ph_logs | December Event - To All a Good Night

December Event - To All a Good Night

To All a Good Night

Givingstide

Winter is hard for everyone, but none more so than the residents of an island that has been isolated by the cruel hands of fate. Where the rest of the Emerald Isles is able to rely on imports from other nations in warmer places, Marrow Isle has no resources but her own. All the while, her mettle continues to be tested against the horrors brought on by the curse.

It is for this reason that among all the holidays celebrated by the Mothers' children, Givingstide is particularly beloved. A warm and cozy festival based around wishing each other prosperity and love in the new year, the lengthening of days, embracing generosity even in the lean times, and celebrating the fact that the darkest part of the year is coming to an end.

The fireplace is lit at the Oak & Iron. A wreath of pine boughs hangs over the merry blaze, paper horses and snowflakes decorate the walls, and a table in the center of the room has been done up to look like a silver sleigh. As people file in, hot food and warm drinks begin coming out of the kitchen and bar, and gifts begin piling up on the sleigh table. (Ultimately, a fair amount of them end up on the floor around it.) Everyone greets each other warmly with hearty handshakes, firm hugs, and wishes of a blessed Givingstide. Perhaps if you have a clever eye, you may even see a horned figure drinking hot cocoa in the corner harmlessly, enjoying the atmosphere of good will and keeping watch over the party to prevent any troublemakers. And for once, just once, for the first time in so long on this frightful, forsaken island, there is true peace.

[ Enter the Tavern. ]

The tavern is warm. Orange firelight flickers, as if dancing with the shadows. Decorations of shimmering silver and hunter green, the colors of Givingstide, adorn the dark wood decor of the Oak & Iron. The stucco and timber walls of the dining hall safeguard those within from the bitter wind and snow. It's no Leeds gala--- the food is simple, but it is beautifully made. Roasted chicken, potatoes, onion soup, and fresh-baked bread. Slices of pumpkin pie are passed around for dessert. Hot cider with or without alcohol, mulled wine, coffee, and spiced tea are served with the meal. It isn't glamorous, but it's made with love and tastes like coming home somehow.

As dinner carries on, music begins to be played from the tavern stage, and Mayor Poe has Yorick assist her in doling out the gifts from the table. They read the tags and summon the recipients to the table to recieve them. You can open yours right there or at your table, and decide for yourself whether you care to announce the name of the giver to the room.

Once the gifts are distributed, the partygoers are left to their own devices, allowed time to laugh with friends, dance to music, drink to their hearts' content, sneak off to while away a private moment in one of the inn's sitting rooms, or head home for an early night. Regardless of your choice, let it be with a loved one. A friend, a partner, a member of your newfound family. Blessed Givingstide, and may your lantern ever stay lit.

gifts and vouchers

Some important information regarding gift-giving and vouchers can be found below.

[ Review. ]

Gifts can be purchased using your own Brass, or via the holiday bazaar vouchers found in our December TDM. If you haven't taken the trivia quiz on the TDM, you still can! You can take it for each character or just once and give all your characters the same voucher.

For simplicity's sake for both our mods and our players, we will allow you to decide for yourselves the prices of your items so long as they are reasonable. You can use other purchase requests in the bank as a reference or simply decide on a price you believe is fair based on your experience. You do not have to list prices. We will trust you to make fair decisions! If you're still unsure how much an item ought to cost, feel free to ask us in the question thread on this post, but in the spirit of the holiday season (both real and fictional) we would rather allow your characters to get gifts for all their loved ones than worry too much about financials. Perhaps your character is simply a very good bargain hunter!

As a slight aside, we would love to thank each and every one of you for being a part of making Pumpkin Hollow amazing this year. We truly could not ask for a better group of players and are extremely grateful to have met all of you delightful, creative, talented, funny, incredible people. We hope you had a great holiday season, whatever that looks like for you, and we're so honored to greet the new year with this fantastic community!

Hand in hand, we put the darkness to our backs and step into the light. Rejoice, spring cometh.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Maybe those rocks square up Bart, you been in the mines lately? Huh? Huh? Maybe they're mining Geodudes like it's an edgy fanfic you don't know!!!

"Don't I know it. I've been trying out different settings trying to find a voice I like...it's hard to remember what I used to sound like, and I'm not sure I want to sound like that either. The higher pitches are right out. It is difficult to threaten people when you sound like one of the immature mammals."

Lbr there will probably be some kind of revelation about geodudes and related others knocking miners out for trying, in some other iteration of that universe...

"Does your voice crack? It's even harder to be intimidating when it breaks when you get upset. Perhaps that can be an augment we experiment with in the future, something that'll give you more control over the nuance of your voice. There are plenty of samples here to choose from for baseline ideas, if they would consent to being recorded."

"No, it's not cracking. Just this."

In the excited tones of a six-year-old, Vika opens her mouth again and proclaims, sweetly: "Touch me and die!"

Cannot stress this enough that while there is not, literally, an uwu at the end of that sentence, the uwu that isn't there is louder than all the words that are.

Bart is silent at the display, and someone reasonably observant would be able to tell why that is: he is fighting so hard not to crack up.

It's not working.

"You see the problem. I tried the opposite route but people kept saying I sounded 'demonic' so I'm not even gonna try it here." Vika rolls her eyes like. Several times. Just the Full Rotation here. "...Samples wouldn't be bad. Maybe I can mix a proper voice. Playback on the recordings is better now too."

It's hard to keep the chuckle out of his voice when he replies. "Yes, I can certainly see how that is a problem, if you can't control it particularly well. I will say though, the idea of a 'demonic' voice could come in handy, if you were to want to intimidate someone enough to leave you be. But, of course, there are better ways to go about these things, you are absolutely correct." He's thinking that he should probably ask the local archivist for access to his recording equipment. This is a good cause after all, he thinks!

"...Miss Bart."

"One of my arms is a gun."

"Are you telling me humans are insane enough to require more to intimidate them than the bit where my arm is a fucking gun?"

"Between you and me? Absolutely. I can tell that you haven't had much exposure to the hubris of human beings in general when faced with something they think that they can simply stand in front of and bluster into submission. Your arm being a fucking gun is neither here nor there, in most cases."

"Sapience was a mistake. We need to roll back to the time of solely aquatic life." Her fingers stray to her shoulder, gently touching the arm where her weapon is stored, and part of her. "...Though they've been very kind here. In their dipshit mammal way."

Guess who's still irrationally bitter about the free house?

"As long as they're being mostly harmless dipshit mammals for the most part, I think we should all count our blessings." Look at him Vika, look what you're doing, you're making him swear so much for the sake of banter. "Life would be much simpler if we were all simply finned things with notocords though, you are right about that."

"Mmhm. For instance you probably would have noticed that the whole mistletoe thing is, for some reason, supposed to provoke making out and not an education. Did it not run through your mind that your poor prisoner was possibly trying to get some?"

Pumpkin Hollow has a public library and Vika is going to be making that everyone else's problem. That outer shell of 'what the fuck are you mammals doing' conceals a Vika that both wants to understand people and hates not knowing things.

She's been researching Givingstide.

Bart wrinkles his nose. "I think that if that were the case, that they would mention as much rather than letting me drone on." But then again, he's used to people that aren't as inclined to just sitting and letting him go on for politeness' sake.

Another one of those ways that Vika is much more like the people that he's accustomed to, really.

Absolute deadpan: "It's in the books. Technically we should be kissing right now."

"I meant that if they really wanted to be elsewhere they could have said at any time! I know the tradition," he huffs, and meets her deadpan with a bit of a squint. Is she being serious?

Time to make her Regret^TM, by planting himself in front of her and moving to plant one intoxicated smooch on her cheek. So there.

Wow, he's really going for it. Several paths stretch before Our Vikas in her mind; do nothing, dodge, say something sarcastic...it's hardly as if she's missed the significance of organic romantic rituals given all the talking the miners do, people making out in the library and, of course, curious paging through the erotica shelves wondering what the difference was between that and romance.

(She sure knows now.)

Ultimately, though, Vika decides to take the path of escalation. She grabs the front of Bart's shirt and pulls him with delicate, precise force into a kiss on the lips.

Vika has no tongue and no chill; there will be no half measures.

He'd expected her to either stay still and do nothing about it and say something extremely blunt and uncomfortable, or maybe shove him off and walk away, but escalation is is, while definitely the way of Our Vikas, not what he expected in this instance. So he finds himself dragged down and kissed in the lease intimate way, muffling a squawk against her lips, finding them only pliant enough to facilitate her attempting to emote in her slightly uncanny way. He realizes that she's being careful, but it's still a lot.

She's not going to let him go until he relents, he figures, so he reciprocates that kiss, and his hands gently attempt to pry her fingers out of his shirt, sure to be wrinkled by her grip.

Vika's fingers don't move but that's honestly just because, y'know. Look at her. She's a robot. She does eventually notice and pull back, a strange little smile on her face; there's a wicked mischief on her face. "Let me make this clear: if there's kissing, I kiss you," she murmurs.

Bart's hand remains curled over hers as she releases his shirt, eyebrow arching up as he chuckles about that. "That was very much a roundabout way to suggest that you kiss me for the sake of a silly tradition," he points out.

"Maybe I wanted to see if I get anything out of it."

His head tilts. He's definitely going to make notes on this, if he remembers. "And?"

She tips a grin. "Not to shock you with my discoveries in mechanical biology but not having a heart or glands means I'm not exactly getting the experience out of the romance novels. And whoever wrote the one about the clockwork boy overheating from cuddling needs to be flogged."

"...But I could go again sometime. There's an appeal."

"Oh no, it stands perfectly to reason that you wouldn't get the same things out of this sort of exchange for exactly that reason," he replies with a small nod. There is some surprise when she continues though, and he laughs quietly. "It sounds like the clockwork boy needs a better cooling system. At least you've got us to help you look after yours."

His nose wrinkles as he looks back at her at that afterthought. "I think you just like manhandling me."

"Maybe. Do you like being robot handled?"

ANSWER THE QUESTION BART -

Vika are you flirting with him or threatening him...

"Can I tell you a secret?" He tucks in close, with his cup tucked against chest securely as if it will protect him from the silliness about to come out of his mouth. He's quiet, cartoonishly secretive when he continues, "I might prefer a larger robot than yourself."

"...The doctor?" Many thoughts run through Vika's mind at the same time; Bart is impaired, she's not sure what she's even doing or what she wants (only that Bart is the only person safe enough right now to help her find out...). Is this a rejection? Merely a confession?

What comes out of her mouth is: "Fifty Brass says you can't get him to prescribe an orgasm."

December Event - To All a Good Night

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SHORT POST BUT -

Equally short post incoming -

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SETUP TAG

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It's Both Bart

V good

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/wraps!