Monthly Rundown: January Edition

[hadrielmods]

To ring in 2017, Tranquility has been resurrected! As our second-to-last resurrection, that means Arc 1 will be coming to a close pretty soon. Thank you all for sticking with us this long, and we're hoping to make this year fun for everyone too!

As always, if you ever have any suggestions or feedback you'd like to offer us mods, remember you can always drop us a line here! Also, please remember to hit up the Current AC post if you have AC for the month! Remember that for the month of December, AC is totally optional, but you get an AC token if you have it!

JANUARY PART 1: BEACH PARTY WRAP-UP

The first week of January will be devoted to finishing off Tranquility's resurrection event. Enjoy your flippie-floppies and Hawaiian shirts, do your best to ignore that it's all fake! Who doesn't love the feeling of sand between their toes? Such a nice way to start the month. Tranquility thinks so too, and he'll pop up to say hello on January 2nd. Make sure he feels welcome, and say thanks for those awesome mopeds! Or, you know, don't. Whatever floats your boat.

Not too long after that, a nice batch of newbies will show up in the intro log on January 10th. This time they'll be accompanied by Shambling Mounds from the Dungeons & Dragons tabletop game.

Shambling Mounds are large, unattractive piles of vaguely humanoid-shaped vegetation. They are not particularly intelligent, but they are carnivorous and perfectly ready to pay you back for all those salads you've been eating. They hit hard, they can take a lot of damage, and if you're really unlucky they might manage to engulf you with their weird plant bodies. If that happens, you'd better try to get free fast - otherwise they'll just walk off with you stuck inside and kill you later at their leisure. Fun! Shortly afterward will be our bimonthly CR meme, on January 12th, so look forward to that.

JANUARY PART 2: DEAD RINGERS

Hopefully everyone enjoyed their vacation and the comparatively light-hearted months we've had recently, because unfortunately they'll be coming to a quick end. Confusion, bored and annoyed (or maybe in celebration of Tranquility's return, it's so hard to tell with her) is teaming up with Fear to give the city of Hadriel some horror movie twins.

Starting January 16th, exact doubles of characters already within the city will appear. Physically, they'll be indistinguishable from the original, and they will have all the same memories as well. However, these doppelgängers' personalities are twisted, and they have one goal: to ruin the lives of their double. They are as intelligent as their originals, and they'll go about their goal in whatever way suits them given the knowledge they have.

Perhaps your double will instigate a fight with your best friend, driving them away. Perhaps they'll steal and destroy your most prized possession. Perhaps they'll say the cruelest thing possible to the one you love most - or even attack them. However, it's important to keep one key thing in mind: ruining someone's life is much easier if they're not around to stop you. Many of the doppelgängers will find that the easiest route is simply to kill their original, pose as them, and lay waste to their life that way. Or maybe you'll catch on and kill them first - but is it going to be easy to kill someone who looks exactly like you? Or worse, exactly like your best friend?

And just to make things worse, Hope can't really tell the difference between doubles and originals. In order to keep from resurrecting an evil clone instead of a good (well, halfway decent, at least) original, he'll simply refrain from resurrecting anyone until the event is over. That means if your double kills you, they'll get to live your life - and ruin it - for the rest of the event and there's nothing you can do to stop them.

All doubles will be played by the player of the original, so if you're not interested in participating in this event, opting out is just that easy! You can assume your character got lucky and Confusion passed them over, though of course they may still have to deal with exact doubles of the people they trust. The event will end on January 25th, when all remaining doubles disappear and any murdered originals return to life. There will be an OOC post before the event with more details for plotting purposes!

TO RECAP...

► January 2nd: Tranquility says hello
► January 10th: Intro log!
► January 12th: CR meme
► January 16th-25th: Dead Ringers Event
► January 24th-31st: Activity check
As a final note, our schedule for the month is viewable on the calendar!

Comments

QUESTIONS

[hadrielmods]

[closerift]

You did say they're physically the same as the real ones, so I can guess what the answer might be, but would Cecily's double, for example, also have the anchor on her hand?

[hadrielmods]

That would be correct! Cecily's double would indeed have the anchor on her hand, as well as any potential benefits and drawbacks that come with having it.

[pellameno]

Will there be an IC announcement about the no-resurrections? I'm trying to avoid my double just straight up killing and replacing my character and the only reason I can think of to keep them alive is if it thinks they'd come right back and spill the whole plot. Or is he just so cruel he wants to go give an update of the fuckery every day?

Also, will doubles be able to recognize each other?

[hadrielmods]

There will be no IC announcements about the resurrections, so it would be fine to assume Pell's double thinks he'll come right back. Over the course of the week, it'll probably become clear that people aren't coming back immediately, but for the first few days it would be easy for anyone to assume that resurrections will work as normal.

Yes, doubles will be able to recognize each other!

[pellameno]

Awesome, thank you mods!

Re: QUESTIONS

[circumitus]

Communicators! Will doubles have to acquire them from their originals in order to pose as their counterparts if they want to do anything on the network? Assuming that they wouldn't have one starting out?

[hadrielmods]

Doubles would not come in with communicators (since that's more of Hope's job) and so in order to access the network, they would either have to kill their originals, or simply figure out a way to steal their communicator. Since doubles have all the original's memories, accessing their own account would be very simple, even if the user has installed any sort of locking/anti hacking program!

[circumitus]

Ooh, interesting! I thought that would be the case, but I just wanted to make sure. Thanks!

[tongueamok]

Will the doubles have all the same powers as the originals, for those who have magic and whatnot?

[hadrielmods]

Yes, doubles will have all the same powers, as well as the knowledge of how to use them.

[glacius]

What happens if both the original and the double are somehow still alive at the end of the event? Will the double just mysteriously vanish, or will they die off, etc etc..?

Also, what happens if the double does successfully kill the original? Will they vanish at the end of the event so that Hope can resurrect the original? Or will the double effectively take the original's place? Or something else entirely?

[hadrielmods]

At the end of the event, Confusion basically decides that she's done giving her power to be life support for 80 someodd people, especially since most of the showdowns and confusion has happened by then, so she's essentially cutting the cord. All dopplegangers will disappear, leaving the originals fresh and unbothered- or, if they're dead, leaving the originals to be resurrected by Hope!

[glacius]

And by "disappear", does this mean they'll just vanish as with the 4th Wall Event, or will they essentially just up and die, leaving their bodies to be found?

[hadrielmods]

Yep! They'll be disappearing entirely.

[glacius]

Thank you, this is all very helpful. Alright, so I have one more question for now--they had a clone event in another game I was in a couple of years ago, and it was really great. I was wondering if it would be possible, instead of Glacius getting a brand new double, for me to bring in the clone that was created in that previous game? You might remember him... I brought him in briefly for the fourth wall event. He's a lot more fleshed out at this point than a fresh creation would be, and he caused some unrest in Hadriel the last time he was here that I think might be fun to follow up on.

I should note that both events were remarkably similar so Algidus (the clone) would play according to pretty much all of these rules... he has a nasty grudge against Glacius and is under the impression that if he's the one to put his original down, he'll get to take over in his stead, so he'll still be trying anything he can think of to accomplish that. The only bits that he doesn't line up with is that he doesn't look completely identical to his original any more (over time they change in appearance based on their environment) and he wouldn't have any of the memories that this Glacius built up in Hadriel (though I suppose the gods could transplant them into his head if they wanted to fuck with him even more).

Thoughts on this proposal?

[hadrielmods]

While this makes sense, and there wouldn't be much difference between Algidus and one of the event clones, we have to say no. Having Algidus would mean that the gods brought him in specifically. The gods don't have the ability to control the door or what comes through it, so they'd be unable to bring something or someone in like that, and we'd like to avoid the implication that they can. Sorry!

[glacius]

Ah, man--disappointing but I understand. Thanks for answering, as always!

[unfollowing]

Would pets (read: Wolfie) be able to sniff out the original and therefore be growly and aggressive towards the copy?

[hadrielmods]

Since doubles are physically identical to their original, their scent will be the same as well. Pets will be just as confused as everyone else.

[ushahin]

Since Ushahin is a psychic, is there any way to tell through mind reading who is a double and who is the original?

[hadrielmods]

That'll be up to each player. If they want Ushahin to be able to distinguish the double from the original, he'll be able to - but please be sure to ask first, as we don't want anyone's plans to be upset. If they don't want him to be able to tell, then he'll simply find that the minds are too similar to tell the difference.

[prazerbutterfly]

So, neither the original or double will be able to kill each other. This'll be interesting. Not to mention there is only one person left in the city he likes as a possible friend. Kanda will just to deal with two Noah. I mean, what.