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Holiday mingle log

It’s the most wonderful (welcome) time of the year

Christmas is coming earlier and earlier every year, which isn't a surprise but hey they're starting the Christmas/Winter stuff the week before thanksgiving. Because why not. this month’s party takes place in the Merchant dome. But it’s not the everyday appearance of the merchant dome. No, for the next five days the Merchant dome’s appearance has been altered to look like a sort of Bavarian Christmas Market. There are small clusters of tables every so often, so people can just sit and chat and eat and drink.

Some enterprising person has even managed to make it snow through some unknown means. It’s not cold, but the snow is soft and steady and slowly building up.

The entire dome, all of the streets and all of the merchant stalls are practically glowing with white fairy lights that are strung everywhere. Vendors in their stalls gleefully cry out to paterons passing by, offering them free food or drinks. The food consists of the sort of things that one might expect to find in a place like this: sausages on buns and on sticks, pretzels, pizza, loads of cookies of every variety that one could think of, including elaborately decorated gingerbread, chocolates, fruits, french fries. Think winter fair food, and be as absurd and as complicated and extra as you want. It is a fair, after all. Go nuts. Drinks are also along the same line: hot cider, mulled wine, hot buttered rum, hot chocolate both with booze and without, as well as all the normal things: water, coffee, tea, milk, soda, and a variety of fruit juices that you’ve both heard of and not.

But food isn’t the only free thing that people are giving away! They’re also offering characters hats and gloves and scarves, small toys, books, delicate ornaments, perfumes, wine… it’s a giant welcome party after all, and these people are cheerful and happy. Even offering to pay just gets met with laughter and being told not to worry about it.

Fun and frivolity.

There are even carnival rides set up! A medium sized ferris wheel, a carousel, a giant slide and ice skating ring are all along the outside of the stalls.

At the far end of the dome, the snow has fallen deeper and held to several inches. Wouldn’t you know it just happens to be perfect snowball snow! So, there of course needs to be a snowball fight! What did you think those free mittens and gloves and scarves are for after all? The snowball fight can be organized into teams, or one on one depending on the player’s choice. This is a friendly fight, of course, so no rocks or slush balls or anything. Well, probably not. No one in the Sphere is your mother.

So you want some summer?.

While the welcome party rages on in the merchant dome, people have made a smaller party in one of the recreation domes. Around the pools, as a matter of fact. There’s almost like a small barbecue clustered around the largest of the three pools, and the light is constant and sunny here. The large pool is olympic sized, and is a sparkling blue. It’s fresh water, and probably clean enough to drink. I still wouldn’t drink it. The second pool is slightly smaller and more kidney shaped with a gradual sand mound at one end of it. This pool is salt water and looks a bit more like a beach than a pool. The third pool is a kiddie pool, complete with a splash pad, that’s running. Buckets drop, it’s got one of those mushroom things, and sprinkler jets. There aren’t any kids though, so people are welcome to go nuts.

Bathing suits and towels are provided in the changing rooms. There’s frozen and fruity drinks flowing freely, along with finger food and snacks. Loud music is playing from a local band that’s just generally of a pop sort. There’s people dancing rather in a rather haphazard fashion, but the dance floor is there and present!

Oh yeah, and there's definitely the baths and everything too!

Network.

In the Sphere, the network is neural, and accessed via touching the glowing golden circle behind your character’s ear. They can identify themselves with a screen name if you so desire, but messages should be one of three ways or a combination of them. 1. Audio. Your character thinks audible words onto the network. 2. Writing: Your character thinks text into the network. 3. Video. Your character projects a broadcast of a video of themselves onto the network. Replies are determined by the player.

The network needs to be accessed by choice, so character broadcasts are not automatically beamed directly into people’s heads. The Sphere isn’t that rude.

Private messages are allowed by pressing and holding and pressing and holding again as you picture the person in your mind. This can be an image or a name, err more on the side of things being more accessible than less.

Welcome to my nightmare.

For anyone within the architecture dome, the library dome, the sunlight rec dome and any personal dome that people chose, around midnight people will have a curiously tired sensation. They just need to rest their eyes for a moment, or some may fall asleep for longer. No matter the length of time that the character is out, the nightmare infects them, and when they wake they will be filled with a curious but urgent sensation.

They have lost something. The loss can be a physical object, an emotion, a memory, a person or perhaps a sense of self. If the lost person is currently present in the game, they will be unable to be seen by the character who is experiencing the waking nightmare. Urgency will grip the character, because the longer the sensation goes on for, the worse it becomes. Characters can search and scrounge for their loss everywhere, but until the nightmare is over, they will not find whatever it is. Even if it is themselves. Instead, they may be frantic, angry, or just play old scared to death. They need to find this at whatever cost. Where they may find it is something that their own brains will settle on, but of course until the nightmare is over, they will not be able to.

The nightmare ends with either the character falling into a normal, restful sleep naturally or through some other means (someone might mention the infirmary has sedation medication just for the is purpose, or that there’s always a brick) or when they are woken with the intervention of someone else. The intervention of someone else is entirely up to you, and can come from a player character or a NPC, depending on how the player is feeling with the thread. By intervention we mean someone who is able to talk the person out of the nightmare, or to slap or shake them out, or to use some sort of trick that shows them that they are indeed inside of a nightmare. The knowledge that someone is affected by a nightmare must come from an external source, and should come from a character that your character would trust. After all, would you believe someone who told you that you were in a nightmare if you didn’t know that? That said, the best way to deal with waking someone is to remove them from the affected domes. Too bad you don’t know which domes are affected.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Michael

[Just because he's pissed about being abandoned, doesn't mean he doesn't want to see him. To make sure with his own two eyes that the other is alright.]

... A couple months ago. How is that even possible?

A lot of things are possible here.

I'm in dome 200.

Like what? Explain it to me.

[He needed to know exactly what he was getting himself into. Possibly into.]

I'm coming to you.

[Even if he's not entirely sure where that was at. Didn't mean he wouldn't find him.]

It's kind of a lot to explain, Alex. Just there's people here that have seen dragons and are from all different time periods, superhero type shit too. Shit, Persephone's even here. [ Don't ask him more about her, though, he almost got turned into a flower once. ]

What's the last thing you remember back home? [ Because he knows that some other people have had some dissonance in that regard. ]

Seen dragons...

[Superheroes come in all shapes and sizes, so he doesn't think too much on that one. Even those in the military could be considered superheroes. Though, at the mention of Persephone, he can't help but make a bit of a face, not that Michael could see it. Wasn't that...?]

Do you really want to go there, Michael? What I remember is you leaving me waiting. That's the last thing I remember from back home.

Like when Isobel and Max were in trouble and I had to go find them?

When you ran off without even asking for help, knowing that I could've helped you.

You couldn't have helped with Noah.

How do you know that, Michael? How do you know I couldn't of helped?

Christ, Alex. He'd already hurt enough people I cared about I wasn't going to let him hurt you too.

So, you decide that he's allowed to hurt someone that I give a damn about? The street goes both ways, Michael, not just one. You also seem to forget that I'm not your typical every day civilian either.

And he's not just your every day fucking alien either. Max and I at least have a chance.

[He raises a brow at the alien talk, since he's pretty sure that's not something the others would normally just air out there.]

Maybe you do, but that doesn't mean you get to go in without asking for help, Michael. Whether Noah is your typical anything doesn't matter. What does is that you thought you had to go at this alone.

[ Things are different here. ]

I didn't have time, Alex. I needed to get to Max. It wasn't about you or us.

Didn't have time to ask for help?

[He takes a deep breath before letting it back out.]

I'm not saying it was about you or us. You're not the only one who cares about them. So, the statement still stands. You could've asked for help.

Whatever, Alex. I don't regret not asking you.

[ Honestly, Michael isn't completely sure how everything even ends up being he never actually got to Max and Isobel before he got pulled here. ]

I'm sure you don't, Michael.

[If anything? Alex is just tired. The fact that he could've helped is going to weight on him for a while.]

Right now? I'm just glad that you're safe. Even if I'd rather see that with my own two eyes.

[Which will happen once he finds the dome that the other lives in.]

[ Michael just sighs and he's already into whiskey at this point. Just hearing Alex has him off balance and of course they'd ended up arguing not even 2 minutes after they started talking. ]

Safe is a relative term.

[This place had thrown Alex for a loop. First with all the free niceties and now this.]

Don't say that Michael.

[In other words, don't make him think that the other is hurt. Whether the alien wanted to, believe it or not, he was family. Alex loved him and didn't need to hear that safe was relative. He needed to hear that Michael was actually safe. Because if anyone tried to hurt the other...]

[ He mostly just meant it that there is always a level of risk and possible bad things happening here in the sphere. ]

Fine.

I'll see you in a bit. Assuming that I don't get lost.

[There's a hint of amusement there.]

I didn't realize how huge this place was.

It gets easier.

I guess we'll find out. I'm pretty prone to getting lost.

[No, he wasn't and they both knew it.]

Sure. [ Yep. Not buying that one. ]

[He shouldn't. He knows Alex better than that. Doesn't he?]

Never know, Guerin, it could happen. I could get horribly lost in this huge place. Then you'd have to come find me instead.