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

[monstertruckers]

There's one more rune that starts to show up, especially as the Convoy draws closer to the gas station, and curiously as the storm grows worse.



Alongside this are fragmented words that can gradually be pieced together to mean:
The ability to move through space, matter, even water and the air itself. Domain of the Volare.

The aspect time writings/rune also appears regularly!

[hexrot]

oh..... 👀

question: if one were to run a test and write specific runes together (like motion/volare with something else) would that cause anything? jayce would try all combinations possible.

Jack Russell | Werewolf by Night | Yokai

[wereperrito]

Okay! Jack has the storm restlessness/storm form trait so when that storm hits, not only is one of his six fox tails turning into a snakey tail, he's gonna pop into a new shape! Entirely unwillingly! Say hello to labrador-sized, six-tailed, phantom-fire-dripping Jack the kitsune fox!

Outside of that, he's going to be scavenging with a will in the towns, adding some armoring to his VW bus, and fixing people's clothes per the message he just posted. It is entirely likely that he'll spawn a husk monster on accident and need rescued, because this is Jack's lot in life. I am still debating on a note from Ted or not.

He may try laying some traps when the convoy stops for the night and winding up with some mutated rabbits or something before the zolom attack, because Serph is not eating his porridge and he's trying to find SOMETHING to feed him with because he does not know Serph has been eating formerly-human monsters yet.

Apollo Justice | Ace Attorney

[justiceobjects]

First off: I'm really sorry if anyone's hit me up on the last plotting post (or even the ones before the game started) and I didn't get to doing a thread with you! I definitely want to continue those plans, Apollo's definitely going to continue getting in trouble for a good long while yet.

Somehow Apollo has continued to dodge getting any monster changes so I'm going to switch that up for this month. He will not be finding any messages from home, and instead will start showing the psychological trait of... collecting things. He's going to find a coffee mug he's very attached to, and you can ply him with more mugs for goodwill or future favors.

Apollo will also get hit by the storm, but he's going to start growing dragon scales instead of showing anything specifically naga-esque, though it'd be easy to mistake it as a snake thing. I'm picturing it as a sort of half-scale growth going on, with red scales framing his face, trailing up his forearms, basically growing like they're reinforcing a lot of the thicker/rougher parts of the body while the softer, squishier areas still get to remain human-looking.

He's also going to start out refusing to eat monster meat, and I'm fully open to him being convinced otherwise should anyone want to tackle that one.

NOTES UP FOR GRABS

[thetatters]

EDIT: Please hold for player plot!

[taediosum]

For event monster transformations, are we limited in the number of traits that are activated?

Also, will the storm be a singular event, or an intermittent/recurring weather condition that drifters will have to watch out for?

arcade gannon | fallout

[taediosum]

resident doctor who is still kind of dodging that label but will dutifully mend all your wounds anyway reporting in o7 

- as far as the messages go, i'm not sure i'll do a specific prompt for this but i would like to play around with it - either arcade finding someone else's notes or them finding his (though in his case it'll most likely be very boring/mundane notes from "family" that he will react very strongly to or incomprehensible research notes from his medicinal work)

- on that note, he collected some of the fancy crystal flowers from last month and has been trying to figure out if they have any medicinal use as anything other than a calmative (or if they can be made more effective as such), because making medicine from plants is his one!! job!! and by god he is going to find a way to do it. ...anyway, fellow smart people interested in talking about nerdy science things in the medbay?? (other people who just want to listen to a nerd talk about nerdy things?) potential willing test subjects?? i don't see this going anywhere significant atm but it could be a fun lil cr opportunity, idk. 

- always down for more scavenging in the ruins, especially when it leads to more dangerous/precarious situations. monster or husk run-ins are good, too. arcade will probably be poking around the latter, this month, to see if he can find any more of that graffiti or more ominous signage/signs of life. 

- he will also be getting caught in the storm, and getting the full naga transformation because it's snake month babeyyy. it'll be his first big horrific monster experience so i'd like to make it a complete disaster - getting stranded in some crumbling ruins during a crazy intense downpour, washed out in a mudslide, etc etc just struggling to survive the night while also struggling to comprehend new horrible monster body. 

on the lighter side, he will most likely need to hitch a ride with somebody or just hang out on the convoy more after this bc he can barely drive with feet, it's not going to work without them. 

- he should definitely get to fight a zolom in full snake form also. 

[taediosum]

yes hello arcade will definitely have the "eating monster meat is actually totally normal and not at all weird" conversation with him?

[taediosum]

hi, i love this cr already,,, perhaps they can do something slightly less tragic this month. :') trading messages from home or scavenging (with optional mortal injury), maybe?

[wereperrito]

Jack is game for the "let's not pluck ourselves bald" bits. Though I also definitely want fox antics with him.

[taediosum]

i would love to get more faith cr this month since i fell off in feb, maybe arcade can spot her while she maims monsters for mental health?

[definitionofcrazy]

Totally down for more Arcade CR, and hey, now he gets to see those superpowers she was talking about in action. Also more of her hilarious relationship with advanced vocabulary and sophisticated references.

[taediosum]

yesss haha, more awkward misunderstandings because he can't not talk like someone whose social life is mostly books. and the superpowers. he will be suitably impressed.

[definitionofcrazy]

A thought: The incident that leads to knifing escalated tensions could start over one of his notes. Him being so eager to hide them makes her suspicious, water gets involved somehow because of the storms, idk I'm spitballing

[hexrot]

cr sums up as: the science guys but they've Seen Shit and trauma bond about it

since arcade is Research Kin jayce would gladly be nostalgic about his diary notes and swap stories..... i would try to find a way to MESH those two bc i want both, jaybe we wild card some scavenging, jayce walks off an injury and they rest by trading notes. cuties.

[undyingcrow]

Tell him all about your monster eating ways, Serph...

[undyingcrow]

Clearly, it's time for the community to come together and speculate about their findings...

[undyingcrow]

Akechi is cool with that, even if he's fairly confident in his ability to defend himself. It is still pragmatic.

[undyingcrow]

I'm down to do something with Akechi during a Husk encounter, after the way SecUnit dived in when Akechi started transforming. He's not one to enjoy owing debts, so it'd be a matter of principle for him.

[flowersnjunk]

Oh man there's so much I wanna do this month!

-I would love for Eunie to get a bunch of naga traits, maybe not a full serpent body but definitely scales, forked tongue, venom, etc. Especially because she doesn't have a lot of defining celestial traits yet so this will just confuse her as to what she's actually turning into.

-Let's explore some ruins! Eunie is extremely skeptical about this whole going to nirvana thing, and she wants to learn more about the world she's been kidnapped to, so she wants to go digging for answers even if it means getting close to more husks, her least favorite thing ever so far.

-Zolom fight! She will never say no to violence and as a Xenoblade character it would be wrong to sit out fighting a bunch of giant monsters.

[bufudine]

He will absolutely not tell Akechi about his monster eating ways LMAO

But if Akechi pitches it to him, I'm sure the fact Serph seems way too good at comfortable about hunting the monsters will make it obvious to Akechi if they go on a hunting trip together that it's not his first time.

[thetatters]

Love it!! Let's start with corpse lore, I'll do a corpse lore prompt on the event.

[thetatters]

I'LL PP YOU.... WE'LL TALK

[thetatters]

extremely funny to me if John is scrambling to keep half his CR from finding out his evil backstory for all of March, and then over there is Serph, who just wants to have some thoughtful pillow talk.

[thetatters]

Love it! We'll do some h/c where John confesses he's stressed about keeping Arthur's body intact, and then we'll let John pet a fox.