outofsticks | October Plotting: It's Halloweeeeeeeeen

SETTING UPDATES

Mizuki made us a therapy office. Mizuki is in charge of this office. This is already reflected on the locations page and on the Grove map because technically it happened in September. Please see Mizuki for therapy, thank you. As a reminder, players are free to purchase one building per character for the continued expansion of the Grove, which can be anything you want, so long as you don’t mind cryptic plot clues attached. :)

The fog wall is now black. It will cause a highly painful burning sensation to the body when touched, regardless of if you have clothing in the way or not. Think of it like touching one of those fuzzy/spiky caterpillars where there’s no skin damage but everything hurts. In addition to this, touching the black fog will induce a high sense of dread/paranoia/doomsday feelings for half an hour after the contact breaks.

Zahliya is now contactable on the NPC Contact page. Thank you for playing with Wolfie’s dumb OC. Wolfie will continue to spew the dumbest plotlines you’ve ever seen at this game and you will all have to cope.

Moder has been eaten, thank you Mizuki.

As a reward for beating your first Large Game (the Volcano, in case that was unclear), the fog wall has pulled back slightly, north of the Inn! It is still black. Within it… are the burned remains of a town! Yaaaay! The town will be fully explorable in October, and we will have a relevant investigations toplevel there for anyone who wants to investigate it deeply.

PLOT UPDATES

It’s fuckin Halloween y’all, aka the best holiday, the only one that matters ever. We will have two coinciding plots: A Halloween Masquerade and a Pain Share.

MASQUERADE

At the far new north of the Grove, erected in the burned town a week after it is first discovered, is a circus tent. We are not actually going to the circus, but rather, we’re having a masquerade! The masquerade dances will begin every night at 10pm, and last until approximately 6am when the sun comes up, at which point the animated skeleton attendants will forcibly kick you out of the tent.

The dances will be frequented by ghosts that may look like people you knew in the past, dressed in Halloween masquerade attire. They will not be able to interact with player characters and will merely pass right through them, as if unaware they’re present. The skeletons, meanwhile, are literally just animated skeletons. They rattle when they walk and are not capable of speech, but will dance with you and serve you hors d'oeuvres. And also, again, kick you out if you try to stay past closing.

Halloween costumes can be regained free of charge (aka don’t go spend your bonus AC on these) as long as the outfits are non-magical, and I have to say this because one of you definitely has magical clothing somewhere. Yes, the outfit can include a prop, as long as that is also non-magical (and non-deadly!). I.e. if you’re dressing as the grim reaper you may have a scythe but the second that shit shoots magic or cuts a bitch it’s gotta go. I guess you could beat someone to death with a Spirit Halloween plastic scythe (not sponsored btw) but imagine the toll.

Masks are also free of charge. Player characters will have their pick of very cool, neat masks made of wood and other organic materials, ranging from simple to complex. Player’s choice on what these look like. Be careful, because donning these between 10pm-6am means you will be unable to remove them until the dance ends, regardless of where you are in the Grove.

PAIN SHARE

Mysterious marks akin to tattoos will show up on characters at the beginning of the month, starting at midnight on the 1st. These marks will match with at least one other person in the Grove, potentially more depending on player choices. These marks link characters physically and emotionally, but only for physical pain and negative emotions. This means your character will feel everything their partner(s) share, but it will be slightly diluted depending on how many people share the same mark. For example, if six people are sharing a mark and one of those six gets stabbed, the other five will feel the pain at 1/6th the intensity of the first character. Emotions, however, are shared full-force.

Characters can be bound to one person or multiple persons. They do not have to all be bound together unless you want to, i.e. Mizuki could be bound to both BB and Toge, but BB and Toge do not have to be bound to each other. Let me know if this doesn’t make sense.

These marks will persist until at least the end of the month. They could go longer, they could not. We will see how the forest feels about this. :)

Please thank Rubie for the suggestion for this part of the event!

OOC UPDATES

Wolfie is sorry about planning too many events last month :( Wolfie will do better (lying)

There will not be a subsequent mini-event this month. This is because a) Wolfie works in retail marketing and will actually die if one more thing is added to her plate and b) we have Forestquest/Addquest for those who signed up for it. Signups are closed, and we hope to use this as a test-drive for mod-led missions for future endeavours. Please Look Forward To It.

Clarification about AC was put on the AC page. This includes what we count as the AC period (from the 1st of the month to the last day of the month, unless otherwise specified), what we mean by “backtagged threads are allowed for AC”, and the check-in system (characters who just apped only have to check in, but please remember to post to your comment that you’re checking in).

The mod team checks AC on the last day of the month super late at night / the first day of the proceeding month. The mod team are also two (2) tired Americans, and we will flex to accommodate our not-American friends, i.e. if your timezone is 12 hours ahead of us it might look like you’re starting your AC thread in the prior month so just let us know if one of us hunts you down like “fix ur AC bro” and remind us that you’re not American. If anybody needs help with AC, let the mod team know.

We are trying to expand the bonus AC store with both magical & nonmagical items. We have a few ideas, but if you have something you’d like to see, feel free to ping the mods.

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: Astarion

Status: He's new! And hungry! Currently he's just been getting a lay of the land, mostly sticking to the inn (or the river) and getting a feel for everyone's personalities. ~~Scoping out the best person to charm into protecting him~~

Seeking: He's absolutely going to be hitting up the masquerade as many nights as he can, because he's the kind to enjoy the spectacle and opulence such events bring. That being said, he's probably going to end up biting off more than he can chew and spotting the ghosts of people he very much does not want to spot, so finding him loitering about outdoors is also fairly probable.

I'm also opening him up for the pain share, pspsps come get your angst. Anyone pain bonded with him can expect to feel a gnawing, painful, all consuming hunger, as he is (spoiler) a vampire! Shocking, I know, he's so very good at hiding it. He hasn't properly fed in some time, so he's kinda goin through it on that front even if he's good at pretending like he isn't. In addition to hunger pangs, there may also be nights where he's woken up by the (unfortunately) familiar sensation of a ghostly knife slowly carving runes into his back. It's a phantom pain, but it's chronic. It's a trauma thing that flares up sometimes. Sorry.

Not Seeking: Romance CR, for the moment! That being said, you're more than welcome to try, and he very much enjoys the playful banter that casual flirting brings, but he's not looking for anything serious or real if that makes sense. Tell him he's pretty so that he can preen and saunter about but don't expect to hold his hand.

Anything Else?: I may be a biiit slow to tags on Thursdays + Fridays especially!

Meme:

> gnawing, painful, all consuming hunger,
Mizuki and Astarion shaking hands. Only, you know, one's vampiric hunger the other is eldritch hunger. They can share notes.

ANYWAY HI SYN HELLO I LOVE YOU! I have boys! You can have any of them.

HI I LOVE YOU TOO ~~why must I choose between boys when I can have all of them~~

Pain share between Mizuki and Astarion is just them sitting next to each other like "some people are fighting battles you wouldn't even believe. for instance, we have stomach aches ://"

Stacking hunger pangs would be quite interesting to play off of though, especially considering that while Astarion's more or less learned to ignore his own, I don't think he would be too good at filtering out someone else's :0

SKJDGLSGJ YOU CAN HAVE ALL!!!! N is theoretically a robot vampire in a way. He can't go out in the sun (because it overheats him) and he eats other robots (because it helps him from overheating—). And Brook is an angsty teen…

So, you know, a wide spread of boyos.

THAT SAID, if it's something you wanna play around with, I'd so be down. Mizuki's cursed with constant hunger??? So, uh. Oops.

puttin my paws on all of them... He and N can bond in the way where he's like "Oh yes I totally get this but like not in a vampire way or anything aha"

But yeah, absolutely. Let's do this. Let's starve them both worse than usual

hope astarion just assumes that gnosis is half-aarakocra because of the feathers or some shit

similarly if gnosis finds out he's a vampire, because vampires are part of the demon race in AK, he'll just keep calling astarion a sarkaz and won't correct it— ("what do you mean demons and vampires are separate where you come from that makes no sense") luckily rhodes island has a vampire who's a doctor so he's not inclined to mistrust astarion at this juncture

He just looks at this bird man like "damn, your parents were getting freaky huh. No judgement here, of course."

I need to see these two interact, I want to study their potential CR under a microscope. I need more Gnosis in my life, it's empty without him

Astarion is one of those silver-tongued bitches and Gnosis spent his entire life around one of those and will be sufficiently immune to it, but it'll still be funny to watch him try... esp bc Gnosis is kinder than he admits sighs

Astarion should meet my teenage vampire asshole (who won vampire lottery and doesn't need blood to survive, though it does make him stronger).

Natsuno used to hate all vampires on principle, he got over some of it but still suspicious, so that can be fun

They absolutely should meet yes! (Lucky Natsuno over here not having to wither away if he doesn’t bite someone omg)

Astarion can be a bit prickly and catty at times, so I feel like that combination would make for really interesting CR :0!

offers BB who can endure all pain or Lancelot who can endure pain to a certain extent, but also might dally w issues of turning into a dragon if things get bad. and when he's a dragon then he's just ~ maddening and crazy ~

fun times 0/10

OTHERWISE I DEFF want lancelot and astarion to interact w each other. i think BB would just confuse the fuck out of him, but also shes a bitch so idk maybe they would also be friends NDFJKSDj

caoimhe is a sweet girl but from what i seen in BG3 ( JUST STARTED DONT MIND ME ) he hates nice people LMFAO

From what I've absorbed of BB through osmosis I'm in desperate need for them to interact :0 I feel like putting the two of them in the same room is a terrible idea full of potential chaos, which is exactly why I feel like it needs to happen lmao. I also do still want to have him come bother Lancelot! Dragon poking! Causing problems on purpose!

I'll leave the final decision as to who you want to go through with the pain share on up to you, as I don't mind either way! As for Caoimhe, I wouldn't so much say that he hates nice people so much as he... He's got issues with heroic types due to his own traumas lmao. He might pester her the same way he might pester Lancelot, or he might just sigh in her general direction. It could go either way!

DFSDHBFJH shes ~ chaotic good ~ and fills the roll in dnd actually really fucking well. I love it for her, she likes to cause problems on purpose, sometimes and most of the times - by accident. Sometimes, she causes problems to make other people better!! just Russian roulette with her. At least, the upside is BB ultimately care for humanity/mortalkind its just... The way she shows that... Shuts my eyes. Can be CHAOTIC.

I LOVE IT I WANT ALL THESES CR LIKE OYU DONT EVEN KNOW IMMA GOBBLE IT UP!! IMM COOK YOU A ROTESSERI CHICKEN AND A WHOLE FEAST WE GUNNA BE DINING!!!

October Plotting: It's Halloweeeeeeeeen

Syn | Astarion

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