♥ 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.

---

❥ 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!

---

Comments

[meridio]

[ If she were a mortal like him, he would call her a hypocrite.

Being vulnerable means giving up his secrets, and the piece of his world that has been brought to this one is not yet ready for the truth. For this reason, Somnus answers at last: ]

No.

1/2

[iustaegis]

[ Finally, a direct answer. She had almost doubted that he would give it.

Her posture softens, and her shoulders relax, as does their joined hands pressed to his chest. Lowering that touch, she holds his hand between them as her eyes look upon him almost approving and proud. In stark contrast his expression hardly changes from before. The answer is final, short, and forfeited like an empty glass upon a tavern's barcounter: there had been something there, but now it's finished, discarded, and left behind.

This answer which took time and patience to obtain from him, she knows, is not admitted lightly.... but it is, somehow, also a mark of vulnerability to speak the single syllable at all.

In turn, she knows she must do the same. ]

Me, too.

[ She smiles softly, keeping her eyes raised, level, and meeting his. ]

[iustaegis]

[ She does her best to sound reassuring-- even if it might be nigh impossible to someone who has been long since dead. ]

It will be alright. [ She turns his hand in her palms. ] But perhaps we can learn... to give our all, to be more vulnerable together.

[ She's missing one more thing to say, but what? What would someone who is afraid to take that next step in opening up need to hear? What would help them feel safer when the unknowns of this world remain so prevalent? When they have been told they must give their touch to the gods, when knowing that touch is ultimately never just physical?

He seems... troubled, discontented. His brow is slightly furrowed, serious. Something displeases him-- admitting that no, most likely.

Her hands clasp his ever more gently. ]

I promise not to hurt you.

[meridio]

[ He needs no such promise.

In the past, he had entrusted some of those very secrets to her for the sake of deepening their bond (and more, to his shame). She'd been persistent. He knows she'll be persistent again, here.

He also knows this: she will not hurt him; if she makes herself vulnerable before him, however, he will hurt her. At least one of her vulnerabilities has already been disclosed to him, and he knows how that will go. Hardly a fair trade, despite what she believes in her justified ignorance.

But if it'll propel her to do more for the gods . . . The crease in his brow evens out.

She needn't promise him something so trivial, and yet she has. Such is the nature of her blessing to the life she so dearly treasures—a blessing he was never meant to receive.

Perhaps, she says. It's a suggestion, not a request. That means he isn't obligated to answer, and so he doesn't. He lapses into silence instead, eventually fixing his sight on her hands. If the promise to not hurt him entails contact, he should take it for the good of this world.

He concedes. ]

Very well.

[ Regarding what, he keeps ambiguous. ]

[iustaegis]

[ She watches him, she sees his expression relax from the intensity of before, his hands continue to be held by hers. She's noticed by now that in their two interactions so far, she's been the one to initiate their contact. A troubling doubt emerges from this observation: it's possible he doesn't personally wish for contact. An even more disturbing thought follows, dismissive: does it matter, when the world is at stake?

Promising not to hurt him simultaneously means not causing him undue discomfort. The issue therein lies of how well she might read him from here on out-- in which ways he may or may not comfortable with touch... or ways in which he might personally wish to break away from it, but endures to pay tribute to the Four despite.

His concession is what she wishes to hear, as it sounds... that he will at the very least give her suggestion some thought.

She notes he makes no similar promise in return, however, but does not demand he make the same. Vulnerability-- she must try to trust this man further. She might not be able to open herself up to everyone, but perhaps with just one...

Her smile is cautious, but glad. ]

So.

You wish to sleep?

[ A pause, and she goes on lightly, a bit of a mirthful breath in her tone: ] Not on the couch this time, either.

[meridio]

[ She accepts his weak answer with a smile, likely having expected him to refuse. Yet it is not in his power to totally refuse her, and she has that nature where she'll press if she feels it necessary. Far be it from him to trouble her with his mortal obstinacy more than he already has.

With an unchanging expression, Somnus nods. It's dark and there's nothing more that he can do at this hour. Best to sleep and rise with the light to learn more about the world. He moves to withdraw his hands, that they might part to sleep in their own rooms this time. ]