hugtopia | video & voice; Story-time for All

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video & voice; Story-time for All

[The video opens on a bare wall and to the sound of very, very corny fanfare. Then Taako's voice cuts in with the sound of applause.]

Yes, yes, welcome one and all to the greatest day of your lives. Today we have a real treat for you folks, so pull up a chair, take a load off and enjoy this banned text we've managed to procure.

[He clears his throat and a puppet appears on the screen - a non-descript looking human priest wearing dark robes and a blue sash around his neck. The voices that read the following lines are similar, but not the same and anyone who knows both Lup and Taako can probably tell it's the twins taking turns to read the passages. People who don't, however, might have a hard time telling them apart.]

"I used to have a lady love,
she journeyed through the sea,"

[A new puppet appears - a beautiful female mermaid with hair that falls just past her breasts. She slides up from the bottom of the screen and the priest turns to her, fawning all over her.]

"Her fins were as the mourning dove,
a mated pair were we.
Our bodies tangled, hand in glove,
a queen and devotee,"

[As the poem progresses, the priest does some...very not PG-13 things to the mermaid puppet. Eventually, the mermaid pushes the priest away, looking tired.]

"But she was called to rise above,
our bond not meant to be."

[Here the mermaid "puppet" flips a double middle finger at the priest and backflips into the sea, leaving him drenched in water.]

"Though I endure, bereft, belove,
I have her guarantee,
I'll be the one she's thinking of,
a little dove told me."

[The priest pines and waits by the water, pantomiming the lament of a forlorn lover as a bird lands next to him, rolling its eyes. The puppet show ends with a curtain drawing across the screen and then the video shuts off. Taako's voice cuts back in once the video is gone.]

Yeah, so the people here? Raunchy as hell. I love it. But then some people were, y'know, boring and said things like--

[Lup's voice takes over smoothly like they're still the same person talking.]

"If any other colonies can hear this message, please respond. This is Havenwell. We're still alive. The city is safe. We will come get you, no matter how far you are. This is not an automated message. Please respond." That there's a radio transmission from "Colony #56'07'4TM", which, obviously, is home sweet home. Not the most interesting, but I won't deny that the archive visits have been… informative.

Anyone else get something fun?

[OOC: It's a joint post! Replies here can be from Taako, Lup, or both of them. If you have a preference, just let us know in the title of your comment or it'll be a roulette of which twin you'll get.

Feel free to use this post to stir up discussion amongst yourselves regarding the lore contributions!]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[You'd best believe Verstael has taken notes of everything he can get his hands on. But, he's willing to share, too.]

I'm beginning to believe we may not even be on a planet. I scoured for hours through texts but many were too battered to decipher. However, I did find something. A diary, written by what sounded to be a farmer. It did not have an exact date. It did, however, note that it was either "pre" or "post" an event called "The Change".

I presume we can guess what "The Change" is referring to, but it could also be something we do not know of as of yet.

The entry read: "The scientists say that once our impact on the environment is lessened that the soil will bounce back and things'll grow better. Not that we'll have any reason to grow things anymore, really. No one'll be eating anymore. Guess we could do contests, grow 'em just to keep something to do. Feels like the city folk aren't really thinking about what it'll do to us out here in the satellite communities, but what're you gonna do, right? It's always been that way."

If this is a diary of one who lived in this area, we may very well be aboard a 'satellite community', whatever the precise definition of that would be.

There's a theory I haven't heard before. You think it might mean a literal satellite?

[If she hadn't spent almost a year traveling through modern space she might not even know what the hell that word means, but thankfully that's a non-issue now.]

I do not know. After all, it's common for words to take on new meanings in different cultures.

However, if you read some of the other entries, does it not sound like the city itself may be going to retrieve survivors?

If it is not a satellite, it may be the city is not as stationary as we believed. I will certainly be asking if this term still has any meaning to the citizens.

Huh. Gonna file that one away as "interesting". But also kind of unlikely- at least, it's unlikely that it's still moving, if it ever was. It'd take some pretty wild magic to move an entire city without anyone noticing.

There is also science. It would be quite a massive contraption, but it's always possible.

What thoughts did you have about it all?

Ehhh, magic, science. Two sides of the same coin in my corner of the world.

Anyway, I try not to come up with too many theories until I have enough information for a starting point. That's why I'm here trying to accumulate more of it. Still letting it all percolate in my noggin.

There can be overlap on mine, but not always. Magiteknology is it's own branch.

[He had his doubts. She was likely keeping her thoughts to herself.]

Hopefully many more have found some pieces.

Magitek, huh? That's a useful term.

[And he can think what he likes, but she's not lying... yet.]

[Heeeeey it's the guy who asked about magic and made some slightly creepy sounding assertions about it. Wassup, my dude?]

You think we're in space? Like up in space? In the stars?

It's a possibility, but it may be that the community was simply far away from the most important city on the world.

The wording of some of the entries did leave me wondering if we had been looking at the city in an overly traditional way, however.

Either makes sense honestly. I'm just-

[He sighs, loud and long.]

I'm so done with living in space.

It would be a first for me, though I admit it would complicate our situation more.

And you? What has your take been on this new information?

Oh you want my hot take, huh?

Welp. [He pops his lips on the P, thinking for a bit. ]

Sounds like to me? They thought they were doing a thing and then super fucked it up. Not entire seemed to be on board either, so? Either only part of the population changed over to robots and survived, or they forced everyone to do it which is.... Yeesh. Not great.

Do you believe they successfully transferred themselves into new bodies?

[He didn't have a settled opinion on it. It could go either way.]

It leaves me wondering if it could be reversed.

[He gestures off camera to the world around them.]

Must've since there aren't any flesh people around. Not the first time I've met a race that yeeted themselves into robots, either.

And, I suppose, if they could do the consciousness transfer one way, they could reverse it. But it'd probably have to be into a blank body. Doing a Dominate Person for the rest of your natural lifespan is just too fuckin' hard. The original consciousness will always be fighting back.

I've no proof of it, but I have wondered if we're dealing with the original people or if we're dealing with robots that have memories uploaded into them.

[It would be tragic, but he'd wondered nonetheless. At times they certainly didn't act human, but it could be a consequence of their longevity.]

...Perhaps if a body were created and never conscious it would be possible.

Now...that's a concept. What are people but a collection of their memories, right?

[Which is why it hurt so much, knowing what she had stolen from him for so long. His memories, his life, the summation of his experience is what made him who he is, who he was. And without them, he'd become...something awful. The worst version of himself with no way to course correct.

Taako bites his lip to avoid frowning as he chases the thought away.]

But if you're thinking of doing some weird ass necromancy and Build-a-Bear yourself a person, that might be a little more complicated. Where are you even going to get the materials that aren't severely black market illegal?

Cloning a body... should not be too difficult. With the right equipment, of course. I have already cloned meat previously, I know the process well.

The more difficult part would be the concept of transferring one's being. Perhaps some form of magiteknology could accomplish this, but it would be no simple task. Transferring memories alone would be simpler, but would that make the body or machine with your memories you? Considering memories are always a part of who we are and integral to everything we do, it would be easy to believe that because the memories have been moved the person has also been moved.

But what if the original bodies also retained the memories? No, I think it would have to be more in-depth than that. Memories influence us, but there is more to the core of our being that makes us who we are.

I wonder... if they discovered their transfer to be incomplete. That may be a cause for mass panic.

You have some creeeeepy hobbies, you know that?

[He stares into the camera for a moment, then shrugs.]

I'm assuming they might still have some version of the original tech that made their transfer possible in the first place. Could be that they destroyed it or it's too old to function, but it might still be around somewhere.

Also? Definitely don't raise that question with any of the locals. Putting that sort of existential crisis into an essentially immortal being is never conducive to your - or my - survival.

I prefer to limit my interactions with the natives to the essentials. There is no need to provoke them, but they also have little to offer other than what tools they have access to. What of 'their own' memories they even retain is even questionable at this point.

[So no. He wouldn't be needlessly trying to draw them into an existential crisis. They already seemed to have gone through plenty of that.]

Perhaps it would be best to search for any parts of the city that have not been accessed in a great length of time. Given that the natives minds seemed to be wiped when it's convenient, anything they've long abandoned and forgotten would likely be something that would trigger such an existential crisis. If I could see the technology for myself... Even if it was no longer fully functional, I'm sure I could have a better understanding of how successful their transfer was.

...I don't see how any of this is 'creepy', though. It's simply progress.

The research? Not creepy. The cloning though? Well, that falls a little bit too far into the necromantic area for ol' Taako.

[He snorts in amusement.]

Not saying creepy is bad - I mean, yeah it is, usually - but I have a skewed perspective on that whole... [He waves his hands.] -thing.

Why are you cloning meat anyway?

Famine. The Empire expanded rapidly. Many lands have been barren since long before I was born, leaving us with many mouths and a shortage of food. My facilities were able to produce mass quantities in order to combat the growing crisis.

It was simply one of several emergencies I was addressing in my work.

Oh. I thought you meant you were cloning meat here and I was thinking "Man, that's a weird ass hobby, but you do you, my guy."

[He snorts and laughs a little.]

What you said makes a loooot more sense. Famine's a real song of a bitch, yeah?

This why you're always so curious about, uh, everything though? Those 'emergencies' you gotta address?

If I was in possession of that amount of equipment I assure you I'd be doing much more.

[How nice it would be to have his lab back instead of being offered the student labs here. It almost felt like being a child again.]

Perhaps. I suppose we're all partially a product of the environments we grew up in. Had I grown up in comfort, maybe I would not be as keen on unearthing the potential threats we face.

But I did not, and that will likely be a fortunate thing.

[Considering the other conversation they've had about magic and all? Taako's kiiinda glad he doesn't have that equipment. He isn't sure what this guy would do with it, or how he'd use the knowledge he gained. He's an interesting one, that's for sure, but Taako is inherently paranoid.]

I mean fair. I grew up in a bad environment too, which is why I peace the fuck outta anything remotely dangerous at the first sign or hint or even a whiff of shit hitting the fan.

So you trying to keep up your experiments or whatever here? Do they even have good labs? I have very little faith after seeing the replicators.

video & voice; Story-time for All

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