In Darkness - OOC

So the game is now officially arc'd out. The alt-comm remains open for your using pleasure, be it back to canons or just random character runs or narratives you want to put up.

We have postponed the opening of Even Darker until RL settles down for everyone. If you haven't signed in but are still interested, just keep an eye on the OOC comms. There'll be an announcement when we're ready to start the ball rolling again, and advertising and whatnot. I think though with the holidays coming up, it's a good time for there to be a break, and we may just wait until the new year to see where everything stands.

Keep in touch though. Through twitter or mails or IMs or whatever, and hopefully we'll see each other again in Even Darker :)

It really was an amazing run. A few bumps along the way but I definitely enjoyed playing with everyone, and definitely hope to see you around again -- if not in ED then in some other game.

Thanks guys. :)

Okay, okay. I didn't do maintenance earlier this week 'cause ... whatever, I was setting up the new game.

That said, would everyone who is continuing to Even Darker please sign in here with the specifics of your character's weaponry? For guns, name and bullet caliber. Any blades or anything like that should be signed in as well. When we kick off v2, no one has any weapons or conduits of magic. If they can do magic with just spell books, those were confiscated too, and should be on the list.

It's just so I know, when plots roll around for weapons to hand-back, to be able to be a little more specific about what caliber of bullets are on the island, and who, exactly, can do what kind of damage.

Also, if you are continuing over, please make sure you join the three new communities so we have an accurate journal-count. Just signing in isn't enough.

First, make sure you guys have read (and responded to) this. There are a lot of you who haven't signed in one way or the other, and I'd like some response before the end of the weekend, either way, so I can make appropriate edits.

Second, plot!

Sunday night/Monday morning in the dark hours, all of the food will be removed from the hotel and the stores. Any characters stashing food in their room will be drugged to sleep and have the food removed from their room. There will be plenty of bottled water, some basic cooking elements (oil and flour, salt and spices, things like that). There will be a note on the fridge Monday morning that says "Happy Hunting!" complete with a yellow smiley-face sticker.

Wednesday morning, a boat will arrive at the island to "rescue" them. The crew will be people they've never seen before, so it's nothing so glaringly obvious as the minions and Heads who post on the network. The crew of the boat will claim to be a rival company who broke off from the current set of experimenters a decade ago and ever since have been trying to rescue the current lot of experiments. So they'll possess the technology to send people home from the point of abduction, memories intact (or not, as the people so choose), or to send people to other realities besides their own (like, Jaime's totally going to Firefly-verse XD)

Thursday, people will be home. Any back-to-canon/return home posts you want to play out, you can stick in the alt-comm. You can even start them preemptively and just fore-date them to Thursday, so they're done by Friday.

Friday, the characters remaining for v2 will wake up in their assigned rooms. Most of them are the same, but some who lost their suitemates are now in singles, and we had a pair suite up. From Friday and beyond, all posts should go in the ED comms, and not the ID ones.

All right. Hopefully this makes sense with my early-morning coherence. If not, questions for clarity, throw them at me.

I am hasing muses today :)

This is Felicity Potter. She's from 2049, the offspring of AlSev and Marcus Flint's daughter. >:D

She has an actual bio because I played her in another game prior to this one, so you can read aaaaaaaallll about her.

::shifty eyes:: 'kay bye.

'kay guys. Just a reminder!

Phobias start tomorrow and will continue through the week for our lucky contestants. :)

If you need anything clarified or anything like that, hit me up.

First, disregard the journal. Login/out isn't worth it with the connection at my desk. (Is not a good connection; takes forever).

That said, as some of you might have seen yesterday, I was kicking around an idea on twitter of introducing a wild-card element to the island. This would be in the form of a boat of some sort (likely not a large one) stranding on the island with crew native to the world.

Since this has potential to radically alter the course of the game (like, if it goes the way where some people escape and call for help and bring more rescue boats), I thought I'd see what your thoughts on the matter were.

I don't have much by way of details (it's a rough sketch, honestly), so if you guys want to build on this or run by some if/thens, I'm cool listening.

If you'd rather not introduce the element at all, also cool.

The other ways it could maybe go:

- the crew are integrated into the experiment
- some people do escape (characters are dropped) but can't send help
- we prematurely move to the land of ice and snow (instead of doing it later in the game)
- ???
- profit!

So, totally up for discussion. Yay, nay, yes if, no but, lay it on me.

Hey guys, just a few maintenance dealies today.

First, I updated the FAQ with the things I removed from the holds page, which was getting a little crowded. These new elements have been added to the FAQ:

Can I play an animal?

If the animal can talk to humans in its canon, then yes you can. For example, Dug from UP! is acceptable with his collar. Bambi is not. Real animals must be used for a PB in this case.

Can I use a comic/cartoon/drawn/anime PB?

Only for network posts. All characters must be represented by a real 3-D person/animal for threading purposes.

What's visible in the network?

The character's log-in (journal name) and icons are both visible in the network, just like they are on the journal site. So yes, you can use non-PB icons for network posts only.

Second, headers! While I definitely appreciate the use of the !complete tag, please don't forget to also edit the status on your header. "Closed" or "narrative" if it was as open that wasn't responded to, "complete" if it's a completed thread, or "dropped" if you've used the !dropped instead of the !complete tag.

In the vein of the !dropped tag, if your partner has labeled the thread as dropped, then it will be counting against you when we do activity checks; the minimal amount of time that can pass between last-tag and application of the !dropped tag is one week. Please do not reply to a thread labeled as dropped without discussing it with your partner first.

Please do not create new ! tags in any of the communities. The only tags you should be creating are character tags or player tags if you're a new player, or ~player tags in the threading community to keep track of your threads, and none of those is a ! tag. If you have a suggestion for a ! tag, please run it by the mods, either through the drop box, IMs, twitter, or e-mail.

If you have any questions, comments, etc, please don't hesitate to hit me up.

Also, omg you guys, 7 posts before 11/1 and we have 100 for the month! we can do this!

First, I'd like you to meet my good friend phobia list!

Second, please see the relevance to next week's plot: The following characters get a week of phobia.

I know this is a little far in advance (it's not this Monday, but the following one), but I wanted everyone to have a chance to think about it if nothing immediately springs to mind.

This is a select plot, which means the characters were generated by random rolls. If you don't want to play this round, lemme know ASAP so we can replace your kid with someone else. Or if the one that was rolled is someone you weren't comfortable playing with a phobia, we'll swap them out for another one of yours.

Dave Stutler - Fear of circles/rings
Arthur Pendragon - Fear of self / being alone
Faye Valentine - Fear of England/English culture
Ichabod Crane - Fear of Books
Trini Kwan - Fear of Plants
Lily Evans - Fear of Doors
River Tam - Fear of Sleep
Salem - Fear of Food
John Allerdyce - Fear of Bathing/Showering

The details:

Monday (11/1) the above characters will wake up with a phobia. The phobia will vary in degrees at random throughout the week. So perhaps at times they'll be able to confront their fear with just a case of the shakes, and at other times the mere idea of their fear has them huddling in a corner trying to hide (unless they have a fear of corners >:D ).

The fear can be anything, though it's suggested it be something they're likely to encounter on the island (for example, a fear of dragons ... isn't going to do much to them).

If you have questions, hit me up. Once you've figured out what phobia your kid's struck with, comment away.

Hi All!

I'm Willow and I'm dropping in with Merlin from the BBC reboot of the Arthurian Legend with Merlin! He's coming in from Series 3, episode 7 and feels more than a little bit traumatised. When he wakes up, he'll be surrounded by technology, it's going to be terrifying, and also really, really fun. =D

So, the information y'all need to know can be summed up in a few words: Merlin's clumsy and awkward and a sorcerer. He's also - currently - Arthur's manservant and Arthur knows nothing about his magical talents (which have been somewhat reduced on the island - to his dismay and great distress) and he would like to keep it that way!

His bio's here for more information, you know, if you're interested, that is.

Love just generally chatting, particularly if it involved game-related plot stuff. So! My AIM is estelwillow, and I can always be reached on willow1609@gmail.com.

Really excited to be here and to be taking part, and both myself and Merlin (sort of) look forward to getting involved and taking part and meeting new people and all that jazz!

-Willow

So... I guess now is as good a time as any to drop a quick hello :) Especially as my muse has some icons if not all of them. I'm something of an icon wh0re, what can I say? :D

Anyways I'm Mands and I'll be joining the community with one Arthur Pendragon from the recently rebooted BBC version of the great Arthurian legend. Don't look now but the boy is preening in my head >.>

Most of what you need to know about the muse can be found here :) but am always happy to answer any questions pertaining to the muse or myself for that matter!

I'm going to be terribly amused when Arthur wakes up and finds himself not in his own bedchambers but a completely foreign place with what I imagine for him will seem to be tricks of sorcery. He won't be so amused I'm sure, but since when does what the muse feel mean anything? Pffft.

Happy to talk sceneage, plottage and other fun game related stuff :) Looking forward to getting involved and having my muse run into new and exciting characters (after he's done torturing Merlin of course)

I can be found on AIM at mandsangelfox or over email at miranda.adelsberg@gmail.com

Again, very excited to be here and I look forward to getting to know everybody and their muses!

-Mands

Okay, so:

1) Communications cut out at 11:59:59 PM tonight between the islands. AS people can network each other, and Barren people can network each other, but one island can't reach the other. Edit They can try to send messages across the island, but will be met with a "communication failed" response.

2) Webcams are going away during the night.

3) Tomorrow before I go to work, I'll post up the video write-ups >:D They're written, but ... you know. Patience and all that. Please be aware that while YOU know the videos were staged, your character doesn't. They can assume it, hope it, etc, but no one's going to know they're faked. 'cause the editing team is that awesome.

4) One of the stores in the Algul Siento Mall is now a Halloween store. It has decorations, candy, costumes, etc. It is active as of now.

5) I'm starting a new tree in the Jaime-armor thread, so we can get to finding the armor instead of bullshitting around with small talk. You're all very encouraged to hop into that post; new tree or join an existing one. you're also encouraged to find some armor around the island in your own threads ('cause hey. Great chance to do narratives that count for activity checks, eh, eh?) Body pieces and helmets only; no ... paw-mitts or anything like that. And remember, it'll take a group (or magic) to move the body-pieces.

Any questions, comments, suggestions, etc. hit me up.

So, twitter was busy today XD

For those who didn't see/follow/think they were invited, we've got a side-project. We had one, but I lost the drive for it, so we're revamping another game. It's secondary to ID, just a laid back place where the characters don't have to be repressed and you can play the kids there that you can't/don't want to play here 'cause of power restrictions.

The journal's two_by_two and it's fully updated. Anyone in ID who wants to play is welcome to sign in (first entry) without apping. It doesn't have to be your ID character, either.

I'd like to emphasize the key feature: side project. This isn't an ID replacement, and it's meant to be maintained at a slower pace. It's pretty much for people who want a bajillion characters but can't maintain activity levels in ID with all bajillion of them.

And the aforementioned drop: I'm dropping Swan planted_it from my list. She's been the hardest to maintain a muse for, and after the move, the reason I brought her in is pretty much nixed.

So people are welcome to notice her missing tonight.

So, finally settled on which version of my Juliet. Going with the OC mutant rather than the HP OC werewolf version XD

She has the ability to manipulate light. Mostly just small things like making prisms, brightening/dimming stuff, bending light rays and things like that. She's working on bending light around herself to make herself invisible, but that's going to be difficult when they keep crippling her powers. XD

::nods:; so yes, open to play, always.

Right. Since no one screamed "oh no Halo that's an awful idea" on twitter, we'll roll with it.

Tuesday, 11:59:59 PM, communication between the islands is going to cut off.

Matt's going to post an "Oops. I guess they had 'til Tuesday; they're all dead now" message in the network, visible only to the Algul Siento residents.

Friday 8 AMish, the old!island people will wake up on the new!island, in their appropriate rooms. Not sooner, 'cause, drugs. The people they're in bed with/sharing rooms with that are already present can wake up whenever because they weren't put as deeply under, but the old!island transplants shouldn't be coming out of the drugs 'til at least 7:45/8ish.

Wednesday, and Thursday, however ... mmm, chaos. Algul Siento people think old!island is dead. Old!island is coping with bears and wondering why no one on new!island is answering them ...

BWAHAHAHAAHAHHAHAHA!!

:;cough:: 'kay. that's it.

So, as I was describing with my words, I thought "this is something I have a very clear mental picture of, and I bet not everyone's going to read this awesome Kyle post, so maybe I should exercise my artistic skills today."

That said, this is what our suites look like. Furniture wasn't placed because it's all able to be dragged around and what not.

(So yes, before you ask, if your characters are super ambitious, they can put both beds in the same bedroom. It just seems easier to me to share one, but I'm lazy).

(also, mandy, omg, the maze-maps were in the graph paper pad. I was all "awww, I remember drawing this at work and coloring it at home". XD )

Hello, and welcome to our lottery-plot writeup!

As promised, I am doing this before clicking tiles.

Since we are very anti-bear death (Sam petitioned very hard for this and overrode Matt's "shoot 'em up" plan), this is going to be a hide-and-seek sort of plot.

You can read about the bears here, and Isadora has the answers people need; she's networking with Didymus but will do a post later to educate the masses so the IC bit's covered.

What's going to happen is this:

The armor is going to be scattered across the old island, and some will be in the buildings. Jaime's power is going to be half-crippled for this so it won't be a matter of her being able to find everything, but she will be able to point the search parties in the general direction of the armor pieces before her brain breaks. None of it will be across the white line 'cause that's just cruel.

The armor is heavy, because it's made of "sky-iron" and is used by very, very large bears. Like, Hulk could probably haul a bit of it around by himself, but for most everyone else, it's going to be bare-minimum 2 person job to haul the larger pieces. One Jayne-sized man can handle a standard helmet (and might struggle with a more elaborate one), and someone slightly smaller could probably drag one with pauses.

We're going to have fifteen pieces scattered around on Monday, and that will give a clue as to what's going on when the first piece is found. I assume it will be stumbled on by accident, so if someone wants to call first-find, lemme know; that way we won't have all of us finding the armor first. XD

To the ice bears, their armor is like their dæmon or their soul. They are nothing without it, and they will kill whatever stands between them and it. They forge it themselves (they have opposable thumbs) and it's very personal to them. They will not be pleased upon learning that their armor was stolen.

In regard to powers to neutralize the bears ...

They are sentient and can be reasoned with.

Stunning spells, binding spells, and confunding spells will work, but not for very long.

They won't be felled by human physical attacks because ... uh. They're giant polar bears.

The Force can be used to slow them down/trip them up.

There's still no ammunition for the firearms, so shooting them is right out.

If people get clever and try to rig some traps, those may work on a mod-discretion basis.

I'm not angling for any casualties on this one, but they are certainly capable of killing characters, very easily. So it's an option if you want to take it >:D Matt's hoping they knock down the hotel, and I hope they'll be incited to damage it, but is not something I'm going to force. Characters will be moved either way; this was just the convenient IC reasoning.

If you have questions or your character's power wasn't covered on the list as will/won't work, go ahead and hit me up for clarification. Or if anything else needs clarification. I'm here for you, yo.

We're having our first-ever mod's-choice mini-plot, woo!

Since bears aren't 'til Thursday (omg omg omg I swear I'll get that written up before I start clicking paradise quest tiles again), I thought we should have a little something to do.

Also, I want to see how long I can make Lily glare hatefully at me before she gives up and moves into someone else's head >:D

So, Matt has decided to have his minions place items in people's rooms over the course of the weekend (today or tomorrow; take your pick)

Jaime is getting Mal's unloaded gun
Lily is getting the Grimhold
Ichabod is getting one of Katrina's necklaces, splashed with blood
Luke is getting Vader's helmet
Lizzy is getting something of Saul's (your call)
Remus is getting Sirius' wand
Aang is getting Katara's necklace

To the players whose characters didn't find something ... I didn't know any of your kids well enough to make any trauma-calls, so you are welcome to comment with an item and I'll add it to the list.

Also, we may or may not be hasing a Dug soon. After I write up the bear plot. (Also, one of you lottery people needs to do a network post with the clues. You can fight over it but it can't be me 'cause I draw the line at commenting to myself. That, and Chase doesn't care. XD).

Arik here with my second character. :)

Just finished getting accepted to have Aang from Avatar: the Last Airbender, join the crew. He's currently on the new island getting adjusted to this strange place.

Feel free to tag me on this character or on Trini for scenes. :)

Right. More swapping. XD

So, apparently Mandy was simply appalled at my handling of River, and she rushed right in to snatch her back up. I'll have you know, that was the grand plan to begin with. ::big wink:: No, for real, I'm just that good at luring and enabling.

River is now back on lilalbatross and back in Mandy's hands. Lizzy prittyprincess is joining her in a grand return.

With the return of River is the mysterious return of Kyle Trager on not_an_alien, because I'm a tool. What? I am.

Things should be mostly updated. Or completely updated.

For the time being, Nate's still hanging on to Balthazar and Mal, but we'll keep you posted if that changes. You know. If you don't see it on twitter first. 'cause ... well. I think most everyone saw this coming, right? XD

Hello, hello!

Sadly, my venture to disney resulted in only one and a half riddles. :;amused:: so we might have some picture matching or something for the lottery. We also opted to shift the bear attack to thursday and the move to thursday midnight, giving the wolves a broader window so they don't panic.

Which isn't at all the point of this.

Nate's going to be picking up Mal on to_the_black, and I'm going to be picking up River on their_witch. Both of these are being picked up with a surrender clause; if Mandy returns and wants them back, they'll revert to her. 'cause she Rivers better than I do.

We are also dropping the Fisher kids.

I also may be bringing in two other OCs, but haven't fully decided yet. I have two versions of Juliet and I'm not sure which I want to play here. I ... still have to see who all in my current lists needs threads and get on that first >:D