Plotting

[neonmods]

This page is your one-stop shop to pitch ideas to the mods, propose an event, or ask questions about things you’d like to do in the game. Every plot post will also have a Q&A section for this same purpose, but this one’s more for your general ideas and permission.

NPCs and factions, monsters, and locations can be suggested on their respective pages. Feel free to ask questions here, but we may send you to the page proper to officially submit it.

As a refresher, we’d like to be consulted for the following types of plots:

✧ Giving your character a prestigious, influential, or extremely privileged job

✧ Working for City Hall in any capacity

✧ Plots that would impact other players/large portions of the setting

✧ Plots that would damage or destroy public locations

✧ Interactions with major mod NPCs

✧ Killing any NPCs

✧ Plots that attempt to bend setting mechanics (taming a monster, leaving the boundaries of the map, experimenting magically with Shadows, etc - these are not forbidden but we’d like to know what you’re doing so we can give you some results)

If you’re unsure or just want to hash something out with us, go ahead and drop us a line!

So, what can we do for you?

Navigation

Comments

[floresco]

Hi mods! Aerith and Krauser are gonna go poke around the botanical gardens, is there anything they should know about?

[neonmods]

So pleased you asked.

The botanic gardens have been run down and abandoned for a long time, well over a hundred years if not more. What plants are not dead are overgrown and out of control, including familiar sorts of plants from Earth as well as some Aerith and other off-Earth characters will recognize. There are a few little sheds and outbuildings, and one brick cottage that's intact but falling apart. It appears to be some sort of small residence.

Won't be much time to look at it closely. It's not long before their presence at the gardens stirs the notice of this little fella, roughly the size of a polar bear. It barks like crazy, its howl causes horrible chills and it obviously wants you the hell away from the gardens- though it will only directly attack if attacked first.

What do they do about Big Pupper?

[heartworthbreaking]

I made an Unofficial Discord for Neon, I think it might scratch an itch for people who want to have a higher impact setting for knowing what's happening in the game with an emphasis that plotting should primarily be done on the comms. It won't need to be moderated by the mods. Would it be alright if I published it to the rest of the comm with the caveat that mods may be participants but the place to ask them about questions is on the comms itself?

Some games have State of the Game posts where mods do a pulse check to see how players feel about things and solicit feedback. Although we already have the mod contact page, it's easy to forget it's there, and might present a target of opportunity for people to provide their present feelings about events and other stuff. Can we get one of those?

It's super we've had time to ramp up gradually, building CR so that future events can have more significance and meaning to characters who formed connections with others. I'd love some juicy, high-stakes stuff to sink my teeth into, less of a smattering of localized but interesting effects and conveniences/inconveniences, but maybe a unifying event that has (almost) everyone encouraged to team up or pursue the same goal. For example, a certain former game had a major (un)natural disaster that threw everyone into a survival situation, which kickstarted a lot of CR. While I'm not recommending a disaster, it would be awesome to have something along those lines.

Some other ideas:

A variant on the cursed objects event - cursed dance shoes that make the wearer dance (like they've been doing it their whole life!); instruments that compel characters to play (albeit with preternatural talent); mirrors that trap their consciousness in a mirror world while their body is controlled by a malevolent ghost; a glove that allows a person to control the physical movements of another Soul as if they were a puppet-- things like this, except they're hungrily devouring the target's anima!

Souls turning into monstrous versions of their shadows, or their shadows switching places with their Souls?

Some laboratory or hospital or underground facility capturing people and conducting horrifying experiments on them (basically any monster transformations, body horror) or 'assessments' by putting them in Saw-like traps or trapping people in with monster-transformed people. Give people some general ideas of what's possible and enough room to make their own fun with it. Emphasis on teamwork to escape? Possibility of permanent alterations (or an excuse for gained powers as an AC award)?

The Memshare/Dreamshare Thing. These are classics for a reason! Shared memories, shared dreams or nightmares, walking through various characters' dreams, maybe even trapped in a labyrinth underground haunted by the ghosts of people's pasts (ha ha) as they escape.

Man, how fucked up would it be if people had a Titanic-type disaster on the river styx I don't know where I'm going with this, I just think of dark hands clawing and grabbing at people and go "mm, yes, terrifying".

What If scenarios, like maybe in the above example anyone dragged down is locked in a possible future/AU with another character, either totally buying into it and "waking" to its illusory nature and trying to break out, or breaking others out of theirs so they can get back to the surface and shake off their dark, uninvited passengers? Especially great if they're SUPER appealing in some way so it's extra painful extracting yourself from a beautiful lie.

More Heaven and Hell orgies please

As promised, this is what I've got cooking, I hope I've conveyed my love by backing my garbagetruck brain into this post.

[neonmods]

1. An unofficial Discord is totally fine. As we are not going to have any sort of official Discord presence, players are welcome to make as many spaces on Discord as they like. Please make sure to mention that it's an unofficial channel, and should not be used for mod contact (with a link to mod contact would be perfect.)

2. Good idea. It felt a little early to do a State of the Game last month, but later this month seems about right.

3. These are all FANTASTIC, thank you very much! I've copied them into the mods' Sacred Plot Document and hope to get some of them into the mix very soon!

[bomblogic]

Hi Mods! A couple assorted questions for you:

If someone were researching the boundaries of Limbo and the Brink, would they find information that no one's returned from the Mag Mell/Northern side? Or would that be the kind of info someone would really have to dig for?

Could a character reach the Brink and lose their physical body but not die? ie. they go into the Brink, not for long or far, and the conditions destroy their body, however they cross back or are forced back before there's any other potential damage. If so, would it be acceptable for them to be able to recreate their body (possibly that task itself taking a few hours) but they're dramatically weakened physically/magically/etc and need proper time to recover as well as recover anima?

Basically Mara here is the sort to see an impossible task as the perfect thing for her to take on, and more relevant she's gone through that specific type of situation before. (Since one of her more unique things is that she's spent a lot of time existing without a physical body, and she's hung out in literal primordial chaos while keeping her awareness/sense of self.) So I'm wondering if she would be allowed to briefly cross the Brink and have it be like one of the times she died in canon. Not looking for this to be a repeatable event, just part of her testing the rules of this realm and trying to figure out how similar or not it is to realms she's familiar with.

And one other question on a completely different note - this is more just for clarifying purposes. Since beings from all kinds of worlds are pulled into Limbo, is it safe to assume there are at least a few establishments that specifically cater to non-humans?

[neonmods]

1. I'd say the amount of research on the northern Brink is very sparse and hard to come by, but there are a few sources that say no one has ever made it to that edge of Limbo and returned. It's hard to tell if this is just a "nobody has reported the contrary" situation or if it's actually true. It's pretty common knowledge that you'd have to be nuts to try going there, though there'll always be curious people wanting to figure out what's out there.

2. Best that Mara's body not get actually destroyed, since there's no known way to recover it once it happens. But what would you think if Mara crossed the Brink and one of the effects severed her from her body and made it vanish? Suddenly she's in ghost form and her body is nowhere to be found.

Meanwhile her body randomly reappears somewhere in the city, and her ghost would have about three days to find and re-inhabit it. Then she'd need an extended period of anima recovery, as you mentioned. That sound nice and juicy?

3. Yes, there are definitely establishments that cater to non-humans. If you come up with a good one and would like it added to the locations list, you know what to do. ;)

Player Plot for January?

[heartworthbreaking]

Soooo I have an idea I want to pitch to you for approval/input, etc. before I go opening this up to the game at large:

Who: Some nefarious guys (TBD) and a bunch of characters who sign up for this.
Where: Various locations, connected to the Underground.
When: Some day in January (this all happens in a single day at the same time)
Format: Basically choose one of the four scenarios below, grab an interested partner or two and hash out your escape together! The fourth scenario has unique handling. (Outcomes will be written for each scenario depending on the results of threads?)
CW: drugging, medical horror, body horror, monsters/transformation, monsterfucking, dubcon, mind control/altered mental states/altered moods

A group - open to any but this is especially for players who are struggling - of disparate characters have been captured (by whom, to be determined). Sequestered in various locations but all of them connected to the Underground, the characters have been separated into pairs or groups. Though the circumstances may be different, the goal is the same: survive until you can escape.

The obstacles facing the characters will be based on what the participants are interested in. If you don't play fighty characters, consider the non-combative options or make your own. If you play fighty characters, you are, of course, not required to only choose combat options. Just like every other event, the choice is yours what you would like to engage in. There is no requirement to participate in every option. Choose the one you like best! Don't like any? Make your own! Anything that has ever appeared on the comms is pretty much up for grabs here, unless it's an AC reward and then I'll see what I can do.

Some examples. Your character awakes...

[Scenario 1] chained to another character, the room begins to fill with gas. A voice from a crackling intercom announces that elevated emotions will accelerate the gas's effect - to be transformed into a horrific monster! Only one of you has been given the antidote, better find out a way to calm them, or escape and pull the lever on the other side of the room that will pump antidote into the room instead. Or save your own hide and leave the other(s) to fend for themselves! Alternatively, if you're into dubcon and monsterfucking: the above, but the monster is horny and so are you.

[Scenario 2] in a carefully preserved room where all the windows and doors are locked. Strange things keep happening too, moments where the room becomes cold enough to see your breath, objects that fall mysteriously off shelves, or flickering lights. And is that the sound of... weeping? Help a ghost resolve the regrets that keep them tied here, and be rewarded with freedom. Investigation or diplomacy, or special psychic/life energy powers might even come in handy here!

[Scenario 3] with a group of other people, dressed in bizarre costumes, on a stage set up with cheap plywood set designs on stands: a fantasy castle, a little cottage in a wood. Over the intercom crackles a tinny recording of orchestrated music... and sitting alone in the audience is a gaunt, figure dressed all in black, any face obscured by the shadow of a top hat (ludicrously tall top hat too, very rude to wear that to a show). Do you take that flimsy stage foil in your hand and try to attack your audience, or hope that entertaining the mysterious being will earn your freedom? There can be compulsive effects involved, such as the irrepressible urge to sing your dialogue. Your costume need not be appropriate or adhere to any perceived gender roles. Go nuts.

[Scenario 4] secured to a chair, bolted to a circular metal disc on the floor. You can't turn your head, but you can make out someone to your left and right in a similar situation. A spotlight descends on one person at a time, and out of the darkness that surrounds you dozens of figures appear. Perhaps some of them are familiar, intimately so. When the light falls on you, they heap accusations, they scream, they yell, they curse you for every sin, every crime, every one of your regrets. The light shuts off and all of them go silent. The disc rotates, the light falls on a new victim, and the cacophony starts up all over again. The air thickens with negative anima the longer this goes on. By the time your turn rolls around again, you feel like a live wire. Will you use this explosive power to escape, or punish your accusers? Will it drive you mad? (This is designed to be a Mingle with no cap on participants. Everyone involved post a top level with their turn for the regrets/sins/etc. being exposed with their character's reaction. Everyone can react to each other's threads. A separate thread will be posted with an outcome once all players involved have had a chance to declare what action they will take once they've all drunk deep of the negative anima juice. Depending on who all gets involved this could turn into absolute pandemonium. Perfect opportunity to run like hell!)

[destinymaker]

The FAQ indicates that faction joining should be done by a quick comment here before we proceed to handwave more, so here I am!

Durandal would like to join the Atropos University Research Team - he's an incredibly geneticist (and pharmacist), he'll love to adapt his skills to more game-specific lab work. Miss him with that field work shit though, just bring back specimens and let him run calculations and sample analysis.

If the University needs someone to fill in to teach a class every once in a while, he won't say no to that either.

[neonmods]

You got it! All perfectly doable.

[onlyforgiveness]

I had an idea for an event last night. Kind of a spin on AU's, only instead of characters changing to become alternate versions of themselves, reflections of their souls get pulled into Limbo or splintered off as separate entities all their own. From an OOC perspective this gives people the full range of options for how they want to play with such an event, with their normal blorbo meeting alternates of their CR and vise versa. It also allows for multiple AU's at once, however much people want to play, whether it's gender swap, mirror verse/alignment swap, what-if scenarios, etc etc.

Probably an event like this would work best as a long-running, month long thing. As for how to get all the AU's back in the bottle...obviously anima, but specifically needing a third party conduit between the original and the AU reflection to encourage CR. Something something it doesn't *have* to be a threesome *but*...

Apologies if this is a bit scattered, I'm dosing cold medicine like woah.

[neonmods]

Oh, fun! Like that a lot! We'll add it to our sacred plot document. >:3

NPC Request...ish

[lachtara]

Hey Mods!

After the latest plot, Emet-Selch is going to do some poking around given the disappearances. To give it a reasonable timeline, he will be quite concerned when Hythlodaeus disappears for a day as it's rather unusual but he will only look into it after he returns and provides him with some details of what happened. So this should largely happen post-24 hour window.

Given the short turnaround, contents of what happened, and lack of demands it will come off like someone is gathering random data or doing some manner of experimentation. Given that... I think he would seek out to make some connections with The Symphony. It's not meant as an accusation but he would find talking with them most useful in terms of A) Finding out if there are culprits among them and B) If not, potentially using their skillset to find potential culprits. This is not going to be a "this thing must be solved right now in this investigation" but more so that there is something sinister afoot and he wants to start gathering resources to find information and prevent such things from happening in the future.

The Symphony does not have NPC lists outside of an enigmatic one that people have never seen. Would there be one of lower rank that he could potentially try and form a connection with or would this be a dead end?

[neonmods]

Tracking down the Symphony is a bit frustrating but not impossible. If Emet-Selch is persistent or is heard asking around at certain affiliated locations (such as Felix Night Casino) he will eventually be messaged by an anonymous number requesting to meet.

At the meeting, a woman introduces herself as "Fife," a Virtuoso for the Symphony. "I assure you," she says, "it's not in our nature to partake in such... barbaric pursuits as that kidnapping business." She is very cagey and refuses to answer questions without a layer of "PR voice" but she does dangle an offer, that if Emet-Selch can prove he's "talented" enough, he may be able to take his queries to the Maestro.

That is, she's asking if he'd like to be recruited.

[destinymaker]

Little question about monsters and shadows!

Mad science has begun, Rau and Gil are taking an Umbra to the vet - which brings a great question to the forefront of my mind: can you draw blood from a monster? Or does the syringe draw anything else? If it's blood, what is Umbra blood like?

I don't expect any major plot reveals from this silly thread, but this particular bit made me curious enough to actually come ask!

[neonmods]

Omg, hilarious. Uhh...

let's say that they can draw... some kind of liquid from the Umbra but it's kind of just part of its gooey little shadowy body. Like taking a chunk off a ball of clay. Which can then be reapplied to the Umbra to make it grow bigger again!

[eschatological]

Dropping a faction-joining comment as per the FAQ.

If this falls within the "other corporate jobs" opportunity at Styx, Rau will be taking a corporate investigations (internal affairs, loss prevention, corporate espionage...) role. Although it's a shift from his military special ops background, Rau was raised to inherit a business empire and will be perfectly competent and well-behaved. His medium/long term goal is to learn what's happening in those secure facilities/in the big foreboding skyscraper, but he won't be overt about his interest or try to break into these places unauthorized -- rather, in the short term, he'll just build a track record of performance and reliability with the aim of getting perfectly legitimate access to these places later.

[neonmods]

You got it!

Rau will probably start off with some basic security work at Styx HQ and possibly traveling around to Styxmarts throughout the city from time to time. This'll probably be a trial period of 1-2 months before he gets to sit in on some corporate investigation work. No access to the secure facilities just yet, but keep up the good work and soon...

[itreachesout]

Redirected from the February plotting post: Miller is investigating the Widowmaker incident and wants to examine Styx's involvement more closely. Definitely will appreciate the mods' guidance and input on this matter.

[neonmods]

Of course! Styx puts everything on lockdown pretty quickly and has their security on the lookout for nosy press or investigators, but there will be a few, shall we say, sources available to find some more info. (For instance Rau, above, is an employee who was interested in spilling the beans.)

We'll also provide you some other stuff if you like, if you give us a couple days to get some things together. What's Miller been looking into about the incident?

[rockitlike]

So- I failed to do anything about it last month, but after her kidnapping/transformation, Scully would definitely have done a blood draw on herself and run it through any tox screen or analysis she had access to via the clinic.

She's also definitely going to take samples of the water (both pre- and post- boiling) and would test it to try to find the nature of the contaminant-- though unless there was some obvious commonality in the results I don't know that she'd necessarily see the connection.

So I guess my questions are

- how obvious would it be that the stuff in the water is what she was gassed with?
(if the answer is, it wouldn't have been detectable in her blood that's totally fine too.)

- is her poking around in this way going to attract any unwanted official attention?

Fortunately or unfortunately she's going to lose interest in this pretty quickly as the water starts to affect her, but if anyone else talks about investigation she'd probably have the presence of mind to chime in at least with her findings....

Thank you sorry this is disjointed and late!!!

[neonmods]

Not late at all!

Scully will find trace amounts of the same chemical in the tainted water sample as she was able to detect in her blood. In the boiled water sample, there is no trace of the chemical, as heat-treating it has eliminated it.

So long as Scully does not run around openly publicizing her findings with her name attached, she shouldn't attract the interest of anyone higher up.

[bomblogic]

Hey mods! I meant to stop by with this sooner but y'all know how Life is.

Mara has been experimenting with different flora and chemicals, trying to create something akin to a particular concoction back home that allows a person to see/access another plane of reality - with her intent being to basically come up with a version that works in Limbo and would let her better see what's beyond the Brink. Obviously she hasn't been successful... but she did accidentally create a potent little hallucinogen.

She's kept it secure with her other creations, but gee wouldn't you know it, with her getting canon updated and temporarily pulled out of Limbo the protection wards around her hidden cabin in the forest suddenly don't work anymore. It'd be a shame if anyone criminally enterprising made off with the vials of her small test batch and recipe. >.> (aka please do with her accidental drug as you wish <3 )

Drug description: Mild hallucinogenic in liquid form that, at a small dosage, produces a heightened sensory experience, particularly affecting visual input and colors. Individuals may report seeing colors or visual effects not on the normal spectrum (or whatever is normal for their species/biology). It leaves a faint bitter aftertaste and taints the tongue black, which fades after a few hours. The liquid will also stain clothes and skin if it comes in contact. Eyes become dilated with the iris color darkening and the pupils appearing to have a 'galaxy' effect.

However on higher dosages the eyes become entirely black, like staring into a void, and the visual world becomes more desaturated. The hallucinations begin to focus on monsters and monstrous elements, but actual monsters may appear in sharper relief and with more detail. A surely dangerous effect to try to make useful since one may become unable to tell the difference between the real monsters and fake. Such dosage also invokes increasing sensations of being disconnected from reality.

[bomblogic]

Good evening mods! I've been kicking this idea around for a bit so. If a character were interested in starting/creating a faction, what kind of restrictions would there be with that? Related, can a player faction have friction with the NPC factions or conversely temporarily work with them at some point (ie. player faction and NPC faction both do something to undermine another NPC faction)?

Basically old habits die hard, Mara wants to dig in some roots and ideally secretly/quietly start making it known that Niesha's not the only god in town. Long long term would be Mara trying to make a move or be more of an active rival. In the immediate would just be her looking to "claim" a little territory and feel out how things are behind the scenes, whose palms to grease to get authorities to look the other way if necessary, that sort of thing.

Since she's been spending a lot of time getting to know the nightlife of the city I was thinking she could possibly make connections with some of those type of businesses, not taking much interest in criminal activity (since that's plenty crowded) but instead her recognizing the value in anima generation and plentiful access to it. Which hey, convenient that suddenly there's a secret society she would be very interested in aligning with.

I don't have much for firm thoughts as I wasn't sure what might or might not be allowed and didn't want to get ahead of myself, lol.

[neonmods]

Short answer for now: Yes, we'd be delighted to help you plan and execute an arc like this! I'd say, to start with, we'd probably build out around a dozen NPC followers for Mara (and any player characters who'd be into the idea, of course) and further power and influence could absolutely be provided via AC rewards.

We definitely encourage her to investigate the Carnal D'Elites and exchange ideas with them, when available. This group is going to tie into some plot further down the road, so Mara will likely want to branch off on her own eventually. But let's just say they share her ideas about anima generation and the value therein.

[lamariposa]

Interested in having Maeve joining BEASTFORCE to make her necessary dosh, especially when it comes to patrolling and fighting monsters. Also hopefully a free leather jacket.

[neonmods]

You've got it, Maeve! The jacket is yours and you are a BEASTFORCE sentry!

Commander Platinum Wolf allows all sentries to choose their own code names, generally in the form of Sentry (Adjective) (Animal), though is not overly picky so long as everybody uses their codenames in official communications.

Feel free to handwave whatever sort of jobs Maeve would be comfortable with, whether hunting, security assignments, or anything else that suits your fancy. Also feel free to hit up the Commander via NPC communications if so inclined.

[rockitlike]

hello FORTY YEARS LATE I am following up on the Carnal d'Elites party from May. (Time is fake, sorry about that.)

Having been invited to their groovy shindig, when Scully was not enjoying the scenery and the other guests, she would certainly have posed a few questions to anyone from the host group she could pin down long enough to ask:

1. what is the CD's elevator pitch for their organization- how would they describe their purpose to her?
2. what is required/expected for membership, and
3. what are they willing to share about their anima studies

Thank you for any info and she will probably.... have more questions..... it's kinda her thing. <3