[DECEMBER INTRO LOG | WORLD TWO]

[spellbindmods]

Who: All coven members, especially new folk!
Where: In and around the new world’s apartment building where the coven is staying, as well as the rest of Shehui
When: Day 160
Open/Closed: Open to All

How did you get into this building? This apartment room? What the fuck is going on? Let's refer back to this page for a semi in-depth, wow so detailed, explanation of your current situation. Are you up to speed? Great. Now, here's the question of the hour: what are you going to do about it? A ▢ Unlike the other coven members, the newbies are coming into the apartment building with non-empty apartment rooms. Depending on how polite or cautious you are, your first instinct may be to find your apartment and knock on the door. But it is your apartment now, too, and you do have an ID card that'll get you in. What horrible calamity will you walk in on? What eccentric roommates will you happen upon? The wacky situational comedy scenarios are ENDLESS. B ▢ One of the jobs on the job board this week is fundraising -- neat, right? Before you even make it up to your apartment, you may be accosted by an excited citizen -- coven member or no -- that is trying to push something onto your character. Chocolate bars? Cheese logs? Cookie dough? Some other luxury item or overpriced snack food? Because this fundraising task is based on commission, the citizen in question may be a bit pushy...or you may be inclined to buy ridiculous amounts of goods and not know what to do with yourself.

New coven members showing up today are in luck. This week, Shehui is celebrating a Keep the Community Clean event. It's rare that they force jobs on people, but there has been an influx of new citizens and the population growth is leading to more trash. Fulfill your assignment and you'll be rewarded 1,000 credits. Don't? Be fined 500. Everyone has been sent a job to their ID, be it collecting trash, cleaning their apartment building or holding up signs/handing out literature about recycling. Sweeping, bagging...it's dirty work, but someone has to do it. C ▢ Cleaning up trash on the street might be hard, but it's fulfilling! Okay, that's a lie. It's demeaning and a lot of citizens don't really care about the minimal littering credit deduction as they toss trash from their cars or miss throwing it into bins. Volunteers are outfitted with gloves, vests and a roll of trash bags, but it doesn't prevent them from being rudely splashed with snow or having to pick up nasty things. Have fun! D ▢ For those who decided to pass out literature, you did pick the better job! It's a lot easier to avoid getting nasty, but it's also awkward...having to hand out fliers, be cheerful, regurgitate boring facts about recycling. Please sir, stop and listen to this exciting speech about why should put your cans in the red bins, not the blue ones! E ▢ There is a bright side to these jobs: local businesses are getting in on the outpouring of people out and about to try and get them into seats and buying things. Free samples are abound! There's a local coffee shop, Mooncents, that is handing out free small drinks to anyone who is actually working today. Come inside, regardless if you "volunteer" or not. It's warm inside with all that snow out there...

Speaking of snow! Most businesses and buildings in Shehui have paid to have snow falling every other hour, which coats the city areas in a fine, powdery dust of snowflakes. You may be familiar with snow, or maybe you've never seen it in your entire life! It's unavoidable either way, so you're going to have to deal with it. F ▢ Children in Shehui are usually in a school building somewhere, but snow days call for some leniency. School is pretty come-and-go anyway, so don't be surprised that there are quite a few kidlets out and about on the streets. They're also fully into the spirit of snow, throwing snowballs at unsuspecting strangers. Will you get in on the action, or will you plan the murder of innocent children today? G ▢ While it's unadvised to just go lay out in the street and make snow angels, there are plenty of parks in which to examine or play in the snow. You won't be the only one acting like a fool -- it's Shehui. You're allowed to live a little! H ▢ Finally, Coins! has bought the most snow as a means for their seasonal activity -- snow paintball. If you're looking to have a good time and enjoy Shehui for what it is, you'd best be inclined to sign up. A massive field with snowbanks and excellent areas for hiding, snowball paintballs that hurt twice as much as usual. What more could you ask for? I ▢ Wildcard! How will your character interact with this new and unusual world?

Comments

[teratias]

I'll admit, the classifications could have changed by your time due to things like that.

[sealeted]

I never really needed to know more than Code Casts for the Holy Grail, but I borrowed a certain technique once... I don't even know how you'd begin to classify it.

[teratias]

I could try. What was the technique?

[sealeted]

..................................................................uh.

[She blanches.

Oh god, why didn't she think he'd followup on that? Why did she open her mouth?]

I-It... They were called... Thesis of the Still Heart and Ten Thousand Colored Stagnation...

[teratias]

A name doesn't tell me a lot.

[Jesus if that's not the floweriest thing he's ran into before.]

What does it actually do?

[sealeted]

[FUNNY HE SHOULD SAY 'FLOWERY'...]

........................

[She takes a big, fortifying sip, to stall.]

Thesis of the Still Heart is a Code Cast skill that allows you to access someone's Secret Garden. ...It finds the openings to a person's heart, and exposes frailties and faults that the person themselves is not even aware of. Kiara... compared it to a vaccine, where the wall of the 'heart' is an illness, and the Thesis of the Still Heart is a vaccine to treat it.

Ten Thousand Colored Stagnation allowed... people to enter the hearts of others, using a similar principle.

[Also nakedness and flower petals are involved.]

[teratias]

[Waver listens carefully. Almost as if he's trying to remove any emotion of it, and break the thing down into it's parts.]

So, that sounds like it's related to soul research. That can fall under a number of headings, alchemy's pretty common with that, actually. [But there's no transmutation element, as far as he can tell.] It isn't evocation, there's no summoning but. Hmmm.

[Hakuno, you've given him a puzzle. He's going to be at this forever.]

[sealeted]

It was designed by a, uh... a certain religious sect.

[Please don't ask, please don't ask, please...]

A-and Wizards are basically soul-hackers, though usually it's your own soul you utilize...

[teratias]

That's all third magic stuff, so at least they've kept that much.

[Waver, alas, isn't a mind reader.]</small Which sect designed it?

[sealeted]

.................................................................

.................................................................

.................................................................

.................................................................

.................................................................

..............the... Shingon Tachikawa school.

[teratias]

Why does that sound....

[Oh.

Oh.

Ohhhhhhhh.]

...well, I guess that's one way to use that and magecraft.

[sealeted]

The-the Code Casts aren't...!

[She's cherry red.]

I-I mean, I've never... certainly, downloading the technique was a bit... unorthodox, b-but nothing major...!

[teratias]

No, just one option of many. And...

[Well, he's bright red, and now chugging his hot cocoa.]

Given the association accepts samples for the craft and pays you for it I can't judge.

[sealeted]

I-In the Moon Cell avatars were just! Spiritron shells for the soul!

[She may never look him in the eye again.]

S...so... tearing in through emotional insecurities, and breaching that boundary to reach the soul directly... u-um, it was very literal, like a planar shift. Really. Still... intimate, I guess, but... n-nothing... tantric happened.

[teratias]

Okay so it's all soul work so maybe there needs to be a new subset to describe the techniques?

[He's trying so, so hard to be good about this and to keep from dying about the thing they're really discussing.]

Planar shifts fall under particular headings at least, so there's that....

[sealeted]

...well, again, the destination is inside the soul itself, so...

[Not quite planar shifting.]

[teratias]

We need a new vocabulary to describe it then.

[sealeted]

There's probably one. On... on that Earth.

[teratias]

Most likely.

[So Waver's just going to keep drinking his cocoa now.]

That was...enlightening.

[sealeted]

I... should have kept my mouth shut.

[teratias]

S'fine. It's...it's just a logical extension of magecraft.

[sealeted]

................it is?

[teratias]

Yeah. Bodily fluids in magecraft isn't unheard of.

[sealeted]

................it isn't?

[teratias]

[See? Now it's Waver's turn to want to die.]

It really isn't.