thenashira | Game Update: May II 2377

Weather & Recap ⭐︎ By Daylight ⭐︎ By Starlight

🎶 Recommended Listening: Transformers Prime Main Theme - Brian Tyler ♪
may ii 2377
EPISODE 2: Bathhouse Blitz! Save the Black Cat and the Golden Butterfly!
May 17 - May 24

Weather: Chalra City is enjoying a balmy and sunny late spring with some light rain here and there. The inland breeze from the nearby beaches brings a cool touch and the promise of summer, and flowering forsythia adds splashes of bright yellow to many parts of the city. The highs for the month average around 72°F/22°C, with lows around 50°F/10°C.
Star Suite: The Library has been unlocked! Every Nova Knight will also recover a memory from their past life. More details in the post below.
Recap: In Episode 1, you successfully investigated and foiled your very first plot by the enemy! After Nautis identified the high-end complicated-patterns fashion craze around the Dan Flashes boutique as originating from the Harbingers, the Nova Knights did some thorough investigating and then, in their first serious battle since the night at Lucky Stars, defeated Dan Flashes himself. You can find the previous month's event log here.

You can see what the Harbingers themselves are up to in the aftermath of the event in the Episode 1 Harbingers Gaiden! Mostly a lot of bickering, but they're now aware of the threat posed by the Nova Knights, and they're already making plans to eliminate them.

BY DAYLIGHT
⭐︎ Now that Dan Flashes is out of business, a new business has taken over the space — so quickly, in fact, that it doesn't seem like it was ever vacant at all. There's now a frozen yogurt joint in its place called FroYo Better Believe It!. The only thing Nautis finds suspicious about it is the fact that people like frozen yogurt at all.

⭐︎ Shelley Lustre, art teacher at Everwave Academy, has announced that he'll be holding an art contest for the students. The theme: hidden beauty. Given his already very polarizing personality and deep fondness for seashell-studded sculpture, this promises to be a very...divisive competition.

⭐︎ Public bathhouses are a staple in Chalra City, and they're no exception to the march toward modernization. Newer public baths are bigger and boast much more amenities than their more traditional counterparts, which is precisely why the historic Golden Butterfly Bathhouse is at risk of going out of business! Run by Granny Chocho, whose family has been operating this bathhouse for the last two hundred years, the Golden Butterfly is located right around where the red-light district and the most historic part of the city intersect. But what the Golden Butterfly lacks in fancy amenities, it makes up for with its historic charm, attentive service, and hard-scrubbed cleanliness — which is exactly what its faithful regulars have been trying to spread the word about.

If you pass through that part of town this week, you might meet some customers and even Granny Chocho herself handing out flyers to try and recruit new customers — and if you bring the flyer with you, you get 50% off your entry fee. Not a bad deal, especially if you like quiet and simple! It might be worth checking out, though you'd have to enter as a civilian.

At the end of the week, though, the flyers are a little different — now they're offering a discount on the new scented bath salts the Golden Butterfly is selling! You're not familiar with the brand — a pearl in a stylized oyster shell, bearing the text Seaside Lustre — but they're being advertised as being great for both relaxation and rejuvenation. Apparently, you can have it all!

BY STARLIGHT
⭐︎ Recovered Memory: In the couple of days following the Dan Flashes fight, everyone will recover a memory from their past life — specifically, their final moments in the fight against the Abyss. More than just the dying wish, this is a full memory of whatever last conversation, fight, or whatever they had before dying in the final battle aboard the Nashira. You're not required to, but you're welcome to detail the contents of your character's memory in the thread for recovered memories below. You can also keep track of your character's past life memories with our handy-dandy info page template!

⭐︎ Hideout Status: As a result of everyone's tidying efforts earlier in the month, it's actually pretty nice in here now! There's a big sectional couch for lounging around, at the very least. It's even starting to feel kind of homey.

Another fruit of your labor is that a new part of the crashed ship has become available: you can now access the Library, a modest-sized room with floor-to-ceiling shelves, every last one of them packed with books. Magic books! Much like a modern tablet but with actual pages, these individual books can hold a wealth of magically-stored information and recall what you wish to learn on its pages. Naturally, none of these books are in the local language, but in standard Hassalean. That's not a problem for you guys, though — perhaps due to your recently recovered memories, you all discover that you also have the ability to speak and read Hassalean, as though you simply downloaded the knowledge into your brain. Neat!

If you'd like to have your character peruse the library, you can reply to the thread below to have the mod roll for what they find.

There's also a small hydroponic garden along one corner, though nothing is currently planted in it.

⭐︎ The Rewards page has been updated with the next Star Suite upgrade: the next room to unlock is the Aquarium, and the reward will be a Silver-level Star Suite power. Save up those SP!

⭐︎ Intel: Thanks to the missions earlier in May, you all know quite a lot more than you started! To recap: you now know that one of the Harbingers is named Prince Shellustria, and his magic is of the Glamour domain.

You also learned that the data Nautis needs to locate the Star Map fragments was stored in the soul of the ship's mascot, a black cat named Niangniang with whom Nautis does not seem to have been on good terms. Nevertheless, she's definitely been reincarnated on Earth too, so you'll need to find this cat so Nautis can retrieve the necessary data. Apparently recovering data from someone's soul is a perfectly safe, painless process, but the way she emphasizes these points makes you feel like maybe she hopes something bad happens to this cat. Anyway, she's working on a means of tracking down this elusive mascot, so she'll get back to you with more info later!

⭐︎ The Fate of Nova Zenith: Late at night on May 17, everyone receives an uncharacteristically subdued update from Nautis. Apparently Nova Zenith read through some books in the library about what was known to the Hassaleans about the Abyss and decided to investigate on his own — and ran afoul of Prince Shellustria himself. Unfortunately, Nova Zenith was outmatched on his own, and before Nautis could summon any backup, he was overpowered by Shellustria and claimed by the Abyss. He isn't dead, but captive, and he can be saved if they defeat the Abyss — but all the same, the loss of the oldest member of their group will doubtless rock the rest of the Nova Knights.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Oh, wow! I've been wondering if you could play it like a real guitar!" Nova Sunbeam hops up to sit on the back of the couch by Nova Mortis, looking thrilled. "Gosh, you're really good, too! What're you playing?"

Edited 2025-06-06 22:32 (UTC)

The riff stumbles into a discordant squeal as Nova Mortis starts slightly in her seat. She'd been too focused on playing to notice him. She looks back down at her guitar, her face mostly unreadable behind the mask, but don't worry: she still just kinda gives off sad vibes.

"Just scales," she says, then begins picking out scales again at a rapid pace, and despite her humility, it absolutely fucking rips.

"Wow!!" He's really impressed. "I wish my Nova Knight weapon was an instrument too, then I could jam out with you! Wouldn't a magic drum be so cool? Or a magic cello? Or a magic keyboard?"

She can't help it...she actually laughs a little bit. Just the tiniest sound, muffled by her hand. Something about Nova Sunbeam really...well, lights up the room, and she just kind of says the first thing that comes to mind.

"They have tambourines at karaoke..."

He grins at her. "Wow, yeah, a magic tambourine would be awesome! Buuut... I could still go bring a regular tambourine -- or anything else! -- back here to jam with you anyway!"

He jumps to his feet right away, without waiting to hear what she thinks about it. "Wait right here, okay? I'll be RIGHT back!"

Nova Mortis nods. She can tell he will in fact be right back. Or at least, he's going to try. So she waits.

Kalim is pretty prone to getting distracted, but this time he knows he can't waste ANY time at all. He grabs the first instrument he can find at his apartment and hurries back with it as fast as he can... It does still take a bit, though, because it's a little bit too big to just teleport back with, so he has to get a taxi back to the arcade.

About fifteen minutes later, Nova Sunbeam returns to the hideout with a largeish goblet drum inlaid with mother of pearl. It looks like it's probably an antique.

"Here!" he announces, holding it up. Jamil will probably be mad that he brought this to the hideout, but it's fine! he DOESN'T HAVE TO FIND OUT! "Let's play!"

Unfortunately, Jamil is in fact present at the scene in the form of Nova Crescent, and he feels his soul leave his body when he sees what Kalim brought back. It is definitely an antique. A one-of-a-kind heirloom antique, in fact, and one Jamil had begged Kalim not to bring to the penthouse precisely to avoid this exact scenario.

Even worse, Nova Crescent can't possibly say anything about that without blowing his cover. His only recourse is to be an asshole about it, and he does so by suddenly appearing to pluck the drum right out of Kalim's outstretched hands.

"This is obviously far too delicate an object to be handled by someone like you. Don't you have a box you can hit?"

Ohhh. Ohhhhh no. She has seen that drum before. There is ONE person in the world that she knows that has that exact drum because she has seen it in that person's apartment. She is getting a sinking feeling that she knows this person.

This is Kalim. It has to be. She can't confirm it — she doesn't see Kalim when she looks at him — but Nautis explained how this works and Nova Mortis, though not always the brightest crayon in the box, can put two and two together most of the time. This must be him. And Jamil must not have known, or else she's sure he would have stopped Kalim from bringing it here in the first place. He must be worried that the priceless drum has been stolen — no wonder he seems so agitated. Nova Mortis looks between the two of them uncertainly, increasingly stressed out.

"Um...you could clap your hands."

"Aw, hey!" Sunbeam reaches for the drum, but not very energetically – it is an antique, and he doesn't want it to get dropped. (If he thought Crescent was Jamil, he'd try harder in the assumption that Jamil would make sure nothing went wrong.) "I've played it loads of times! It's my favourite drum." He turns to Mortis. "It would totally sound great with your guitar! We'd have a blast, I know it!"

(While Sunbeam is distracted by Mortis, Crescent takes the opportunity to put the drum in a corner somewhere that will hopefully escape Sunbeam's notice for the rest of the evening. Later on he'll smuggle it back to the penthouse and Kalim will presumably never know the difference.)

Ohh that's a relief. Nova Mortis relaxes a little, nodding, and looks sidelong at Kalim.

"...You could sing."

Game Update: May II 2377

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