It’s about time to kick off the Oracle plot and this is how it’s going to start.

The Oracle has been kept on Belle Isle. Part of what has been keeping her there are seals placed on the island by witchfinders who are no longer in Detroit, seals that are maintained in part by the magic forces in the city itself. Jacob’s act of destroying the Adams Theater breaks one of the seals, eroding the force that keeps the Oracle down.

Afterwards, the bodies of Shaun and Cadey are found on the island, dead. There is no sign of external violence on either one of them. The Oracle is missing and now out on the streets. She is now wandering the city, prophesying and making small alterations to events.

If your character is a witchfinder, they are just now becoming aware of this. If you’d like your character to have discovered these events, please feel free to comment and move forward. Mages are not yet aware of what is happening--the witchfinders are likely to make an attempt to keep this information very, very controlled. Mages can definitely have an encounter with the Oracle as an NPC who turns up and makes a strange prophesy, but they have no reason at all to know who she is or that she exists, so … they don’t.

Questions? Ask them in comments.

We hope everyone's rested and relaxed after their winter holiday of choice!

We are now back on our usual schedule of a weekly mod post (even though this isn't Saturday). We are also out of check-free week, and we will be running activity check over the weekend, so be sure that you post, either journals or rps, to make that.

And, as with mod posts, please read and comment so that we all know we're on the same page.

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No activity records have been kept for the last two weeks. Thanks to those of you who played nonetheless!

On hiatus:
Cadey
Chris
All other hiatuses that we were informed of have expired; let us know if that is incorrect information.

New:
Ben
Damian

Permanent Additions:
Fletcher

Additionally, Jillian has decided to leave the game. We wish her well with her commitments and hope to hear from her occasionally.

With all of these changes, we have updated the friends-add button; please run it. The console is here; the list of names is here

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( Tryout Characters )

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( Oracle )

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Any questions or comments, please let us know!

Weekly mod post! Read, comment, go forth.

First, the results of activity check:
16 of 22 characters had activity in this cycle.

The following characters are on hiatus:
Chris
Leonard
Sara

The following characters did not make check:
Chauncy (first warning)
Mason (first warning)
Shaun (Final Warning - character will be removed if check is not made next week.)

Don’t forget that you can always find the spreadsheet to see whether you’re making check here (we update it pretty regularly and note when we’ve updated in the lower left corner):
http://tinyurl.com/2c8mo5k

( Leaving Player; Character Shifts )

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( December )

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That's all we've got - any questions or comments?

Weekly mod post! Note use of the word mod: confirm you've read this by commenting.

First, the results of activity check:
19 of 25 characters had activity in this cycle.

The following characters are on hiatus:
Alfie
Chris
Evran
Johnny

The following characters did not make check:
Sara (second consecutive week)
Shaun (second week, nonconsecutive)

Don’t forget that you can always find the spreadsheet to see whether you’re making check here (we update it pretty regularly and note when we’ve updated in the lower left corner):
http://tinyurl.com/2c8mo5k

( Activity Check Rules )

( Character Plots )

( Header Information And Tags )

That's all we've got - any questions or comments?

A few items of housekeeping for your perusal!

Please note that this is a mod post; we want you to comment that you've read it (even though you all read the email, and we appreciate that, this is a) a mod post; b) has a change to what the email said.)

1) Activity check is now go.
However, based on regaining our sanity, it's not going to run Sunday-Saturday; instead, we're thinking Saturday to the following Friday, with the check posts on either Saturday or Sunday as time allows.

If you're not sure if your characters are going to make check, go here to look. Remember, activity is either one posted journal entry or one posted rp per week - more is always fine, that's minimum guidelines. Also remember, we have no problem with hiatuses as long as they are not excessive; if you know you won't be able to make check because of other commitments that are going to take too much of your time, by all means, hiatus is fine.

2) Current players
We have lost some players as a result of the mod email that we sent out last week. We are currently clarifying with Cait as to whether she's still in or not, but right now, the list of the lost is as follows:
Cait
Kami
Mary
Nicki

We are not going to write their characters out at this time; we are going to go another week to give players who have rps and storylines with these characters the chance to come up with a workaround for their characters. However, at that time, the characters that these players brought in will be rendered unplayable - because this is an OCs game, we are not going to allow people to NPC characters.

If Cait is, in fact, out of the game, we will allow Shaun, who had a significant connection to a number of people, to be killed off for plot purposes, but our consideration of the other characters is that they did not develop attachments in game and it's preferable to simply edit them out of the wiki and the game and leave them be.

Additionally: we will not be updating the friends button until next week; please hold off on defriending people just yet.

3) Factions
We realise we're harping, but if you have a character who is not yet aligned with a faction (that you want to align) send an email to the mods and we'll help you with that. Plots will be coming up soon that will require people to know where they stand. While it's fine to not yet align, we do want to get a sense (particularly on the mages side) of whether we've got one faction, two, three, or more.

4) Questions?
Contact us.

Hey all!

Modly question here: Jacob and Ariah have started thinking about ways to find and recruit unaffiliated characters - not because we expect to force anyone to reveal magic, or to require anyone to join the side that they might ultimately wind up on, I hasten to add. We wanted to know who's playing an unaffiliated character who'd like to be part of a power-play at this time - basically, can either of them (or both!) get wind of your character and start trying to recruit them to the Right Side?

For that matter, this offer is open to anyone who's interested in playing a factional character who'd like to have that level of drama in their lives.

Let us know, either via email or comment!

It's the end of the week; I'm going to sound more country as it goes, so let's start here:

Hey, y'all!

Now that we've posted the last bit of the fire - and a reminder: you do not have to play that post if you don't want to - we're into regular posting! Yay! Go forth! Post!

Thanks for your awesome participation with the fire threads!

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EDIT:
Please go hit the friends-add button--there were a lot of characters added towards the beginning of the game!
http://wiki.cityofthestraits.com/wiki/Friends_Add_Button

Hey all,

Just a quick heads up to let everyone know that we're thinking, at this point, of wrapping the fire and going into normal mode (well, as normal as we manage) on Friday, probably afternoon or evening our time, so PST.

At that time, we are, of course, open to posting backstory, drabbles, and whatever else you got, so feel free to bring it, but please remember to direct macros to Cass, who loves macros entirely and is looking for some new ones.

As always, this is a commentable post, so if you've got questions, comments, or just want more places to chatter, go for it!