outofsticks | OOC PLOTTING: BUY MORE CRYSTALS

SETTING UPDATES

Thanks to Beat’s final wish/sacrifice, a small handful of stars have returned to the night sky. They are few in number but shine brightly nonetheless. For the first week of the month, upon seeing the stars, songbirds will sing a non-stop tune to the skies.
A rumbling can be felt beneath the earth as the skeleton of the Sky Guardian starts to regain her willpower to return. The rest of this plot hook will be left up to player action.
Callan’s Corruption has been mostly dealt with. While he is still partly Corrupted, his head is clearer, and he will be able to fulfill his duties as Lake Guardian. This does not mean that he is not still an asshole. He is, in fact, still an asshole.
As is the case with most Guardians, when they are free from their eternal prisons/suffering, they give something special to the Grove. In this case, Callan’s gift… is a month-long torrential downpour. This is what you guys want right? Potential flooding?? Yeah, he knows you do. (He’s pretty sure he’s helping.)
- Even though a normal month-long rainstorm would cause plants to die because Too Much Water, everyone’s plants they’ve worked so hard to raise, as well as their regained buildings and the sort, will be perfectly fine. (Unless you want them to not be fine, then that’s your choice.) In fact, the plants may grow to gargantuan size during the storms — think of Stardew Valley’s giant produce, that’s what we’re going for.
- Plants inside the greenhouse/not exposed to the rains will not be affected by this unnatural growth.
The Burned Town has been cleaned up thanks to Enciodes & a handful of player characters (and Moder)! It will henceforth be called “North Aldric’s Grove”. The map will be updated when Wolfie has a second (as will the locations page, naturally). Players are free to now put buildings in that area thanks to the ground being stable. Enciodes has already installed the Archives/library in there as a treat.
Zahliya has eaten the sun shard he was entrusted with. Thank you Mizuki for the idea. As a result, his ability to cure corruption has been enhanced significantly… and will likely be influenced further by his questline happening later in August.

PLOT UPDATES

Within the Grove, it seems as though furniture is going on strike. Tread cautiously, because even the act of sitting down in a chair or laying in bed may result in you being bucked, rolled or thrown off. Dressers are especially moody, and doors? Oh, they will NOT stop creaking.
Breaking the furniture only makes things worse, so act with caution. Unless you want to play Night of the Living Chairs…
In the end however, all they really want is some TLC. Cleaning, upgrading or repairing the furniture will settle them down. Probably.
Aside from this minor bump in the road, things seem quiet for once. Or, they will, until Suri’s newest gifts to the Grove show up. Every character will receive a small bag of gemstones, each of them randomized ICly — and if you wish to randomize it OOCly, you know the mods will be there for you. Every gemstone has a meaning, a healing effect, or both — but upon contact with the gems, they’ll influence the characters with the opposite meaning. For example, rose quartz is the stone of unconditional love… or, it was. Now? All it brings is hate, and player characters will quickly find themselves under this curse.
- Gem meanings can be found with a quick Google search. We the mods do not have predetermined meanings for you. If you choose to gacha it, we will give you meanings when you gacha, otherwise this is up to your choice.
Discarding the gems only seems to amplify the effects as well, and the curse only seems to worsen as time goes on.
To break the curse, characters must hold the afflicted gemstone and perform a true act of what it embodies. Going back to the rose quartz example, this would mean holding it and performing an act of unconditional love. Anything goes with these acts, so be as creative as you like!
On a truly calmer note, as the skies clear up after the downpour, a few stars now dot the night sky, twinkling in the darkness. This is entirely new after centuries of darkness. A soft rosy joy radiates from the moon, and the night feels peaceful and safe.
Whether you stop by Ydalir’s one night, or Heimr’s as the sun sets, both are quietly emotional and urge you all to spend the night out together, watching the skies. They give you blankets to lay on in the clearing, bring teas and cocoas and dim the few lights that do remain in the Grove. The stars dance in the sky, and you are all here together, for better or for worse.

OOC UPDATES

Remember how Summer was supposed to be chiller? That. Did not happen and Amity is very sorry. Amity promises not to sabotage the next beach episode with Plot. (Wolfie makes no such promises though /s)
The plot for Zahliyaquest is in the post linked above; please do relevant plotting for that event over There, but feel free to mention here if your character will be participating. This is just so that Wolfie has an easier time keeping track of participants, questions, etc etc. Thank u :>
As always, we mods take player feedback, plot suggestions, wishlist items, whatever else, extremely seriously. Feel free to reach out to us with whatever you need! Special thanks to Rubie for the suggestions this month.
If we forgot anything important that happened in July, please let us know so we can edit the post!

Please use the following form for plotting:

Character:
Status: Who is your character? What did they get up to last month and how is it impacting this month? Did they discover something? Are they harboring a clue? HMM
Seeking: Any CR or plot thread you want to kickstart!
Not Seeking: Anything you'd like to avoid.
Anything Else: A permissions post, opt-in for a character-specific power or whatever else.
Meme: you know you have one.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Character: Siffrin

Status: New and awkward about it! Siffrin is nice and helpful even with strangers, but he's still slow to get close to anyone so he's just made some acquaintances so far while sulking around the grove. Extremely depressed due to being stuck here, and the only thing keeping him sane atm is unfortunately Loop, but he'll be acting normal for everyone else because he'd rather die than open up to anyone. So y'all will just get awful puns while he has a slow, quiet breakdown.

Seeking: F...friends?? He doesn't know how to make friends intentionally, the few he has were pretty much dropped into his lap by the universe and he got so extremely attached to them he nearly broke reality because of it. Y'all could be having regular happy hangouts and he will still be unsure whether that makes you friends. Please, he needs an extrovert to drag him into shit, and also probably an introvert he can relate to.

He'll also eventually be making a trek out to the temple Heimr told him about to try to solo the evil god thing and probably die in the process, possibly with Loop tagging along, whenever things have quieted down enough for it. Maybe during all the rock curse shenanigans? We can blame his suicidal tendencies on rock stuff, it's totally not just what he's like. Anyone that'd wanna try to stop them or join in or whatever else could be cool!

And yeah, Siffrin and Loop have the most It's Complicated relationship imaginable and the inhabitants of the grove have likely been forced to witness their weird antagonism at least once or twice. But Sif also wants Loop to make some friends and might try playing platonic matchmaker if anyone is willing! Just...subtly, because Loop would definitely throw a fit if they knew.

Not Seeking: Sif is canonically asexual so definitely nothing along those lines, and he's fresh off finally broaching the topic of feelings and kissing and whatnot with one of his friends and there was intent to explore that, so he's not really open to anything romantic with anyone else rn either. ISAT's setting is really chill about polyamory and whatnot, so I won't rule out the possibility entirely, but it'd be the most slowburn shit ever and Sif would still have some guilt about his not-boyfriend to grapple with. Also, please know that despite the cute art style and the fact that Siffrin is a 5'1" manlet, he's in his mid-twenties.

Anything Else: ISAT deals with some heavy subjects, especially where Siffrin is concerned, so please lemme know if there's anything you'd like me to avoid touching on specifically! Most likely to come up is depression, suicide and self-harm, maybe alcoholism. I'll also generally try to avoid big ISAT spoilers but some stuff is likely to come up with Sif coming from the end of the game, so let me know if I should avoid all spoilers at any cost!

Meme:

OOC PLOTTING: BUY MORE CRYSTALS

Kelly | Siffrin