Kostos Averesch (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
exequy) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
faderiftooc2019-05-05 05:55 pm
exequy) wrote in faderiftooc2019-05-05 05:55 pm
Entry tags:
i love dying and being dead
Hello! I'm putting together a plot almost entirely for the sake telenovela-level drama, for everybody. The basic summary of the plot is: a team of people sent on official business will be abducted and taken beyond enemy lines. They'll be able to escape, but they'll be deep in enemy territory, without sending crystals or supplies, and they'll have to make their way back to friendly territory alone.
In the meantime, their captors will be terrified of losing their jobs/heads and will use their belongings and uniforms plus some spare dead bodies to convince their bosses—and a mole who's secretly reporting to the Inquisition—that they killed them all rather than losing them. This news will be sent back to the Gallows, giving everyone there good cause to believe their friends are truly and completely dead.
The escapees will then get to crash their own memorial. It'll be great.
There are two things you can potentially sign up for.
1. CAPTIVE: Characters who will be captured and believed dead. A few notes:
WHO: Anyone. The intended mission, before they're betrayed and abducted, will be one that requires diplomats, researchers, guards/combatants, people to do menial labor, etc., so pretty much anyone can have an excuse to be sent there. Except people who haven't actually officially joined up and thus are never sent anywhere. (P.S., they should join.) Also: no mages who have intact and identifiable phylacteries that would confirm they were still alive, no people with powers or abilities you’re going to tell me would make them impossible to capture, and no people who could circumvent the long walk back or otherwise ruin everything for everyone else.
WHEN: Those who are captured will be gone from May/Bloomingtide 18-28, or thereabouts, and they won't be able to participate in anything else during that time. No crystal posts, no plots, no nothin'. Unless it's backdated! Then whatever.
WHAT: I'll provide a log that includes a basic outline of the journey back, but it won't be GMed, and everyone can make their own mini-adventures along the way. They'll be covering a lot of ground, camping, lying their way through civilized areas, maybe going underground and having to eat nug, all of that, so hopefully there will be plenty of room for you to come up with some fun stuff to do during the week and a half you aren't allowed to do anything else.
AND ABOUT THEIR STUFF: The captives will lose basically all of their belongings. Clothes, weapons, valuables, sending crystals, etc. All gone. So if you don't want something to be gone forever—or at least until you come up with your own separate epic quest to have your character recover their ancestral sword from the Venatori who took it, or whatever—have them leave their important things at home for some reason. Maybe the sword needed repairs.
The only exceptions to this are small items, like rings or necklaces. Two or three of those items can be delivered back to the Gallows as proof that everyone has died, and others can be dropped, lost, or discarded during the abduction, as long as they're things that are small enough the captors wouldn't notice them or think they were worth picking up, and later found during the rescue attempt.
Obviously they'll get new crystals when they get back.
2. RESCUE ATTEMPT: Since the people back home wouldn't just give up, a team of people will try to track the captives and bring them back. They'll be able to make some progress tracking everyone and getting past enemy lines, but they'll be contacted and then met midway by the mole, who will tell them they're FAILURES and provide them some physical evidence that their friends are super dead.
At that point, they're required to go home. If your character would refuse to believe anyone is dead and insist on pressing forward to look for them, then they need to not go on this mission, because that would ruin everything.
And, 3. MEMORIAL: You don't have to sign up for this. It will be OTA.
Extra OOC Info: Everyone Else
BELONGINGS: All of the belongings listed by the "dead" characters can/will be brought back to the Gallows prior to the memorial, so if you want your character to cry over someone's necklace and so on, they'll be able to do that once the attempted rescue team returns with it.
REVENGE: If your character wants to go a-killin' or anything like that... my general advice is to refrain. Maybe they can be making plans for a revenge killing spree but not actually have time to enact them before everyone gets back. But if they just can't be stopped because it would be so incredibly out of character for them to not immediately go find random Tevinters to murder within a week of finding out their people have died, make sure you submit separate plot requests for that, because it isn't within the scope of what I already got approved and consequences etc. would need to be handled separately.
REVENGE SPECIFICALLY ON THE BARON: Once the attempted rescue team reports back, it's perfectly acceptable for them and for anyone they talk to to think that the Orlesian Baron is hiding something and may have been involved, but there won't be solid proof of that until the dead people return and confirm it. At that point, everyone can figure out what to do about him. Nobody is allowed to ride off and kill him alone.
ADDITIONAL RESCUE EFFORTS: Don't? I mean, if your character wants to hare off into the desert alone to keep looking for them, that's fine, but they'll miss the memorial log and dramatic telenovela return from the dead. Which could be pretty funny! I guess! If they aren't there and just get an awkward crystal call about it. So if you really want people to go keep trying to find the dead, that's fine. But I'm not going to provide extra info or do any plotting for independent rescue efforts, so they won't be able to find anything useful, and they might get in trouble for running off alone into enemy territory, so maybe also consider making them start planning a private rescue expedition but not having time to actually leave before everyone turns up alive.
TIMELINE: Here is the timeline, again! Some stuff is going to be forward-dated, but for people waiting at home, the important dates are 5.19 (silence from the missing people), 5.20 (confirmation they've disappeared), 5.24 (confirmation that everyone is totally dead), and 5.27 (memorius interruptus).