outofsticks | OOC PLOTTING: MONSTER MASH (GRAVEYARD SMASH??)

SETTING UPDATES:

You guys have had a productive month, despite me trapping you in Cyberpunk 2077! Good job!
- Beiwe’s Church has been moved from the forest to the North Grove, right smack dab in the middle of it. It was initially in ruins, however it has been repaired and is now fully operational. A more detailed summary is on the locations page, but in short:
  - Corrupted or those willingly working with Suri cannot enter it, as they will automatically be blocked by Her will
  - The middle of the church has a pseudo-arena space for battles, because it’s Beiwe
  - The rooms in the back contain a kitchen, dining room, and a room for making pottery including pottery wheels and a kiln
- Luca has resurrected Sehul! Oops! They are currently just walking bones and do not exactly fit in the Grove, the buildings are close together and they are 100ft tall. They will be spending their time on the beach.
  - I have Yet Again bumped up the height limit barrier. It is 200ft. Hold me to this: It will not change again. I keep forgetting how large my creatures are.
  - Sehul also has the original protection circle on the inside of their skull, and their resurrection has significantly strengthened that in tandem with the existing barrier and other hidden circles being quite strong. The turns are tabling!
- Dion has figured out that Suri’s constructs can be poisoned. :) And Shadow Milk found out how to do A Lot Of Damage. These items were shared at the most recent family meeting.
- Renard has been rescued (untreed)! He’s walking around despite the fact he should not, but lives out of the General Store for now. He will probably at some point ask Sesa to borrow the workshop so he can make sickass swords. He has a rat in his shirt pocket named Jennie, and probably knows Too Much about where magical items and artifacts are hidden, considering he came back with at least ten of them.
- The Heimr’s children from the manor are still snzzzing.
- Sinann can take person form now, since they’ve been fully strengthened. They will make this everybody’s problem.
- The fog wall has been strengthened, and Suri’s constructs are no longer able to slip into the Grove, barring super extenuating circumstances such as someone physically going into the forest and forcing them through the barrier (don’t do this). The fog wall is also white again and will not automatically harm you when touched. The Golden Glasses are still needed to traverse its paths properly; I’ve given you guys some leeway in the past with this but we’re going to make this a requirement going forward. No more accidentally stumbling into the plot.
Neo Eden is gone, goodbye Neo Eden. As a reminder you’re allowed to take one (1) item from it, be it clothing, a box set of movies, an espresso machine… as long as an adult can physically carry it without struggle. Again, you cannot have a car.
The mushrooms fruiting in the forest have gotten worse. They have spread beyond the fog barrier and into the accessible woods to you guys, and when stepped on, a spray of spores may have mystical effects…

PLOT UPDATES:

Hi. You’ve been waiting for this event for (checks notes) like 4 months. Hope you got your monster-lovin’ bones ready. (Also this month is a TDM!)
Curious characters who wander into the forest and step on a mushroom may be subjected to some monstery transformations. They can either be very painful or completely painless depending on how you want to play it; we just ask you use appropriate CWs as always.
- If it was not incredibly obvious I based the mushroom sporing transformation thing on an episode of Dungeon Meshi, and if you haven’t seen Dungeon Meshi go watch it. Our habits of getting sent Cease & Desists will not abate.
As per the last few posts, we do have rules for how the monstering will operate, outlined below for ease:
- Your monster can be whatever you want as long as it’s not too massive (i.e. don’t be a 200ft giant). Your monster design cannot be overly mechanical; some mechanics like a cyborg are allowed, but no TVs for heads. Keep it within the setting’s typical low-tech constraints.
- Whatever monster design you want does not have to be animal based or plant-based, you can be an eldritch horror if that appeals to you.
- You cannot gain new powers (if you become a cyborg you can’t suddenly shoot lasers if you couldn’t before). Basic powers such as wings that give you flight, being a vampire lets you suck blood, etc, are okay. The ability to shapeshift into a smaller form (i.e. if you decided to make your monster very large) or to change forms (i.e. from merfolk to humanoid) is okay as well, so that you aren’t bared off from buildings.
- You can choose to keep your existing powerset, or scrap it/parts of it. The only stipulation we have is that you cannot gain powersets (exceptions are noted above — if you aren’t sure, ask). We will not be allowing hard swaps in powersets either, i.e. if your original powerset says you can use fire magic but you wanted an aquatic design, you will not be able to waterbend instead.
- Those of you who are dragon-blessed do not have to incorporate your dragon blessings into your design if it would interfere with the ~aesthetique~; you will retain the dragon blessing powers either way.
- Those of you who are Corrupted MUST include the Corruption damage/motifs still, however.
- The marks left on your person by the Gods (Suri or the lesbians) will remain, if you have them.
- Personality changes to match your monster/transformation type are not expected, but allowed and encouraged! Dietary changes to match are fun as well, but again, not required.
- Multiple transformations are allowed, since these are mushrooms in the woods that you step on. This is also the way to reverse the transformation. Story wise this is “random” and not based on your will; OOCly obviously you can do whatever you want.
At max, the transformations will last 3 months — May, June, July, and end at the beginning of August automatically. You can, again, end this early by stepping on a mushroom. You can opt out entirely by Not stepping on a mushroom.
There isn’t going to be much “““““plot””””” this time around. We want this first event to be more sandboxy, while everyone gets used to being a creature. That said, we will throw interactable things into the background for everyone so that we’re not entirely boring you. This will be a Vibes Month since we’ve had so much back to back plot.

OOC UPDATES:

All the now-contactable NPCs will be bumped up on the NPC Contact page. It’s getting pretty long, so we’ll probably look at reorganizing the page again soon. You guys are doing a good job at rescuing people. Aurora’s real name, Freyr, will be included on the page — she will go by either name, she thinks your new name for her is cute.
Related to NPCs, we’ve had pronoun blurbs under each NPC for a while, but we’d like to remind everyone that they’re there. We know we have quite the robust cast all around and would like to help everyone avoid confusion, especially because we don’t expect you to memorize every single character. Let us know if there’s anything more we can do to help with ease of navigation.

Please use the following form for plotting (and please describe your monster transformation to the class while you're at it!):

Character:
Canon:
CR: Who is your character? Any special powers or things they have going on? Any specific CR you want to kickstart?
Plans: What’s on the agenda for this month? Any interactions with the monthly event? Other things you want to do?
Not Seeking: Anything you'd like to avoid.
Anything Else: A permissions post, opt-in for a character-specific power or whatever else.
Recent Posts or Toplevels: For things you posted that you want additional tag-ins on or that might’ve gone missed.
Past Life Plotting Toplevel: From ye olde post.
Meme: Make us laugh.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Character: Thorns/Isidor
sidebar: his event is coming out on the global arknights server in another month and there's a chance they're going to re-spell his real name in the localization, zzz pray this doesn't happen.
Canon: Arknights

CR: this man owns my entire fucking brain about 45% of the time PLEASE help. anyway-

Thorns is a lot of things. In short: Pharmacologist, toxicologist, very smart but tends to unintentionally cause explosions whenever he's working, not very well put together (generally his shirt is inside out/backwards, he's missing a shoe, pants unbuttoned, hair fucked up, might've forgotten a sock... you know, the picture of a man with severe ADHD), doesn't care for his appearance, oblivious... also has a metal arm but it's Not a prosthetic it's just alchemy components that fused with him (it's complicated). His perms post on his journal has all his powers, it's a sort of ridiculous set. Most importantly he knows how to sail a ship and was Very Briefly a pirate before he instead became more of a seafaring reconnaissance & supply runner for Rhodes Island. Just know that he is not above doing a crime if it means that crime winds up serving the greater good.

Very specifically he can use his cool alchemy arm for various things (outlined on his perms page in the powers section) but the most important is that he can just. find shit with it. like a compass, or a dowsing rod. Surprise it has compass abilities. if you need shit found please hit him up.

Thorns also code switches very frequently. Any Spanish (Iberian) he speaks will be translated in hover text. Sorry mobile taggers this will be super unhelpful for you.

He is also Aegirian (Sea Urchin specifically) and like Mizuki, has ties with the Church of the Deep, except unlike Mizuki he fucking hates Seaborn and is very much struggling with the fact that y'all like them. He can slightly hear the Call, which essentially means he's been corrupted enough by being fed Seaborn secretly as a youth that he's slightly turning into one and joining the hivemind, so he tends to steer clear of the river and lies low when the evolved ones are flying.

He has an friend with him too, aptly named Baby. Baby is a type of land-faring fishlike creature known as a Salt Scale and responds to commands and orders like a dog.

for Stix: Thorns currently lives at the inn and conducts experiments there. He briefly borrowed the clinic to run experiments on himself re: his Corruption... this did not go well but he's essentially made a biochemical weapon (yay?) that he will totally use and I will not forget he has. His goal was to reverse engineer the Corruption into a Suri poison. He will "work on this in the background" but he will not be successful because he is a mod character.

Plans: the boy needs more CR i will throw him at whoever and see if he sticks (haha, get it. because. because sticks and bones. do you get it? do y)

anyway for the monster mash I am super not going to finish this art sorry, but here is the concept sketch. Thorns will be an Alraune based on various carnivorous plants, except all the plants on him will be black (bc he is Corrupted), save for the rafflesia base which will be a golden colour like his neurotoxins + eyes normally are. He very much will be eating with the sundews & fly traps. You can feed him at your leisure by walking up and slipping a french fry in there.

Since it will be very hard for him to move he will probably root himself down in various areas and Not Move For Many Hours, he does not have legs he has a bunch of thorny vines to walk on. If you make the mistake of walking by him with food he will try to steal it with his vines. Very sorry.

Not Seeking: n/a come at me

Anything Else: ????

Recent Posts or Toplevels: he has a log

Past Life Plotting Toplevel: N/A yet still cookin

Meme:

OOC PLOTTING: MONSTER MASH (GRAVEYARD SMASH??)

thorny thing :)