Monthly Rundown: February Edition

[hadrielmods]

Almost all the gods are back now, so the city can get back to normal! But was Hadriel ever normal to begin with? And things are starting to get a little dicey anyway. Maybe normal is just a pipe dream.

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! Characters accepted in January do not require AC proofs, but we do require a check-in on the post!

FEBRUARY PART 1: TAKEN

Most of the gods are back - even Delight got dragged back and thrown in her cage. Hadriel is still missing one, though. Where has Tranquility gone, and why isn't he back yet?

On February 3rd, everyone finds out. The Null will break onto the network again, bringing with them a message: they have Tranquility, and they're not going to just let him go. They are, however, willing to make a deal - Tranquility will be returned, but only in exchange for their ally Delight. Shortly after this announcement, the gods will make a post addressing the possibilities of this deal and asking you for input on what to do.

There will be an opportunity for your character to volunteer to go along on the prisoner exchange (if that's the route that's chosen); there is no OOC signup for this as all choices will be made ICly. That is to say, the way to sign up is to tell the gods that you want to be involved, after which they'll choose a number of the volunteers to go along depending on their skills and the gods' opinions of them. There will be minimal RNG involved in this - basically only if we get too many volunteers that the gods would accept. It's all based on your characters' skills, how well they present themselves, and their previous interactions with the gods!

But while all the drama is happening, the Door continues to do as it pleases. On February 10th, it opens again, bringing along a batch of new faces. In addition to the newbies a number of beautiful trees arrive - except of course they're actually Territorial Oaks from the video game EarthBound.

Territorial Oaks are exactly what they sound like: large trees that do not want you around. They can move pretty quickly and hit pretty hard, and they have psychic attacks that really aren't very pleasant. Best (worst?) of all, when defeated they destroy themselves in a fiery explosion, seriously damaging anyone nearby who can't get out of the way fast enough.

FEBRUARY PART 2: SOULMATES

Love has clearly been busy. They tracked down and recaptured Delight, so crisis or not, captured Tranquility or not, Love needs to recharge. Get ready to find your other half!

On the morning of February 14th (wow, weird coincidence) every character will wake up with the name of another Hadriel resident inscribed on the inside of their wrist. They'll feel a pull to that person, a desire to see and talk to them, and when they find them - wow! It's a connection like nothing else. Your other half will have your name inscribed on their arm, and that's how you'll know you're supposed to be together. Haven't you always secretly wanted a soulmate?

And there you are, together forever... or until a few days later, when each of you wake up with someone else's name on your arm. Or no name at all! Maybe you have a new soulmate, maybe it's skipped you this time, but you don't feel that pull towards your previous soulmate anymore. Huh. Wild!

Your characters can have as many soulmates as there are days in the event (which ends on February 22nd), or they could have only one for the whole time, or none at all. The connections can be platonic or romantic, friendly or familial, but whatever they are, while they're intact they feel deeper and stronger than anything you've felt before. What a way to make new friends.

FEBRUARY PART 3: PRISONER TRADE AND EXPLORATION

After some time for planning and deciding what to do, the date for the prisoner transfer with the Null arrives. On February 24th, whatever happens, happens - and it's all up to you. We will post an OOC plotting post on February 20th 21st, summarizing what happens and what the consequences are.

In addition, during this month we'd like to open up the world to more player exploration. We've already seen IC interest in finding the creatures attacking people, as well as investigating the world a little bit more. We've written up a summary of various ways characters can do that - so please look HERE if you're interested in your character doing some exploring. We've got a thread to organize in as well as a place to sign up, and lots of fun things for people to discover!

TO RECAP...

► February 3rd: NPC Post
► February 10th: Intro log!
► February 14th-22nd: Soulmates Event
► February 24th: Prisoner Exchange
► February 21st-28th: Activity Check
As a final note, our schedule for the month is viewable on the calendar!

Comments

[completelycrazy]

HEY MODS Newt has put together a team to... catch a nautilus. For science. Sorry in advance that this is long as shit, we wanted to be Thorough...

The general plan is this: The group is gonna build two portable nautilus cages, and then they'll patrol Hadriel and the surrounding area. Once they find a nautilus, they'll try to herd/bait it into one of the cages.

The goal here is to study and communicate with a living specimen, and maybe eventually turn it over to the gods. The group isn't out to kill or even hurt the creatures.

THE GROUP IS
Newt Geiszler, Alphys, Shigeru Miyata, Michael Munroe, Cashmere, Scott Ryder, George Lass, Steak, Lee Rosen, Cecily Trevelyan, Sora, Riku, and Red Wine


And the plan in detail:

Newt and Alphys will design two large, strong cages cages for capturing and holding the things. They'll construct the cages with the help of Steak, Red Wine, Rosen, Scott, and Sora. The cages will be constructed using some scrap material the lab's been hoarding, and Newt's other, smaller cages/traps will be broken down to use for materials too. So, mostly the cages will be made from wood and scrap Null parts. They're designed to be strong and portable, which means two things. One, the cages are solid walls with no door (Shigeru will operate the traps later) for maximum holding potential. Two, the cages have wheels along the bottom and handles for easy maneuvering.

Once the cages are constructed, it's time to put the plan into action. Everyone in the group will help with this part in some capacity. To start, the group will split into two groups of six, with Alphys staying behind at the lab to conserve her body heat to play mission control between the two teams. She'll be in charge of tracking their location and communicating between the two teams during the plan.

Starting in the center of town, the two groups will spiral outward to cover as much ground as possible. They'll continue until they run into a nautilus or until they hit the outskirts of town. They'll be trying this pretty much every day until the manage to find a thing, so this isn't "oh we tried once guess it didn't work bummer the end" type operation.

The teams are:
Newt, Shigeru, Cashmere, Sora, Riku, Cecily
Michael, Scott, George, Steak, Red Wine, Rosen

Michael will be able to track any nautilus creatures within about a mile of him (he'll make them the Visitor's target, which allows him to know their location), and ideally, he'll get a read on one of the creatures so then both groups can gang up on the nautilus as Alphys directs traffic. Newt's group will mostly just be keeping a sharp eye out for any signs of tentacle tracks or shellfish delinquency. If one group runs into a nautilus or two unexpectedly, they'll notify Alphys who will send the other group in their direction as fast as possible.

ASSUMING THE BEST CASE SCENARIO HAPPENS and Michael gets a ping on a nautilus and both groups are able to join forces, everyone in the group will try to herd a single nautilus into one of the traps. Newt, George, Cashmere, Shigeru, Rosen, and Michael will be responsible for moving the cages around while Scott, Steak, Cecily, Red Wine, Sora, and Riku will fight/herd the nautilus into a cage. Steak, Red Wine, Sora, Riku, and Cecily are all experienced fighters, so they're the brute force of the operation. Cashmere is too, though her job is specifically to protect Newt's nerd bones and will be protecting him as he tries to coordinate everything. Scott can move stuff around telepathically, so he will either be maneuvering one of the cages or moving around rocks and any large debris around to try to barricade the nautilus and corral it in the right direction. In a pinch, he can telepathically move living creatures too. Shigeru is capable of altering matter, so he's in charge of opening and closing the cages as needed. George can heal very quickly, so she's kindly offered herself up as bait to try to draw the nautilus into the trap, plus she can temporarily pull the soul out of a nautilus, which will stun it briefly to allow the others to wrestle it into the cage.

Once the team actually catches a nautilus, they’ll take it back to the lab for science time. First thing’s first: Gotta figure out how to communicate with it, if that’s possible. The crew wants to find a way to determine whether or not these things are the actual original hosts of Hadriel, along with why they’re attacking us, what they want (ideally to like get them to stop attacking us???), and how they ended up here/survived the Null. From there, there’s probably other stuff the crew will want to ask, but those are the main things.

IF THIS IS POSSIBLE… We’d also like to have Alphys build a small GPS tracking device/app that they can use to tag the creature if they end up releasing it (maybe the gods want to keep it as a pet we don’t know). The idea here is that the tag could lead to the colony or whatever, which could lead to further sciencing. We super get that this is a stretch so nbd if it’s not gonna work.

After everyone is satisfied with the communication attempts and after Newt is done studying its biology, they’ll turn the nautilus over to Sorrow to see what he thinks.

AAAAAAND here's our planning doc that we've been using which goes into a little more detail on everyone's particular qualifications in terms of building/hunting/doing science/whatever. No pressure to delve into that since it's way long, but in case y'all wanted more specific info, there it is!

THANK YOU MODS <3

[hadrielmods]

Thank you for your interest!

The hosts are difficult to capture of course- as noted in Nate's expedition, they are traumatized and understandably terrified of being controlled or contained. They will fight like hell to avoid any kind of capture, even to the point of damaging or injuring themselves- however, with enough patience and skill, one of Newt's crew will be able to capture a living host (which crew catches them is up to you, or if you'd rather us RNG that, we can as well [a process which would take a much shorter response time than this, we promise!]).

The hosts are large and powerful and hard to contain without sedation, but with a strong enough cage (be careful of the bars as well, as they can push their tentacles through the empty spaces), they should be able to hold alright.

As far as communication is concerned, the hosts communicate via emotion in what could be described as an empathic telepathy. They have no verbal or written language and it's difficult to make any sort of connection at all with the beast in the cage- it would be easier if someone had empathic abilities. However, under the right conditions, if someone was able to open themselves up in a sort of meditative state near the host, it would be possible to understand it.

First and foremost: the host is terrified. It does not like being caged and reacts very poorly to it (again, see the information in Nate's first expedition). It is also afraid of any sort of intelligent life around it- any sort of civilization at all. It is deeply angry at a past injustice to it, and this rage and fear seems to be granting it its resilience to harm, as well as its strength in combat. These emotions feel static, deeply burned into its psyche through some form of trauma, but behind it there is an undercurrent of confusion and maybe even curiosity.

If it is possible to calm it at all, they may be able to get information out of this host through a strange sort of communication that is an exchange of feelings, rather than verbal thoughts. This city is alien to them, ergo they are not from Hadriel, but they remember another city from long ago, one that originated on this planet. They remember a codependent relationship with their gods- different gods than the one in Hadriel, though based on the same emotions- and they remember a feeling of gentle curiosity as they were handed over to the Null in an attempt to see how these strange god abilities worked.

After that, it is very little, but rage and pain and suffering. These hosts were experimented on, hurt, and discarded when they were no longer valuable or when the Null decided to abandon their outpost on this planet after eradicating the rest of the god species. The hosts are angry, afraid, reluctant to trust again, and unhappy with other sentient creatures settling in where they had began to rebuild some kind of colony on their own- thus the attacks and defensive measures.

It's possible to install a GPS into a host and release it back into 'the wild', so to speak- more information on that will come later, and we will respond to your comment again with an update if/when you decide to go through with this and the host rejoins its brethren.

Again, thank you for your interest and thank you for your efforts and your patience. We hope this is helpful!

[completelycrazy]

OH NO THIS IS SO SAD AAAA but thank you so much mods!! i'll relay all this to the team and we'll get back to you with our plan from here.

[completelycrazy]

OKAY SO, since it's up to us (thank you!!) this is how we're deciding the capture plan goes down: Michael will sense one via the Visitor and will get in contact with Newt's team so that everyone can converge before engaging the hosts, so yay everyone gets to be involved. The fight will be tricky, but ultimately George will use her reaper power to temporarily pull out the host's soul, which will disorient it long enough for everyone to wrestle it into a cage.

Once they get back to the lab, the crew will be pretty quick to realize the host is panicking and in a bad state. Nate told Newt about the creepy experiment footage stuff that expedition found, so Newt would tell everyone else, and... Ultimately they just collectively feel bad about keeping the poor thing trapped and scared. They don't want it to hurt itself trying to escape or break out and hurt them/the lab. They'll scrap the original plan of wanting to hang onto the host for a little while to run experiments, and instead will just skip straight to trying to communicate.

During the capture, they'll try to do as little damage as possible to the host, but Shigeru will heal any injuries it does have pretty much immediately once they're back at the lab. Maybe this will calm it down a little? Either way, Shigeru and Alphys will take point on trying to communicate with it via emotions and an attempt at meditation. Meanwhile, Newt and the rest of the team will try to get as much info as possible from the nautilus without hurting it/freaking it out further, though most of what they'll be looking for is like, info we already have access to probably, like taking measurements and observing its reactions/movements, etc. Newt will also want to check over for signs of Null experimentation/augmentation.

Hopefully they can knock all this out in an hour or two tops, and then they'll be taking the host straight to Sorrow to see if he has any further insights and because they're hoping he can communicate with it. Alphys will bring along her GPS device too, but the group will only agree to track it if Sorrow is aiming to help the hosts. After all this, no one in the group wants to see the hosts hurt anymore than they already are. Help the mollusk buds!!!

And finally A BIG THANK YOU, MODS <3 this is super cool!!

[hadrielmods]

That sounds good to us! Our only comment is that Sorrow will likely tell them to bring the host to Hope, since Hope is generally more sympathetic to them and will be able to heal it/calm it better than Sorrow himself can. However, Hope will in turn agree to the gps tracker and will be able to communicate with the hosts so that they can be assured that no harm will come to them.

In the presence of the gods, the host demeanor will rapidly change: from apprehensive, defensive, and violent to disbelief, shock, and pure joy. Reuniting this host with the gods- even though they're not the host's original god population- will fill almost the entire temple with a short burst happiness and the host will tremble and make small squeaks of excitement.

Ultimately, it will decide to go back to its colony in hopes of spreading the word around a bit, but now there's new hope for it. While it's still apprehensive of humanoids (other Hadrielites have hurt and killed them, after all), attacks from this particular colony from now on will be far fewer and only in self defense. So there's that to feel good about!

[completelycrazy]

okay well all of us are losing our minds over how heckin cute this is. just some last notes here:

- We'll definitely slap the gps tracker on that little dude then, so yay hopefully that'll help with Hope's capture initiative thing in March.
- WE'RE TAKING A GROUP SELFIE WITH THE HOST AT HOPE'S TEMPLE Hope will be badgered to get in the picture too (Sorrow also if he's there) so get in here buds.

thank you so much for this mods!! THIS WAS SUPER FUN <3 yall are great.