etrayalogs | FEBRUARY MINGLE

Entry tags:

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⏴

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Lars pays the lack of direct attention no mind. If anything, it's easier than being under anyone's focus. He turns his own gaze toward the window as well, idly surveying the emptiness of the building interior beyond it. Back home, so many buildings were rendered vacant by unceasing war, but this isn't the same. It doesn't look like anyone ever lived here.

Almost like the Cage, if the Cage had houses in it instead of endlessly sprawling stairs, pathways, and towering structures reaching ever toward the sky.

"Seems like it. The only population's people like us," Lars replies after a long, thoughtful moment. It's easy to see their environment is far larger than their modest population requires. "Probably supposed to make us feel at home." Probably. Not that it achieves that.

Edited 2025-02-15 17:34 (UTC)

"....Does it?"

The very idea of it seems to force rethinking what he's observed so far, and ... none of it seemed particularly comforting to him. Maybe that's what having a home was for, to provide a frame of reference for this kind of thing.

And yet, studying another empty building, he can't help but wonder if that's complete nonsense. Surely it would be unsettling, knowing everything around is utterly fake. "Was there ever a greater population than ... a few dozen people?"

He sounds terribly uncertain about all of this, for all that his expression and stance is carefully neutral.

To that question, Lars' best true answer is little more than a roll of his shoulders. Could any of them know what this all was before they got here? "Far as I can tell, they've been building around us."

People like them, anyway. During their commute, between stops, Lars has been filling his time digging through network commentary. What it suggests to him, aside the lot of them being one hell of a mixed bag, is that this place was pretty damned empty to begin with.

"Anything like that's mostly for show." Lars would know. The home he'd lived in as a child seemed real enough to him, but he didn't know or remember anything else. It was more convincing than their present surroundings, but it was no more real than all of this. "Or maybe some space reserved for more recruits."

"....A terrible method if this is meant to be built on later, there's no infrastructure inside." Lars might be right and it's all planning ahead but it's being badly done and somehow that's insulting. "You'll have to tear down everything and build it properly, there aren't even rooms. It's just ... a facade."

And one that was surely unsettling!

He turns away from the building, as if it had personally offended him. Maybe it did. He preferred efficiency in everything. "And a wasteful one. Have you been given one of those checklists of ridiculous little tasks to complete?"

Sephiroth has one. He's gotten through some of it, bit by bit; the subject change might be a bit of whiplash but priorities are what they are.

It may be inefficient and strange, but Lars isn't all too certain what those in charge here think is effective. They're all pulled in from who-knows-where and expected to work together. No training, no equipment issued or clear regulations set. It's not at all intuitive for someone who'd spent his adolescence in the military.

If it makes no sense to either of them, those in charge must be operating on something very different from what either of them know.

But he lets it go, folding his arms with an idle shift of weight. "Yeah, something about 'Valentines', whatever that is. Doling out gifts and compliments to random people is just bizarre. "Wonder if they're bored or something, assigning us stuff like that."

He's never heard of any such holiday and can't really fill in the gaps. As far as he knows, Valentine is just a surname.

Of a man who did not give the impression this entire thing would be up his alley. "Or a test of obedience and creativity. If we are being sent on missions to test our worlds' suitability for survival, these..may be more minor examinations."

He sounds like he disapproves of that as well. Probably he doesn't. "But this is only my first time loose in Etraya besides a mission, so I .. admit ... I'm guessing a little." A lot.

"Your guess is as good as mine — I don't know their methods." Lars sees no point in pretending otherwise. If they're going to be tested with seemingly mundane activities, that's cause for some concern. Anything at all might be some form of assessment of worth.

The only one from his world that he knows of is him. Is he capable of proving his world deserves to exist on his own? He supposes he has no choice but to try.

"Guess it's better to play it safe than get docked points, or however they keep score." To that end, Lars fishes out a rumpled bit of paper from his pocket. What all were they asked to do again...?

"Confessions of feelings is easier than expected," he says mildly as Lars fishes out his paper. "It doesn't specify what emotion you're supposed to confess, so any will do."

He's been abusing that one right along. Probably it's against the spirit of the thing, but Sephiroth has no use whatsoever for romantic holidays, and just randomly giving people things felt incredibly disingenuous. But if that's what's required, so be it. "I recommend the giving-flowers one if you can trade them out for other cards. Most anyone will accept one."

"People like that chocolate stuff too." Lars can add that little tidbit. It makes them more even, that way. The confections are sweeter than he's accustomed to, so he has no reluctance in parting with them. Years of military rations meant sweets were a rare touch of decadence, yet chocolate is something beyond that.

Since people accept it easily, he reasons it's popular. "The hard one's stuffed animals. Been trying to find a kid to pass one to ever since this one guy handed it to me."

The masked guy helped him once. Sort of. It seemed fair enough to take the thing off his hands.

His nose wrinkles. Chocolate was okay, but too much sweet, and that wasn't much at all, tended to make his teeth ache and give him an upset stomach, so he avoided it mostly. "So long as I'm not expected to share what I give them I'll look into that as well." Why not? It left more openings.

Stuffed animals were easier. He'd gotten one earlier, and pawned it off on someone else shortly later, it seemed like this was mostly just swapping items around instead of meaningfully keeping anything.. "I don't think a child is required, as long as they accept it. You could give it to anyone. Just hand it to them, and when they take it, leave." It counts. He's sure it counts.

Lars can't argue with the guy's reasoning. If anything, it makes a lot of sense, actually. As long as someone takes whatever he gives them, his work there is done. Just a matter of getting someone to accept the teddy bear the masked guy had traded him, then.

A kid would make it easiest, but there don't seem to be many here. Perhaps for the best.

"Pretty sure you don't have to eat anything you give away. That's on them once they've got it." A mercy for those of them unaccustomed to highly sugared foods, upon reflection. "Must be enough people like that kind of thing for it to be a custom."

"I wonder if it's a custom anywhere in my planet." He doesn't get to see a lot of the world as yet and when he did it was battlefields. Holidays? Those happen to OTHER people.

After a moment, he shakes his head, dismissing the thought as irrelevant in favor of looking around the area for osmeone who might suddenly turn up who can have a stuffed animal shoved at them. "If nothing else, you could try the hospital. Isn't there usually people there?"

It's an idea! Enough of one that Sephiroth's seriously weighing heading that way now instead of lingering here. He could knock the rest of these off in an hour or two maybe!

"I've heard people say something like that." Lars hasn't known what to make of it, coming from a gunfire nightmare of a life. Are that many people injured on a typical mission? Are they usually more combative than what he'd encountered in that library?

Were it the case, it would explain a soldier like him being brought here. At the same time, it would make his captain's absence all the stranger. The man has been called many things, but he does get things done.

"Haven't checked it out myself, though."

Meanwhile, there is a checklist - technically two - that need doing, and nobody else is just standing around except them, so Sephiroth reorients on the trolley line and heads back for it; sooner or later people WILL appear, and he'd be WAITING.

... Or use the tracks to head for the next bit of 'populated' land, since it's a six hour wait.

"There's food too, so it's worth investigating for that alone." And finding things to swipe, though he hadn't started doing that yet his willingness to rely on people in white coats who claim to be doctors is very low. "In the meantime no-one is here so if we're to do more on our lists we best keep moving."

When it became 'we' he didn't know, but it didn't say a thing about not teaming up on poor innocent people not expecting teddy bears and candies to be shoved at them.

"Fair enough." It's a better plan than standing around, Lars has to agree. He tucks his hands in his jacket pocket and falls into stride behind Sephiroth. While it may not be at all crowded now, people have a way of popping up out of nowhere, and he's not keen to bump elbows.

"People usually are wherever food is." The logic's sound, and it'd apply back home too. The mess hall was often crammed full of soldiers when they weren't busy doing drills or battling for their lives. Lars usually stuck to the periphery, focused as he was on his goals for the longest time. "Some of these stops have to be near restaurants or something."

Hunting people down for some bizarre social endeavor is a new experience, but at least this silver-haired guy treats it like business. An assignment. A mission proper. Lars can deal with that.

LARS JOINED THE PARTY

"I've found two so far, I'm certain there's more. All of it seems.. suited to industrialized tastes." Which is a nice way to say heavily processed and incredibly greasy. Sephiroth suffered terribly from mixed feelings on it. On one hand, the taste was amazing. On the other hand it tended to make him ill. But fried cheese sticks were created by gods as proof of their love to humanity, he's sure of it.

The space between them is noted, and he doesn't say a word. If he said something that space might suddenly disappear, and he preferred a little bit of distance. "The map doesn't help much on that front."

"They don't make them like that where I'm from," Lars says by way of agreement as they make their way toward the trolley car. He was accustomed to maps that were more comprehensible than what they're provided here. That's how he'd put it anyway, unaccustomed as he is to the visual style of it. Paper, please.

The food too is foreign, both in its make and ingredients. Meat was a luxury due to the unending conflict, much less anything other than chooped up scraps dumped into something else in an attempt to mask that it was akin to chewing leather. Everything here is curiously plentiful. Overwhelmingly so. "I know there's a place with coffee a few stops off, if nothing else. People mingle around there too."

He's long accustomed to some black, bitter swill his unit had called coffee. The appeal still eludes him, but Lars can choke it down to make a point.

"The ones I know reveal more information. Street names and locations more than a stop, in civilized places. What to expect of the wildlife for less populated ones." Snake Island was a noteworthy point in the 'maybe this should be identified in detail' section.

He could only guess that the food was supplied by the robots expecting a city sized population instead of the few dozen who were here. "...I think I'd prefer water. Coffee smells appealing but tastes like asphalt."

What kind of coffee Sephiroth's tried may be best left to the imagination.

"Yeah...yeah, coffee's like that." Lars agrees, knowing well that the aroma is deceptively pleasant for something that's either a step above or below motor oil depending on who's making it. "Some people can't get enough of it though."

At least it's an easy way to find more people. Lars doesn't know how they stomach it, but it's also not his problem. "You try the tea around here yet? There were so many listed at the place I passed earlier."

The variety in this place is on the overwhelming side really.

"Anything that requires an 'acquired taste' should perhaps not be acquired." Coffee absolutely counts, as far as Sephiroth is concerned. There's much he'll tolerate because he has to, but if he CHOOSES to.. it better taste good.

Though he's had tea plenty of times, tea HERE ... he shakes his head. "I haven't really looked for that kind of thing. Water's usually fine."

Now that it's been mentioned htough, he's forced to consider if perhaps he's missing out. It's something he supposed he could investigate on the way back to where most people are probably hanging out. "The variety of certain forms of shops makes me question if we are really the only ones meant to be here." The size and scale of things suggested there should be thousands, tens of thousands more..

Lars nods along with Sephiroth's assessment. Why one needs to acquire a taste for something has never quite made sense to him, but he'll leave those people to it. If they want to suffer until they build a tolerance or convince themselves they like something, that's their peculiar life choice.

As for their surroundings, that's its own can of worms. "Maybe they expect more of us to show up, eventually." Maybe their worlds aren't saved so much as their populations relocated, but he won't lend that thought his voice. There wouldn't be enough space were that the eventuality. "Or it could be there's some other purpose to it. The place I came from was massive in scale for no apparent reason."

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

FEBRUARY MINGLE

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immediately rummages through Lars' inventory

wise move, his inventory has: swords

immediate +1 to reputation. He likes swords.

🤝 swords

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