happyheartsstaff: (Default)
๐ป๐’œ๐’ซ๐’ซ๐’ด ๐ป๐ธ๐’œ๐‘…๐’ฏ๐’ฎ ๐’ฎ๐’ฏ๐’œ๐น๐น ([personal profile] happyheartsstaff) wrote in [community profile] funnyhearts2019-01-29 02:26 pm
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INAUGURAL TEST DRIVE MEME




TEST DRIVE MEME: WELCOME TO HAPPY HEARTS


You wake up in a padded box. It rocks, gently, as though suspended in mid-air. You begin to stir, confusion or distress pushing you to try to sit up — and then the air begins to smell sweet, and you fall back asleep.

You wake up in a padded box. For a moment, you are beatifically calm. You don't know how you got here, or why, but that isn't really all that important. You don't need to know where you are. You're just... here. And here is a wonderful place to be.

But there is a niggling suspicion growing in the back of your mind. A suspicion that here is not somewhere you wanted to be. That it is not where you're supposed to be. You remember... chasing a white rabbit (or was it a person)? A mirror? Bright light, and green ivy crawling over your skin... Before you can worry too much, the box jolts, and then settles, and after a long moment the walls fall from around you to reveal —

A hotel lobby?

"Welcome to the Happy Hearts Hotel and Casino," says an attendant behind a desk. "We're so pleased you could join us for our grand opening gala. We have your room keys and Empathies here, please make an orderly line and we'll hand them out once we've confirmed identities. After that, feel free to explore the hotel! We highly recommend starting with the casino. Everyone's a winner here in Happy Hearts!"

Is this normal? It doesn't feel normal. And hey — you could swear you had shoes before!


I. THE CASINO FLOOR


As you pass through the entrance to the casino floor, an attendant passes you a small bag of chips. The casino is loud and bright and filled with games of every kind — you want to play poker? They've got a table for that. Sabacc? There's a table for that, too. Slots, pachinko, and bingo are also available. The attendant in the lobby wasn't lying, either — everyone who plays wins. Everyone, every time.

Servers wander the floor with trays of shotglasses full of multi-coloured liquids, offering them to every oyster "Compliments of Her Royal Highness." If you're expecting alcohol, though, you'll be surprised — these drinks are teas made of the distilled emotions of every oyster in the hotel. Each colour tea corresponds to a different emotion, and as soon as you take a sip, you feel overcome with that emotion.
JOY — the distilled essence of happiness, this tea makes even the most rough and tumble of oysters giddy with happiness — for a moment. The effect fades into a sense of general contentment after a few seconds, and that itself fades away slowly over the course of twenty minutes.
ANGER — this tea, anger in liquid form, can make the most even-tempered of oysters ready to absolutely blow a gasket. For twenty minutes, anyone who drinks this tea will find themselves much more easily annoyed, frustrated, and all around irritable and snappy.
SADNESS — distilled sadness is a potent tea, capable of turning a stoic, stalwart oyster into a blubbering mess in moments. Events that may have previously only been a minor disappointment become the end of the world, every repressed unhappiness comes to the fore, and for twenty minutes, any oyster who drank a sadness tea can hardly keep themselves together.


II. MAKE YOURSELF AT HOME


If gambling isn't to your interest, there are many other areas of the hotel to explore! For the moment, only The Pool Of Tears and the Pig & Pepper buffet are available for oysters to peruse, but the staff will assure anyone who asks that the other facilities will be open by the next day. Unfortunately, that means no one can buy any swimsuits from This Elegant Thimble, but the staff aren't going to kick anyone out of the pool for jumping in in their clothes! The Pig & Pepper serves lunch foods from across all different cultures, offering something for everyone, and some things you've never even heard of.

Maybe you just want to be alone — well, that's what you have your room key for! Oysters room on the second and third floors of the hotel, one to a room. You were assured your room would be exactly what you'd always wished for — and for some, that's right! It's exactly as you would have decorated it yourself. But for others, their rooms are totally wrong. A grizzled cowboy can't have a pink room! Hotel staff are firm, though: every room is exactly as its owner wants it to be. Search your feelings, oyster. You know it to be true.




III. YOU'VE BEEN NAUGHTY


Curiosity is not, on its own, a trait the staff want to discourage. Oysters are free to search for ways out of the hotel, but they won't find anything — there are no doors anywhere in the lobby or the casino, the windows are impenetrable, the walls don't crumble no matter how hard anyone hits them. The elevator between floors has no service hatch, and there are no stairs to take. The hotel is, at least so far as anyone can tell, a completely closed system.

Now, in light of this, Happy Hearts knows some oysters can be a little... reactionary. Especially when cornered, especially the ones with powers or abilities beyond the average human. With this in mind, any oyster found to be destructive or combative won't be punished. Not yet. They will, however, be quickly incapacitated by hotel staff, drugged to incoherence, and brought discretely to a hidden back room. No one notices these oysters disappearing, nor the doors they must have been dragged through.

In this room, troublesome oysters sit, paralyzed, across from a woman in red. She smiles, and offers candy from a bowl on her desk, and laughs to herself when she remembers the oysters can't take one.

You're new, she says, kindly, so it's understandable that you're having trouble adjusting to the hotel. We promise to do all we can to make your stay here as fulfilling as possible, so you have nothing to worry about. Your experience is our top priority.

She plucks a candy disk from her bowl, and unwraps it slowly.

But you must know: if you endanger our other guests again like you have today, there will be punishments. We pride ourselves on the emotional experience we offer our oysters, and we can't let anything get in the way of that. For everyone's safety and happiness, you understand.

She pops the candy in her mouth, sucks for a moment, and smiles broadly.

That's all.

The oyster is brought, still paralyzed and incoherent, back to the hotel. No one notices them return. The paths taken through the hotel to bring them to the woman in red fade from their mind as soon as they arrive back on the hotel floor. They're left in the lobby to sit and think until the paralysis wears off.

And then they can go back to having fun in the casino!


IV. HEY! LISTEN!


At the end of the day, every oyster's Empathy device buzzes, pings, and lights up — there's a message waiting for them!
A woman with red hair and a teal dress, sat on a throne with her hands held delicately in her lap and her legs crossed daintily at the ankle, looks into the camera, smiling.

"Hello, my dear oysters! We're so pleased you could join us. I am Victoria Hart, the humble Queen of this realm, and I wanted to personally welcome you to the Happy Hearts hotel, and thank you for your gifts. We will not squander them, dears, as we will not allow your stay with us to be anything less than perfect. If you need anything at all, I'm sure hotel staff will be happy to provide, and I will be keeping an eye on all of you, to ensure your experience remains a positive one.

Welcome, darlings. This is the beginning of something wonderful."
The message saves to each oyster's Empathy, and an app pops up on the screen: the community bulletin board. The queen doesn't respond to any messages sent to her, but the other oysters might. It's worth a shot, right?



Welcome to the first TDM of Happy Hearts, a new panfandom roleplaying game here on DW! If you have any questions, please direct them to the first comment on this page. Happy playing, oysters!
polydeukes: (Default)

[personal profile] polydeukes 2019-03-02 02:07 am (UTC)(link)
The open door is a good offer and she does leave it open before making her way in further, eyes scanning the rest of the room as she takes it all in. "Reminds me of someone I know."

She shouldn't keep lingering on Hope, but there's something about his seriousness that reminds Josie of her - it's hard not to leave an impression when you're constantly focused on how terrible the world is. Not that Hope hasn't earned it.

"But I think that if she can learn how to be a team player so can you. Believe me, we were pretty sure there was no hope for her for a while."
duelo: (extra โ™ฆ 08)

[personal profile] duelo 2019-03-02 05:39 pm (UTC)(link)
Derek lets his hands fall back to his lap and he lifts his eyebrows with interest when she says that his sentiment reminds her of someone she knows. He feels bad for that person, whoever he or she is because it's a horrible feeling knowing that spending time with him tends to only ever get others tangled up in danger. It makes for a pretty lonely existence, spending all of his time alone to protect the people around him. It's hard for Derek to imagine someone else living as he does.

"It's not about me not knowing how or not wanting to be a team player," he replies with a smile that doesn't match the look in his eyes, the latter of which is more saddened and resigned. "When someone needs me, I step up. I fight the good fight with the rest of them, back home."

Clearing his throat, Derek puts his hands on the mattress on either side of himself and leans back a little. His eyes flash an icy glowing blue for a split second. "What are you thinking? If I'm going to jump into this, you need a plan. I'm not really an idea man, but I can be the brawn if you can be a brain."
polydeukes: (Default)

[personal profile] polydeukes 2019-03-06 08:27 pm (UTC)(link)
She thinks she sees his eyes flash, but it happens so fast she thinks it might be a trick of the light. It doesn't help that werewolves don't have blue eyes where she's from - it's all gold.

"Clarice and I theorized that if they're bringing us in and bringing food in and all that kind of stuff, there has to be some kind of entrance. We went poking around in the kitchens and stuff, but we haven't found anything yet. Right now we don't really need brawn so much as extra eyes."

Once they have a guaranteed exit, they can make the next plan to get past it.
duelo: (ฯ‰ะฝั”ฮท โ„“ฯƒฮทั”โ„“ฮนฮทั”ั•ั• ยขฮฑะผั”)

[personal profile] duelo 2019-03-08 06:24 pm (UTC)(link)
"There's definitely a way out if there's a way and there's a way in if we're here," Derek agrees, nodding. The problem is that it isn't going to be that simple. If it were, he's certain that most people would've found their way back home by now. If Derek is honest, up until today, he'd sort of been thinking that staying in this place really might not actually be so bad. It isn't like he's got anything to go home to, after all.

Now he's not so sure.

"It won't be that easy," he replies, shaking his head. "There's no way it'll be that easy. It'll be somewhere that we don't have ready access to," he adds thoughtfully. If they're meant to be kept, in some cases against their will, the entrance and exit won't be somewhere that they can come and go as they please. At least, not if the people who run this place are smart, they won't.
polydeukes: (Default)

[personal profile] polydeukes 2019-03-08 09:41 pm (UTC)(link)
"I don't think you're wrong there." Because he does have a point - if they're trying to keep them contained, then they'll want to hide all the possible exits. "But they can't hide them all forever. Maybe we should be paying more attention to whoever's running this place and how they come and go."