πβπΌ βπΌππ βππΎβπ. (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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!
| QUICKNAV | |||
| comms | | | network β’ logs β’ memes β’ ooc | |
| pages | | | rules β’ faq β’ taken β’ mod contact β’ player contact β’ calendar β’ setting β’ exploration β’ item requests β’ full nav | |
no subject
character(s): Haein, Carmilla, Meg, Masaomi
area of exploration: The abandoned building that Carmilla and Xayah stumbled upon.
date(s) of exploration: Mid-May
plan: Carmilla leads this ragtag party to the abandoned building she and Xayah had previously discovered. They're all in relatively good health, and Masaomi is armed with a crowbar, two knives, and his sporty delinquent attitude. Meg is armed to the teeth with her sharp tongue and wit, while Haein's got a bad personality and a torch that he never returned to the bonfire. Carmilla's the powerhouse here with her vampire abilities, but she's expecting Masaomi to do all the heavy lifting for her.
For their first order of business, they'll try to break into the shuttered building with Masaomi's crowbar, and if that doesn't work, Carmilla will order Masaomi to distract Haein and Meg while she tries teleporting inside. The goal is to discover what's inside the building and what its function/history was. Three of the four are exploration newbies and don't really know what to expect.
is your group willing to accept risk of serious injury/death? Yes.
no subject
Before them is a dark, muddy entryway. The yellow paint on the walls and ceiling is peeling away, and flakes of it litter the floor. On the right, a glass window looks into an office with desks and shelves. The door to the office is ajar and in fact the doorknob has broken entirely and now lies on the floor. A metal plate on the door reads "DAYBREAK ORPHANAGE MAIN OFFICE".
Just past that, a hallway runs to the left and to the right, while straight ahead is a concrete spiral staircase with a wrought iron banister. Peering down the hallway shows four doors to the left, and three to the right - all fairly large rooms, probably, as they're spaced well apart. On a wall in the hallway to the left is a corkboard stuck with pins and a few crude children's drawings remain.
The mud is littered with footprints - many sets of small ones, scurrying erratically from room to room and to and from the staircase. One large set, a pair of boots with pointed toes, has prowled back and forth through the exact middle of the hallway.
Upstairs, something clatters loudly and a heavy thunk is heard through the ceiling.
no subject
Haein breaks off for the hallway... He'll start with the first room on the right!
Carmilla, the brave soul, ascends the stairs to see what caused the noise. She's fully prepared to teleport away at anything murderous.
no subject
Meanwhile, Masaomi notices a trash can under the desk has a stack of brochures in it, now completely soaked with mud, but he can see the image of a roller coaster on the front cover.
Haein heads to the right and enters the first door he finds, which opens into a kitchen. As he goes to step into it, he trips on a thin wire strung across the doorway and lands face-first in mud and broken glass, suffering several fine cuts across his palms and knees. The floor that he's now very close to is covered in those little handprints, especially around the doorway where the wire has been affixed.
Brave Carmilla heads upstairs and finds herself at a landing facing a similar left-right running hallway with doors at regular intervals. The staircase continues up at least one more floor. One door to her left is ajar, and she can see metal bed frames, and scattered toys on the floor. But to the right, there's another thump, a squeal, and the sound of scurrying feet behind a closed door. Just as soon as she hears that sound, heavy footsteps start approaching the stairway rapidly - from above.
no subject
Upon hearing a thump, Masaomi pokes his head out to see that Haein had fallen and waves that whole ordeal aside because that's a guy and therefore not a priority. He'll then turn back to the office and lean in to try to read the headline on the brochure in the trash can, but won't touch it because it's gross. Meg makes a note of the vast number of forms and its need for more in-depth research and suggests to Masaomi that they move on for now. They head to the kitchen where Haein is, and stop by the door to inspect the wire there.
Footsteps from above be damned. Carmilla makes for the door on the right where she'd heard the squeal and scurrying feet and, having heard Haein's warning with her vampire hearing, is careful when entering.
no subject
Without doing any digging, the brochures in the top portion of the trash can are indeed for the Amusement Park - specifically highlighting the euthanasia coaster. Masaomi can just make out the phrase "final days" peering through the mud. He and Meg get to watch Haein meet the cockroaches before bending down to look at the trip wire, which was crudely tied to a couple of nails that have been hammered into the molding around the floor. It has snapped through the middle since being tripped on. Little muddy handprints are visible on the floor and walls near where it was set up, and these tracks loop through the kitchen before exiting back out the door and then right again, continuing farther down the hallway toward one of the other two doors, which is slightly ajar. Through that door, a few inches of the wall just past are visible, and a bright red arrow pointing into the room has been painted there.
Carmilla follows the sound of small footsteps. She opens the door just in time to catch a glimpse of the troublesome spirits here, as a round, furred body with finger-like toes on its paws and a bushy tail turns its masked head to face her with a giggle and a chirp before it slips into a crack in the wall it just should not be able to fit into. Glistening wet footprints show three pairs of tracks in total leading from where she stands to that same crack - and the distraction, plus her keen senses and quick reaction time, stop her from stepping forward straight into a puddle of very slick grease in the doorway.
The room itself is some sort of dormitory, long-abandoned, with scattered toys and other personal belongings near a few of the beds. Many of the items look targeted more toward preteens, with a few light novels, playing cards, and other games strewn amidst the blankets and shoes.
A tall figure emerges from the stairwell directly behind Carmilla. Its back is harshly curved forward and yet it still stands a full eight feet in height, with dozens of clasping hands holding its ragged black robes together. The fabric covers its entire face except for the gray, cracked skin of its lower jaw, and it drapes around jagged, angular bony shapes at the spirit's shoulders and spine. The spirit looms immediately into Carmilla's face, studying her, then lets out a harsh, ringing shriek at full volume for a solid few seconds. This will result in Carmilla having a popped eardrum and muffled hearing for the next 24 hours.
no subject
She heads back downstairs (as in, teleports there immediately) and while Masaomi freaks out, does explain that there's a Slenderman Wannabe and creepy spirit child(ren?) upstairs that she does not suggest fucking with.
Despite this, The Boys gotta keep fooling, so they're going to check out the arrow. This can't possibly go wrong. Masaomi is taking point this time, because Haein's still having cockroach flashbacks. It's fine, Masaomi has his crowbar and he's not afraid to use it on that door. Carmilla and Meg will stay behind, listening for any approaching footsteps, little or terrifying. Well, Meg will listen, anyway. Carmilla will probably just swear and mutter about how the boys are idiots.
no subject
Past the door is a laundry room. Several washers and dryers line the walls, and an open closet door holds some very musty linens. Across the room, on the opposite wall, is another door, although this one with its window full of darkness implies it leads somewhere outside.
The red arrow painted on the wall is not alone. In fact, the entire room has red arrows painted pointing all in the same direction, forming a loop around the room and ultimately leading nowhere in particular except back out again.
Upstairs, the sound of footsteps and the creak of wooden floorboards had resumed initially, and those paying close attention might notice they had continued on across the room just above as if trying to follow those pesky spirit kids. But at the clatter of the bucket they stop, and then hurriedly start toward the stairs again. From the stairwell comes a low rumble of a groan before those boots start thunking their way downward.
no subject
The boys agree that now does seem an ideal time to peace out. Masaomi looks for a way to block the door behind them, if possible. Otherwise, they're outta there!
no subject