metalogs | LOVE POTION #9

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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.)

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[David's grinning between sips of his tea while Balthier talks.]

You and I are going to need weekly discussions at this rate. Do you have any idea how much I've longed for someone to talk to like this? You're brilliant, Balthier, and the way you think about things is familiar but refreshing.

[He missed Jane Foster because she asked things like this sometimes.]

Okay, yes, I can iterate the dance, and I theoretically could synthesize, but what I get can't impart creativity itself. I don't have the spark for creativity in a lot of fields. So let's actually look at it as a comparison to music instead of cooking as a starting point. Say I was to acquire the skills to play a certain instrument from someone, and let's go for obscure for my world. I pick up how to play a lute. I don't have the creative spark myself to make new pieces of lute music. But I can synthesize from principles and pieces I know from other instruments. I could iterate a piece of piano music to the lute or lute to the piano, because that relies a lot on theory, rather than full on creativity. Will it sound as good as someone who has a creative spark doing an adaptation? No. But it will sound true.

Cooking? That I do have a creative spark for on my own. While I do work with recipes, and sometimes even pick up new recipes from people who just KNOW how to do certain things, I bring my own experiences, preferences, creativity, and even the mindfulness of who my audience is into play to create something new, or adapt something old. I can even make a new dish, but again, that's a spark in myself mixing with the absorbed skill of cooking from my father, and years of practice. With technology, where I'm actually just a prodigy and capable of great intuitive leaps of my own, I can go further. These glasses I made by hand, and they're pretty advanced for my world. Put me in a room with other great tech minds and honestly, I'd probably become one of the best tech minds of several generations.

[Hopefully that explains it all.]

I've got to warn you, I tend to cook for my friends. So you better just be forthright and start thinking about what you like, what your allergies are, and when you're going to draw a line to tell me to stop cooking for you. Just don't expect baked goods. I'm terrible with those. That I lack the talent for.

[The figure skating leaves David flustered for a moment. The guy didn't even seem bothered that it was something David was a) somehow missing, b) planning on stealing back from someone, and c) that he was working with a god to do it. Damn, he could like this guy. But what really leaves him flustered was thinking back. He'd only ever shown his skating prowess to one person before and the memories of that day were... Well, not for public consumption.]

Maybe I will sometime.

[ Balthier is wearing a smile of his own at David's grin and enthusiastic conversation. ] You will clearly have to drag me kicking and screaming to any such discussions. I think this is the first time I've been called brilliant by a certified genius. [ The only person in his life who came close to that was his father, and he was both nowhere near as intelligent as David and also too much of a narcissist to give anything but backhanded compliments. ]

I have been blessed with no food allergies and an adventurous palette. I look forward to our extravagant meals, which I will gladly provide extravagant tableware for.

[ Balthier has seen a lot of weird things. He's not particularly worried about the details if the underlying reasoning makes sense to him, though the idea of losing something of yourself certainly sounds unappealing. Since there is a chance to get it back, though, he presumes David will figure that out. ]

Speaking of, you asked about the Strahl, which had three excellent full service sets of tableware and one of the best collections of wine in Ivalice. Ah, I hope someone is enjoying that in my absence.

She was originally a military prototype. My father worked on her. Client turned her down -- too expensive. She has a collapsible dual wing structure that allows for greater speed and maneuverability, though does require more upkeep. I may have liberated her to escape the city and taint my father's career. Healthy teenage rebellion.

She's a medium sized ship -- can hold a crew of 6-10, takes two to man her. Full dining and sleeping quarters. Upgraded her over the years for both systems and luxury. Kept some of my favorite antiques and books onboard. We were countryless and lived everywhere -- open invitation in almost every port in and out of the empire.

I expect my technical expertise is quite different from yours. We don't have computers in the same way -- our technology runs heavily on the Mist, which is a sort of life or energy force that runs through everything in our world. Using magick is channeling the Mist. The Strahl ran on that as a power source. Fran and I built a lot of tuners and blockers, though. It can be easy to override the system in flares or lose power in lower areas. Built a cloaking device for her -- that came in handy more than once. I modded the bike I have too -- two seats, extremely fast. That made it through with me, at least.

[ He gets a sheen to his eyes thinking about his ship, about Fran. He hopes Vaan is taking decent care of it. Penelo will keep him in line. He wonders if Fran has stayed with them, or gone her own way. ]

Clearly you haven't known the right certified geniuses in your life. I'm glad to help correct that.

[Extravagant tableware? Balthier was going to get himself talked into helping David host a proper, small, multi-course meal for friends some day. It was absolutely going to happen.]

I warn you, I like wine, but I'm not a sommelier. Don't have the nose for it. But I am decent at pairings. Hopefully that will meet any standards you have.

As for the Strahl, I'm also sad not to see her. She sounds truly beautiful, and I admit, there's something truly romantic about living in the sky as a concept. Though I suppose I should feel blessed because back home I live on a tropical paradise island, so we all get our little wonders we get to miss. I also REALLY wish I could get my hands on her engine. I want to know what it feels like to my other power, and to see what the ship as a whole feels about you.

[ Balthier will in no way protest helping host a fancy dinner party. ]

I’ve a nose for wine and an excellent palette though I have my work cut out for me here. It’s both invigorating and disorienting to have my knowledge suddenly have holes in it. Ingredients and labels aren’t the same but the principal remains. And I have a habit of leading so it gives me something to do while leaving you to your expertise. [ He did not miss that David likes having someone else to lead and that suits Balthier extremely well. ]

Now you have me intrigued again on your abilities. Truly a shame I can’t show you the Strahl but I’d be curious what you saw on the hovbike especially given something about the confluence changed it’s mechanism — I can’t access the Mist here and neither can it.

Living in the sky is wonderful, though. I’m finding myself reluctant to choose somewhere to live.

[He's done leadership before. To say he'd fucked it up a lot and come to realize he was a great second, well, it would be an understatement. For now he's definitely considering what sorts of complicated foods he could work with here. Damian was the only person he'd cooked for before that had a complicated, aristocratic palette. Getting to challenge himself at that level of cooking was going to be a delight. Plus it could occupy his mind when he needed distracting.]

I will happily see the bike sometime if you want. Especially if you're going to need to be aware of what changes it's got going on here. Because I don't even know what the Mist is, so that it's changed isn't a surprise.

[Ah, choosing somewhere to live. David sighs.]

I'm having trouble too. I'm worried about surveillance. I'm actually considering going to scout the cities they've suggested. From the initial pitch, Excelsior sounds like my sort of place, but I'm worried about being monitored too much, so I've got some looking into it to do.

[ Balthier has had the opposite, constantly trying to stay under the radar or as a loner and drifting toward leadership. He’s finally starting to accept that. ]

There’s something deeply calming about Mist and realizing that regardless of status or training or anything else, we are all connected to the same energy. Humbling I think, and also connective. Like reading good literature or seeing good art. A sense of connection well beyond the here and now.

Ah someone rational. I was talking to Peter about the absurdity of carrying around a surveillance device and he seems to think that was entirely responsible. Maybe I’m an old man pirate but I don't particularly care for others being able to find or track me. Another perk of my ship — I was in charge of any surveillance. I’m finding myself leaning toward the city for the access to resources but the surveillance is heavier. Certainly more research to do — that was how I ended up here today. I don’t think I’ll be staying in Sunset Falls. [ Speaking of… he has another appointment with the guild today. He cold blow it off but he’s not particularly keen to do so when he’s hoping they’ll give him both funds and access to starting an antique shop. He’s going to have to get moving soon, loathe as he is to let this afternoon come to an end. ]

I admit, I've never felt anything like this Mist then. I wish I had. There's not much in the way of deeply calming experiences for me back home, even when it comes to art. Literature... Well, with my powers, I can't read as much as I want to. I used to love science-fiction books, because it was so speculative and about the very nature of humanity. It got predictive and I got a little too good at tech so it bored me. I miss pleasurable reading.

[Peter, whoever that was, was clearly unwise. But David smirked. He didn't have to worry about it with his issued phone. No, that he could absolutely turn the monitoring off with.]

If you'd like, I could disable any inherent monitoring software and hardware that is in the phone you have. The technopathy allows me to do that. Unless another technopath gets at it or it gets toggled back on by some sort of phishing attack, the way that I can encrypt it should keep you more or less safe from that. But I can let you know what Excelsior is like if you're interested. It seems the most tech focused and so the one I'm most worried about. Little Love is, to my suspicions, the least likely to be heavily monitored. That's the vibe I get from those sorts of Small Town, America places.

[If Balthier needed to get a move on, David wouldn't stop him. He could use some time to think through today, and see if he couldn't escape Sunset Falls before whatever was going on here caught him up again.]

Alas, it’s such a misfortune that I don’t have my literature collection. I’ll have to see what I can recall.

I will happily take you up on disabling any tracking on my phone. The map and messaging are useful but I don’t like the reciprocal data relay. Speaking of…I cannot express how deeply disappointed I am to say I am needed elsewhere shortly. Please help me put your contact information into this phone, and please assure me we will see each other again sooner rather than later. I promise I am not exaggerating in saying this has been the most enjoyable exchange I have had in a long time — slaying gods and all.

[ Balthier hands over his phone. He is certainly happy to take help where his own skills are limited. ]

The map does require a certain degree of data exchange between your phone, cell towers, and satellites, so that's always going to be a bit of complication. The rest I can easily deal with.

[But he smiles as Balthier talks and holds out his phone. David doesn't even take the thing in hand, he merely touches it briefly before gesturing for Balthier to put it away.]

I promise we'll see each other soon if I can arrange it. I might actually need to borrow you for something if you don't decide in the next few hours that you regret this whole conversation. If you do, text me and tell me to leave you alone. My phone number is already in there, I took the liberty of favoriting myself in your contacts and putting me in speed dial as number seven. Now get moving. I can do the rest of the work on your phone while you're walking. I'm interfaced with your phone right now, and I'll 'lock' it on the way out.

Please stay presumptuous. It’s quite charming. [ He pockets the phone and stands, but before he goes he takes David’s hand and and kisses his knuckles. ] Until next time. [ He will absolutely be texting David, as soon as he figures out how that works. He’s a quick study though. ]

[Oh. David's heart, free of the spell entirely, fluttered at the kiss he was given. Charming, so damn fucking charming. Damn fucking sky pirate mimicking something only one person had ever done before. He was definitely going to be in David's thoughts for a bit.]

Until next time, Balthier. Now go, don't be late. Not even fashionably. Get more settled here before you get up to that.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

LOVE POTION #9

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