hugtopia_logs | ♥ November Event Log

♥ November Event Log

a gloved hand places a brick in place on a wall

November (Malom) Event Log
The chaos of Lasohm's invasion is still fresh in the mind, but it's over. The ugly scar of the hole in Havenwell's wall is a jarring reminder that this world is dying and nothing goes quietly into that dark night. The phantom is gone as Malom overtakes Lasohm, the weather turning colder and chillier with each passing day. Still, the city of Havenwell has all of you offworlders to thank for its survival, and the fearful citizens make sure you know just how much they appreciate you by stopping you on the street to say their thanks. Your new home still needs your help to recover from their ordeal though, so will you lend them your strength once more?

❥ PROMPT I: Rebuilding Effort

a stone wall with a large collapsed hole in the center

The magic barrier over the hole that unknown monster punched through Havenwell's wall is repaired, stopping the onslaught and encouraging any other nightmares that lurk outside to move on and away, but the hole itself remains. Throughout the month of Malom, robot natives are working tirelessly to gather bricks and stone and patch the breach, but they could use some help. Work together with other offworlders and natives alike to repair the wall and be rewarded with a handsome bump to the Dora in your bank account. They need all sorts of help, from clearing away the dead bodies of the spider-like creatures for cremation, to retrieving and hauling stone for the wall, to actually slotting the heavy blocks into place to cement them back together.

Outside the barrier, now clearly visible through the hole, a storm rages on, obscuring the view of the world beyond it. Gray and black clouds whip against the invisible barrier, and occasional debris slams into it, causing the impact site to light up with silver, pink, blue, or white hues before it fades away again. It seems even without monsters, the world outside is as inhospitable as was rumored.

Work together or take a break along the base of the wall and get to know your fellow offworlders a little better. It's going to take a while before this mess is cleaned up.

❥ PROMPT II: Air Sickness

Those who worked at or were near the breach in the wall for any extended period of time will notice that, over time, it gets harder to breathe. Then they begin to feel feverish, even if they don't have flesh bodies or are immune to disease. Their bodies ache and groan and it gets harder to move about without help. Once the natives notice, they set up a recovery area away from where the breach occurred: a giant tent with cots and pillows, thick rugs and blankets to keep the chill away. Unfortunately, they don't have medicines available to treat flesh bodied people, so they're at a loss of what to do otherwise. The priests gather anyone who is ill and brings them here...which is when a curious thing occurs.

While conventional medicines and healing spells seem to have no effect on the illness, staying in contact with another person alleviates the symptoms. After a period of contact with another person or persons, the fever breaks and it's like you were never sick at all.

Return to the wall, however, and you'll notice your symptoms coming back with a vengeance after a few days. It seems that making regular trips between the wall and this recovery tent is the only way to keep working. At least it's an easy fix so long as you're not a germaphobe.

❥ PROMPT III: A Tasty(?) Reward

a collage of different foods on display: salads, meats, and pasta

Toward the end of the month as the hole in the wall is completely repaired and the risk of illness declines, a message is sent to all the offworlders' communication devices. Those who choose to open it will find a very official looking message from The Havenwell Council that reads:

Greetings, Saviours of Havenwell!
We of the Havenwell Council greet you and wish to express our eternal gratitude for your valiant efforts to keep our wonderful home safe. Without you, we would not have survived this terrible onslaught. As such, we wish to express our gratitude in a more concrete form. Your emissary, Magolor, has been in contact with this venerable Council and has brought to our attention that your greatest concern is for the food available. We apologize that due to our inability to taste we have been unable to supply you with satisfactory meals.

To that end, we invite you to work with our scientists to improve upon the taste of currently available offerings from our replicators. Please come to the Northern Research Tower (map included) at any time this month to sample what our replicators can produce and give us feedback on their flavour and textures. We ask that you be as specific as possible in your criticisms so we may improve upon your general quality of life. Please feel free to bring as many friends as you wish.
May the Gods Protect You,
Havenwell Council, Community Liaisons

Those who take the invitation will arrive at the Northern Research Tower and be taken directly to the 40th floor, where a large banquet hall has been laid out. Five rectangular tables, over 5 meters long each, stretch down the room, creating aisles for people to walk down. At the far end are several high round tables, covered in white cloth, and high round stools for those who wish them. The tables are overflowing with food, much like the welcome dinner, but at each table and scattered throughout the room are scientist robots with arm bands that read "Experiment 73" in that peculiar Aellyn script you saw during your time at the Archives. They invite you to taste the foods - both raw and cooked - and to give your very honest opinions.

Enjoy the food, help them improve the flavours, and walk the room to talk with the others who have come. Those who participate will receive a small synthetic fruit basket to take home with them on their first visit. Feel free to come back as often as you like, however! Each time, they'll be changing and adjusting the food available so your first and last visit may be very different. Perhaps that strawberry actually even tastes sweet, finally.

❥ PROMPT IV: A Virtual Spa

a spa/water park with large open pools, an enclosed building, a bridge, and a water slide in the background

The VR cafes are uncharacteristically quiet while the rebuilding effort goes on, but there are still those who come to plug in to unwind after a day of intensive labor. And what better way to unwind than with a hot bath, right? Since the people of Havenwell can't actually submerge themselves in water, they're doing the next best thing: going to a virtual hot spring. There are several types to choose from and despite being digital, their calming and soothing effects on the body seem very real. Choose from:

The Classic Outdoors: a rock lined hot spring with natural rock floors and steamy mineral infused waters nestled in the mountains. All around you is beautiful greenery like a sweeping pine and low fragrant bushes. The serene air and the calm forest is only occasionally broken by the sound of a wooden pipe thudding hollowly against a rock at a steady interval or the sound of birdsong off in the trees. The relaxing atmosphere is enough to set even the tightest wound nerves at ease.
The Marbled Columns: white and painted marble columns lead to a series of different shaped baths with statues of the gods pouring water into them. Each bath has a different healing property, which is clearly marked with a plaque at the rim of each: good for your circulation, your bones, your aches and pains, even acne and metabolic rate. The columns support a beautiful open ceiling that shows the perfectly blue sky overhead dotted with the occasional cloud.
The Steamy Sauna: though seemingly austere in their white tile and deep blue bath basins, the air here is thick and steamy and the baths are deep with hand-rails leading down steps to help you enter. All around the basins are stone or wooden benches with towels laid down for those who wish to simply sit and let the warm air open their lungs. If you get too hot? Grab a bucketful of cold water from one of the freestanding tubs and douse yourself to get a shock and cool off.
The Milk-and-Honey: a beautifully tiled bath with a large shallow rectangular basin. The surrounding walls and ceilings have blue, white, and gold geometric designs laid out with loving care in pleasant designs that ease the mind. The bath water here is filled with a concoction of milk and honey to soothe and smooth the skin, filling the air with a pleasing sweet scent. The effects of these baths on a person's skin is said to make them glow from the inside out for at least a day after bathing.
The Theme Park: the first thing to greet you is the comically oversized bottle of red wine tipped to pour a continuous stream of red liquid into the large crystalline bath basin. The smell of wine is heavy but pleasant in the air and the crystalline basin is round and shaped like a wine glass. Climb up the glass steps and give yourself a good old soak in the red water. You might even find that taking a dip here gives you a heady happiness that lasts all day. And if it feels like you're a little drunk while there? That has to be your imagination! ...Maybe.

Hot springs are great to experience with friends to deepen that feeling of skinship you have with each other, and several Havenwell natives are doing just that. But what about those who don't have a friend to log in with? Don't worry! The game will randomly select another player from this or another facility and match you together. Isn't that nice? We're sure it is! Who doesn't want to talk to someone else while naked, right?

This event will run from November 14th to the 31st. 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 here.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Perhaps...

[If she thinks about it, such programmed illusions don't go so beyond what she knew technology to be capable of. Merely -- there was never any reason, to develop it in this way. She thinks of training programs that must have existed, to train for reactions and endurance. She had been away from it all for some time. Such things were not immediate without a proper frame of reference. They certainly could create pocket dimensions with technology.

Lup's mention of her mansion also helps. It is still curious that the people here had achieved such heights and had lost themselves so thoroughly to it.

That said, Honerva walks around to the other side of the bath, taking a few moments to discard her slippers and outermost layers and sitting by the edge of the tub in a robe with her legs dipped in, twisting her hair up as well.]

I should like a closer look at their technology, though I imagine they would not appreciate that inquiry.

Dunno. I actually haven't given this VR stuff much attention, so I haven't thought to ask. I get them being squirrely about letting us in their labs, or finding out how the shield works, but virtual escapism seems kind of... innocuous?

[It doesn't strike her as something dangerous that they could be researching.]

Perhaps it is. However, it does leave us vulnerable, should anything go awry.

[This all still from the woman who went poking about outside a protective barrier, but go figure. At least she had command over her own senses there instead of being virtually not asleep. Her hair secured, she gently shrugs her robe away and slips down further into the waiting waters. Below her shoulders, her arms bear deep red markings, similar to those on her face, extending far further than they should, a crisp yet slightly jagged line that ends above her elbows.]

Yeah, but there's spells for that. And I'm not really keen on missing out thanks to my own paranoia.

[Been there, done that, hated it. She resisted the urge to do this VR thing for months, actually, for this very reason. But you gain nothing if you don't at least try.

She tilts her head curiously at those marks; she'd seen the face ones, of course, but Honerva is so rarely uncovered that this is likely new.]

That's an Altean thing, right?

Fair enough.

[They were here now trying it out together, so that was beside the point. Certainly far safer than their traipsing beyond the wall, paranoia or not.

Lup's next words are... unexpected, as she realizes what is being referred to. Ever since she had started going along with the twins referring to her as an elf, she had never any reason to acknowledge her actual roots out loud, since it was hardly even asked. And she was certainly always covered up in the company of others. This was new.]

... yes, it is. Although I suppose these must have changed when I did.

Is there a reason for that? Like, is it just a kind of evolution that happens, or - what's it mean?

[Honerva's welcome to tell her to piss off (as unlikely as it seems) but she can't help her curiosity. She's spent time teaching the other woman about the cultures and traditions of her home or Faerun, but due to those memory lapses, she hadn't thought to ask much in the other direction until now.]

[She makes a soft thoughtful sound, almost similar to ones that she's heard from Lup, and falls quiet for a moment, settling herself further in the water while drawing to mind the memory of her face from years past. She tries to think of other Alteans too, to grasp a sense of comparison for such a thing, though that's a lot more difficult.]

... These markings usually remain as a constant for an Altean throughout their lives. Though colors may differ, it remains an identifying trait of the race itself, rather than anything meaningful. Some are more sensitive depending on our ... ability to feel or channel quintessence.

[There's a lingering pause after that word. She often goes out of her way to not say it, which Lup might even notice.]

What must have happened to mine was... unprecedented, though I do not doubt it was the exposure that led to this... mutation.

Do you remember if they're different from how they were before it happened?

[She shifts a bit closer in the water, to get a more thorough and clear view of what's visible above the surface. So it's a racial difference, huh... but one that can appear or reappear based on very specific circumstances? Very interesting, indeed.]

[There's that familiar pause, of her thinking, trying to recall those wispy details that liked to slip away.]

... They were smaller, before my years of work on the rift. It is difficult to remember such things clearly, but perhaps I was already changing just from being nearby it for so long. I was highly skilled, but not as... for lack of a better description, magical as I am now.

...So... how do you feel about having them now?

... It is difficult to say. They are... a reminder of what has changed.

[ Her gaze shifts to the surface of the water. ]

There was a time when I was unaware of my origins, and my appearance was different in other ways as well. It was only recently that I recalled that Alteans have an innate ability to... shift to blend in with the people around them, whether it is deliberate or not. I found my way back to my original appearance, but... these have persisted.

Mm... I can get that. But sometimes the reminders are good.

[Lup shifts a little closer, nudging at Honerva with a toe.]

There are things you want to remember, right?

[ She's quiet for a moment, allowing those words to sink in. Perhaps it was better to have these reminders than to not have any at all.

She had lost her way become someone else and forgot herself and any time she looked upon her reflection she would see the changes staring back at her and it would sting, always, but ... better to know than to not, there was no running away from the disasterous consequences that came at the cost of having her life preserved at all.

When Lup was with her, it was not so precarious a balance. She was more than those reminders and she had lost so much more. Lup knew this. Lup had to walk her through understanding how to treat her own cat, and how that might apply to others. That it was not a weakness, to feel.

Understanding that, along with that knowing nudge, she moves closer as well. ]

... There are.

[ It's half a murmur, half a sigh, at the weight of such things, even if Lup was trying to make them lighter, with this. ]

With data, approximations can be made, to fill certain gaps. I do not have access to such things here.

[ She had unearthed some of memories before through some means, though, hadn't she. ]

Edited 2019-12-16 19:20 (UTC)

[She hates the idea of being helpless, especially when it comes to memories. It's a similar frustration to what she'd had with Taako in the fleet, though of course back then it had been sharper, more personal- he'd forgotten her, and that will always be infinitely more painful than anything else.

Still, this is important to Honerva, and that makes it important to her.]

Is there anything we can do to help?

You already help me.

[She lifts her gaze, to give Lup a reassuring glance. Securing their future had certainly taken priority. A lot had happened, between then and now. Any restoration to those gaps in memory would not give her the people who might be lost in them. Save perhaps, herself.

But there were other questions, other elusive aspects, like the fact that most of her too-few memories of her past life still revolved around her husband's life as the center of her world--or her being the center of his world--rather than what sort of life she might have had before then. She was uncertain if the memories she held were still his rather than her own. If her own were truly there at all.

A thoughtful cast comes to her gaze.]

Although... I had not considered the possibility of... pursuing another ritual, to see if I could recall more.

Another... ritual?

[Like something reminiscent to the stuff they went through in the fleet? Lup's not entirely sure what that might entail, but she's listening.

It is good to know that Honerva's feeling... well, helped. She hasn't done much other than be herself and poke her along in the right direction, but if doing that is useful, then she's more than willing to continue along that road.]

[ What Lup had offered her from before and even after hearing her story was more help than she had ever had since... everything happened. Even without knowing who she had been, there was still a good deal of effort being put into defining who and what she was now, regardless of her gaps and what still plagued her. ]

... It is relative to scrying, to... interrogating. However... since I must turn it upon myself, it requires an outside source of energy for the process. One that is powerful enough to claw through these blocks.

[ Which is... about as pleasant as it sounds. ]

The last time I had done so was... not long before we met. When... Prince Lotor arrived to the fleet and told me that he had killed his father. And that was when I ... when I finally realized that I needed to discover the truth of his origins.

[Yeah, doesn't sound pleasant. But she's very familiar with the idea of doing shitty things to ultimately benefit yourself- the proof's in the payoff, and this sounds like it could be worth it.]

Well, if you need a battery for it, you've got a pure magic essence to pull on. Though, uh.

[She hesitates, awkwardly twisting her hands together.]

If it's going to be anything like what happened when we did big magic before... we might need to involve Taako. I'd need a stabilizer.

If you have control over the flow it should be far less volatile, and not take nearly as long. However...

[ She did not know if her own energy would fight back, or worse. And they'd had too many close calls already, the two of them. ]

... Since we know our magic together is unpredictable, making certain you are protected comes first. Especially since it is an option to do so.

Mm... well, we can work out the kinks as needed. But we definitely need to tell him before we do anything. I'm not gonna do that to him again.

[He hates secrets at the best of times, especially when it puts his loved ones in danger; she'd like to be annoyed at Honerva for rushing off like that and getting them both in trouble, but she'd followed all too quickly, afraid of the implications of leaving a note and vanishing on him again, so she's just as culpable. She needs to find a healthy medium, but she's not sure it exists in emergencies yet. A text? Is that better?

No. What's better is looking him in the eye and involving him ahead of time. What's better is not rushing in.]

... We won't. Taako's promised to kill me three times over if we do.

[ Humor first, but then more importantly. Close calls are where the lessons are learned. Had she apologized properly to Lup as well? That whole early part of the month had been spent in similar misery with her, and yet. ]

... I do owe you an apology, Lup. It may be an instinct, to only consider capabilities and not... the level of care that others might have. At the time I did not fully understand why you had chosen to join me, or perhaps at that moment we were of a similar mind for what we both could do, out there. I had not thought enough of care of others to extend that... warning further, on your behalf, when you arrived at my side so suddenly.

[ She takes a breath, hands folded and drawn close to her chest. ]

I would not trade you for the information we earned and that goes for these memories as well. We... have time.

[Lup takes some time to consider those words, not responding right away. It's unexpected, to say the least. People don't really apologize to the twins, historically; they rarely apologize for anything either, so they tend to not expect it. And yet here it is.

There's a lot she could say. She could agree, lash out, scold the other woman, she could brush it off or defend her brother and the fears he still carried. But all of that has less to do with Honerva and more with the fact that their relationship is not normal compared to most people. A package deal, in every sense of the word. You can't have Lup without Taako, and every issue and anxiety and flaw and quirk that comes along with one is countered or complimented by the other in some way. They're a million complexities wrapped into one. One heart.

Honerva could have cost Taako his heart, again. You can't brush that off so easily.

So instead of the million things she could have said or done, she simply shifts closer, until her arm bumps up against Honerva's side and she says, quietly,]

Okay.

[ She knows all too well that there are many ways that Lup could have taken that. Whether she would have accepted it or not, but they would not have come all the way here to this place to bare all if there was the danger that she and Taako would have decided that she was too much trouble, that their lives were complicated enough without her being with them.

That she could no longer be... wanted.

In the end an apology solves nothing; it is only words, and from there forward, only action would matter. If she were capable of learning from her missteps. She was accustomed to a world in which failures were met with harsh punishment, and she had failed here. She has had time to reassess and feel that all too clearly --

But then Lup draws close, quiet, accepting, and she feels something wrench in her, too. A moment or so passes, before equally quiet, she murmurs. ]

... you deserve better than that, from me.

[And that makes Lup exhale in a huff, shaking her head.]

I said okay. You don't have to keep punishing yourself for it.

[She's not interested in a pity party, or whatever else Honerva is thinking about. The damage was done and they've handled it, right? They fucked up, they both apologized to the ones who needed an apology. What else needs to be said?]

[ ... Punishing herself. It was difficult not to punish herself for it, to run through all the possibilities that could have gone wrong that had somehow escaped her calculations all because she had neglected to take into account her actual worth to them.

How could she do so, when she would look into a mirror and hate her own self? And yet despite all of this, they were still here. Lup was right here and she said it was okay.

So maybe that meant it was okay, and whatever else her mind was trying to throw at her, it just needed to shut up and not make her doubt those closest to her. That was the poison in her, wasn't it? Those... nasty whispers, sometimes such a clear mimicry of her own voice that she hadn't realized.

She exhales softly, before she offers one of her hands to Lup. ]

... Okay.

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