kaisou | February Town Log

February City Log
Dominant Element: Fire
Waning Element: Wind

Full Moon: February 11th - 13th

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With the arrival of February, the worst of winter is finally past. In the sky, the Spirit Vein will take on the colors of fire, blazing across the sky in hues of red and orange. As such, the temperature will begin to warm to much more bearable weather. While it's still winter, as the month moves on it'll step closer and closer to spring with rising temperature and melting snow. Most of the days are sunny and bright, bringing much needed warmth to the town.

Valentine's Day

The season of love is once again here for Kaisou. Throughout the city, stores and streets are decorated in red and pink hearts along with loads of other romantic themed things. Just about everywhere you turn, there's vendors selling chocolates, flowers, jewelry, as well as mundane items that are trying desperately to be marketed as great Valentine's day gifts. If you're hoping to take your date out to eat for the special holiday, you better make reservations well in advanced- as the nicer restaurants will quickly fill up. But don't worry if you didn't plan ahead, because Papa's Omniria is open with a full Valentine's Day special line up that includes strawberries and pomegranate being added to just about everything - even if it's really questionable if it actually works (strawberry and pomegranate sushi?). Just be careful not to be the first customer of the week, unless you prefer to work through the holiday.

Down in Undertown, the merchants there have also gotten into the holiday spirit. Lots of stores are selling enchanted items used to help keep the spirit of love going: aphrodisiacs, enchanted rose petals, and various potions and enchantments that'll help you in the bedroom. The kitsune have also opened up a shop here, peddling beauty products that they claim will definitely attract a date-- but in reality the only date you'll be making is one to the Urgent Care to clear up a heart-shaped rash, or a date to salon to get the hot-pink dye out of your hair.

Looking for a more romantic getaway? The sparrow clan that live in the El Nido realm can also be found in Undertown, promoting their beach resort. For the small price of delicious birdseed, you'll be welcomed to stay at their beach resort paradise in El Nido. During your stay, you'll be given a 5-star treatment from room service, massages, spas, and a high quality restaurant where you can have a romantic dinner as the sunsets over the ocean. It might be a perfect way to spend a romantic holiday- or simply get away from the winter cold.

As usual, whether you're shopping in Undertown or around the city- you'll find an absence of any kind of true love potions. Those are seen as deeply taboo in paranormal circles. Even than less than moral vendors don't want to risk a visit from the Black Order peddling those.

Black Order Mission: Potion Seller

Speaking of the Black Order, just like every year, there's those people out there who use romantic holiday as an excuse to sell much more dangerous potions. Almost like clockwork, they start to hear reports of some dealing selling "love potions". Sure enough, if you look into it, you find victims who are dealing with the typical array of symptoms: obsessive love, disregards of personal well being, and blind devotion. Though there seems to be something a little bit different from this year's batch, as the victims seem ... more detached from reality than normal. They ramble incoherently more, and any victims that happen to be monsters are acting much more bestial, almost as if they've become feral.

Fortunately, there is an antidote. The Black Order headquarters will send batches of a bitter tasting antidote potion. While normally this clears up symptoms right away, this year? It'll still work, but some of the victims seem to experience symptoms similar to withdrawal over the course of the new few days. Luckily the symptoms will pass within a week, leaving the people back to normal. Still... was someone trying to make these love potions addictive?

Investigations of the source of the love potions will lead to an abandoned warehouse in the Warehouse district. It's a small operation, run by drug pushing thugs that just happen to have some supernatural powers. How they will go about dealing with these guys will be up to the Black Order Guardians. However should they investigate the warehouse, they won't find any sign that the love potion was produced there- it was shipped in from somewhere else.

[OOC: As usual, the results of the Black Order mission will be left up to the Black Order team! Characters not part of the black order can also take part in this plot, though the investigation and the fate of the thugs will be left up to TBO players]

Black Order Mission Results

(As discussed between mods and TBO players)

When the team reaches the warehouse, they are able to apprehend the potion sellers. They will interrogate with legal methods, using a good-cop, bad-cop method. Xie Lian will be a good cop but fail to persuade them. Wriothesley and Ayato will take on the role of bad cop and succeed in scaring the crap out of some of the potion sellers.

From this, they will learn that they heard the potion was devised by a person who goes by the name "H". Unfortunately, they won't get much more information than that, as one of the potion sellers will panic will decide it's better to resist than give up information to the Black Order. He will take a clear potion (the love potions are pink) from his coat pocket and chug it. This causes him to go berserk and fully lose himself to his monster side (which unfortunately, is a flame bear that is now much larger than normal). He will attack the Order, and a few other of the potion sellers will see this chaos as a chance to try to escape -- or to try to fight off the guardians.

When the dust settles, several of the potion sellers are now dead. The rest of them are really freaked out and opt to go quietly into custody. The team will decide to take a few samples of the Love potion to send to the order to analyze, before burning the place down.

Red Strings of Love

At the start of February, those who are connected to the Greek Pantheon (either by being a member or possessed by one), will be treated to a video message from the mysterious number 696-6969. Should you open it, you'll be treated to a full body video of Cupid in all his naked glory. He is completely unfazed by this as he delivers a quick message:

Hey Fam! Heard a bunch of you had moved to Kaisou, so thought I'd say hi. I'd love to drop in and visit for awhile, but as you know I'm totally swamped this time of year. You know, with the whole holiday about me and everything!

So thanks to Aunt Persie and the others in your town, my staff are back to work and more motivated than ever! Thanks so much with that help. Anyway, they wanted to test a new product and felt that Kaisou would be the PERFECT place to do it. So don't be surprised if you see some strings pop up around town- they're totally harmless, swear! You just gotta be emotionally honest if you want them to go away, so if one of you could let people know that if they start panicking- that'd be great.

I gotta run. Happy Valentine's day! Oh, and mom sends her love too- as always, ha. And Uncle D? Love the new arm candy you got, talk about a 10/10, rawr!

Oh oh, and Polly? I heard you sucked at archery again- you're never gonna hit a poor guy in his heel again at this rate. Never knew you had a thing for fishermen though, Uncle Po-Po would be delighted!

Byeeee! Love to you all!

Everyone else in the city will not receive such a message. Which means you have no warning to what's to come... but also you were spared having to stare at Cupid's dick. So, maybe you're the lucky ones after all.

Sure enough, around the city, if you're spending time with someone, you have a chance to have a string appear on your wrists that will tie the two of you together. The color of the string will depend on your relationship with the person: red (romantic), pink (friendship), white (family), orange (rivalry), or candy stripped for the very complicated relationships.

These strings can not be untied or removed by hand. The only way to get rid of them is to be emotionally honest with your feelings towards the other. If both of you manage to vocalize your true feelings for each other, the string will disappear and you'll be free. However if you try to lie or deny? The strings will both tighten and increase - until you two are virtually tied together.

Looks like it's time to open up about your feelings!

OOC Notes

The dominant element this month is Fire! Anyone with an affinity to the water element will find themselves boosted throughout the month. This could mean a boost to their power, having more energy, feeling more inspired with creativity, having better luck on different attempts -- the boost can manifest in all sorts of different ways. By contrast, anyone with an affinity for Wind will be experiencing the opposite. Perhaps their powers will be weaker, they have less energy, they're having a creative block or general worse luck - again it can manifest in all sorts of way and players are free to play with this mechanic as they'd like.

The original OOC plotting post for this event can be found here. There will be a second log about the spirit realm event and a midmonth Zodiac posted on the 15th.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Ordinarily, he wouldn't care about the rest and let the conversation die there. What she did with her friends, or for them in this case, was no business of his. Yet something inside of him pushed him to try and say something meaningful, or conversational.

"...What have you tried so far?"

It's okay to be curious and ask questions too, you know!

"Oh, well, most of what I've done before has been using molds, so I was thinking of seeing if I can shape some stuff by and, and also I thought it'd be neat to try more with fillings or mixing in nuts or fruits with the chocolate too..."

She could probably go on for a while about this if encouraged.

Sadly, Haitham weirdly loved to let the yappers do what they do best. He was a listener who offered snappy comebacks and harsh truths in return. In this case, he does at least take interest in the desire to try different things that hadn't been attempted before. He would always support hands-on experience when learning a skill.

"You'll have to be more conscious of the temperature of the chocolate and how the add-ins will mess with the tempering if you go that route. Some combinations can also change the texture of the end product. Going in with careful consideration is a good call."

Ritsuka nodded.

"Right, exactly. I know not everything's going to work out all the time, but having a whole batch get totally ruined is pretty frustrating, you know?"

Not that that would stop her for long, but still.

"But even if it's a lot of work, it's worth it to see how happy it makes everyone when I give it to them."

"If you're going to experiment with the chocolate, dividing them up before adding things in sounds best."

He falls into contemplative silence. Going through so much work for other people who may or may not like was so strange to him. He used to know someone like that, and saw how it could make someone miserable. This person just seemed so happy to be doing it, though. Social people were strange.

"I didn't mean to keep you from your chocolate making with chatter."

"Yeah, that's the idea!"

It also meant that in cases of failures that were still edible, there was much less waste to eat.

"Oh, that's fine. I don't think making homemade chocolates is as big a deal here in America, so I don't mind explaining if people want to know."

She was even teaching at least one friend how to do it! There waas also something fun about introducing other people to something new, after all.

He did have to agree that she had a point. He also wasn't familiar with anyone doing that very much for as long as he's been here. Or, at the very least, as long as he thinks he's been here.

"Where do you come from where it's more common?" It was an honest curiosity. Food wasn't something he tended to study up on outside of it's ties to culture and agriculture. The more detached from actual preparation side, he would say.

"I'm from Japan, though there's plenty of people who just buy most their chocolate there too."

Homemade was usually reserved for that special someone.

"But the place I was at before I came here, an organization called Chaldea, when people heard about the idea it got really popular with everyone there."

He can recall a Chaldea from history books, but an organization with the same name was almost funny to him. People will take all sorts of names, won't they?

"Has that popularity started to catch on here? Or was your chocolate making part of the reason it caught on in your former organization?" He hadn't seen anything, but he would admit he wasn't really looking either. Maybe people really did like this sort of thing. It was out of his wheelhouse.

That was hardly the only meaningful name, were Ritsuka to get into the details of what the organization was and why, but that was a whole separate matter. Right now, this was about chocolate!

"Oh, I actually wasn't that into it before, but when everyone at Chaldea got so excited it was kinda hard not to join in too, you know?

"But most people here don't really do that, no. I think even my friends I showed how mostly just do a little bit."

She didn't mind that, though. What mattered was that it was meaningful to her regardless of whether others reciprocated or it caught on.

So it was just her. If she enjoyed it, then that's what mattered. Still, he thought it was mildly interesting how far she goes for a holiday.

"Is all of this due to an interest in chocolate and cooking, or just the gesture toward your friends?"

Even if he did have friends, he didn't think he'd go this far for a holiday for them. Probably. He could empathize with her friends in this case.

"Well, like I said, even if they don't give me anything back, it's worth it seeing how happy it makes everyone. But also I guess it makes me think of everyone I knew back at Chaldea, too."

So really, it was mostly about the gesture, with a bit of fond memories thrown in. For Ritsuka, seeing other people she cared about happy was a reward all its own.

It was a little hard for a man who's never had a lasting connection to imagine putting in so much effort to do the sorts of things that make Ritsuka happy, but he didn't need to understand it. People with friends and fond memories of 'other places' were probably plentiful now that he had that cursed app on his phone.

"Were there a lot of people you left behind in Chaldea?"

"Yeah, there were."

There was fondness in how she replied, but also a tinge of sadness, too. Ritsuka did miss her friends who weren't here in general, but there were also some she'd never see again regardless.

"It was a pretty lively place."

February Town Log

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