cleanly...to his person, anyway. His room is a nightmare o clothes strewn about haphazardly, but honestly? What young millenial male's room isn't a total disaster in some sense?]

Sweet. [He takes the offered hand, but it's not really all that needed to stand - and he'd probably pull the poor thing down with him on accident - and cracks his back with a few satisfying pops. His posture is...bad. It's real bad, but will take eons to fix that slouch. At the very least, he can fix his appearance enough with some good old TLC with a pinch of RNR.] I dunno if y'all got any cash, or whatever they're accepting, but I know I'm flat broke. Hopefully these guys'll take a solid IOU or, uh...

[He's gonna be doing some shoplifting. Look, once a thief, always a thief. At least it's not Pokemon this time.]

[iustaegis]

[ With ease so she assist him up, if not with strength, then by the virtue of simply offering a hand. As it is, she keeps their hands linked together.

Tugging him out of the shadows of the alleyway, she begins to lead him. ] Dora, you mean?

Ah, I'm sure it will be alright. If we ask nicely, will lend you some clothes out of the goodness of their hearts. [ Fake hearts, since they're robots.

Also, they'll probably see him as a charity case. ] You do look as if you haven't had a change in clothes in years. Just what were you doing before you came here?

[yallstupid]

[Aha...that hand-holding is not going to last, sadly. Guzma isn't a touchy feely sort of person, not unless he knows someone very well, and trusts them enough to enter their personal space. Most of the times, physical contact is...not well received by the big guy. Probably because physical contact for his has been so perpetually negative during his youth that he's growth a sort of dislike to undesired and unprompted contact.

Needless to say, he shakes off her hand rather quickly. Nothing rude about it, or at least he tries not to make it so, but the building blocks of trust simply haven't been established yet.]

Oh, is that what those scrapheaps were talking about? [He wasn't really paying attention... But huh, he remembers being told he'd get some as a start up for arriving, so...yay? At the least now Guzma knows he has some spending cash, but he snorts at her comment.] Yo, hey! I don't look that bad, tch! I mean, I tried to alternate my outfits, but it ain't so easy when I got got what, three? Four, tops. Where I been before ain't like this, we was basically roughin' it for three years in whatever world took me 'fore this place did.

[No running water, no electricity, and food has to hunted, gathered, slaughtered, and cooked the old fashioned way. Any sort of amenities were earned by favors to the local gods in that world...and even that was sparse.]

[iustaegis]

[ It takes a moment to parse all of what he's saying because he speaks so quickly but--

1. He was in a world before this one.
2. He was in a world before this one that was not his own world, for three years. Now, he has been spirited to yet another one.
3. The previous world had been harsh, perhaps unkind to him.
4. Three years.

She will ask her questions as they walk, not holding hands. ] The previous world you were in... did it demand anything of you? [ Like, touch? ] Or was it also, ah, dying?

[yallstupid]

[Three years indeed, and it has changed him a bit. For the better? Perhaps, one couldn't really say other than perhaps Guzma himself. But he's gained experience nonetheless, and a whole slew of skills he's learned from people he's met along the way. Cooking, some martial arts, and how to fire a gun are a few things. Essentials to take care of himself and his Pokemon companions. And of course, the friends he'd made.]

Mm? Well, not...really? I mean, the whole environment was demanding in n' of itself... Harsh, I should say. [He scratches at his chin, which certainly has some scruff growing from it. Bleh, he'll need a shave, too...shit itches something fierce.] Can't say nothing 'bout the world dying, but it was...well, it was.

I guess the only things what was asked of us is to share our, uh...stories. Mem'ries of our experiences on the islands what we visited or lived on, for favors from the local god to use as we please. [He shrugs.] Made hard life a li'l more easy.

[iustaegis]

[ Harsh, he says, but she appears fare more relieved when he concludes on a more positive note. ]

... There were others with you, then. Others from other worlds, correct? [ Her brow furrows. ]

Are any of them here?

[yallstupid]

Mmhm. [The noise is a little...distant. He's happy to be here - sort of, anyway - but there's also a bit of a quiet somberness to his gaze as he looks past Pyra and exhales slowly, eyes closing as he shoves his hands into his pockets.]

No clue. Prob'ly not? I mean, I expected to be sent home once I was done in that place. That's what we was told... But now I'm here, and I can tell y'all right now, this ain't Alola. Pretty sure the only ones what came with me are my Pokem--...uh. My friends from my world. Partners.

[Or at least they better have, or Guzma's going to breathe fire on this entire world like Godzilla. Thankfully, a preliminary check into the pockets of his hoodie finds the small, spherical orbs that contain his beloved friends. ...Wait. There's an extra one??

Nah, it must be some treasure (translation: junk, garbage, trash, etc.) Ren gifted him prior. Ah...she's gonna be the one he misses the most. Poor kid...he didn't even leave her anything, or get to say goodbye. Is this what it felt like when Lillie left him behind? It stings.]