etrayalogs | FEBRUARY MINGLE

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FEBRUARY MINGLE

WHO: Everyone!
WHEN: February 14th - March
WHERE: Etraya
WHAT: The arrival of newcomers, a mini mission, and some new city features!
NOTES\WARNINGS:

⏵ arrival ⏴
Welcome to Etraya!

Arrival goes as expected - characters awaken on hospital beds and are offered an explanation of their situation: that they have arrived in the city of Etraya, and they are their world's only hope. They are welcome to wander the hospital if they would like to - the upper floors are mostly empty, full of pristine hallways and numerous rooms filled with supplies, cots, and things one would expect from a relatively average 21st-century hospital.

In the hospital's lobby are several party tables set out with miscellaneous baked goods: croissants, cookies, breads, cake slices, as well as tea and coffee to accompany them - or hot chocolate, for those who are opposed to the other offerings.

Outside the hospital, the last remnants of snow are melting in the sunlight as the weather begins to warm up. It's still chilly enough one might want to put on a coat, but not so cold a jacket is necessary for wandering around without freezing off one's fingers.

We hope you enjoy your stay.

⏵ heroes return ⏴

As the Quantum Rail train glides to a halt, returning passengers step out onto familiar ground - the train station, right where they had initially begun their mission. When exiting the station, their earpieces vibrate, indicating the automatic download of a detailed map which highlights key locations, transit paths, and notable landmarks. As Aurora promised, she had been working on a few renovations around Etraya! A sleek trolley system now winds through Etraya, following clearly marked pathways through the city bubble to make travel across the city smoother. However, the trolley only moves one way, eternally following the loop Aurora has set it on. And because of this, it takes six hours to complete it's loop all the way around. Don't miss your stop!

Pets and animals have been returned to their usual preferred areas, some awaiting the arrival of their owners, and others keeping to themselves in the forested areas throughout Etraya.

Beyond the small upgrades, things seem relatively unchanged - until one familiar sign catches the eye. One marked by four vertical lines, methodically crossed out one by one: the final slash has now been drawn through. The tally is complete. What it indicates has yet to be made clear, but it has to mean something, right? No one would go through the effort of making an ominous-sounding sign without following through.

⏵ love in the air ⏴

This Valentines Day, Aurora and the companion bots have opted to try something a little different: they have scattered mystery valentines across the city. Hidden within mailboxes, tucked into cafe menus, slipped under doors, on the outside of high windows for those wall-crawlers to spot. There are countless of these little slips of papers, strewn throughout the city. And within each valentine, is a challenge or gesture to complete. Please feel free to make these up yourselves as long as they fit in with the theme!

Some examples include:

Deliver a flower to a stranger.
Write a heartfelt poem for someone.
Share a box of chocolates!
Confess your feelings for another.
Play matchmaker for two people - this can be platonic, or romantic!
Gift a friend with a stuffed animal.
Give five different people a genuine compliment.

While not mandatory, completing five tasks will earn an individual an additional ten points to use towards anything they would like!

Each little Valentine is signed "Your Secret Admirer. ♡", and some of them may even be addressed to specific individuals. Don't be surprised, Eddie, if you see one or two that are specifically addressed to you lurking around your collection of chicken friends!

And while most of these are harmless, some of the valentines cards come with effects for those who come into contact with the paper. Perhaps they thought it was a piece of garbage, or were just kicking it out of the way rather than intending on taking part. It doesn't matter! They get to join in on the fun, too.

Heart Eyes - your pupils literally turn into hearts for a few hours, making it hard to focus on anything other than things (or people) you find attractive.
Love-Struck Stammer - You can only speak in poetic compliments or romantic declarations, regardless of whom you're speaking to.
Chocolate Bliss - Everything feels good. Simple. Easy. As if there's nothing in the world to concern yourself with. You feel happy, without any concerns or worry.
Rose-Tinted Vision - everything looks soft and romantic, as if you're in a romance novel. You know the ones.
Magnetic Attraction - regardless of what you had been doing, you suddenly find yourself unable to leave the side of the person closest to you. Had you been eating chocolates while walking down the street? Well, have fun getting stuck to the guy who'd been out for a jog!
Serenade Syndrome - you find it impossible to resist the urge to sing your words, turning all conversations into love ballads.
Heartstrings - A thread appears, connecting you to someone close by who you share many similarities too. Perhaps you had never met this person before, but the threads tied around your pinky fingers that refuse to let go until you allow yourself to open up to them clearly means you should be a little more familiar with them.

Love is in the air—or maybe just a bit of well-intended chaos! 💕

⏵ NOTES ⏴

Welcome back from the mission, and welcome to Etraya for our newcomers! We've tried to keep this log simple for an easy introduction, as well as some downtime for our mission-goers who worked hard to solve the Quantum Rail mystery.

There is something else going on, but. . . well, no one seems to know what! The computer that had been on the lower floor of the hospital is now missing, and Aurora may seem a little flustered as she flits around Etraya, in search of something.

For all questions relating to this log, please refer to the mod queries comment. All other questions can be directed to the FAQ.

⏵FULL NAVIGATION⏴

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"..Have you ever tried it?"

He hasn't. By the time Sephiroth started picking up on doing his own hunting to relieve the burden of his meals from the town and his left-behind family, cold weather set in and snakes were conspicuously absent. "It could be very tasty, and we just don't know it because nobody's tried it. Think of it as meat spaghetti."

That might not help. That probably won't help, in fact.

Whatever he was expecting of Snake Island, it was definitely more snakes than they currently have. He swivels to study the skin Popp's found, frowning. That's a reptile thing isn't it. "I guess you could.. keep it and look at it? It's rather fragile looking. Is that a snake skin?" ..... "Are snakes really delicate?"

"Meat spaghetti?! That makes it sound even worse!"

The skin tears in his hands when he fidgets around with it. Augh.

"They're not that delicate when they're on the snake, that's for sure! They ditch their old skins once they're done with them, so I guess this one's no good..?"

Unless... He wiggles it at Sephiroth.

"Wanna try eating it? Think of it as dry spaghetti, yum yum~"

"Meat spaghetti sounds amazing," is the prompt, incredibly serene response. "If you haven't had it with anything but sauce, add meat. Your world will change."

Not everyone is quite as carnivorous as Sephiroth is, so maybe eating a snake really isn't on anyone else's menu but his own. It's while rummaging hopefully in a bush, searching for some sign of scales, that the dead skin is wiggled at him.

He eyes it speculatively. "No, it's probably like licking tracing paper. No taste, and it just sticks to your tongue. That's not meat anyway. Maybe Gaia will want it for something, but we should look for a bigger one."

How much bigger do they get anyway? "I wonder if anything here is zolom sized."

He was picturing a bowl of long, raw sausages. Noodles with meat does sound better... And it seems like there's a limit to what even Seph can be dared to put in his mouth (Popp thinks this despite having accepted a dare to eat a reed at one point). Then again, he has, apparently, eaten paper at some point? Maybe neither of them are a trustworthy authority on food here. He tosses aside the tattered skin.

"Fine, fine, we'll catch a snake and have a fleshy noodle dinner... How big is a zolom? This big around? Or more like this?"

Hands held out with the fingertips touching, and then out to about shoulder width.

He'll try anything that looks like food, that did NOT look like food, it looked like tracing paper. Instantly suspicious. "...Oh, hm."

Popp's examples seem a little too small, so Sephiroth looks around briefly for something to compare them to, extracting himself from the bush. Unseen, a little black and yellow garden snake takes the opportunity to wriggle frantically away through the grass.

There's not much to compare them to around, but after a long moment he points. At an oak tree, perhaps eighty feet tall. "They're about as thick as that tree is, and perhaps as long as it is tall? They can swallow chocobos whole, which are the size of the horses that were occasionally around Town."

Popp thinks that if one of those crops up, he might develop a severe phobia of snakes on the spot.

"That's... a lot bigger than my dragon form. A little bigger than the biggest dragon I've seen, even!"

Uuuuugh but he's being a supportive friend. He flits up into the trees, hoping to find a snake on a more modest, non-tree sized scale. Heh, heh. Scale.

"...Hey, if something like that shows up, can you fight it?"

Running is theoretically always on the table because of Popp's skillset, and this is a situation in which he has the luxury of bailing. They're just here to explore. The only thing at stake here is that Sephiroth will think that he is a weenie, which he is weighing pretty heavily, as a motivation.

Popp can face dragons, he can face snakes! It's practically the same thing! He doesn't say so, because it might end in another round of 'what is and is not a mammal'. "They're swamp dwellers though, I don't think any of the water around here is deep enough for a zolom."

Not that he's gone swimming. He could be wrong.

The pause when asked if he could fight one really doesn't bode well, he seems far too speculative instead of easily and promptly confident. Right this very moment, beating a zolom would be.. a very difficult task. "Maybe," he concludes at length. "It'd be much harder unarmed as I am."

He really needed to get his hands on a sword. Something. As Popp gets a bit too close to some perfectly ordinary tall grass, there's the sharp warning rattling buzz of a very unhappy snake in it, one perfectly willing to hold its ground versus intruders. At least it's providing warning, but has Popp ever encountered a rattlesnake before?

Well, at least he's honest but that's not reassuring! Popp can proudly do something about the unarmed part - he reaches into his pockets and zips down to hand over a pair of glittering green stones. Aero is familiar, Ruinra is an upgrade.

"How about with these? Ruin's stronger than before, it should be able to leave a pretty big hole in something."

The buzzing deflates his confidence a little.

"Do snakes... normally sound like that? They hiss, right?"

Popp, for all his foolishness, is not inclined to shove his face blindly into something that could be bees, either, or possibly some sort of robotic snake. He parts the grass with caution. Yep, that's a snake! It's doing the tongue thing, and might have four eyes? (those are heat pits, he's not a herpetologist).

"...Well, it's not as big as a tree. Not that scary at all, really!"

"Zoloms are only really weak to poison damage. The best way to kill them is a sword through the eye." Oh, he recognizes those materia! .. And does not ask for them back. If they've grown in power then that was Popp's work and effort, not his own. "Ruin's useful, but would take a very powerful spellcaster or a lot of time to get through their scales."

There's a reason most people just run rather than fight one. That and the fire breathing, but surely nobody's concerned about that point.

The buzzing in the grass does draw his attention too; Sephiroth's ALSO not encountered a rattlesnake before. "Some growl. I've not heard that before."

Obviously this means investigating. Meanwhile, the snake, further displeased at this intrusion, draws itself up into an S, tail buzzing away.

"...I think it's venomous." Sephiroth is staying outside of what he thinks is that thing's striking range, frowning. "The head's very triangular, that means venom sacs, and something that couldn't defend itself wouldn't hold its ground."

Buzz.

He doesn't want them back... does Popp just come off as extra helpless or something? Sheesh, he was proud of what he'd managed. Siiigh, maybe if he powers them up even more it'll prove something. Or he could leave them on Seph's pillow.

But for now, snakes. Popp is also staying out of what he thinks is strike range. He's not unarmed himself, he's got his collapsible staff tucked into his belt. Does he want to use his mentor's vintage weapon from his days of heroism for snake-poking? Maybe. He's considering it.

"...So if we run into a zolom, we run back here and toss this snake in its eyes. I don't think we should eat it, if it's got venom sacs in it."

Sephiroth watches the snake. The snake watches Popp, who is closer and moving a little more.

"..I don't want to risk either of us getting bitten by something venomous anyway, the trolley won't be back for hours." Wait so why are they blundering around in the grass and bushes and soon to be trees if he didn't want them getting bitten? "At least this one warns you first, so it's best to leave that one to make more."

Versus all the snakes who don't provide any warning AT ALL, this is actually kind of nice. The buzz let him know exactly where it was and what its intentions were. "But if we run into a zolom, just head for dry land. They don't like being far from water." Running away is, as far as Sephiroth is concerned, perfectly valid when it comes to enormous hulking monstrosities that could eat them both whole with room to spare.

But he gives the rattlesnake a wide berth, fully intent on finding something a little less noisy a try. Or at least, less venomous.

That's a pretty solid point and a good reason to cease bothering the snake.

"We're on an island, Sephiroth. A snake island. There's water all over the place."

There's plenty of dry parts, he's just complaining. He feels a lot more secure than he's acting; there's always the option of Zooming out... but that is the weenie option, he doesn't want to do the weenie option because he wants Sephiroth to think that he is cool, this is why he's prepared to spend six hours on Snake Island.

Six hours of exciting activities such as poking a hole with the end of his staff. Yay. He disturbs a rat, which leaps out and skitters into the forest. He does not have much optimism for the rest of that rat's day.

"It's not a swamp," he points out mercilessly. "It takes a LOT of water to house a zolom. We'll be fine."

Surely. Surely NOTHING AT ALL can go wrong. "We just need to make sure we don't step on anything that bites, so don't be afraid to make some noise. Though I've heard serpents are deaf, they can pick up on the vibrations of something moving. They don't want to get squashed any more than we want to be bitten."

Reasonable advice! It might even work! There's snakes everywhere, they're just hard to spot because they are hiding like sensible ambush predators. Some lie in comfortable green coils in trees. Others are pretending to be tumbles of rocks. One monstrosity as thick as a log floats serenely in some nearby water trying to pretend to be a branch. It's not working.

But nothing exceedingly large or aggressive! Yet!

True, there are no swamps (...yet...). As far as islands go, it's a pretty decent hangout, aside from the snakes all over the place... Thick as a log is pretty large for a snake, but it's not large or startling enough to get a flinch out of Popp when he notices it. He does yelp when he puts his hand right on a big green python while he's up in the trees, and has to ~~fall onto the ground like an idiot~~ do an abrupt controlled descent to avoid getting bitten by a large set of fangs. This doesn't count as exceedingly aggressive; Popp started it.

"Whoa, whoa! Feisty! But it looks too much like Senrik, I'd feel weird about eating it. I'd feel weird about you eating it."

Popp feeling weird about eating a snake doesn't mean Sephiroth's not going to drift over to check it out anyway, another little grass snake disturbed by his passage and wiggling away as fast as it can.

Possibly it's to see the snake, possibly it's to make sure Popp's okay, who definitely didn't just fall out of a tree. "..That's what your dragon looked like?"

Green tree spaghetti. But there's no scorn, there might be a touch of wistfulness instead; for all that the previous world had not been the kindest, he missed his dragon. But she belonged in her own world, not on this one.. "..Do you miss him?" Has it been long enough to miss him?

Popp falls out of so many things, up to and including the open sky. He's already sitting up, rubbing the back of his head.

"Kinda, yeah. On, uh, both counts, especially all coiled up like that. It feels weird to have all this open space in my head all of a sudden. I thought he didn't really do much outside of the whole dragon bond, but just being there was still a lot, you know?"

The snake extends a few feet of snake neck from the branch and flicks its tongue. It doesn't seem interested in moving from its comfortable tree perch, but if another hand comes within biting distance, there could be trouble.

That he seems no worse for wear really shouldn't be as surprising as it is. Sephiroth's used to people being very fragile compared to himself, and Popp.. might only have a bruise to show for it later. That's.. almost impressive.

But as Popp speaks, he watches the snake with measured interest. It's one thing, hearing about the continued transformations .. and that they had, in the end, kept their minds intact, rendering his endless anxieties a little pointless. But it's another having a living thing pointed at and gone 'like that, right there'.

It makes it a little more real. And a little more absent. "..I do," he murmurs, in agreement to the not-question of if he knew. Having someone else there had been a lot. "I wonder what your dragon thought of your method of flight. Did you speak to each other?"

Sans wings, lots of magic. Cheating, in other words.

Reluctantly, the tree python is left alone. He can't eat it now, it'd be weird. Which means heading off in search of something he won't feel distantly uncomfortable with, now that there's an association with green tree snakes and an intelligent creature.

"Oh, we talked now and then. He was pretty laid back, and he thought I used too much energy. In general, not just with flying... he was used to the normal way, all that flapping and coiling. If it hadn't been so cold, I'd have done more of that, it was really good for quick turns. It's hard to do at speed in a straight line, but Senrik's body shape always wants to wiggle in one way or another."

He's doing hand gestures to approximate a wavy noodle in full majestic flight, and really putting his whole body into it.

"It was a pain to get the hang of, but worth it for sure."

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FEBRUARY MINGLE

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