MARCH PLOTTING: WOULD YOU STILL LOVE ME IF I WAS A WORM?

[sticksandbonesmods]

SETTING UPDATES:

• Luca built us a bar watchtower. It’s very cool. When he is absent, it will be maintained by an old spirit. Get drunk and eat fondue to your hearts’ contents.
• The school is officially under Livio’s jurisdiction and is gradually being patched up. Please offer to assist Livio as he’s working very hard and deserves the world.
• The snowfall has stopped, and the remaining snow is melting off. Cute flowers in various colours will pop up across the Grove. They are harmless, but care should be given to thank the forest before picking them. This also means that bugs have returned to the Grove: a fly might be in your soup, or a butterfly might land on your nose, or a bee might bumble over to you. For some reason, the eyespots on the butterflies’ wings look too realistic.
• Moder has started to grow mosses and flowers on her back as well. Happy Spring!
• The map has been updated. Some curious players have already seen the new maps in the gallery, which leads us to…
• The explorable area for everyone is going to massively expand this month. The expansion will happen to the east and west, aka the sides of the map the river stretches across, and player characters will be able to take rafts down the river from either side of the stepping stones in the middle to these new locations. One of them goes up to the edge of the cliffs to the east, where Sesa and Elsword saw the ocean and the Cosmic Serpent, at which point the fog wall will block them from progressing further (the serpent will however be visible); the other travels west and has multiple viewing points: a graveyard of bones, including a creature so massive one wonders how it once roamed this land, and the lake, which will be visible but still blocked off by the fog. Sometimes when player characters stand too close to the lake, myriads of black hands slap against the fog wall as if trying to reach them, and a distinctly beautiful singing can be heard.
  • Keep in mind that to reach the end of either of these areas will require a three-day long journey at minimum, as was discovered when Elsword and Sesa got lost in the woods for 3 days the first time around. The River Guardian may be able to speed along this journey if offerings are made to it first. If that option is not taken, there are spots along the bank to camp out, so no one needs to sleep on a raft.
    • Maps are not reflective of travel time because Wolfie did not feel like making 3 maps worth of nothing but trees.
• Sometimes, curious player characters might travel to the lake’s edge to hear the Guardians bickering with the thing behind the fog in an unknown language.
• A monstrous crocodile with too many eyes can be seen swimming through the river. It will stalk player characters, but won’t hurt them unless they hurt it first.

PLOT UPDATES:

• This month will feature our regularly-scheduled TDM/Event, as well as a player-plot type mingle log that Chi will be writing us that we wanted to highlight. While this player-plot is optional to participate in, we felt the need to bring it up in the plotting post because it is going to shake up the state of the game slightly. “Why isn’t in the event log then” because we didn’t want you guys to feel pressured since the mod team is going to ruin Wolfwood’s nice mingle log. Don’t ask questions you’re not ready for the answers to!!
• (Side note: If anyone wants to run any big events in the future as a mingle and wants it highlighted in a mod-official plotting post, tap us. We’re here for it.)

TDM/Event:

• This is a Large Game Month. For our new players: Large Games are events in which player characters are transported elsewhere by the Creature’s magic and made to participate in some sort of event or “game” lasting for one day, with the reward at the end being something that will affect the game setting or be otherwise profitable. This game’s reward is the explorable area expansion, meaning that unfortunately you cannot immediately walk to the new locations until this challenge is done. Worry not, because this event is ICly taking place 🎉🎉🎉March 2nd 🎉🎉🎉, nice and early.
• The game itself will involve each player character being transformed into an animal no larger than a German Shepherd, where they will then race through the woods while being chased by monsters. Player characters will have to not only evade these monsters, but outsmart them, as the racetrack is a little too long and will take about 8 hours for each character to get through. You could sprint the whole way, but breaks are encouraged… just don’t be surprised if something sneaks up on you.
• Aside from the rule that you can’t be too large, you are also limited to just real-life Earth animals (extinct ones will also work), so no dragons or unicorns. If you want to be an animal that is normally quite large, you will be shrunk down to the proper size dimensions — so if you choose a bear, you will be a small bear. We are also aware that saying "extinct animals are fine" means y'all will want to be dinosaurs, and we are willingly opening ourselves up to the mayhem of letting a tiny T. rex roam our setting.
• This time, there will be a clear winner of this race determined via the mods rolling a d20. We are requiring players to sign up to win the race against their peers (signups are below), so if you don’t care to win you don’t need to sign up. The reward for the winner will be a free, up to medium-sized item from home, given to you by the Creature itself in a package made of… sticks and bones. Sorry, we had to.
• With Large Games, keep in mind that while death is possible, deaths are not punishable with trips to the Garden, so die terribly as you see fit. We support you.

Chi’s Plotline:

• We will admit upfront that we want to keep the heavy details of this under wraps for the surprise factor of it, as we think it’ll be more exciting that way, especially with the “what happens and why” since this is Chi’s baby — but here’s the information we can share with you in advance:
• On the night of the New Moon (March 10th ICly) when the Fog wall is weakened, as the moon lore goes, Wolfwood is going to start burning the cult books in the Church (again). This happened in a prior thread between players, but they respawned, and he’s had enough. The entire Grove is allowed to come to this historic cult book burning and are encouraged to add fuel to the literal fire.
• Unfortunately, this is going to piss off the Forest, and in retaliation, the Grove will be attacked by all sorts of twisted monsters, enough to keep player characters occupied — there might be two monsters to one player, even. Have fun with it, go wild. Characters wishing to not participate in combat can skip this by hiding in the inn or their houses, if they own one.
• The Guardians, meanwhile, will be unable to help for various reasons. Moder can only take on about three giant beasts at once; the River Guardian is a fish with 0 combat abilities; Zahliya will be elsewhere. “What does that mean” Zahliya will be elsewhere. It ain’t fun if the demigods can bail y’all out!
• The attack will last for a few hours of the night, and end when the Forest is satisfied. “Hey what does that mean” you’ll find out. :)
• This event is not a Large Game, since it's a player-posted log, which means dying will send you to the Garden, and the usual rules of “losing something to return” will apply.

OOC UPDATES:

• The rec center is still unowned. If anyone would like to claim it, please shout at us on this post or in the discord. It needs less cleaning up than the school does, but we thought we’d put that out there. This will NOT count against you owning a building in this setting if you have yet to use your bonus AC to build us something neat. The rec center is now Sesa's to clean up, have fun buddy. We will update this on the locations page.
• We are working on tweaking the FAQ page to clarify some things. We will announce in the Discord when this is done.
• This plotting post kinda long, someone should tell the mods to chill :/

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.

<strong>Character:</strong> <strong>Status:</strong> <strong>Seeking:</strong> <strong>Not Seeking:</strong> <strong>Anything Else:</strong> <strong>Meme:</strong>

Comments

[oleaeuropaea]

Likewise, apologies for the delay! But yes, that would work, though provided the Plantimal is always on Phantom's person, I would prefer it have the explo aspect, just so there's a bit more of a driving force to the interaction to keep it going. If that's alright with you, of course!

*remembers that I have only replied to this in my head*

[bloodyopus]

It's alright, I was also swamped with stuff, feeling unwell, etc. Take your time! And yes, that's alright, since I could always have Phantom figure out that particular nerf I'd mentioned another way.

Also, I lowkey just remembered that there is Wolfwood's burning cult texts' log...would you like me to include a locked prompt for you in a toplevel, then (this one we'd discussed, ofc; if it's alright, they could meet near the church although before the monsters come), or would you prefer a separate log post instead? I'd be fine with either way!

[oleaeuropaea]

This actually works out, since I realized with how crazy my schedule is, I'm not going to be able to TL on the main event at all. We can either do a locked post on the WW log, or you can just hit Vash patrolling and we can go from there. I don't know that he'll go far from the Church, but at least it's an excuse for them to meet up?

[bloodyopus]

Replying to Vash patrolling would work out for me, and yeah, that would be an excuse for them to meet up! We don't even have to go with my original idea, although either way, I could figure something out and we could take it from there? We'll just...see where it would take us.

Essentially, the classic 'fuck around and find out'; oldie but goodie. Take your time with the replies, though!