outofsticks | JANUARY PLOTTING: THE COLD NEVER BOTHERED ME ANYWAY

SETTING UPDATES

Wolfie remembered to update the frickin map and locations page before this plotting post went out, give it up for Wolfie overcoming her executive dysfunction finally🎉🎉🎉
The fog wall is starting to roll back in, so no more free forest vacations. While it isn’t back to fully covering most of the forest, most of it will be covered back up by the end of the month. The Golden Glasses can still be used to find the “true paths” through any fogged areas.
On that note, the Forest is also waking back up, which means no more sleepy monsters in the woods. The monsters are awake and they want to kill you.
Sesa & Elsword know the path to the cliff overlooking the ocean. You cannot go to the beach yet, but if you want to look at the ocean over a cliff, ask them to take you there.
It continues to snow, but the temperatures are no longer sub-zero most nights, and instead it feels like a regular winter again.
The river is now unfrozen, so Vash can get his pants wet as he walks back and forth to his house. Good luck buddy.
Alongside that, the river is now full of fish and the temporary meat famine has ended. There are many fish that shouldn’t be in a freshwater river, such is the nature of the Grove. Reminder that the river can be populated with fish from player canons if you’d like. Please give us your weird fish.
Wolfwood and Mizuki discovered Renard! He is a tree-man. He can be saved if the playerbase would like this to happen; this will tie into the greater plotline of players discovering how to cure the forest corruption.
Speaking of the corruption conundrum, Mizuki ate the moon shard. The sun shard is still in Zahliya’s possession. The rest of the shards… unknown, good luck, have fun finding them!
Animals will start to reappear in the Grove. They will be… mutated and feral. Biblically accurate deer and carnivore bunnies and the sort. This is probably fine.

PLOT UPDATES

It is Large Game Month. For those that weren’t here with us for the Volcano Event that keeps being ominously referenced by us old people, “Large Games” are semi-regular events that last for a single in-game day where the goal is typically to survive whatever silly shenanigans the mod team stole from a movie or something for a day. You will see exactly what movie we robbed for this one shortly.
Large Games make death very, very possible, but importantly they do not send you to the Garden, our death spot where you must give up something to return to life, and you will respawn the morning after you died terribly. This is your opportunity to kill and be killed without repercussion, have fun, go wild.
The Grove-wide reward for surviving this game will be that each player character receives a single-use charm that can undo any negative outcomes going forward. It cannot be used to undo harm that was already done (i.e. Elsword’s corruption), but say one of y’all hecks up and gets an NPC killed — the charm could possibly undo that outcome. Do not godmod with these… we doubt we have to say this. Always ask another player for their OOC consent before you unbreak their bones for them.
In addition to the Game, this month, small pocket mirrors will begin showing up around player characters, starting within their nightstands and almost seeming to follow them around by appearing on nearby surfaces (desks, walls, the floor, in the coffee machine, go wild). Looking into these mirrors will reveal your “worst” traits about yourself in a reflection that looks just like you. Anybody can look into your mirror and see your “worst self”. You can break the mirrors to stop them from following you and nothing will happen, until the Game takes place that is.

Anyway, here’s the Game:

One night, everyone will go to sleep (and if you can’t or don’t sleep, you will simply close your eyes the moment before everyone gets transported) and when they next open their eyes, they’ll be laying on the floor of a giant ice castle. Yes, you will have your gear with you. Yes, coats can be included if you want. Or you can freeze to death, we’re not your parents.
The castle will be able to be roamed freely. Unfortunately, the furniture is also made of ice, so there’s no where comfortable to sit down. You will also eventually be chased by a frozen legion of knights the entire time, all hell-bent on killing you. They cannot talk and they will not entertain conversation, they will simply try to stab you with lances/spears/other sharp objects. They can be killed, but more will eventually take their place. If they land a killing blow on you, you’ll immediately freeze solid and shatter into shards.
Those of you who decided to break your mirrors will also find that you get colder, both physically and emotionally, as time goes on. Eventually, you’ll start to turn to a statue of ice. Don’t worry, though: The cure is true love, whatever that means. This can range from a genuine compliment to being kissed on the mouth to being given a hug from someone you really needed a hug from.
If you survive until the morning, the castle will start to melt around you, and you’ll be transported back to your room/preferred area of sleeping. Those who died will wake up a bit afterwards, but they will feel an inner chill for about a week.
hbomberguy is going to shut down our game for plagiarism—

OOC UPDATES

Happy 2024 what the fuck happened in 2023??
We said this in the discord but are putting it on paper: The cast limit cap has been removed, and we allow people to play up to 4 characters now. Player cap (25) remains the same.
Thank you for participating in our silly little game <3

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

Status: getting settled in finally. he has like a very basic understanding of stuff now but not like The Full Picture. this event is sure going to make him Feel Things teehee.
icons may or may not reflect his current appearance which is 1. long hair on the right side 2. hair on the left side growing out 3. stubble at all times 4. actually wearing decently warm clothes now thank you

event stuff: i have a few mirror ideas, some which may or may not involve spoilers or cw's, but i'll do my best to tailor all of that to whoever wants to do anything with that

i'm unsure if he would go so far as to break them. literally if ONLY because he would have a moment of "oh no if i do that somebody could step on glass."

but yeah he has both his guns so you bet your happy ASS he will be shooting those ice bitches up as soon as they pose a threat to others. undecided if he will die or not, leaning towards no but we'll see how the event goes

Seeking:
++ more cr & new cr
++ explain him more things about the grove
++ building a bridge for ~~vash~~ wolfwood
++ is there any character around here who can't handle themselves? or are too pacifist/underpowered/weak/etc to do so? let him help. let him find his inner nurturer/protector. (this especially goes for the event)

Not Seeking:
-- more super-negative cr at this time, i still haven't had him run into knives yet so whenever that shit happens he'll probably be very trigger-happy and i don't want him to actually hurt people
-- please don't put your character's dog in threads with him without talking to me first he has major trauma

Anything Else:
++ i'm not against it but i'm kinda low energy atm so plz be patient with me on intensive things. i do WANT to do them but i may cherrypick which things and be slow

Meme:

HOLDING MY HANDS OUT FOR LIVIO. i love him so much give him to me more.
i want him and vash to be friends...

honestly i'd love for these two to see each other in action. i know livio has accepted that this vash is just. his vash but weird, but i do think seeing each other in something they're both more familiar with will do something for them.

so basically. let them fight together to protect.

baby's first chance to fight with vash instead of against him........ 🥺 give it to me

BET MY BELOVED.

how does livio feel about lions..... i am asking bc elsword has a lion, he's friendly and will lay on u

otherwise?? elsword is certainly not defenseless but he'll be like "waow those guns are cool mr livio :)" that's it that's all i got

lion is cool literally anything besides Domestic Dog Canis Familiaris is fine!

they sure are elbuddy! check this shit out (shoots things to the left, right, front, and back simultaneously)

i love them i want them be friends