LOVE POTION #9

[metamods]

LOVE POTION #9

LOVE IS... not in the air! The reintroduction of Confluences into this world has left it rocked, so the season of love is not quite as lovey-dovey as it usually is. People are stressed and anxious. Valentine's events are being cancelled left, right, and center in fear that a Confluence may catch young lovers unawares.

Unbeknownst to mortals, the God of Love really can't afford his month to be ruined by a few little dimensional catastrophes. This is his month! ... And for whatever reason, he seems to be stranded on the Earthly plane.

Surely he can fix things. Push it along a little. Though Gods don't usually meddle in mortal affairs, this is a personal catastrophe. All it takes is a few drops of love potion on a token of affection, and voila! Instant-connection.

(This event has a blanket warning for dubious consent of the love spell variety. To opt out completely, characters can simply not be in Sunset Falls at the time of the event, which runs through Valentine's Day.)

WHITE HEARTS FESTIVAL

Welcome to Sunset Falls, the most magical place in all of America! Literally. The streets are charged with magical energies, and while it won't be spinning your words into spells, it will give anyone who is magically inclined a comfortable little buzz. Maybe it's the boost you need to get a spell working, or maybe it's just a pep in your step. Confluence-displaced metas who take the Guilds up on their offer to tour the new housing will arrive just in time to witness the an annual tradition: The White Hearts Festival, a festival dedicated to all forms of love - familial, friendship, and romantic.

The whole town is decked out in pinks, golds and reds. Town square has been overtaken by food booths peddling elaborate meals and desserts with various magical effects. (It's probably better not to ask why some of the cookies being handed out are in the shape of anatomical hearts.)

• Eat an emoji cookie and find yourself sprouting heart-eyes, or gaining a flurry of hearts above your head.


• The Bolder Biscuit - by far and above the densest thing you've ever tried to eat - makes you bold. It compels you to march right up to someone and tell them what you think, good or bad.


• And there's also the Firework Delight cake, which makes you shoot off literal fireworks the moment you touch that special someone that makes your life complete... but honestly, they go off when you touch anyone. Sorry if you end up giving off the wrong impression!

In addition, pop-up craft stands sell trinkets that guarantee you'll be together with your people forever and ever. The most popular item on sale this year appears to be the Eternal Bond - which is just an enchanted finger-trap that refuses to let go unless you tell someone a deep dark secret.

There is an altar at the town park where you can make your offering and give prayers to the God of Love in hopes he will smile favorable upon you. Lay your chocolate heart at its base and offer up a prayer to the God so that your life will be full of love and connection.

Truthfully, when it started it wasn't as cutesy as it is now. It became a lot more wholesome when people began to offer only chocolate hearts to the God of Love. Now it's fun for the whole family! ... So long as you don't veer into the woods. Some people still practice the old ways, and there are (what you hope to be) animal hearts nailed to trees. This is Sunset Falls, after all. Weird often goes hand in hand with terror.

LONELY HEARTS

For those of you who don't yet have those special people, lonely hearts still single can collect white rose enamel pins from the festival committee. They're expected to pick someone to give it out to as a declaration of their attraction by the end of the festival. However... there seems to be an issue this year. There's more pins here than there are people in town. Committee members start handing them out to anyone, single or not, and from there that's where things start to get a little weird...

You clip the pin onto your shirt and at once, your life has suddenly become a romcom. Everything is just a little brighter, the sounds a little more musical (sometimes literally), and you're suddenly compelled to reach out and find connection.

And the universe is conspiring to bring it your way! Cliches won't stop happening around you. Suddenly people are determined to give you a makeover so you can catch the eye of an admirer. Your friends are betting on your romantic future. A complex love triangle is springing out of previously platonic friendships.

You're not not limited to one partner, and that partner doesn't need to be romantic. It could be a best friend, or a nemesis that you're compelled to fight over and over again for the joy of it. What matters is the connection and the way the world seems to stop at nothing to give you that perfect three act structure: You Meet, You Lose, You Get.

Reach the end of your romcom's little arc and you'll find yourself freed from the spell... and probably will have some choice words for its caster.

HEARTS ON FIRE

Regardless of how you participate in the festival, everyone is at risk when the town itself falls under a love spell.

This may be unlike anything you've known before. Perhaps it's the first stumbling steps of puppy love. You want to be with this person all the time. Hold their hands and work up the courage for a kiss. Or perhaps this is something fierce and passionate. You want to be kissing them always, pursuing these passions heedless of consequences.

This doesn't need to be a romantic love. It can be strong and familial. Perhaps the sort you've always desired but never had. You could fall into a family unit with others affected by the spell. Compelled to hug each other and say words of encouragement or praise. Perhaps you, while living your own love story, are the best friend in someone else's - offering up the speech that tells them they deserve more than they think they do.

Whatever your flavor of love may be, you're prone to dramatic declarations. Confessions at the drop of a hat. It's go big or go home, and since nobody's going home right now, you might as well go as big as you can. Perhaps you're arranging for Flash Mobs to declare your feelings! Or making plans to move in together despite only having met a few hours ago.

This is all fine and well at first, but it may become clear pretty quickly that characters who try to hold their burning passions are likely to burn themselves! If you're the repressed type and you try to resist the compulsions that the love spell puts on you, you might just burst into flames, and someone will need to put you out. Don't worry — move quick enough, and there won't be any lasting damage, and if there is, the Guilds' healers can help you out.

MEET CUTE-PID

For those paying attention to that sort of thing, one constant of all these wild declarations can be spotted in the background. A tall man with curly blonde hair and an all too charming smile never seems to be far from the romance.

Those who are curious enough to follow will find he retreats to a lavish mansion on the outskirts of town. The mansion has the gaudy and abundant decor of a honeymoon suite on the Las Vegas Strip, with lights attuned to music and a massive twirling heart above the roof of the building. Peer inside and you will see hundreds of tiny viewing windows, each depicting a different romantic story unfolding outside of town. The door to the mansion appears to be locked tight and the windows are magically sealed, but some quick thinking may get you inside.

If anyone wants to engage him, HERE is a top level where we will summarize encounters. The more PCs involved in an encounter, the bigger its outcome will be. We will determine the impact on the god of love on Valentine's Day, so get your comments in by end of day on the 13th! You may also use this top level to ask event-specific questions about the effects on this page! (Please refer general questions about the setting to the FAQ, and refer any player plots to the PLOTTING page.)

Comments

[tinglesense]

"Is that a…what do they call it? A meta power thing?" Peter has other words he might use, but Peter Parker is only supposed to have newfound technology powers, not spider powers he's had since he was 15. He doesn't know that Bart knows about his spider powers, so he has to play dumb about superhuman knowledge. It's a bit of an annoyance, but that's just how it has to be in his mind.

"We can just walk til we find something. I'm not in a rush," Peter says. He's not, either. He's glad to have the company. He likes Bart anyway, but he's even gladder of the company now, thanks to…whatever this is in the air.

"Never been? Well, I dunno where you're from actually, but New York is the best. I'm from Queens, but all of NYC is pretty full of people. There's always places to eat and things to see. But all the boroughs have different cultures 'cause of the people who immigrated there when New York was just becoming New York and they brought culture with them, so it kind of miso-mashed into, like, a Thing. I guess. People say that New York is full of rude people, but they just haven't been there. Yeah, New Yorkers can be kinda rude or gruff sometimes, but we always help each other out when things are tough."

[kid_flash_found]

"Part of the speedster package. Outrun a photon canon, but have to stop for lunch after," Bart half-jokes. Although the canon thing was a little crazy. Nobody needs that in their lives. "It's...something I've always had. I was born with powers, and I don't know that I got anything new coming here."

He shrugs, not knowing how it is with Peter. He knows more than he should, but not enough. "I'm actually kinda from the future. But I never really lived then. Moved around a lot, though. I'd say Keystone City was home, or maybe Central, but they usually weren't where I was actually living."

[tinglesense]

"Whoa. That sounds crazy, outrunning a canon," he says. He could add some crazy thing that he's done, but…secret identity and all that. So he keeps a lid on that, at least for now.

"I wonder if people with powers of their own don't get stuff from the Confluence? If it brings in people that don't have any, it gives some. Hey, congratudolences, you're in a new universe and it might suck but you get to fly now! Or something like that."

He listens to Bart talk about where he's from.

"The future? What year? It was…uh…2023, I think, when I came from. It's hard to remember since half the universe blipped for five years or something, so it wa 2018 and then bam it was 2023."

[kid_flash_found]

"Originally? I was born in 2980," Bart said, thinking about it. "But once I was old enough, my grandmother decided I would be better off with her nephew in the past, well, present. I mean, she was both right and wrong, because he's a terrible mentor, but he did help me get started on the right food."

He shrugs. "Not the craziest thing I've done, but it's definitely not something I'd want to revisit. I just...well, I tried to stop helping people for a while. It...honestly hurt more than the time I got shot. Because there were things I knew I could handle that nobody was."

[tinglesense]

Peter's eyes go real wide at that number.

"You're from almost a thousand years in the future?! That's crazy. But wouldn't going back in time upset the timeline and mess up your present?"

Time travel is more than theoretical to Peter, knowing now what the Avengers had to do to reverse Thanos's snap.

"Or would it create an alternate timeline…"

That's mostly musing out loud.

That last part, oof. He can sympathise a little bit. He reaches for Bart's hand, offering a squeeze without thinking about it. (Also look, an excuse to hold hands? Why not take that?)

"Great power, great responsibility," he says. As light as he tries to keep it, there's still too much emotion attached to that phrase now. May had said that to him before she died, and it does weigh on him.

Oh, but right, secret identity.

"I mean…I heard that once, about superheroes."

It's…an attempt at recovery.

"I guess it's like you have to do it because you're the one that can. If you don't use the power you have for good then what's the point, right? Where I'm from, I read that Iron Man — he's like this super cool big deal hero — started doing things like making clean energy and helping people instead of, uh, making weapons to use in wars. I guess it was some epiphany he had, but that's kind of the same thing? Maybe?"

This is a much better attempt at recovery. He actually knows plenty more about Tony Stark, but what he says is true. They read about him in more than one of his classes in school.

[kid_flash_found]

"It's...well, not a lot about the past survives that long. And the timeline has a certain inertia. In general, one person being in a particular place doesn't have a lot of impact. And I would have probably died pretty soon if I'd stayed. There wasn't anyone to teach me to survive my powers," he said, but he does take the hand, squeezing back, especially when he sees that look. One he's seen so often on people who live their kind of lives.

He wants to say that he knows, that Peter doesn't have to play the secret identity card with him, but it feels wrong. Like he's admitting to knowing things he shouldn't, and that would ruin things. On the other hand, maybe coming clean would be right.

"It's...well, you know. Responsibility. I know I can't save everyone, even if I spent all my time doing that. But I can make a difference, even if it's just helping get a cat out of a tree."

He considers. "Speaking of alternates...one of the weird things I've met is alternate versions of people I know or have met."

[tinglesense]

"So there's like a half-life to the butterfly effect?" he asks, half-joking. But it seems good to know, since they do live in a place where literally anything can happen. Hopefully they won't randomly get yeeted through time but you never know.

He's certainly happy that Bart takes his hand in return. It feels pretty good, actually.

"Well, yeah, no one can save everyone."

He tries to keep emotion out of that, but he doesn't really succeed. His own recent losses cut him too deep.

"You've met alternates of people you know? Oh, man, okay, so I've met alternates of me. And one of them is actually here too? Which is pretty wild. There were three of us but only two of us got sucked up by the Confluence."

Joke's on him, since there will soon be three Peter Parkers here, too. And then four.

[kid_flash_found]

"Maybe more like how people don't understand that global warming is behind those crazy-weird blizzards we've been getting. There's a kind of turbulence in the currents of the timestream, but there are also channels it wants to flow in. So while shifting the path is possible, it generally doesn't move too far. Chaotic systems can still allow for general predictions, or nobody would bother consulting the weather report," he says, figuring a little science is fine. He has his own nerd moments sometimes, they just aren't as obvious.

"I've...never actually met a version of myself. Well, not from an alternate reality. I met a version of myself that I don't think could exist now from a potential future, and I kinda have an evil clone. Usually, though, dimensional travel is even harder than time-travel, and that's hard enough to manage."

[tinglesense]

He doesn't — can't? — get into the whole Thanos thing and changing their timeline to make everyone come back, but when he thinks about it, it's not at odds with what Bart's saying. The Avengers had only had to course correct five years, not a thousand. Movies about time travel always said that one tiny thing, no matter how far back, could change the whole future. But it makes sense that the reality of it would be different.

"It's weird meeting another version of yourself. I mean, I didn't think the multiverse was a real thing until, like, a few weeks ago? Or a few weeks before I got here, anyway."

Wait, hold on.

"You have an evil clone? Your world sounds nuts!" As if being snapped out of existence for five years was less nuts.

[kid_flash_found]

"It could be worse. But it's not for everyone. You have to have a certain level of what might be seen as crazy to keep throwing yourself into danger," Bart said, sighing a little. "I mean, you're from a world with the Avengers, right? I've heard about them. Kinda like my world's Justice League.

"It's...well, not everything needs folks like that. I'm more the guy you need when someone needs to snag all the guns from an armed mob, or catch a high-speed getaway. My cousin and I once teamed up to dismantle the Trickstermobile when James Jesse was on a rampage while he was driving it. Speed isn't usually all that useful, though. Not like strength or flying or supersenses."