Last night, Tadakatsu, one of the Game Masters (GMs) of Hello Kitty Online, held an event-- he was poisoned, and the Sanrioland citizens had to save him!
Tadakatsu, The loyal samurai vassal of Ieyasu Tokugawa, has
been poisoned while on a delivery mission! Fleeing from his pursuers, he
stumbled upon Florapolis, a peaceful place where the citizens of Sanrio land
lives.
Using the last of his strength, he dropped down in the front
door of Kuririn's cafe, where Kuririn immediately gave him first aid upon
seeing the injured samurai. However
Kuririn needs more ingredients for the antidote he needs to make for
Tadakatsu...
Kuririn: Oh my...these ingredients are not enough! Hang on,
Tadakatsu! I just need to buy 10 poison powders!
But when Kuririn went out to buy all the ingredients, he saw
ninjas swarming Florapolis!!! Tadakatsu can fend them all off but is
injured. Help him get back on his feet
and save Florapolis!
This is where you come in, my friend. I need you to get me 1 poison powder and
deliver it to me. Be careful though! If
a ninja spots you and shouts in town, "(player's name), you're Tadakatsu's
agent!" you're out of the game. You'll be spotted if you transact with
merchants using the local chat so make sure you transact with them in private
chat. You can also be spotted by Ninjas
if you don't tell the merchants the correct secret message in private when
buying ingredients. If you're one of the
first 10 who will successfully deliver the ingredient to Tadakatsu, you'll be
rewarded.
However, poison powders are not easy to find. You need to go
through 4 merchants who will tell you riddles before they tell you the
merchant's name (5th merchant) who's selling the poison powders.
Here's how the game should go:
Go to merchant 1 -> tell them the secret message -->
answer the riddle --> ask merchant 1 for the secret message needed to locate
merchant 2 --> repeat until you reach merchant 5 --> answer merchant 5's
riddle --> get poison powder --> deliver to Tadakatsu
Good luck. As a
start, here's a clue to find Merchant 1.
Merchant 1 is at the tower that lights travelers’
ways. PM the merchant "Orange"
to give you access to the riddle.
Merchant 1, Akio-kun, was posted at the lighthouse. On his blog, he posted his riddle:
Rich men need me, poor men have me, but if you eat me or
drink me you will die. What am I?
Players had to check the merchants' blogs in-game as well as use the PM function to play. So, those who had finished the newbie quests had a bit of an advantage over those who hadn't...but since almost everyone has (it IS a Closed Beta after all) it was okay!
When the answer to Akio's riddle was given, "nothing", he released the clue to the next merchant: "Visit Merchant 2 and her Dear friend." Merchant 2's code word was "GI Joe" and she was a tricky one to find if you don't know Sanrio! Bella was standing by Daniel -- also known as Dear Daniel, Hello Kitty's boyfriend. When Bella recieved the code word she, too, told players to check her blog for her riddle:
I have three
letters, and I read the same forward and backwards. I rhyme with a word that is
important to everyone. What word am I?
The correct answer was "eye", and when it was PMed to Bella, she told them that "the carpentry kitty helps Merchant 3 out." The new code word was "Squall" and the next merchant was someone familiar to you all -- me! Yep, I played the third merchant and I stood by Mellotune -- a cute kitty that teaches you how to craft a bed. Here's a peek at the instructions I wrote myself to make sure I wouldn't forget anything!
1: "squall" is the code word
2: "Fantastic! I'm #3. Check my blog for the riddle!"
(the riddle was more of a question: what is the shortest complete sentence in the English language?)
3: correct answer: "I am"
4: "Bravo/Brava! The next merchant is helpful even if he looks fishy. PM him "Sasuke" for the next riddle!"
5: Report to Tom
Tom was the fourth merchant, and he was by the lake in Sanrio Harbor. He was actually one of the easiest to find -- he was spouting fish phrases like crazy. Bad puns abounded. He recited One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish, he sang songs(a bit out of tuna though), he wrote little fishy emoticons...He was pretty finny. Akio couldn't stop laughing. I didn't get to see most of it because I was on another map, but from what I did hear, he was hilarious.
This clue actually had the most reworking. Originally, the fourth merchant was to be Bucket, but it got too late and she had to go -- understandable as she needed to work and it took longer than expected. (It ended up running until just after midnight Central time! o_o!) The first clues were all related to our names -- so Flowerfall was "when Sakura touches the land of Japan" and Bucket was "You can't get water out of a well without this". My favorite was Bella's -- Merchant 2’s name is loudest of all Florapolis,
mimicking a gong. Anyways, since Bucket was going to be the fourth merchant, we had "get water with Merchant 4, but watch out for the claws!" (There are crabs around the lake, you see.) When Tom joined in we had to hastily reconfigure. The first one would have been okay, but it wasn't as good as the second -- Tom is one of the most prominent newbie-helpers ever. He knows pretty much everything about HKO, having played through the closed beta game three times.
Anyways, in order to prevent people skipping steps, I reported to Tom all the people who had passed by me. We had one instance where someone DID skip me. We're still not sure about her...but we had her come back to me and answer my riddle anyways. :D There was also another account we suspected of being a multi (someone who had more than one account to play on -- boo, that's cheating in the worst way!) but we didn't have any real proof other than they gave Tom's password and answer in the same line and walked away to the last merchant before Tom had finished typing the clue.
Oh yeah, this was Tom's riddle:
If you have me,
you want to share me. If you share me, you haven't got me. What am I?
The answer was "a secret". The clue to the final merchant, where the poison antidote lay, was definitely one of the hardest. Katie was indoors in Kuririn's house, standing by his girlfriend, Sakura. So, the clue to find her was "Merchant 5 stands by someone who blooms once a year." Tricky, eh? Sakura has a few quests so she's not totally off the map. Once they had answered Katie's riddle, she would deliver them one antidote -- but it was a hard riddle.
The man
who makes it does not need it. The man who buys its does not use it. The man
who uses it doesn't know he is. What is it?
I'll let you work on that one and post the answer at the end. ;D Anyways, once they got through to Katie and answered her riddle, she gave the powder and they took it back to Tadakatsu. You can read his report, and a list of the winners in order, on his Hello Kitty blog. Each winner got $100,000 (in-game) and, I think, a pet. Not sure on the pet though. The merchants got special clothes! Woo!
I've drawn up a map showing where each merchant was, by number. The T is for Tadakatsu -- that's where he lay, sick and dying! :(
Woo! Did you figure out the answer to the last riddle yet? It's "a coffin."
This was really fun and I want to do it again in the open beta so everyone can participate! But be warned...the riddles will change~ ;D Hope you guys have enjoyed reading about this! If any part of it is confusing please comment here or
send me an email! I love email. ^_^
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FunctionArt - Teal Mocha Rose
And,
the other two are almost totally opposite! These two are also spun from
merino wool hand dyed by Lynn, but this is color "Citrus" again. The
first is a different twist on my Novel-Ply yarns. In this one, the yarn
I plied with has 60 Hello Kitty face beads strung on it - so when
plying they get interspersed throughout the skein! The yarn I used for
plying is Schoeller & Stahl "Tahiti". The other is a FunctionArt
skein in bright yellows, oranges, and pinks!
FunctionArt - Summer Citrus Sun
Last
night, I spun up a bulky Squooshy! Two-Ply in the Pine Forest colorway.
It is one thin strand of merino/silk plied with a thicker strand of
just merino. So soft & squishilicious! I should have that listed
later this afternoon. I also have a smaller skein of just the
merino/silk Navajo plied. I *love* how that came out. The greens in it
are so vivid!
