hadriel_ooc | Monthly Rundown: April Edition

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Monthly Rundown: April Edition

It's time to gear up for endgame. We're on a new world, we've got some new plans, and at least for now the Null haven't descended from the sky to destroy us all. Buckle in, and check out how it's all gonna unfold. There's a LOT to do this month, but it's up to you how much you want to participate in!

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

APRIL PART 1: THE SETUP

You're on a new world, with new creatures and new dangers and a whole shitload of trees and plants. Luckily, that'll all provide some decent cover for everyone, because the Null are coming. Sooner or later, they'll find you, and you picked this world so there'll be time to prepare for that final attack. That's what April is all about.

This month will have a different format than past months. Rather than a couple of events scattered throughout the month, it will have almost non-stop god events, with only a couple of days downtime between them. These are designed to give the gods the power they will need to fight the Null. All of these events will be opt-in, which means your character does not have to participate if you do not want them to. While these events are going on, the gods will also be assisting all of you with your own projects - whether that involves fighting the Null, investigating the Door, or anything else. The outcome of the final battle depends on both the power gained by the events and your actions, so get busy!

It all begins on April 3rd. This will be a Sorrow event that involves being compelled to share the secret that will make the person you're talking to the saddest. More details will be announced in an OOC post a few days from now.

This event ends on the 9th, and immediately afterwards, on April 10th, the Door brings in its final batch of newbies. And of course, another batch of monsters - in this case, Shugguraths from the video game Borderlands: The Pre-sequel.

Shugguraths are large creatures that creepily float through the sky, spitting corrosive acid at whatever they view as an enemy - so, you. Except of course for the ones that can shock you with electricity, the ones that can freeze you, the ones that can turn invisible... look, there's a few different kinds, and none of them are fun. Unless you love dying and being dead.

APRIL PART 2: MORE GOD POWER-UPS

In the interests of keeping this monthly rundown below 10,000 words, each god event in April will just get a small summary in this post. There will be more details and an extended writeup in OOC posts a few days before the beginning of each event. Remember, you don't have to participate in every event, or even in any of them! It's totally up to you.

The second event will begin on April 12th and end on April 16th. This will be a Hope event that will give every person affected a source of hope, inspiration, and perhaps leadership... in the form of someone else in the city. Haven't you always wanted someone to put up on that pedestal?

Then we'll have a Rage event from April 18th-April 22nd. This will be somewhat less murderous than recent Rage events - instead, it'll be you, seized with the urge to troll the shit out of your friends. Pranks, jokes, mean-spirited tricks, anything that will make you laugh and make them angry.

From April 24th-May 2nd we'll have a combo Tranquility and Confusion event which will have some of those involved with their emotions dialed down extremely low, and some with their emotions dialed all the way up to 11 - but who is affected by which god could switch in a moment.

APRIL PART 3: PREPARATION

This part is all up to you. While the gods are running their events, getting as much power as they can to face the Null, everything else is in your hands.

What will your characters do? Propose a sneak attack? Use some of the tech or intelligence they found on the ice planet? Train the non-fighters? Stock up on medical supplies, train nurses for the inevitable casualties? Build defenses? Build weapons? The sky's the limit, and the gods are ready to help.

Please comment under this starter with a brief description of what your character plans to do and if they need a god's help to do it. We will take your plans and get back to you with whatever information, effects, or logs might be necessary. Again, this is totally in your hands! Feel free to form groups or do things on your own, assist with many projects or focus on just one. What you all choose to do will help shape both what happens during the coming Null attack and what happens during Hadriel's endgame.

APRIL EXTRA: A POLL

One last thing for this month! To cap off these nonstop god events, we'd like to offer the chance to repeat one past event. We've done a lot over the years at Hadriel, and we have a lot of folks who have missed out on events for one reason to another. So we're going to run a couple polls to see which past event people might want to repeat. Once chosen, we'll schedule it to happen during May.

Today, you just need to vote for the god. On April 5th, we'll close the poll and tally up the votes, and later in the month we'll run another poll to decide which event to repeat. Take a look at this Google doc to get an idea of which events will be available, and which god was in charge of which event. Then go ahead and vote!

Do you want something hopeful? Something sad? Something terrifying? Or maybe something that will inspire love! Whatever god you'd like to get a repeat from, let us know below! When the god is chosen, we'll write up short descriptions of each of their events, and you can choose which one sounds like the most fun. Obviously, this is an OOC poll! Your character has no knowledge of it.

Unfortunately, Dreamwidth does not seem to want us to use their poll creator for this, so after several failed attempts we gave up - this time, the poll will be right over here!. Hopefully we'll have more luck with the follow-up poll!

TO RECAP...

► April 3rd-9th: Sorrow Event
► April 10th: Intro log!
► April 12th-16th: Hope Event
► April 18th-22nd: Rage Event
► April 24th-May 2nd: Tranquility/Confusion Event
► April 23rd-30th: Activity Check
As a final note, our schedule for the month is viewable on the calendar!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Are there set plans for the gods to arrange small scouting missions to other planets? I'm just wondering whether this is something that has to be initiated by players (which I'm absolutely fine with!) or whether this is going to be a future event in itself.

This is something that we'd prefer to be initiated by players! Our objective with plotting out how the final few months are going to go is to give players the ability to choose between metaplot-focused threads (scouting parties, etc) and general god events. That way, players can do something for the metaplot that makes more sense for their characters (rather than just us telling everyone what they'll be doing) and players who don't have much interest in the plot and simply want to close character arcs or CR can do that without feeling like they need to participate in any event or be left out. Hopefully that helps!

Edited 2019-04-08 01:53 (UTC)

That makes sense! Thank you, mods!

Please let us know here if your character is planning to do anything to prepare for the Null attack. This could be anything from stockpiling supplies to making weapons to asking Fear to assist in sneak attacks on Null bases, and everything in between.

Make sure to include in your comment what you plan to do, how you plan to do it, which characters are involved, and what (if any) help you need from the gods.

Now that the move is complete, I think Jon (and presumably Dany, depending on how up for it her player is -- she has some RL stuff going on) with the cooperation of the Guard (esp Nick, who is definitely a big part of this) will be attempting to get people to think more about physical city defenses. The fact that they've moved to a jungle and that the gods are thinking of it too will help a lot!

However, the anarchic spirit of the city and lack of central government per se means that there isn't one really solid, disciplined plan, which came up before towards the end of the time on the ocean/island planet, and it seems like they could be a little more organized than they currently are. (Could be, but don't have to be: obviously everyone's characters are free to stick to their own existing plans or lack of interest in participating. It's only that this is something he would try to get rolling or get involved with, because if you know the canon, you know it's really OOC for him to not be concerned about defenses and fortification in the face of an oncoming attack. Results from all this would be cool if they happen, but if they don't, that's fine: this is about the process, about at least making the attempt.)

As an example, he would be interested in turning the empty houses in Delight's Housing (I think they're #9-10) into temporary bunkers for noncombatants to shelter in if they need to, because those seem especially defensible due to location and build. That would be in addition to a few bunker-type places that exist around the town.

He would take any help he can get from any gods with any of this. Weapon help/stockpiling from Rage was ICly discussed in the past among a few player characters. (I should mention that Jon thinks he's a Hope guy, but he is much more of a Rage guy in a general personality sense than he'd like to admit.) If there's a way he could get a god to help replace the glass front wall in those empty houses with stone, he'd be into it. Other ideas like that might come up.

Edited 2019-03-29 03:40 (UTC)

Just saying that Nick is totally on-board with this idea!

Jon could definitely work on this, with assistance from any other character who wants to get involved. If asked (and of course this can be handwaved), Rage would provide a decently-sized stockpile of weapons to be stored in or around the bunkers. Tranquility would be willing to transform the glass into stone, as well as providing a small stockpile of additional stone for any additional defenses that might be built. His resources aren't infinite, but he could provide enough for a small wall or building.

Oh, god, I meant to reply to this two weeks ago. Just not having a very good month. Anyway, all of this sounds good!

We got the initial "get the ball rolling" post up earlier in the month (it's Dany's network post) and did indeed plan to handwave threading out any of the specifics as far as logs go, because it seemed to me that most players find logging that stuff kind of tedious and would rather focus on IC interactions like the events this month. BUT, let me know if there's anything else I need to do in the next few days to finish nailing any of this down and I'll do whatever is needed or pass it over to Kai.

I don't know if Sansa hit up Hope as she was planning to (i.e. to do the things Tranquility would ultimately have wound up doing), but I think if not it would just be presumed that Hope sent her over to Tranquility.

Law is absolutely going to talk to Sorrow about his research and what he can do with it to create a long-term solution. He's aware that even if the Null are going to come at them with extermination in mind, it might not be "the end" without one side doing something drastic. Originally he had wanted to create some kind of means of shielding the gods' energy signatures from the Null, but now he's got two options: inoculate the Null against catching emotions, or deliberately infect the entirety of the Null collective with emotions. Either way, they would logically have no reason to take it out on the gods, who would be free to use the Door to flit off, pick up their hosts, and go live a quiet life somewhere.

For the actual creation of whichever solution is the most likely (whichever works with the worldbuild, mods) Law will need help from others because he's a doctor, not an engineer. He would probably also need to make use of [Name] to figure out how it's physically possible. So, good time for all science types to get with him, if Sorrow and/or the other gods OK one of these two lines of action. Law would personally lean toward inoculation because he's vaguely ethically against biological weapons but desperate times call for desperate measures, so he won't turn down the second option.

This sounds fantastic! As the Null have staggeringly large numbers, it's reasonable to assume that we'll never be able to fight them all off, and so alternative solutions such as these are definitely encouraged! Remember also that some characters located a place that would allow someone to directly upload information into the Null hivemind- so there's definitely a venue for this sort of thing.

That being said, Law would definitely have to get a lot of people involved, particularly since this is a bit outside of his wheelhouse, skillwise. This type of plot is definitely encouraged by us and we'd love for Law to start asking questions, working with others, and generally poking around this idea of somehow altering the Null species.

If given the chance, Sorrow would prefer the second option as that seems safer to him and less likely to be somehow reverted. Either way, this is a great project that has our go-ahead, provided that other characters are brought in for their expertise and player involvement. Thank you!

Absolutely! Sounds like a good time for him to make a network post. :D

I'll run with it as far as I can but if I need your guidance or OK again, I'll come straight to you. If you're busy I can also handwave going to Sorrow or Name, unless Sorrow wants to chat on his post. I can manage to whip something up without him breaking his deal with Sorrow, but he'll probably have to 'fess up to his research sooner or later once this gets rolling.

Sounds great! I'd be happy to have a Name thread about it, as they would be very hesitant (but it would be extremely difficult to upload any sort of virus or patch to the Null without Name's help, so...) but could be convinced!

There's been a lot of planning and action going on lately, so I'm not quite as responsive to NPC threads as I know I should be- I'm totally willing to do any threads necessary but be sure to kick me if I go a few days without replying!

Gotcha. I'll have him text Name, then, while he's also going to the city at large.

I don't envy you all the hard work but we got your back, something will definitely come of it and I'm curious to see who Law can convince to help on this.

Steak, Red Wine and Ivar want to enlist Fear's help to take them to the Null planet. Or The Door's help, they're not picky if we're honest. The goal is to investigate things there and attempt a proactive strike against the forces if they can.

Ideally, they'd need some way of communicating their need to be picked back up and returned to the jungle after this is done. But that's... basically the bare bones of it. They don't want to take many people with them while they do this for the sake of not being too obvious, but there may be room for a couple of other characters if anyone is interested!

Obviously, this is also up to all the discussion, fine-tuning and editing that is needed for you guys as mods to make it work, etc.

Fear would be (reluctantly) willing to transport them to the Null planet. However, be aware that the particular planet the gods mentioned before is in fact empty of Null, so while they could definitely investigate and do some damage if they wanted to, it would be more along the lines of a distraction than a proactive strike (since there are no Null there to strike at).

Are they hoping to fight Null directly? If so, Fear could transport them to a location where Null forces are currently occupied, but in that case there would be no time for investigation - it would be a quick in-and-out strike focusing on battle. Alternately, he could transport them to the empty Null planet and leave them there for a bit to do what investigation and damage they wish, and then pick them up again.

Both are also possible, in separate logs/at separate times, though we'd ask you to get more people involved if you want to do them both. Just let us know!

I completely spaced on replying to this with all the Door stuff, but we'd like to send them out to an occupied planet ~~because they're stupid, send help~~ if possible.

The only question is... when............

Whenever you want! Feel free to back or forward date, anytime before the Null invasion begins (though if they really want to go during, they could - that just poses different potential problems).

Fear would transport them to one of the more sparsely populated Null planets, because he is very interested in not dying horribly. Once there, they'd have a fairly limited time to fight the Null there as well as do whatever damage to the infrastructure they wanted - then, Fear would collect them all and get away. He would leave behind anyone who didn't make it easy to retrieve (captured by Null, impossible to get to, etc).

Unless they somehow convince him to go somewhere else, Fear would choose to transport them to a mining colony. This is an important source of material, but being deep within Null territory, is relatively unguarded. The Null on the planet will not be prepared for an attack, and will therefore initially be in forms not suited for combat. They will be focused on repairing, engineering, and mining minerals and materials that will be used for creating more Null and their weapons, crafts, and other technology. As such, there will be a number of large mining structures, some buildings for refining and repais, and a few Null craft for offworld transport.

Once the alarm is raised and they know they are being attacked, they will alter themselves into more combat-ready forms, similar to those that attacked the city previously. How long it takes for this to happen depends on what your characters do - for example, if they immediately start blowing shit up, the Null will react quickly, whereas if they attack more stealthily, it will take longer. However, it won't take longer than, at the absolute most, about an hour and a half before they realize they are being attacked.

At this point, the entire mining colony will begin to search out and destroy the creatures attacking them. This is when Fear decides it's time to go, collects everyone, and transports them back to the city.

Depending on what they decide to do while there, Steak and the others could have any result from simply putting a small dent in the Null forces to crippling the mining structures and destroying some of the Null's ability to repair themselves and construct more Null. It's up to you!

Ah, this sounds great! It would definitely be a more stealthy attack than straight blowing shit up, and probably somewhere out of event time so everyone can enjoy themselves with those.

One last question: Is there anything of worthwhile interest they could loot and bring back? >>

Overall, not really, since it's a mining outpost rather than a technological center and Fear won't be willing to bring back anything large. However, they could definitely find smaller things, like pieces of the alloys that the Null use on their ships and themselves or some of the smaller tools that are used for repair. Some will resemble Earth tools (wrenches are fairly universal), while others will be more confusing and it won't be immediately evident what they're for.

Some research once they've returned, using comparisons to the Null they've seen, would determine that these tools are likely used for replacement of Null parts when they become too damaged to repair.

To continue their work on The Door, Kate and Alphys are trying to devise ways to make it useful in case of a Sudden Surprise Null Attack (gosh, I wonder when that might happen). To that end, they've also enlisted the help of Lucretia, Jo, Cecily and probably others to figure out what they would like to do.

They're looking at things from a defensive stand point, and ideas include the following:
- Finding a way to amplify the Door's madness effects / to target the Null with it as a last resort attack
- Using the Door to teleport the Null to an empty universe if such a thing exists
- Various "how can we stop them beyond emulating a Hack & Slash video game for the next month" plans that we're still mulling over.

They'll definitely want to talk to Sorrow, once they themselves agree on a plan of action so he can help them figure out what might be possible without being (too???) damaging to the residents of the city.

Again, totally fine with any and all changes, edits and discussion that might need to happen to make this work! And with others wanting to join the party.

Tacking onto this because it's part of Said Plan though more a solo Alphys question- Alphys wants to talk to [name] about their feelings on all this/what they want out of what the Null is doing. I know we're threading but in the interest of having plans, she'd want to know:

- what they want to happen to the null
- if they'll want to go back to the null hoarde
- if they'll get taken over when the null come back :(

again lmk if ya'll need anything from me o7

Messing with the Door is a good, if potentially dangerous, idea! Of course, experimenting will need to be done carefully and over a good amount of time, given the difficulty of working directly with the Door. Sorrow would be interested in both of their ideas, with a mild preference for the first because it's much harder to 'test-run' sending an entire species into another universe.

They could experiment with both ideas, and possibly others that they come up with. It would involve a lot of exposure to the Door, and attempting to increase the madness effects would possibly affect the rest of the city (or at least parts of it). It'll definitely be psychologically difficult on everyone working with the Door.

Let us know what the group chooses to focus on, and we can give you further effects and things to work with!

Can I add you guys to a PP with the rest of the group? We've got an IC log going on for the characters to discuss their plans but that's probably gonna take a bit of time to finalise.

Edited 2019-04-09 22:49 (UTC)

We're so sorry for the delay on this, the notice was lost in the mod inbox! Yes, of course you can.

Once upon a time in February, Poe, Finn, and Rey did one of those explorations and discovered some cool things that Poe now wants to share with the community at large to see if anyone can come up with a way to utilize the relay station to disable or help destroy the Null.

One of the obstacles to that is translation of the menus, data, etc, and Poe is seeking out the help of Taako, Lup, and Nathan Drake, whose translation skills were used on another expedition. Would they be able to translate the menus/functions/data that the group downloaded, or make heads/tails of the information that Rey stayed to gather? If Poe got in touch with Tranquility to see how he fared with the translations, what would he find out?

Hello mods! I just wanted to follow up on this. Not trying to be pushy, it will just affect Poe and some other characters' plans for the month before the Null attack. (See below, in addition to sharing information with ~~A Certain Ginger Menace~~ Hux.)

We're sorry for the wait, things have been very busy over here! Yes, with that help they would be able to translate the menus and be able to more easily navigate the data and understand what it says. Contacting Tranquility will also provide them with more information (which is essentially what he shared with the game when people were voting on which planet to go to, here). The bulk of the data is locations and movements of Null troops, and with it they could fairly easily find more-or-less current locations of Null bases.

Whether the locations of Null ships and movements are current will be more uncertain, because once the data was taken from the communications hub it is no longer updated. So it's a snapshot of the Null presence as of the moment they downloaded it from the hub - meaning the base locations are almost certainly accurate, and some guesses can be made based on the ship and troop locations, but it's impossible to be sure.

Again, our apologies for the wait, and please let us know if there is more information in particular they'd be looking for!

Riding on the comment above, since their discovery on the ice planet, Rey was considering on utilizing the communications hub in different ways. One, using it to transfer a virus/program into the Null hivemind (as she brought up with Law and Alphys. The nature of what would be sent would of course be up to character choice, because if it were up to Rey she would want to figure out a way to send a virus to self-destruct every synthetic bastard altogether. Law brought up creating what would basically be a "firewall" to protect the Null from the gods' effects (alternatively, Rey would consider wanting to infect the Null the same way [name] is infected so they end up becoming emotional robots and hope for the best. If they could use their access to the hivemind for this in some way, she would want to give it a shot).

OR! Two, they could use the hub to distract the Null from attacking the city itself, or use it to split their forces. Now that Hadriel is no longer in the direct line of fire, I was wondering if it would be possible to draw the Null to the ice planet and if maybe that could offer them some advantages - such as being able to fight the Null on their own terms and being able to better prepare on a more offensive approach.

This is essentially where I'm trying to go with Rey's contacting Tranquility; I've just been supremely out of it lately.

Apologies for the lateness of this response! Law and Alphys are working on this and we've been in touch with Alphys' player on the progress of such a plot.

It would be possible to create and administer a Null virus, to infect the null with god emotions or something else altogether- however, [Name] would likely play a pivotal role in this, as from our observation thusfar it seems that not many characters interested in this plot have the required extensive coding skills to spearhead something like this on their own. [Name] will be able to help in this regard, as well as to administer the virus if brought to the Null hub- however, in doing so, it would be destroyed by the Null firewall (which, of course, would come as some sort of surprise- it could be a known risk going in but [Name] would anticipate living through it).

There is unfortunately no way to manipulate the Null to create a shield capable of repelling the god virus- since the issue comes from the composition of energy from the gods themselves, one would have to look into the gods for that and ultimately, taking the gods apart in a way that would prevent them from affecting the Null would be akin to killing them.

However, there is definitely a possibility of distracting the Null, splitting their forces, or using their communications to fight them on better terrain. [Name] is capable of using the Null frequency and codes to do so- or they can teach someone else the necessary statements. However, using the communications array to draw the Null into a trap would almost certainly lead to some sort of retaliation and likely the Null shutting down this particular array. That doesn't necessarily mean that you cannot proceed with the infection plot, however- just that you'd need to find another array on a different planet.

Okay, cool! Rey has definitely been thinking of using it to split the forces or control where they fight, which she is bringing up here if any of the NPCs might have a say in it (since unfortunately, Rey wouldn't approach [Name] herself for help. She still doesn't trust the cute little 'bot, though the idea of them dying via the firewall would make even her feel pretty bad, mang).

But yeah, good stuff. I can work with this ICly, so knowing that it's a possibility is a nifty start.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Monthly Rundown: April Edition

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