nextnightmods | EXPLORATION.

EXPLORATION

ACTIVE EXPLORATION SLOTS: 1/4

Explorations are currently OPEN. They will close again when we run out of active exploration slots.

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The forest engulfing Beacon is dense and uncharted, but that just means there's never a shortage of cool stuff to discover lurking off the beaten path. There's always new locations, plot clues, or extra resources to be found, so although venturing into the woods is always dangerous, the rewards may just outweigh the risks.

Once you come up with a plan, please fill out and submit the form below. We'll respond in one of two ways, depending on the nature of your exploration:

In most cases, we'll respond with a single write-up detailing the outcome of your exploration. For example, characters venturing out into unknown areas may discover a new location! In that case, you'll receive a full description of that new location, along with any other details worth noting, such as forest spirit encounters or difficulties along the way. If your group would then like to react to any of this or explore that location after its discovery, you can then respond with your own write-up of everything your group would investigate, and we'll let you know what happens as a result. And that's it! Then the exploration is wrapped, the location becomes available to the GPSL at large, and you're welcome to thread out any details of the exploration if you like.

In limited cases, an exploration request will open a dialogue between the players and mods to determine the outcome of your exploration. For example, characters attempting to interact with forest spirits may get the chance to play out that encounter, whether it be a pleasant conversation or, uh, the forest spirit trying to kill you, since that happens sometimes. Explorations of this nature will not always result in a response like this, as it'll depend on our availability as mods. If you're interested in doing an exploration like this and don't want to leave it up to chance, PM us! We'll work with you to schedule an encounter.

Regardless of which type of exploration you end up with, what you do during an exploration is entirely up to you, so feel free to get creative! We always try to reward creativity in some way, even if it's not a success in the way that you hoped for.

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Before you embark on your quest, here's everything you need to know about explorations:

Exploring uncharted territory is intended to be dangerous, and there is always a risk of failure, injury, and other setbacks. If you're not on board with these risks, exploration may not be in the cards for you.

That said, the exploration form includes an opt-in for serious injury and death. If you aren't interested in having your character(s) at risk for that stuff at this time, you can let us know upfront. Please keep in mind that opting out of serious injury/death does not mean you're opting out of the above risks of failure, injury, and other setbacks. Those risks are always in play during explorations. In addition, while opting out of serious risks doesn't mean you'll get a watered down exploration, some discoveries lurking out in the forest are reserved for risk-taking characters. For example, opting out of serious risks eliminates the chance of running into the hostile green-eyed spirits, so characters interested in pursuing green-eyed spirit plot threads will have to put themselves on the line to do so.

If you choose to opt into the risks of serious injury and death, your character's safety is forfeit and you give the mods the right to maim accordingly (though, of course, we'll check permissions posts in doing so). This does not mean that groups opting into these risks will always be tormented and killed! It's just helpful for us to know your preferences and expectations upfront. Please keep in mind that opting into the risk of serious injury or death applies to the whole group, not just individual characters.

Explorations into the area of Beacon currently occupied by the Parade will always be extra dangerous. Characters will run the risk of encountering the Parade itself, but besides that, the Parade's presence gets all the forest spirits in the area extra revved up, increasing their hostility. We'll give you the "danger zone warning" at the top of the exploration if you're about to head into Parade-infested territory, as characters may be seriously injured or killed at any point during an exploration within the parade route. You can check the Parade's schedule on the calendar page.

Chance of success will be left up to a mix of mod discretion and RNG. We'll typically use a RNG to determine what you find, if anything, but we'll also take player/character ingenuity into account. In short: If you have a solid, creative plan, you're more likely to be rewarded for that. Aimlessly wandering won't always get you nothing, but it's less likely to earn you something neat for your trouble. (However, please do be encouraged to follow the dumb idea that's in your character's heart. We will reward for IC idiocy, too.)

Having torches from the bonfire with you will also increase your chance of success, though be careful: If you lose the torches while exploring, someone will have to recover them or they're lost forever. Additionally, you must request torches through the item request page in order to take them on explorations. Torches not logged through the item requests page are not considered game canon.

Once you receive a mod response to your exploration, you will have one week to tag us back. If that week timer runs out, we'll consider that exploration closed, and mod responses will stop. You're welcome to handwave your own IC conclusion to the exploration at that point. To be extra clear: the time it takes for us mods to respond to your exploration is not included in that time limit. The timer starts fresh each time we tag you back.

Explorations over two weeks old will be wrapped in the next mod response. This is to prevent explorations from dragging on for too long, which will slow up our system, but more importantly, it'll make for awkward timing issues in the game! We don't want to leave players waiting on exploration outcomes to be able to engage with the rest of the GPSL.

Characters may only embark on one exploration a month. This is to allow all characters to have equal opportunity to make an impact on the setting, as well as to foster more cooperation between characters! With only one explore a month, we implore you to collaborate with other individuals and complete explores as a group when possible.

We will only accept a maximum of 4 active explorations at a time. If those 4 slots fill up, we'll close the queue to new submissions until we're able to wrap some of the active adventures. This number is based on mod availability, and we are looking to get comfortable with the system before we up the number in the future.

Explorations will always be closed during events except under rare special circumstances. Similarly, explorations can't be forward- or back-dated to happen during an event. Go do event things instead!

We have recently moved setting and building updates to the Setting Page. If you're interested in doing that, head on over that way!

To EMBARK ON AN EXPLORATION, please fill out the form below:

player name(s): (please list ALL PLAYERS involved with the exploration!)
character(s): (please list ALL CHARACTERS involved with the exploration!)
area of exploration: (please be as specific as possible! we need to know where your character is/is trying to go.)
date(s) of exploration: (you may forward or back date by up to two weeks from the current date.)
plan: (what, specifically, are you doing? this is the place to detail the plan in full, so be sure to include all of the relevant details so that we can factor it all into our response. consider questions like: what's the goal? are you bringing supplies or torches? does anyone have experience or training that could assist with your plan? is anyone already injured or impaired? tell us what your plan is! AS A REMINDER, EXPLORATIONS WILL TYPICALLY ONLY RECEIVE ONE RESPONSE TO DETAIL THE RESULT, so it's important to be clear about your intentions and plans!)
is your group willing to accept risk of serious injury/death? (a simple yes/no is all we need, and please only give ONE ANSWER for the whole group. a "yes" here doesn't automatically mean you'll all die horribly, and a "no" doesn't mean you won't get anything cool. we'll check permissions posts before injuring/killing characters.)

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Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

After a solid forty minutes of searching, the chill is really starting to make things tricky. Breath freezes to scarves and eyelashes, and Law's hands are starting to tingle with numbness. It's Soldat who spots the clearing first, the yawning black hole in the snow just visible through the trees to the north as they chance upon it.

And it's Link who first hears trouble.

Their slow search has been successful, but while the group has been hunting, they've also been hunted. Link whirls with his sword and shield facing the source of the muffled slumping sound of something behind them to the south just in time for a sharp spear-like bone to come whistling toward his head. It glances off the shield with a loud clang and drops into the snow.

As the group readies to defend themselves against the unseen attacker, another sharp bone projectile whistles through the air and embeds itself in Rosinante's right shoulder, knocking him to the ground before he can get a shot off. A second pierces right through Hope's sternum, pinning her to the ground and killing her instantly. Soldat fires several shots into the black void to the south, and while a few sound like they've hit bark, one lands with a satisfying squelch into something fleshy, followed by an ear-splitting shriek. Law calls up a Room and swaps the unseen-but-sensed creature into view in a gap between trees as he stands in front of Rosinante, and suddenly all can see what they're up against.

Green eyes shimmer behind a bark mask. The creature isn't enormous, about the size of a horse, but even at that distance the details of its slimy mass of twisted flesh are so vivid in their minds it feels like it's much closer than it truly is. Though it has no clear limbs on which to walk, a porcupine-like mass of bony spines jut out in rows on its back, several more of which are suddenly ejected in their direction.

Law carves it neatly to pieces, rendering it immobile, while Link stands ready with shield raised to deflect the volley of missiles, and Soldat lands another several shots into exposed innards. They're quickly able to put the green-eyed creature out of its abrupt misery before it can do any more harm to the group.

It seems there's nothing Law can do for Hope, sadly - her injuries were too abrupt and too severe. Rosinante, meanwhile, has lost the use of his right arm for the remainder of the explore - that injury is severe enough that it will take a lot of time and care to recover from.

But! Threat eradicated, the silo has been found. While Law stays back with Rosinante and Hope's body, Soldat and Link creep forward to the edge. There's a small partly-buried bunker on the far side with a door that might reasonably lead to a staircase, ladder, or elevator of some sort. Looking down into the hole itself is slightly nausea-inducing given the immense drop, and before the bottom is even visible it's swallowed up by the ever-present darkness.

At this point no more danger can be heard or sensed - but the bottom is very, very far down.

Please don't forget to report your death!

Well that was nightmarish. General consensus: carry on, while they're here and still have people who can press forward. Rosinante will carry Hope's body plus lantern and the torch will just have to get jammed into a belt loop or something for now.

Link drops a stone at the edge so they can try to judge how far down the silo goes. Soldat readies his rope and prepares to head down the stairs, or ladder, or whatever is over there that might get them down (is a working elevator too much to ask?), but ultimately Law is just going to shambles them to the lower levels anyway because his fruit is overpowered (thanks, Rosi, that's on you).

The stone falls for about three seconds, plinks off something below, and rattles a bit in something that sounds like it involves metal before settling.

Falling for three seconds sounds like a pretty good way to break every bone, but luckily Law does have the simple way down and extends a Room far enough to carry the group to the bottom, where they quickly find themselves having to get their footing on top of a pile of twisted metal.

It's in pretty bad shape down there, a product of the blast door having gone missing at some point, and decades of weather corroding the interior. The launch cylinder walls are mostly intact down to the last fifteen or so feet, which are badly rusted. Metal plating has collapsed off the walls and crumbled to the floor, and with it a cascade of soil.

There's a side hatch that leads to a short tunnel and a control room, all likewise in a really poor state except for a set of monitors on an upper shelf. Still, if someone wants to come in here with new wiring, it might be fixable. A lot of the equipment looks identical to what's in the power station, as well, which Rosinante and Law quickly recognize. Maybe those computers can be networked to whatever is left of the controls here? That's a job for some tech-savvy folks, probably.

A few warped but readable manuals can be recovered from shelves inside the control room as well, which describe the control scheme and launch procedures. Hm - to launch from a silo, a bomb does have to be on some sort of large projectile with a lot of fuel stored in it, based on these pictures. But surely it's not too far off from the sort of weaponry Weaver has been building already? If nothing else, the group can easily reason that she might have an idea of what to do here if they don't, and if nobody else in Beacon does.

It's not perfect, but it's promising! Is there anything else the group wants to look for down here before they head back?

EXPLORATION.

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