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

Oh, if only the group had someone with them who could clean up that hallway from all the glass shards... wait, they do.

Law promptly creates a Room that envelops the hallway, uses Tact to move everything on the floor to a neat pile at the end of the hallway, leaving the way to the operation rooms slightly less hazardous.

With the way (mostly) clear, they decide to check out the operation rooms, one by one, with all three in one room at a time, because splitting up sounds like an excellent way to get killed. They figure the operation rooms are where the tools will be, if anywhere, and will look for any supply closets in sight as well. At the same time, they will try to see if there's any sign of the green eyes, or any evidence of what took place in the operation rooms.

All through this, Law keeps the Room active, so that at the first sign of the ceiling starting to break/cave in/whatever, he can teleport them back to the lobby.

It does seem safe enough to proceed with care, now, and so they do. The first few rooms they enter are similar enough to each other - a handful of bloodstained gurneys and operating tables are scattered in the rooms, all covered in rust with rotting, torn fabric for padding on those fortunate enough to have any padding left. On one, a scalpel lies discarded, itself covered in that same old blood that covers so many of the surfaces here, but for the most part these rooms have little that could serve any functional use.

Footprints, bloodstains, and long stretches of disturbed dust and broken tile lead to several of the farther rooms. The building creaks and groans as if in protest as they push onward and finally arrive in a room that is clearly the source of the smell. Here, tables have been packed into the room from elsewhere in the wing. On top of them, scattered haphazardly around, are not forceps and razors but instead shards of glass and sharpened bone all used in lieu of actual equipment. Here and there, a broken claw sits jaggedly buried in torn padding or a discarded shirt. One table has a neat row of human teeth. Piled on the floor are the liquefying remains of organs, studded here and there with fragments of bone, all of which look to have been roughly torn or hacked from their owners with the makeshift tools.

But they notice on entering the room, before approaching these things directly, that they are not alone in this hospital. Matt hears, and Law feels, several large somethings in one of the rooms beyond. Blunted sounds of many footsteps and the occasional buzz or hum drift down the hallway. In that direction, a door creaks, and the sound of crumbling stone rubble accompanies it as it falls onto the hallway floor.

Well, that's cheery! From one of the first rooms, Law picks one of the operating tables that is in the least bad shape and shambles it outside the hospital. He also takes the lonely scalpel and puts that in his pocket.

Upon hearing the sounds, the group's consensus is to proceed with extreme caution: that means all three are as stealthy as they can be (luckily, all three are also used to being stealthy) to hopefully scope what exactly is making the sounds — all the while remaining unnoticed by the source of the sounds.

If they are noticed, and especially if the something is large, dangerous spirits, they will take immediate action and teleport back to the lobby... if they have the time, obviously. If they're not noticed... well, why hurry?

The three creep their way out the door and down the hallway, past a few closed doors to one that seems to be the source of the noise. It's slightly ajar, but more useful is the window in the door itself, which all three can manage to look into.

The room beyond the door is wide open to the forest. Trees uprooted by the flood crashed down onto the back side of this wing, smashing windows and carving a crumbled hole in the wall which is barely visible in the dim glow cast by the torch and lanterns which slips through the window and the gap in the door. Between the three explorers and the darkness of the constant night are five spirits which are crouched down on the floor, wings vibrating, while their suction-cup mouths sponge and suck at the contents of many discarded metal buckets and at flashes of silver on the floor which may be a few more surgical tools, still oozing something slick and dark and foul. Each spirit is about the size of a pony, while crouched like this, and their iridescent masks reflect many colors in the faint light.

It does not take long for them to notice the three outside the window because of that light, faint though it is and occupied though they may be. First one, then another, raises its head, and while the remaining three turn to face the door while they keep cleaning the goo off the floor, the former two stand on long, spindly hind legs to look back through the window, their heads twitching side to side as they buzz to each other.

Two spirits and three humans stare at each other through the window. Javert blinks first and at that slight movement, a long, sharp, piercing proboscis shoots from the center of the suction cup on each spirit's mouth, transforming them from something like horrible house fly to horrible deer fly. That's quite enough for Law, who teleports them all out instantly, though he manages to grab a few things from the floor inside the room with Shambles first, just in case they're useful.

Back in the lobby, he finds he's obtained a pair of forceps that look a little mangled but probably repairable, an empty syringe, and a bag for IV solution which is actually just full of the same old blackened goo that covers everything else.

EXPLORATION.

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