hugtopia_logs | ♥ 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!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[He's called a flip wizard for a reason, and when the stranger goes to kick his umbrella, Taako is quick as hell to jump back and lift it, pointing the tip, now glowing with magic, right at the guy's head. If he wants to go kicking at Taako with his probably very strong legs, he's going to have to answer to a magic missile in the face. He takes a few more steps back, narrowing his eyes.]

What the fuck?! You just wake up on the wrong side of everything or what? I was just saying hello.

[Alas, Guzma was really hoping he'd get to see this guy fall lat on his face, but the reaction is still aces. He snickers to himself, not moving other than to straighten up his back to his full height. Which is...pretty tall, actually. He probably loses a solid three inches just by slouching, and he was already six feet there.]

Yeah? Well, word of advice, my guy, calling people what y'don't really know names right of the bat? Mmm...prob'ly bad etiquette, but who's a thug to say anything 'bout manners, am I right?

[A guy's height isn't enough to intimidate Taako, not when he made dick jokes at a crystal golem trying to murder him, but it is still a little unsettling to see a guy just grow like that. Asshole is trying to look down at him and while Taako isn't exactly short by any means, he's not six foot tall either, so he has to look up. Somehow, he manages to make looking up seem like looking down though as he raises an eyebrow at the commentary.]

My bad, my guy, didn't realize you were the sensitive type with that whole post-apocalyptic hobo chic thing you had going on.

[Guzma looks down on nearly everyone, if they deserve it. And while he'd have...liked(?) to have been nice to someone his more or less adopted little sister was exceptionally close to back on the islands, Guzma simply can't bring himself to get past the pettiness. Besides, not like this is the same guy anyway.]

Oh, you noticed? [Guzma batts his eyes, running a hand through his hair in an overly dramatic way, giving the too long white parts a bit of a flick. Bah, he really does need to get his look updated though, and have his undercut tended to. The sooner the better, though he'll ham it up in the meanwhile.] And here I thought no one would appreciate my fashion sense.

Oh, do tell me I'm the prettiest boy at the ball, would you?

[Oh, he wants to be rated?

Taako smirks, takes a step back and puts a chin to his hand, studying the guy in front of him. Definite bad boy vibes which are hot for some people. Hair is too long for the coloring he's rocking to not look a little bit like a skunk. Face is fine, but could do with a little less "I haven't slept in the last century" lean it has. Negative points for taking a swipe at me immediately after almost running into him in the first place, but positive points for sticking to the Bad Boy Aesthetic™ of being kind of a jerk.

After pulling his hand away from his face, he snaps his fingers and a magical 6.5/10 sign appears over his shoulder.]

More a ruggedly handsome type, I think. And you need a haircut like, stat. But you got an aesthetic and you're sticking to it so I'm wavering between a 6 and a 7.

[O-Oh...okay??

Guzma didn't actually expect an honest answer here? It shows from the baffled look on his face, and the stunned quirk of a brow when the score actually is...pretty decent. Huh. He's not sure how to feel about that, really, because it's honestly a whole hecking lot higher than he'd rate himself, but what is positive self esteem, hahahaaa. That doesn't really exist, and certainly not in Team Skull.]

...Dang, dude. [I mean, what ELSE is he going to say?!] Couldn'ta predicted that. But...y'all made a point there, your boy needs a haircut like, now, and I been looking for a place what can gimme a proper buzz.

Place I been to last ain't exactly the most hospitable when it comes to... [He gestures widely at the environment around them. The buildings, the roads, the ELECTRICITY AND PLUMBING.] All this.

[Taako shrugs and the sign over his shoulder puffs away into wisps of magic that dissipate quickly.]

Ask a question, get an answer, my guy. Not saying I'd swipe right on you right this second, mind you. Not until I see how you clean up - not that I can help with that. I can style some hair like I'm a fuckin' diva, but I'm a chef not a hairdresser.

[Because even if it had been awhile since Kravitz, it was....well still a lot to deal with having lost him. And also, this guy's hair still did look like a skunk.]

But you had a shitty waystation between here and home, too, huh? That sucks. At least mine had- [He motions to the world around them.] -some of this. [And a lot more spaceships.] So what's your name, anyway? Can't keep calling you "Not a Thug" in my head.

[His eyes only briefly flicker to the magic display. Nothing new, nothing he hasn't seen before in some form or another from another magic user back on Enso. Plus, his Pokemon can pull off some pretty "magical" shit of their own, so. He's unphased, or at least grown used to the oddities.

Though the uh...honesty gets a swiftly raised brow and a raised hand. Sorry, bruh.]

Hard pass. Nothing personal, man, I just ain't interested in no one. [A relationship is the furthest thing on his mind right now, thanks, and it feels...weird, actually, that someone even finds him remotely good-looking. He never would have clocked himself to be. Ever.] And yeah, basically. Deserted islands type deali-o. He were lucky to get places to sleep after a while. When I first showed up, the remaining homes were in disrepair and y'all had to work to patch 'em up. Not to mention hunt, slaughter, and cook your own food. T'say it was a heaving load is being generous.

N' I'm Guzma. Met one'a you, actually...back on Enso. Uh... [He snaps his fingers. They didn't talk much, he mainly went to "Elf Camp" to pick up someone they cared for there, so the name escapes him, but...it's a food.]

♥ November Intro Mingle Log

don't @ me with dice rolls!

ur not my MOM

ur mom wishes she were hot like me

i haven't talked to my mom in 15 years

that's either real sad or real jerky and idk which it is

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

gonna go with both then

i mean, his mom probably didn't deserve it, but his dad was icly shite so he ran away as a kid