Holiday Magic!

At the edges of Ursa farthest from Order's grasp, nestled in the deepest snow, a cluster of pine trees stood as shelter. In the center, a crackling campfire burned, emanating a welcoming warmth and beckoning light to all who might see it.

Around the fire stood three strange platforms made of simple hewn wood planks, like sleds. Each had a sign on a post beside it.

The first's sign depicted a picture of brightly-wrapped gifts, and indeed, plenty of spare wrapping paper and ribbons and the like were piled carefully alongside this. Words, for those who could read, stated: "Deposit gifts here!"

The second, a little more odd, showed a clawed and furred hand drawing on a pad of paper. "Alterations here!" declared this sign; and yes, for those who looked, there were pads of paper, paint, sticks of charcoal to serve as pencils, and the like--again all stacked to one side of the sled.

The third sled's sign bore a picture of the gifts, again, but now sparkling as if with magic. "Completed gifts go here!"

What could this possibly mean..?

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WELCOME to this year's little Origin holiday event, Holiday Magic!

In this event, any characters at all are welcome to participate. This event takes place in three steps; the first and second freely overlap. The event is also intended as a loose OOC artwork thread--see below for more!

1. Characters may place any gift they choose onto Sled 1. This gift can be a silly little item, armor or weapons, food, a gemstone, or Gembounds may even place and give life to a gemstone there. (The sled is magic; the gemstone won't form into a chrysalis just yet...)

2. Any other character may then select a gift to alter, but not to keep for themselves. They can describe or draw alterations on the paper, and then place the paper and gift together onto the third sled. Magic™ from the third sled will enact the changes onto the gift (GM tag to confirm results)! This could be odd changes to a growing character in a freshly Give Life-d gemstone, or new properties granted to armor, an enchantment, or any other changes you can think of. Go wild! Be creative! Bonus points if you post a drawing of your character's artwork attempts in your post, but description-only is fine too!

3. At the end of the event, on December 26th, a GM will randomize the gifts to provide one at random to each participant. Characters may then choose amongst themselves if they wish to swap gifts.

This is intended to be lighthearted fun, so don't worry too much about rules! Also, any combat that might take place will result in combatants being magically repelled from the gift-exchanging site to battle it out elsewhere. Happy Holidays!

The light of the campfire didn't draw Tourmaline's attention because she was cold. But that didn't mean it wasn't inviting. Her curiosity piqued, she slips closer through the snow, peeking around trees as she approached.

Though there's... no one here. Curious. She looks over the sleigh, and the talk of gifts - This seems like Naskital's doing.., she thinks to herself, remembering a time prior, spent exchanging gifts with Arquia and others.

Though she seems to have missed him this time, she's more than happy to oblige a gift. Her first thought was to maybe donate some shiny trinket, but her mind flickers back to one specific stone she had received ages ago. It held magic, she was sure.

Her ear flicks as she pulls it out, setting it into a open box. The deep green of it shines in the firelight, and she wonders what it once belonged to. And before long, she's considering doing something reckless. I could revive it. Maybe it was strange, to give a child to some stranger... but maybe whoever got it would be looking for company and someone to raise. Naskital seemed to always know what he was doing.

And she felt a little bad, having done nothing with this stone for cycles. "Come on little guy, we're going to find you a new home," she whispers to it, even as she drives her magic into it. She winces as something lashes back, stinging around her stone, but it seems the magic still stuck anyway. Ignoring the pain, she'd hurriedly place the lid on top and set the present on the sleigh. The first of many, surely.

...Maybe she'll wait by the fire for the pins and needles to go away.

Tourmaline is giving life to the lost stone described here, which was received from a prior event.

Holiday gifts... Jinyi remembered something of the sort happening before, some number of cycles ago. He hadn't witnessed the exchange of gifts himself, having been absorbed in the development of new chip flavors and enhancement of production efficiency, but the Hive had seen it, so he basically had witnessed it if you didn't think about it too hard anyway.

Now that it was happening again, how could he miss this opportunity to showcase Order's divine, maternal love and generosity? And also to showcase all of Jinyi's hard work on behalf of the Hive, of course. The Drone emerged from the pine trees with heavy, somewhat undignified steps, staggering a little under the large and unwieldy box he was carrying. As soon as the wooden sleds came into view, he breathed a sigh of relief and practically collapsed into the snow as he unloaded the box onto the sled. "Goodness," he laughed breathlessly, mostly to himself. "What a trek! But I guess it's good to get some exercise."

In truth, it wasn't that heavy of a box. But the gift site was far from Order's influence and the tunnels of the Dontas factory, and Jinyi was built for an office job, not carrying boxes miles in the snow uphill both ways. But! Here he was, ready to share his beloved creations with the world. Festive colors flashing across his eerie face, the Drone swept into a bow with a dramatic arm gesture and a billow of red-and-gold robes, though it didn't look like anyone was here to see it [...] :

"One PARTY-sized box of everyone's favorite tasty and environmentally-conscious snack-- TWENTY-FOUR different flavors of DONTAS, including NEVER-BEFORE SEEN, NEWLY RELEASED ULTRA-LIMITED HOLIDAY EDITION! Here for everyone to share and enjoy!" He then played--sang, rather--a jaunty little jingle to go with it. In his pipe-organ voice. The majestic organ sound effects clashed a little with the actual contents of the jingle, but that was all right.

Ah, but one more thing--the residents of these caves didn't particularly enjoy feeling the loving embrace of Order unprompted, did they? Weird as it was, who was Jinyi to go against the customer... "Ah, my dear sibling... if you would?" he coughed.

Unburdened as Yellow was by a party-sized variety pack of chips, they bounded easily after Jinyi. The Collar of the Wind God was around their neck, but they carried only a small kaleidoscope and not their gun--after all, this was in Ursa, the safest place of them all, and they were only going to exchange some gifts.

Mother had given out these kinds of gifts before! They remembered visiting and picking some up with their tall friend Khloros. They hadn't seen him in a long time, either. That seemed to be the nature of things in this place; so many people came and went, and you'd only see them once or a couple of times before you parted ways for perhaps forever. It was lucky that they had found their family in the Hive now, permanent attachments that would forever surround their heart.

They laughed, delighted, at Jinyi's little speech, and clapped politely with small black hands after his jingle. "I'm sure they will love them! Hey, take me back to the factory with you after. I want to try the... limited edition? ... flavors too!" Unfamiliar as the sifaka was with chip capitalism and marketing terms, they were still captivated by the promise of shiny new snacks. "Do you have peppermint?"

They hopped forward after Jinyi to put a small silver kaleidoscope on the first sled, then tried to move the box of chips over for alterations. ... They were not very successful. Even as they tried to conjure a gust of wind to help push it along, the small breeze that resulted was barely enough to ruffle their fur. I must be out of practice with magic... Luckily, their sibling was there to help.

Now, what to draw? First things first, as promised, they would help Jinyi with the side effects of consuming the chip. A big X through a picture of someone with fungus growing out their ears should do--although they disagreed with the cartoonish representation on principle (Hive fungus was NOT that messy!). What else? Some fun effects to go with the flavors... Magical bananas made one sparkle, so why not magical chips? They decisively added rainbow sparkles next to a smiley-faced chip-eater. What was this flavor made of--some kind of blue fruit? They could turn the eater blue! Oh, deer meat... that one should make people grow antlers! Peppermint, just like they were craving! That should make people breathe ice! Or candy canes! Or... both? The indecisive sifaka decided to add a cartoon Gembound breathing ice with candy-cane shaped snowflakes and red and white sparkles! And so on...