♥ 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...

---

❥ 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.

---

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

[begguiling]

He did! We wouldn't have a story if he didn't. The Crown had been under the protection of a guardian dragon for a thousand years or more. And the evil wizard was pretty certain of his own power at the time, so once he knew, he didn't waste any time making a plan. He'd finish renovating the ship he was working on, steal it from the ruins to use as a getaway, surprise the dragon, and make off with the Crown! . . . I didn't say it was a super original evil plan, but it was a smart one. Sometimes simple is best. And it almost worked, except that the dragon was stronger than he anticipated . . .

[Ugh, Landia. Magolor is telling this story with full awareness that both of them know the evil wizard is himself, but he's still telling it from a distance, avoiding referring to himself directly or showing any emotion over any of it. Even so, he grimaces a little at the memory of Landia, well, completely owning him and his ship.]

Instead, the wizard ended up having to flee the planet on his broken ship and find someplace to hide and reconsider his plan. He'd heard before of a planet where a great hero lived who might be able to help him out—and that was better than setting sail for somewhere completely random. So that's where he ended up, crash landing on that distant world, and the kind hero arrived on the scene to meet him!

[hedgehogsdilemma]

[Sometimes you get your ass kicked by a dragon, it happens to the best of us. Or, Evil Wizard and all, the worst of us, he supposes? You have his sympathies.

But now we have a new character in the story, huh? The hero finally arrives on scene, and Shinji can already take a couple of guesses at what someone with less-than-pure intentions might want out of a 'kind hero', but he gets the feeling that he'll find out shortly.]

That hero was probably happy to help out the wizard after crashing, I imagine.

[But to what extent? Hm...!]

[begguiling]

That's right. You know how heroes think, huh? He really is a great one . . . so of course he listened to everything the poor wizard had to say about how he was the victim of an unprovoked attack, and needed help repairing his ship so he could travel back to his home planet. So for the next little while, that's what they did—the hero and his friends working tirelessly to help the wizard repair his ship, until they could all set sail together to the wizard's home planet! Over that time, they became friends . . . or so the hero thought. And maybe the hero was right, and it was the wizard who was wrong to think it was all a game. That's a complicated issue. It doesn't really matter to the story, anyway.

[But he couldn't stop himself from touching on it. It's too weighty to not at least address in passing before moving on as if it truly doesn't matter, regardless of how true that isn't.]

So in the next chapter, they arrive back at the villain's home planet, only to be shot down again by the dragon, who'd been waiting for his inevitable return. There was never any way the wizard wouldn't come back for another shot at that crown, especially not now that he had reinforcements.

[hedgehogsdilemma]

[They'd probably need to get that ship up and running again in order to get back to that dragon's lair, huh? He can't imagine that was a quick and simple task - you'd probably get to know the person you're working fairly well by that point. And if he still thinks the hero is 'kind', rather than 'gullible' or 'naive', that's a little telling, he thinks. It's probably an important enough detail if Magolor thinks it's even worth mentioning, but he won't argue with his assessment of 'doesn't really matter' out loud.

But now the wizard has backup, even if his ship's been shot down again.] Did it go the way the wizard hoped this time?

[begguiling]

Of course it did. He was a genius, after all! Everything went exactly according to his plan. The hero was tricked into fighting the dragon, and when he won, and the crown was up for grabs, the evil wizard swooped in to take it for himself. That's where everything stopped going according to his great plan.

[Finally, the point, and the climax, where the villain gets his just desserts. Magolor cranes to look up at Shinji, but just for a moment before he goes off into the distance again; this isn't a good story to tell with eye contact. Or any concession to its intimacy.]

The power residing in that artifact was too great and ancient, you see! It had grown a will of its own, more powerful than the wizard. As soon as he put it on and prepared to wield its power, it sank its teeth in and began to take his mind, and then his body too. Before too long there wasn't anything left of him but a shell with a great evil living inside.

[hedgehogsdilemma]

Ah, [he says it quietly,] so that's what that was. [This is where things really start to fall into place, huh?

He gives Magolor's hand a brief, slight squeeze.] What happened then...?

[begguiling]

[That's what that was. Magolor finds he's too embarrassed by the squeeze to return it, but also too appreciative of it to interfere with it or pull away. He leaves his hand where it is and tries not to dwell on it, just finishing this up so it's finally out of the way. The rest is, from his point of view, anticlimactic anyway.]

He had to be stopped, you know? So the great hero took up his sword against the wizard's possessed shell. And when all was said and done, and he dealt the finishing blow, the wizard was purged of the ancient evil, but both of them were sent off where they deserved to go, off into the great beyond! . . . And that's that. Well, there's a part two, but it's not as exciting or relevant to this story.

[hedgehogsdilemma]

[Good thing he dragged that hero along for the adventure, huh? There's a few moments where Shinji's concerned that the end of the story is, well, the end of the story, especially with that 'great beyond' comment, but the promise of an untold 'part two' puts those worries at ease.]

It sounds like it was a very good thing that the wizard brought that kind hero along with him, all things considered.

[Even if it was under deceitful pretenses. Thank you for also being a merciful hero, kind hero!]