funnyhearts | 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!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I'm familiar with all three of them.

[If this were in person, there would definitely be some high pitched whine-y noises. But this is text so she's just going to hope and pray that this Elijah isn't from a weird timeline where his niece doesn't exist yet.]

Hi, Mr. Mikaelson, I'm a friend of Hope's.

[Please don't eat her.]

I assumed as much, given the other names you mentioned. Given any friend of Hayley's wouldn't have mentioned Salvatore or Forbes.

I figured that might catch the Crescents if they're here. They go to my school. Hope goes to my school.

[OH MY GOD JOSIE GET A GRIP.]

I'm Alaric Saltzman's daughter.

So you're Caroline's daughter, then. [He'd suspected as much with the mention of Forbes but confirmation was always good.]

And you're alone here?

Edited 2019-02-01 01:26 (UTC)

[Part of her wants to go SHHHHHHHHHH but she's going to tell Caroline in a bit so she'll just ... hope she doesn't see it before that.]

My mom's here, and so is Uncle Damon.

[Long pause.]

But they're from before I existed.

At least you have some familiar faces then. Given your parentage, Damon will likely be willing to look out for you. And of course Caroline will.

Do you plan to tell either of them?

I'm working on it. It's ... a lot to tell all at once.

Given how much your family has done for my niece, you can ask anything of me until you're ready to tell them what happens in their future.

[God having an Original vampire actually volunteering to keep an eye out for her is weird, but since he's brought it up ...]

Actually, there's something unrelated that I could use your help with. Can we talk in person?

Where would you like to meet?

How do you like baccarat?

I've played a time or two. Do you gamble regularly?

Nope, but the baccarat table makes a fairly decent landmark.

I'll meet you there.

[While waiting for him to get there, she's managed to scrounge up a few supplies. A lighter from one of the rooms, a piece of paper, and a few other ingredients. When he arrives, she's scribbling a message to her sister and folding it in half.

Then she looks up to see if she can flag him down, because she isn't 100% sure he knows what she looks like.]

[Elijah doesn't take long before he's walking towards the table where she's waiting for him, gaze drifting over the people in the area.]

[She glances up and offers a small smile.]

Thank you for coming. Hopefully this won't take too long.

Even if it does, I have no demands on my time here so take as much time as you need. [Depending on what she's planning to do anyway.]

Although, what is it you're planning to do?

Try and send a message to Hope?

[She would say her sister, but unfortunately while she doesn't have anything of or from Lizzie on her, she is wearing the talisman Hope gave her for her birthday. She'd be the easiest point of contact to reach.]

But I can't do magic without channeling it from someone or something so ... you're pretty much the biggest source of magic around.

And given you're attempting to reach my niece, the easiest to reach out to. Do you need me to do anything specific before you begin the spell?

Actually, yes. Hold this with it on?

[She holds up the lighter to him, and flicks the switch so that the flame jumps out the top.]

I couldn't find a candle, so we're improvising. And I need one hand on you to channel you.

[Elijah takes the lighter in one hand, keeping it lit before offering her his other hand.]

I hope this works. It will make things that much simpler if you can reach people outside of this hotel.

Agreed.

[She closes her eyes and tries not to let it go to her head. Channeling an Original, magic that's so old that it's beyond time, in it's own way is a bit like being chained to a rocket and she doesn't want to lose herself in this. She needs to stay focused on the mission, no matter what.

With that, she begins to chant, holding up her note and starting to burn it slowly.

For a while, the magic starts to bubble and crest, and then it just ... fizzles out, almost like that bubble was just popped with a finger, blowing out the lighter and letting the ashes of the message drop around them.]

[Which is honestly not far off from what he'd expected, but it had still been worth the trying. And if it had reached Hope, it would have been more for Josie's benefit than his own, at least here.]

Do you want to try something else?

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