Event Eighteen.

[awashmods]

My Own Heart
[ 2/8 - 2/15 ]

Nothing is more romantic for the month of Valentine's Day than touching someone's heart, right?

... Really, the Town just takes everything far, far too literally. Because as of 2/8, when the event begins, everything's going to get a little bit messy for characters.

It doesn't matter how you end up touching someone -- you might reach out to pat their shoulder, or stumble into them, or feel a Town-driven urge to touch them -- but as soon as you do, you'll find yourself (and the person you touched) stumbling into...somewhere else entirely.

It's not the Town anymore. Instead? It's their heart. It'll come across as an area strongly influenced by the person you touched, almost eerily so. The heart might be somewhere very important to them, or somewhere that they hate, but which left a strong mark on them. It's distorted, twisted, with euclidean geography and aspects that just don't seem quite right.

That's right. For this event, you'll be diving right into the heart of anyone you touch, accidentally or otherwise, and dragging them along for the ride. What someone's heart looks like is entirely up to the player, of course -- a closed off heart might have monsters to protect it, or traps, or magic in place. An open heart might be a little too open -- maybe you'll be at risk of stepping right off the edge and into nothingness. A heart might treasure and protect one person, but try to harm another person that it doesn't care about near enough.

Hearts really can't hide any secrets once you're in that deeply, though it's all very... abstract. The heart's issues might come across more symbolically than anything; it won't always be cut and dry. For example, a character who struggles a lot with authority might manifest that by constantly having the poor characters in it chased by very vicious police officers, while a heart that longs for romance might just bury you in love letters. The possibilities are truly endless, because everyone's heart is different.

Of course, you'll want to be careful while you're in there. If you damage too much of the heart, that damage will reflect in the real world -- a character whose heart has been physically damaged will start to lose color. The more damaged the heart's been, the more color they'll lose. The more color a character loses? The less emotion they'll feel, as if they're being deadened to the world, as if they just can't bring themselves to care about anything anymore. This will last for up to a week after the event ends.

So even if that heart's trying to kill you and the person that got dragged along... maybe be careful, okay? Unfortunately, what it takes to return from a heart also depends on the heart in question...and what someone is missing from their lives. A heart that's lonely might just need someone's company for awhile. A heart that needs a hug might really just need you to hug the person (nice way to be invasive in their heart, jerk). If you spend long enough in there, you'll probably get a pretty good idea of what's necessary to make things a little more right (you are deep in their heart, after all. It's impossible not to get a sense of how they feel at least a little). The more attached the heart is to you, though, the more you're going to have to do to get it to let you go and return to the real world -- the heart knows what it wants, after all!

If you have any questions, please ask them here. The event log for this event will be up on 2/8. Thanks everyone!