♥ December Event Log

[hugtopiamods]

December (Ranir) Event Log
The city of Havenwell is recovering very well thanks to your efforts, offworlders. The hole in the wall is sealed up and, while maybe not looking like new, it certainly looks sturdy and safe. The city itself has removed much of the rubble from the battles you fought, and the people are back to their regularly scheduled lives. They're eternally grateful that you continue to put in the time to rebuild this final bastion of civilization and are pleased to see that you enjoyed their festivals so far. As the weather of Ranir turns colder and the nights longer, some may even see snow dust the cobblestone and paved streets in the morning. The time of Rawna has come and with it...

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❥ PROMPT I: At Least It's Not a Sweater

Normally when a new season belonging to a god rolls around, the temple priests gear up and start with temple festivities. Seeing how this is Rawna's month, however, nothing much of the sort seems to be happening. In fact, it's almost as if Rawna's priests don't even care that their god's season has started. Rawna is, after all, chiefly the god of Apathy, so is it all that surprising?

What might be surprising is the sight of Ainea's priests in pairs out around the city in their stead. Each pair carries with them a single bright silver sash and they alternatively stand in broad daylight or hide in the shadows of the buildings. Walk by on your own and you'll be left alone, but when the priests spot two people walking even remotely near each other, they spring into action.

The two robotic priests zip around you and another person with surprising speed, tying the sash off around you - either around your wrists, your waists, your legs, whatever it takes to tie you to another person. With a triumphant buzz of excitement, they declare "Happy Ranir! Kindness comes in many forms!" and depart to find a new pair of victims patrons. As they leave, one of the pair calls out an additional clue for you: "Be kind to unwind!"

Good luck, everyone, you're now stuck with this other person. You can either wait until the sash naturally falls off in a few hours, or you can take the direction of the priests and be kind to the other person to encourage the magical knot to come undone. Each compliment, word of encouragement, or other act of kindness directed at your new partner seems to loosen the sash a little each time, so get to winning the Niceness War.

Oh, and in case you were thinking of blasting, teleporting, or cutting your way out? No amount of magic or physical force seems capable of cutting or removing the sash. Hopefully you went to the bathroom before they got you.

❥ PROMPT II: A Delicious Delight

After a long hard day of dodging Ainea's priests or just slogging through the colder weather around the city, what could be better than imbibing a seasonally festive drink? Well, the scientists in charge of Experiment 73 certainly think so! They've added a limited edition drink selection to all of the replicators and have some delightfully festive booths spread about the city staffed by a few robots wearing Rawna's colors in their sashes and hats. There are five drinks in total to choose from and you should certainly try them! They're only here until the end of the month and then the scientists say they'll be gone! The best things in life are fleeting, aren't they? The best things in life are also surprises, so when you take a sip of these exquisitely delicious (honest! For once they're good) beverages, prepare yourself for a little trick with your treat.

• Ginger and Honey Tea: A hot, thoroughly warming drink with the bite of ginger and the sweetness of honey. Drink this and you'll be shored up against the cold, but also feel compelled to tell or blurt out the truth. Whether you're asked a question or trying to tell a little white lie, you find you can't say anything but the truth. This effect lasts for up to an hour after drinking the tea.
  
• Strawberry Shortcake Smoothie: A cold sweet treat of vanilla smoothie topped with sweet strawberry pieces and whipped cream. At the bottom, you'll find a layer of sweet sponge cake cut up into pieces. Drink this with its own special thick straw and enjoy the taste of cake; and the effect of a personal miniature snow cloud that appears over your head. The cloud dusts you and your immediate area within a foot of you with beautiful multicolored snow - and that snow leaves splotches of color behind that last for up to an hour after drinking the smoothie.
  
• Hot Cinnamon Apple Cider: A deliciously steamy beverage that tastes of apple and cinnamon and comes with a cinnamon stick stirrer for effect. This beverage smells as delicious as it tastes and the aroma wafts around the area more strongly than the others. Drink this penultimate holiday drink and you'll find yourself heating up so much that you'll want to stay cold by giving your heat away via holding someone else. You'll want to be everyone's personal heater for up to an hour after drinking the cider.
  
• Gingerbread Latte: A nice piping hot latte with the hint of gingerbread threaded through the coffee, topped with whipped cream and dusted with gingerbread spice. Served in a tall red cup that seems to transfer the heat uncannily well through its thin walls, sip this and you'll find yourself painlessly sprouting an animal's appendage at random. You can have one functioning or non-functioning, cosmetic animal appendage like a cat's ears, a dog's tail, a duck's beak or whatever else you can think of for up to an hour after drinking the latte. They can replace your original body part (e.g. your ears become cat ears) or grow superfluously (e.g. you have regular ears AND cat ears). You can move the appendages or talk with them as if they are your own, but they don't confer any special magical powers with them. So you can fly with those griffin wings, sure, but you're going to need to put the effort into it.
  
• Hot Mulled Wine (alcoholic): This one isn't for children - and in fact, under 18 people might find it hard (but not impossible, be industrious, little ones!) to get their hands on this drink. Red wine is heated with spices and citrus fruit over low heat for several hours - or it would if it wasn't all synthetically created. The effect is the same though, a delicious adult beverage that's a nice way to spend an evening with someone special. And you'll want them to be someone special because drinking the hot wine makes you inclined to get a little steamy with people. Kisses, both chaste and passionate, seem to alleviate the urge which you'll be under for up to an hour after drinking the wine.

❥ PROMPT III: Winter (VR) Wonderland

There isn't quite enough snow on the ground to allow it in reality, but in the VR Cafes anything is possible. This month, the VR Cafes are decorated with snowflakes in odd patterns and designs - holograms, naturally - that spin and change shape and color in a timed routine. Plug into the games and you'll find a new selection among the usual offerings: Winter Wonderland.

There are two modes to Winter Wonderland and each are fun in their own ways.

Snow Fight! Head out into the powdery snow where fantastic snow forts await and battle it out with snowballs to claim the most territory or just see who can hit the other side the most. You can choose Team Battle, Solo 1vs1, or Battle Royale. All magic, skills, and cunning are at your disposal. While the snow might not be falling outside, it's definitely going to be raining down on you here, so bundle up and have some fun. You earned it!

Ski Lodge But maybe you don't want to go flinging snow down someone's shirt and would rather cuddle up on a couch in front of a big warm fire, huh? Sure, we understand that. Welcome to the Ski Lodge, a cozy getaway up in the mountains where you can relax with a hot chocolate (or cider, or glass of wine even) and curl up on the couches and experience a lazy afternoon in thick fluffy sweaters. It's even better with a friend, they say, so why not create this private little getaway for the two (or three or four, we're not judging) of you? For people wanting a romantic lean, you can always slip out the back (and out of your clothes if you prefer) into the private jacuzzi on the wooden deck, too.

For people who want to have some fun tearing it up on the mountain-side though, we suggest trying Ski-venture! A year-round game that lets you ski or snowboard your way down the mountain.

❥ PROMPT IV: A Mysterious Gift [REGAIN EVENT]

Toward the end of the month starting from the 20th and on, some people may find themselves drawn to Rawna's temple late at night, when most of the priests are offline or elsewhere. The only native creatures you can see here are the fledgling rainbow dragons which watch you from their various perches all around the sanctum. As you approach the temple's altar, you realize someone else has been drawn here as well. In the quiet, dim lighting, the barest of candles still burning and the watchful eyes of the dragons, you feel compelled to unburden yourself to the other person. Tell your tale of woe or sorrow, relieve yourself of a secret you've kept hidden for too long, and listen to your companion as well. They say a burden shared is a burden halved after all.

Once you've both shared something, a pair of dragonlings crawl up into the altar's clawed hands. They wind around each other until an iridescent light shines from their scales. The light is blinding and you must look away as it reaches its pinnacle and releases a burst of rainbow light. When you look back, the dragonlings are slithering away and in their places are two objects - one familiar to you and one to your partner - so long as both of you have shared. It seems your tithe has been rewarded with something from home.

OOC: These items from home must be approved by a mod. They cannot exceed the Medium Item regain limit. It cannot be a power or other ability. It cannot be something your character did not own or have knowledge of in their canon or their CRAU. Please post your regain request in the Regain Request thread before threading out the receipt of the item.

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This event will run from December 6th to December 31st. Click on each prompt's title to see the text. You are welcome to use this log, or create entries of your own! If you have any questions, feel free to direct them to the FAQ or to the Mod Question thread.

Comments

also ftr I'm moving this to set towards near the very end of the month bc of castmate canon update

[unsunderworld]

That is kind of you to say, if a bit foolish.

[Ardyn, after all, has never truly meant to hurt anyone. Emet-Selch is another, entirely different story, one which trails darkness and ruin behind him at the best of times.

That, arguably, is his true monstrousness, not the nature of the form of his soul or the means by which he possesses flesh.]

Humanity is a matter of the heart, and though it weeps like any other, of late I tip upon the edge of the realization that mine is very much the black. I find I begin to almost envy you mortals and your freedom of will.

o7 Era

[kingkingcxiii]

[Regis spreads his hands in a helpless gesture.]

My father always said my soft heart would be my downfall. If it is to be my heart that leads to my end, I would prefer it to be because I loved too much than too little.

[Lucis' people dealt with enough coldness from the throne when Mors sat upon it.]

Before you envy too much, be certain that the will you are envying is as free as it appears.

[Regis sighs, looking up at the Temple's alter with a suddenly distant gaze.]

Of late, I've found that the free will I thought I and those around me had is not nearly as free as I assumed it was.

[The prophecy has existed for ages but Regis had thought it more of a vague telling of how Eos would be saved. Now it is seeming more and more like that may not be the case.]

[unsunderworld]

In that, at least, you are in good company. Better, as they say, to have loved and lost.

[Says the voice of someone who has all too clearly known plenty of loss. Emet-Selch does not seem to have his eyes on any particular place - they are off to the bottom left, in the place of deep memory.]

Fear not - I've more acquaintance with how one's will might be bound than most might think. Mine own is fettered as a natural consequence of the god I summoned, after all.

[His voice is almost whimsical. If there are regrets, they are well disguised.]

You are yours possess true freedom of will - it is the consequences of acting against the grain that shape your road. You might step out of line and be struck down for it, but still you can take that step. To weigh those consequences upon the scale with an unbiased eye... It is this of which I am incapable.

[kingkingcxiii]

[Regis is quiet for several moments pondering Emet-Selch's words and then finds himself nodding.]

When put that way, you are correct. For most of those on Eos anyway. That freedom of choice ends for those of the Lucis Caelum line once they pass from life to death.

[He pauses a moment to raise his hand putting the Ring of the Lucii on full display.]

Once I die, my soul, like those of the 112 kings and queens before me will come to rest, not in the afterlife, but in this ring. It is here we wait, gathering our power for the day that the the True King is born. The eldest of the souls that reside here has waited almost two thousand years at my point in the timeline and there is no way to know how much longer the wait will be. We have no choice but to wait as it is what Bahamut bade when he passed both the power and the responsibility of watching over the Crystal to us.

The god that you summoned, who now binds your will, did they grant you what you hoped for?

[unsunderworld]

[There's no hesitation in how his gaze goes to the Ring, this time. He's been given permission to look, after all.]

Mmm, that would explain its brilliance. I cannot deny that I wondered.

[But answers come to the patient, as well-demonstrated here.]

What there was time to grant was granted. Unfortunately, the fact that Zodiark was the loser of the battle betwixt Him and Hydaelyn has rather put the rest on hold.

[Can't get shit from a nonfunctional god.]

[kingkingcxiii]

I have no doubt it shines as brightly as a star, but I can't help but wonder is that glow is the result of the magical power that is housed within or something else.

[Though to be honest now that he thinks on it, considering its nature, the ring likely is blinding across a couple of different spectrums.]

He lost the battle, but still holds power over you, so he wasn't killed and merely sleeps?

[unsunderworld]

[A faint smile. He speaks politics; he can catch the unspoken question.]

Mine is a Sight which sees not only aether - the energy that those of your world call more simply 'magic' - but the soul. Such a crowded space is brilliant indeed.

[Blinding indeed. In response to the proper question, a sigh.]

He sleeps, but even had He been destroyed, His colors would remain on the souls He touched. Such is the nature of primals - and the problem of them, in modern eyes.

[kingkingcxiii]

I must admit I had not given thought to how the ring might look to others with special senses so few have them on our world.

[Honestly, he feels a little foolish for having tried to hide it at all back during that first meeting. Putting his hand over it must have been like placing a tissue over the sun.

Regis pauses for just a moment before asking a question.]

I take it you don't agree with this modern view?

[unsunderworld]

Few in ours, as well. Though there are some races with a predisposition towards sight like mine - the fae come to mind, in particular - it is almost unheard of in most. And mine is abnormally acute at that.

[Tissue paper over the sun is an accurate metaphor indeed.]

I have no particular opinion on the matter, truthfully. It is more that the recognition of the lengths to which the tempered will follow the will of their gods is a new development for most cultures of this last age and a half or so.