OOC PLOTTING: Gee Zahliya, how come your mom lets you have TWO quests?

[sticksandbonesmods]

 Hello Stickbones, welcome to the plotting post for Zahliyaquest…2! “Wait, what happened in the first Zahliyaquest?” “There was a first one?” Yes, all the way back in [mumblemumble last year], Zahliya’s first appearance was marked by an event spanning over a month, where he kept leaving people creepy DMs from beyond the fog wall while trying to escape it. After being pulled into the Grove by the cast at the time and rescued, a Corrupted Moder attacked the Grove! And was summarily eaten by Mizuki because yeah.

Now everyone is okay again! And now that we have 3 Guardians able to watch over the Grove while Zahliya is gone, he feels comfortable enough to step out in pursuit of something he’s needed for a long time: His own strength.

The goal of this quest is twofold: First is to further arm Zahliya with ~secret cool God swords that won’t break on him~ and convince him of his own strength and power so that his ass stops going “but I’m so normal :/ I’m just a guy :/ I’m not special :/”. The second will influence the rest of the game majorly, and will therefore affect endgame whenever we get there. “When is that Wolfie” no idea just putting it out there.

As for that second point — depending on player actions during this quest, Zahliya will have a personality shift. He can therefore either:

• Become more aggressive and more confident. He will be less tolerant of Corruption and Corrupted, less forgiving of people who work with Suri/the False God in the future (starting from the point the quest is officially completed and carrying on from there), and much more likely to act on his desires to protect the people of the Grove. If that means killing the heavily Corrupted if they’re at “the point of no return”, setting the whole forest on (green) fire to burn out the Corruption, slaughtering every monster in sight, or what have you, he will attempt it. This is the option to pick if you want More NPC interaction in plotlines, and the option to pick if you want Zahliya to be the final “say” in the Corruption cure.
  
  • Don’t worry, everyone can still engage in Corruption plotlines and Suri-serving behaviour if this option is chosen! Zahliya can only have so many eyes in so many places; the option to sneak around him and hide from him exists and makes for interesting interactions. I as the mod am not going to metagame your plotlines, I will always ask before I do shit.
• Become more passive and less decisive. Zahliya will be more willing to tolerate Corruption and Corrupted only if they exist within the people in the Grove as a whole (monsters and other NPCs do not apply, he is still a Guardian after all). He will become more patient and wait for players to figure out their own battles/cures without stepping in at all, unless asked directly, and will occupy himself with killing Suri’s monster armies in the forest instead of focusing his attention in the Grove as a whole. He will not be sure if this is the correct decision, but is willing to leave important choices in the hands of the players. This is the option to pick if you want Less NPC interaction in plotlines, if you don’t want Zahliya to be the final Corruption cure, or if you want to see the forest passively cleaned of its dangers (off-screen, and fairly slowly).
  
  • Note that if this one is chosen, Zahliya will be moved from a Contactable NPC to Semi-Contactable due to his lack of a presence in the Grove, and he will usually not be found on the roof of the church since he’s out in the woods so much. This also means that the Corruption cure will have to be entirely player-owned.

“Hey Wolfie these options suck” you know where the Discord is, ping me and we can hash out something better. Nothing is set in stone, the things I think are cool might not be cool to you, I was playing Dragon Age when I came up with this you know how it is.

The player actions are both obvious (telling Zahliya to “just kill everyone” will make him more aggressive, for example) and not obvious (surprise!) but I will pulse-check midway through to tell people where we’re at with him before there’s a final verdict.

As for what the log involves, sorry this is so long:

• Mod tags (from purifier) will come either a) after everyone involved has tagged in or b) after 24 hours have passed since the last mod tag. This means if you are absent for any reason, the thread WILL move on without you, barring circumstances such as “Wolfie died” or “player requested another day to wait because real life got hands”.
• Interaction in this log will be redeemable for MAIN AC, not just Bonus AC like most of our NPC threads.
• You will probably find some more sun/moon/star shards. What you do with these is up to you; note that if Zahliya is set on the “aggression” path he will want them by the end of the questline, if they haven’t been turned over to him!
• There will be funny little timeline shenanigans happening. Depending on the amount of people who sign up, these will either be interactions in small groups or the larger group as a whole, involving past apparitions of Zahliya at key moments in his life so far. More details will come when the post goes up and we get into the weeds, but this will be primarily where the referenced “character influence” comes in. :)
• You will fight something, sorry, I love to write battles. It will be short, theoretically, and probably dramatic.

Sign-ups are below. There is no limit, however please only bring one character per player (so no Sesa and Wolfwood!). Sign-ups for this will close August 2nd, the day the event log is posted.

OOC PLOTTING: BUY MORE CRYSTALS

[sticksandbonesmods]

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:

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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
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