November Undercurrent: And We Give Thanks

[lifeaftr_mods]

NOVEMBER UNDERCURRENT

Who: Everyone!
What: Have you told someone you loved them yet?
When: November 3rd to November 20th
Where: Everywhere!
Warnings: Nothing of note; please mark if anything comes up!

Take Me Back to the Reasons Why
The Water wishes to demonstrate their power to you, as well as just what they mean, when they suggest that they require your cooperation. They are going to bring back the harvest island of Nuidan, a generally fondly remembered island that explorers have encountered in the past. What's more, they're going to require your help to do it.

Starting November 3rd, characters will discover a simple strip of dark leather among their belongings, meant to be worn around the neck or wrist. They can disregard it, of course, but if they attempt to discard or destroy it, it will always find its way back to them, no matter how improbable this might seem. How strange...

Perhaps even stranger is the sudden appearance of a smooth slab of stone, half-submerged in the waters just off of Ensō's coast. It's an altar, and around its edges are a series of deep notches, as though something is meant to be inserted into them. In its center is a pool of water, though it curiously doesn't seem to reflect anything.

The purpose of this will only really become obvious once the month goes on. Characters will find themselves to compelled to be honest with the people around them as to why they care, why they appreciate them as people, or what they like most about them. This compulsion can vary wildly and at the player's discretion, from a gentle mental pressure to an unstoppable force, and anything in between!

The bottom line is that every time one admits to some feeling of gratitude, no matter how small or big, their little plait of leather will receive a crystal from the interaction. All crystals will be roughly the same shape, but they may vary in color, pattern, and texture. Some might be simple sticks of quartz, while others might be comprised of myriad, ever-changing swirls of color. Again, the only limit here is your imagination. Now the presence of that strange, altar-shaped stone in the water might make a bit more sense. Those notches in its sides are the perfect size and shape to fit a crystal smoothly into any one of them. The more grateful interactions one has with others, the more crystals they will gather, and the more they can fit into the altar. As more crystals are fed to the altar, it will start to glow. The pool of water at the altar's top will start to reflect the likeness island of Nuidan in increasing clarity, as though one is peering at its likeness in a snowglobe. What's more is that the number of crystals in the altar will very obviously affect Nuidan's state: very few crystals will make the island look as though it is mostly wilderness only a handful of structures in dire need of repair, while a great deal of crystals will cause the island to look as though it is thriving, in full bloom, and in more need of harvest than maintenance.

But, ultimately, the state in which Nuidan returns to you is up to you...and how far you're willing to go to express a little gratitude. Don't worry if you don't know anyone, either - this marks a great opportunity to start doing nice things for people, even if you don't know them! You've got most of the month to get to know each other, after all.

Don't think you can get away with heaping compliments on your closest friends and companions, however; variety is the name of the game here. While you can collect all sorts of crystals for personal use from repeat interactions, you can only feed one crystal to the altar per person. That is to say, Character A can be as grateful to Character B as they like, but only one crystal from each character can be delivered to the altar. If they want to procure more for the altar's purposes, Character A will have to have a positive interaction with Character C, and so on.

Take Me Back to That Big Sky

Of course, there's a lot going on in the background as well. You're free to use this log as a catch-all for the duration of November's Undercurrent Event, as well as the other minor events listed on our Monthly Rundown post. You are very, very free to let your dreams about creepers and baby lorbies become reality, and you are always free to create your own individual logs and posts as needed.

If you have any questions, please feel free to ask them over on our Monthly Rundown post!

November Timeline

[ ♆ ] November 3rd: "And We Give Thanks" begins and lasts until November 20th
[ ♆ ] November 4th: "Aw, Man" begins and lasts until November 12th
[ ♆ ] November 11th: "The Lorblings" begins and lasts until November 25th
[ ♆ ] November 20th: Nuidan returns to the archipelago
[ ♆ ] November 21st: "Return to Your Roots" begins and lasts until November 30th

LOGS ● OOC ● STORIES ● MAIN NAVIGATION

( CODED BY BOOTYCALL )

Comments

[counterblows]

Maybe we can take turns giving each other shit and thanking each other for that. That's technically gratitude, right?

[Technically. Yeah, he would exploit some technicalities to avoid being completely honest with himself or other people, because that's just so much easier, wouldn't he?]

[journalname]

[Asgore doesn't typically have trouble with thanking people, but yeah, sometimes we don't need to be totally honest.]

Yes, it would be. [...] Oh, there is some human festival about giving thanks, is there not?

[counterblows]

...

[God, and it's...it's November. Isn't it.]

Yeah, actually. Late November. It's literally called Thanksgiving. [Is that what this is? Is that what this literally is?]

[journalname]

...I see.

[That is...actually a lot more literal than he thought it was?]

Do you give gifts for Thanksgiving?

[counterblows]

Not...gifts so much? It's more about just, you know. It's about giving thanks. [Right, obviously.] Some bullshit about family and togetherness. Sharing food is pretty common, I think.

[journalname]

Oh. That sounds nice.

[It's for the best that isn't a thing here, probably. Asgore doesn't agree that it's bullshit, but Gyftmas is usually depressing enough by itself.]

Monsters have Gyftmas, in the midwinter. It shares some similarities with a human holiday - there is a decorated tree, and gifts underneath it.

[counterblows]

Giftmas? What, like Christmas? [Christmas with the serial numbers filed off?]

Yeah, that sounds pretty much exactly like it.

[journalname]

[I mean......yeah that's absolutely what it is]

I suppose that is to be expected. Even since the banishment, we have received plenty of human media from the garbage in the river. [he says like that's a normal, not super gross thing]

[counterblows]

You got banished and got all your information on humans from their garbage.

[He says it in a flat, unaffected way that signals that he's more repeating it to process it than he is asking for any real clarification. Jesus.]

...I guess garbage is a pretty great way to learn about people.

[journalname]

...yes, well, I suppose they did not throw quite so much garbage into that river when they put us down there.

[So, that's...Asgore doesn't want to make them sound needlessly cruel, but the whole thing sort of...wasn't great...]

It really has been a wonderful resource. We would never have been able to develop any technology, I imagine, if we did not have the pieces of what they have built on the Surface.

[counterblows]

You're really not selling a lot of good points about humans where you come from.

[WAS HE JUST OKAY WITH THIS. Maybe there's only so much you could do, but...being grateful of garbage just seems kind of much.]

[journalname]

.....our history with them was not a good one. But that does not mean they are all bad! I -

[Does...does it still matter now, if people know about his connection to the children? They are not here. In Beacon, he was free to speak about his life, and that felt...better than this has. Maybe it would be okay.

But what if Chara ever came back?]

- I had...an adopted human child, once.

[counterblows]

Oh.

[He doesn't know how to interpret that. How to...deal with that exactly? He doesn't have a lot of experience with kids. He's dealt with a few of them by now, but his track record is pretty hit or miss.]

Was this before or after the garbage?

[journalname]

During. You must understand, we have been in the Underground for centuries.

[And the trash river has been...pretty constant throughout most of it...]

[counterblows]

You...adopted a human anyway?

[There's a question to the words but there's also a question to the angle of Wash's helmet, though it's not one devoid of sympathy - or even devoid of understanding. Not on a personal level, but...]

[Well, this wouldn't be the first time he's heard of a species taking in a child of the enemy, and growing attached to it despite everything.]

[journalname]

...they were only a child. And they were hurt. They fell some distance into the Underground.

[it's what it sounds like, kid fell into a fucking pit]

[counterblows]

Not everybody would take someone like that in, kid or not.

[The child of an enemy isn't always regarded as such. In the case of Junior - he knew what it must have been like, to make that call. He was an enemy first. A child second, if at all.]

[journalname]

[Asgore winces a little. Please don't let this turn into calling him a good person, or something.]

There was no...

[Reason to harm them. But that isn't strictly true.]

What else could we have done? They were no older than my son.

[counterblows]

I'm just saying that not everyone would. Where I come from, an enemy's an enemy - no matter how old they are.

[Little Storm Elites would grow up to be bigger ones, after all. Unggoy eggs would hatch into bigger brutes that would happily rip a human limb from limb on the front lines.]

[journalname]

[Well, maybe that's true of aliens. But humans can rip a monster apart at any age!

Okay, that doesn't help.]

It had been a long time since the war by then. Humans had already begun to think we were a myth. They were not going to come after us again.

[counterblows]

I'm not sure if that's really helping your case, if they banished you and then just dumped garbage on you for, what? Literal decades? [If that. Christ, how old is Asgore, even?]

Longer?

[journalname]

...centuries.

[look he knows this isn't helping his case either!]

[counterblows]

Centuries.

[Figures. He, uh. Looks good for his age?]

So, you know, I'm just putting it out there that you'd maybe be justified in wanting a little comeuppance.

[journalname]

...do you really think that?

[It's hardly as if Asgore hasn't spoken to people who do; just look how excited the Underground was to go free. But even then, he doesn't think it's about comeuppance for them. Monsters talk about wanting to see the sky, to have space and clean air, to live in peace - the destruction of humanity seems like something of an afterthought to most of them, just a bit of business that the King will have to wrap up in the middle there. Asgore suspects it isn't really real to them.

And that's alright. That's why he's always ordered the humans brought to him, and not harmed by the Guard. He should bear the burden of his own decree.

But monsters who knew humanity, monsters like Toriel and Gerson, don't think they deserve comeuppance. Asgore doesn't. Washington probably wouldn't, either, if he knew the extent of what Asgore had promised - but it's funny to hear him advocate anything even similar.]

[counterblows]

[Wash breathes out, long and slow. When he answers, he doesn't immediately respond to the question.]

I fought in a war. The War. It was...big. So it wasn't...it was not a win or defeat thing. It was a "for the preservation of our species" thing. We were facing absolute extinction, so it was humans up against this coalition of alien forces and the odds were stacked so significantly against us that people were willing to try anything.

If you brought one of those aliens up to any one of us, it'd be dead. Wouldn't matter if it was a kid or not. It'd be dead out of principle. It'd be dead out of spite. It'd be dead because we were dying and exhausted and miserable and we were losing.

I'm saying that I know people who wouldn't hesitate. Who wouldn't have then, and maybe still wouldn't now. Doesn't matter if the War's over. They'd kill anything that reminded them of what we lost.