MARCH PLOTTING POST

[monstertruckers]

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Hello Drifters, and welcome to the March Plotting Post!


March marks a busy month for the game: we’ll be holding our main game event around the 5th or the 7th (depending on schedules!) an ATP/EMP timed for the 8th to go up alongside the EMP comm post, and our second Test Drive Meme on the 15th!

As a reminder, players may tag either the game event OR TDM posts as they wish! If you post a top level in the TDM, please mark in the subject line that you are Currently In-Game. Both for the ease of book keeping, and to help new players figure out who is who! With this said, onto the major stops this month:

With the forest behind them the Convoy makes its way onto the grasslands. Powerlines dot the landscape, decorated with paper scraps. These papers contain messages from home, and can help stabilize Drifters from the effects of last month’s Moon Warp.

While on the move Drifters will encounter the ruins of old homes and stores, with plenty of Husks scattered around these dwellings. While the ruins can provide supplies and shelters, getting too close to the Husks can prompt either monster spawns from the Husks, or behavior changes in Drifters. (Your character may feel restless, on edge, and/or showing a psychological monster trait.) The Convoy has a fix for this in the form of a song played from speakers, but this only works when the Convoy is close at hand.

In addition there will be encounters with a new monster called bull gorgons, which can be harvested for meat but not without a fight! At the end of the month, the terrain will also get more marshy, and will be the perfect spot for a zolom attack. That’s right, the Final Fantasy 7 snake kaiju is going to make an appearance, and they hunt in a pack!

We’re also pleased to announce this is our first event monster month. And this month will be centered around the Harpy and Naga species. A monster transforming storm is going to rage through the grasslands. It temporarily (ie, for one month) imparts traits from one of these monsters if any Drifter stumbles into the storm. This will occur in both the main comms, and the TDM, so feel free to play either way!

As a last house keeping note, we are currently short on mod staff, so feel free to take a look at the Mod Contact page if that is something that sounds interesting!

And that is our route planned for the month! We hope you enjoy this event, and feel free to plan in the comments below!

NAVIGATION

Comments

[constantvrunning]

Yes! V does not believe in kill-stealing. :P
And the checking-in works all-round, looks like!

[constantvrunning]

/thumbs up/ Works for me!

... Also pondering group threads, but those can get hard to coordinate/track after a while.

[solitarysoul]

Serph being lethargic might have Levi checking in on him to make sure he's okay. He still feels bad about growling at Serph AND feels he owes him for the help stitching up his back.
Never mind him stitching up Serph's arm was kind of already repayment.

[solitarysoul]

yeah, i love to do group scenes but after you get to three or four characters it starts to get trickier. i usually try to stick to a tag order but even then its not perfect.

[bufudine]

I think one of the tricky things is that Serph's been pretty avoidant and cagey about the fact he's been eating monsters. (Just kinda letting people assume that he's been eating at the dining car.)

So I think in order for Serph to agree to that, V will need to demonstrate to him something like... wanting to try eating monster meat or something :V (And even then, Serph won't outright say that he's been doing that all this time.)

[bufudine]

Aw Levi.

Maybe when Levi checks up on him, if Levi lets him know that he's going to try hunting monsters for meat, Serph will come and they can hunt together. He'd like to gauge Levi's skills and they can scope out what monsters would be good. Serph still won't break cover that he's been eating monsters all this time, but he can provide guidance if Levi's willing to try.

[solitarysoul]

Levi is very much a long range hunter, but no reason they can't tag team with one far and one close to a monster.

actually i think if levi noticed the not eating he'd offer to try and hunt something for serph, maybe then they can go together

[bufudine]

One of his officers is a sniper so Serph will have no problem working with someone long range :>b

Oh yeah, that sounds good. If Levi's been keeping an eye out for Serph, it's definitely more apparent that he just never shows up at the dining car.

[solitarysoul]

probably not keeping an eye out for him at meals or such, but he'd definitely notice if some people never showed up

[constantvrunning]

Hmmm...

Maybe V hauling in one of the portions of bull-meat, asking 'so this one didn't dissolve, but I still want to eat it?? Plz explain??' would that work?

[bufudine]

Yeah I can see that working! Some people are developing the inability to feel satiation from normal food so yeah if V approached him like that, he'd try and help.

[serialmurderbot]

I too tend to forget lol. It's fine they got the important things done, which is making sure no one dies or gets eaten. It'll probably need some help on that second one, sometimes this can shut down the mechanical parts of its brain which is fun for. no one.

Book prompt sounds fun! I'll keep an eye out.

[serialmurderbot]

Sounds good! At its current canon point it knows that some of its ptsd reactions are due to being a construct, so knowing that V is at least kind of similar to it in that respect it might try asking them about it. With half an attempt at subtlety

Faith Lehane | Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Angel

[definitionofcrazy]

Faith is still not entirely processing the fact that her head came off during the last Moon Warp. She got better, but she's still reassessing this place and wondering if this is a "This is hell and she deserves to be here" situation. (She only knows one guy who's actually been to hell, and he's not around to ask)

As usual, the best therapy is violence, so she'll be throwing herself a little bit recklessly into the maiming of monsters. We have fun. Depending on the specifics of the notes from home, those also might do a number on her.

She might get a temporary touch of Harpy from the event, not sure yet. (It might be fun to give her false hope that she's got her slayer reflexes back only for them to go away again. Also her having nesting compulsions without realizing it would be hilarious.)

And finally: For her Dullahan template, I have her absorbing life force, and she's gonna start to experience The Hunger that goes with it as her first permanent/long-term behavior change. She won't know why. She's also gonna start feeling twitchy around anything made of gold, so if your character has any gold on their person, feel free to fuck up her day about it.

OTHER THAN THAT I AM UP FOR ANYTHING hit me up here, in DMs, or on my plurk at yonfellow

[andnevermore]

On the subject of houses; will there be any books to be found among them, and what type of books? Blake would specifically be looking for fiction, but also keeping an eye out for anything that might tell her the history of this world.

jayce talis (arcane)

[hexrot]

this is jayce. he came from the world's most magically corrupt hole. it killed him last month by rotting him inside out! he's finally graduated as an undead corpse and on his way to his main monster, draugr! :') jayce is generally a sweet guy, very caring, big brother material forced to become Daddy except he's very likely to break down or have ptsd flashbacks that work like a shock collar. he is but Baby Girl who has just been through the horrors and may come off a bit cold/guarded/tweaky because of that, but get on his good side and you'll see Him under all the grime and magic rot.



messages from home: waiting on some people's questions to be answered which are also my questions, not really sure if jayce should get any! maybe from cait (little sister figure) and ximena (mommy) but not really sure yet. i'll think on it. a message from mom might do him some good. getting his old hextech files was an idea i had that he would try to burn right away— could be a good prompt for talking about the Dangers of Ambition if anyone is interested in arcane/jayce lore! LASTLY i could also think about the pages of jayce's notebook which is just funny/cute jayce lore, too! see his diary entries and his sassy science boy attitude way back when his face was still naked.

ruines/abandoned shops: i will always be up for scavenging!! jayce is going to look for more runes too, so if anyone would like to join him and run into monsters that way, i'd be down! he can SMASH or BLAST with his eldritch infected hammer!! it might be a good opportunity for him to get mortally injured and walk it off for once lmao..... he might end up eating the bull if it's further down his hunger itch for the month. and share it with serph!! and anyone else who wants to eat blood/guts/flesh!

monster storm event: for once i am not interested in giving jayce bird or snake features, so i'm sitting this one out but i'm so excited for future events like these!! instead i will be furthering jayce's draugr traits by focusing on hunger for flesh/blood, regeneration through consumption and deer antlers! he will start getting hungry again after his post-reanimation break from that, barf anything he eats that isn't raw and will notice blood quiiiiiiiite a bit more! he'll start looking sick and Not Well again which may be a point of concern. viktor will be his first pc feast and jayce may not feel comfortable chomping anyone else atm because it will be........... intimate vore................ but if we want some tension and conflict before that i am game. post feeding he will be 200% better he'll even look more alive!! ANYWAY he will also get these cute lil nubs on his head don't look at me anymore.

the talis archives: I FORGOT TO MENTION jayce made a post last month that had to do with gathering info about the marks people carry and the runes they came across back at the alter. that post is here and he might make another post this month to talk about that. feel free to handwave or throw things at him!!

i am liberos or owlshaped on discord! if you want to plot or chat through there by all means, feel free to add!!

[hexrot]

i'm back with my monthly: jayce is snooping for runes at the stop they make, is there anything of value that he would find/figure out if he looks hard enough? so far he's gathered what he can from the tdm and feb!

[constantvrunning]

That sounds like a VERY interesting conversation. Count me in!

[monstertruckers]

There could be notes and papers that exist in their canon, but only if the character themselves has read it and has knowledge of it.

[solitarysoul]

i think i can use that to pull the ones i'd want. thanks!

[monstertruckers]

They could not lose their traits as a result of the storm. However, the messages from home prompt has a chance of resetting one trait, if a player wishes to pursue that.

Re: EVENT FAQ

[monstertruckers]

General notes, messages that have emotional significance to a character, but nothing that suggests people from home know they are missing. (Unless they are already AWOL from their canon point.)

There will not be a moon warp this month, since the storm will be providing a lot of chaos and transformation prompts.

[monstertruckers]

It is a literal storm with rain. Sometimes large, deluging amounts of it depending on the time or the day. There are small rivers and creeks in the grasslands, and closer to the Zolom encounter the area gets especially marshy with large quantities of water and mucky ground outside of the main road.

Re: EVENT FAQ

[monstertruckers]

The contents in houses are largely paper maps, books, most of them in poor repair with small parts of them legible. Data-containing devices are suspiciously absent or scrapped of all workable parts.

That weird symbol from the February Wrecks Event is sometimes found near the harvested electronics.

[monstertruckers]

There would be paper books to be found. Most of them in poor repair with small parts of them legible.

A handful of books across several houses have been violently shredded and burned, like they have been purposefully destroyed instead of wasting away over time. "Book of the Moon" can slowly be pieced together as the title of these books. Rather concerning, many of them contain barely legible passages that are similar to the Shrine Messages Event from last month.

Apart from that, there's a few books containing tales and fables about humans and strange creatures, though many of them are fragmented. The words "Dawn Impact" frequently occur in these books, suggesting some sort of distant event.