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nextnightmods) wrote2020-04-20 11:03 pm
nextnightmods) wrote2020-04-20 11:03 pm
EXPLORATION.
EXPLORATION
Explorations are currently OPEN. They will close again when we run out of active exploration slots.
β’β’β’
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.
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!
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no subject
character(s): Fjord and Soldat!
area of exploration: The tunnels under the church, starting at the mudslide; Fjord has already excavated the church-side tunnel.
date(s) of exploration: May 11th
plan: Fjord wants to explore the tunnels leading to the church and needs supervision, so Soldat is here. The aim is to follow the open tunnel as far as it goes, investigate that immediate area, and back up immediately if something threatens to go wrong.
They are both coming thoroughly overprepared, since there's no knowing what happens if they die. Soldat has So Many knives, a mix of small and large guns and plenty of hand-to-hand combat experience; Fjord has a magic sword, can teleport, and can cast ranged spells; Soldat has patched up tactical armour, Fjord has leather armour. They also both have charms: Soldat's "friend to spirits" charm that he got from Owl Friend, and Fjord's Constitution charm (makes Fjord unable to feel pain) and Wisdom charm (better insight into other beings and their motives). Soldat also has snacks!
If they make it all the way to the end and back in one piece, Fjord wants to
test their luck andshovel clear the tunnel leading away from the church and see where that goes.is your group willing to accept risk of serious injury/death? No death please
no subject
From the point at which Mollymauk's horn was found, it's only a short walk, less than a minute, before the walls become stone beneath the church's foundation. Fjord had been able to see just this far before, at the very edge of his lantern's light. The water sounds undeniably loud here, as if they will come out to the river at any point - but of course the river lies in the opposite direction across the Bonfire Square. Nevertheless, the air feels thick, as if it must be swum through rather than walked. But they never do find much more water than the damp layer of soil on the ground, which looks to have been regularly walked by one pair of boots by how many layers of the same footprint are left in the caked dust. Pressing through the slightly disorienting feeling of being underwater without being in water at all, they find themselves at the foot of a small set of steps beneath a trapdoor. There is a small box here with a keypad - perhaps the heavy, well-constructed metal trapdoor above needs a combination in order to be opened.
But there is nothing else immediately here to discover, and so the two backtrack and begin to dig. It's painful, backbreaking work digging through the collapsed tunnel wall and debris. The loose muddy ground easily collapses further on itself as they go, and grasping the tools with wet, muddy hands gets frustrating. But eventually they break through into this stretch of the tunnel that runs away from the church, angled westward toward the mountains in the far distance. And so, faced with the same style of dark, narrow tunnel just comfortably big enough for one, they begin to walk.
About fifteen minutes in, they come to an intersection. Ahead, the tunnel carries on as it currently is - mostly straight, fairly level, but the humid air carries the faint smell of blood and meat. Thin, yellow strands of some gelatinous substance wander across the tunnel walls and ceiling ahead, forming sparse but intricate networks over the top of the bare soil and its occasional wooden supports which in this area have held their own against the weight of the flood.
To their left, the tunnel slopes downward at a comfortable angle into darkness, and cool, crisp air blows from it, carrying a muffled echo of the river.
Which way would they like to go?
no subject
cw: gross, gore, seriously it's gross
Soldat and Fjord continue along the tunnel an additional fifteen minutes, watching as the network of gelatinous yellow something gets ever denser, crisscrossing the walls like the veins of some enormous underground creature until they become so thick they overlap, producing delicate coral-like patterns; no longer just veins but fans and spiraling fractals. In some areas they even hang suspended from the ceiling, and the boys must either duck below them or have their hair caressed by those long, spindly, slippery fingers. The stench grows thicker, too, and layered alongside the smell of death is something ripe and clearly decayed.
Ahead, the tunnel changes shape. The flood must have caved in the ceiling here also, or it tried but was thwarted in part not just by wooden supports but by the metal frame of a door. It too has a keypad, much like the trapdoor had. But the weight of water and sliding mud has bent the frame out of shape, and the door has buckled under the immense pressure, leaving just enough of a gap for Soldat to squeeze through first, followed by Fjord.
On the other side of the door is a room. On the western wall straight ahead is a door like this one, but tightly-sealed with a keypad. But the rest of the room opens up into what can best be described as a morgue. Lying in wooden boxes, rather like handmade open coffins, are several bodies:
- One figure is humanoid except that it possesses a long, bony tail and one ram-like horn. The other is missing, and so is the arm on the body's same side. Much of the skin on the body as well as many of the organs within have blackened and sloughed away, and the blackish ooze has mixed into what remains of tattered, muddy clothing that shows evidence of a fight with something with either claws or long teeth.
- Two humanoid figures are difficult to discern details of. Hair and fingernails have detached into the pool of black filth and the bodies are covered in delicate white fungi, mycelia weaving through grease and bone. By height and shape they may have been women but nothing else distinguishing about them is visible considering the state of decay and the abundance of mushrooms, which must have been here for at least a little while as some have shrunken inward and blackened, themselves.
- Another female-sized humanoid, this one still has a mat of short white hair attached in some places to the rotting scalp. Whatever killed her must have split her open severely, for the level of decay on the body does not indicate the skeleton should be visible and yet the muscle and tendons have peeled away in a split from collarbone to one hip. Out of this crevice, thick orange fungi bloom upward in undulating, fleshy sheets and waves. Laid at her side is a rapier.
- The last, a tall sturdy-bodied man with black hair, and hung on the side of his box is a pair of smashed black thick-framed glasses. His body, for whatever reason, seems to have resisted much of the decay the others have gone through. His skin is a deep purple-red and bloated beyond the capacity of his clothing. Thick foam oozes from his mouth and nose. The yellow mat of gelatinous web has pulled itself up over the edges of his box and lays over and across his body. At the foot of his box, unlike the others, are dozens of disastrously-fragmented pieces of a lantern.
The stench in here is overwhelmingly nauseating. It makes their eyes water; makes it hard to search for much else in this room, though it doesn't look to hold more secrets anyway. Feel free to punch or kick the locked door - it doesn't seem to budge, however.
no subject
After that they'll double back together and try the second tunnel heading downhill.
no subject
What they find, once they've finally climbed all the way back up to what ought to be the surface, is perhaps a little discouraging - for like at the church, here too is a one-way trapdoor with a keypad. Hm! But they're far enough away from the river now where it can't be heard, and no other sounds are loud enough on the surface to make their way through this apparent exit. They've learned that the tunnel system must indeed have multiple entrances and exits, but given the disorienting spiral upward, it's hard to say exactly where in Beacon they should be now.
Which means it's another long walk down, and then back up to their original entrance where they've dug through at the site of the collapsed section of tunnel. Finally, fresh air.
no subject
no subject