For our next event, we'll be looking northeast—all the way off the continent, when reports of suspicious activity on a small island far off the coast of Rivain will coincide with Solas' prediction that the next group of rifters will appear nearby. Hoping to kill both birds with one stone, Inquisition members will sail out on two Inquisition ships to investigate.


In the first open log, participating characters will sail from Kirkwall into the Amaranthine Ocean and locate a small tropical island west of Llomerryn. The journey will be largely uneventful, other than some choppy seas, but after arriving they'll find a contingent of Qunari from Par Vollen already present to investigate the same rumors. The Qunari won't be hostile, but they will be wary, and the couple who speak Common will be disinterested in small talk.

The Inquisition team will have only a few hours to orient themselves before the predicted rift splits open and drops our new arrivals—right into the middle of the island's bay. Rowing out to retrieve them will initially look straightforward—other than the fact that being wet seems to make the demons a little angrier than usual—but the situation will be complicated when the fighting and thrashing attracts something entirely new. If you've ever wondered what might happen if you crossed a Red Lyrium Behemoth with sea serpents and octopi, then it will be your lucky day! It will not be your character's lucky day, however, as the presence of corrupted monsters in the bay will leave the Inquisition temporarily stranded on the island.

In this log, potential activities include:

Sailing for adventure on the big blue wet thing.

Sailing for adventure in a scary storm.

Beach camping.

Trying not to give the Qunari the impression that the South needs an intervention.

Rescuing our new rifters from demons and red lyrium sea monsters.

Recuperating, healing, and assessing the situation afterwards.

Hunting for the source of the red lyrium sea monsters

PART TWO: RUINS & RUM

The second open log will focus on exploring the island, escaping it, and then making port in Llomerryn for repairs and supplies before heading home.

Due to the continued presence of monsters lurking hungrily in the bay, leaving the island won't immediately be feasible. Some characters will be put to task finding a way around this obstacle, while others will need to take advantage of the time they have to search the island, all while preferably while avoiding too much attention from Qunari, who might want to stake a claim to anything that's found if they get there first. Scouting parties will be able to discover ancient ruins—some will be oddly elven, but also the site of a more recent human settlement.

After a week stranded on the island, the Qunari, whose own ship is conveniently anchored on the other side of the island, will offer to assist the Inquisition in making it past the monsters in exchange for a full report on their findings there. Making it out of the bay will result in some damage to the ships, however, and between that and depleted supplies, the Inquisition team will need to detour to Llomerryn to recuperate.

In this log, potential activities will include:

Hacking through jungle, maybe finding monkeys.

Exploring ancient elven ruins as well as the site of a more recent settlement, both mysterious.

Seeing gatlok in action.

Exploring Llomerryn, including its black markets, and possibly starting tavern fights with pirates. Or making friends. Or both at the same time.

RECOMMENDED PLAYER PLOTS

Over the course of the event there will be several unanswered questions or more in-depth plot threads that are available for players to take on and lead as miniature player plots or closed logs with their CR. We'll provide about a paragraph's worth of information about the parameters and what characters will be able to find or accomplish, but the rest will be up to you. Your options include:

Discovering the source of the red lyrium infecting the sea creatures.

Making the bargain with the Qunari for their assistance (and deciding how much to actually tell them).

Finding the artifact that drew attention to the island in the first place.

Making an alliance with a pirate armada in Llomerryn.

If you're interested in taking on one of these things, comment here to let us know before midnight on SEPTEMBER 15. If more than one person wants something, we'll RNG. And if you have an idea for your own plot-within-the-event, you're more than welcome to drop it onto the plot request page.

SCHEDULING & NOTES

IC, this event will be forward dated to begin on Kingsway 20, and characters who go along can expect to return to Kirkwall by mid-Harvestmere. OOC, the first part will be posted as soon as rifter apps are all processed—so most likely tomorrow or Saturday—and the second part will be posted on September 22.

You're welcome and encouraged to use this post to post plotting comments and make plans.

And a final note: we strongly encourage people who want to participate but don't have a good reason for their characters to go along to just make one up. Maybe they're needed for manual labor. Maybe their boss thought they looked like sea air would be good for them. Maybe they were helping load supplies and a hammock looked really comfortable and they woke up at sea. Maybe their boss just wanted them out of the way for a while. Don't stress about it. It's cool.

Welcome back from summer vacation! This weekend we'll be putting up an open event post with a number of plot options. It'll encompass both the arrival of our new Rifters, an Inquisition missions, and some downtime in an exotic locale, so we hope there will be something for everyone. We've posted more specifics about this plot here, and we strongly encourage everyone to take a look and use the post to plot with other players.

We're doing a lot of catching up with plot requests and administrative tasks, so please bear with us. We're also making a few changes:

Future Plot Adjustments

In the past, we've tried delivering mod plot a lot of different ways, with varying levels of success, but the most successful plots have always been player plots. Given the smaller and more intimate nature of the game as of late, plus our own time constraints, we're going to take advantage of that—we want to streamline how we deliver plot as mods and empower you guys to do more as players.

Mod Plots: Going back to something that's worked for us in the past, future mod plots will take the form of open, make-your-own-adventure open logs like the one we'll be posting later this week. They'll each have themes and objectives that relate to the missions of some of our projects, they'll usually involve traveling to a new place in Thedas, and they will often contain plot elements or mysteries that project leaders/members can follow up on afterwards if they choose.

Divisions and Projects: Divisions and Projects are remaining in place, and we strongly encourage players to collaborate within those areas to come up with things for characters to pursue, whether as player plots or as more day-to-day background work. You don't need our permission as mods to send your characters outside of Kirkwall for routine scouting, patrolling, nobility schmoozing, etc. Division and project leaders are also welcome (but not required) to come up with IC assignments for their teams.

Player Plots: Player plots have always been Fade Rift's bread and butter, so keep doing what you're doing, because it's great. Three notes, however:

• Corypheus: In the past we've kept a pretty tight rein on the elements of the plot that deal directly with Corypheus and his plans, but we think it's past time to loosen that up. From now on, we'll be allowing (and welcoming!) player plots related directly to battling Corypheus and making major forward strides in the war effort, which has previously been reserved for mod plots. If you have an idea for a plot that would advance the war effort, whether it's as small as a few people spying on Corypheus or as large as a battle that would involve most of the game population, you don't need to worry about overstepping—submit it. Just keep in mind that we will continue to work to make defeating him a complex group effort. No one is allowed to go assassinate him alone tomorrow.


• Canon Deviation: We are well off the beaten path by now, and we encourage everyone to continue to think outside the canon timeline, explore countries we never visit in canon, etc. Please don't feel like you have to have a canon basis for your plot requests. You should also feel free to submit requests even for areas of the map that are visited in canon but haven't been covered by the Inquisition yet in-game (i.e. the time to explore the Emerald Graves is finally here). And while we encourage canon deviation, adapting canon operations to fit the game is definitely still an option.


• Plot Request Form: We've revised the Plot Request form on the page to streamline the information required and focus on the key pieces of info we most need from you, including some length guidelines. We know it often takes us a while to reply, and we'll be able to process player plot requests a lot faster if they're a bit shorter. We have faith that you'll all continue doing an awesome job planning out player plots; we just don't need you to show us all your work beforehand anymore. Please make sure to use the new form for all plot requests going forward.

Application Caps

In addition to streamlining plot, we're also simplifying our app rules. We know over time we've built up a lot of different caps, so we'll be easing some of those. Most of our per-player character caps will remain in place, but we're lifting some gamewide restrictions. The new rules are as follows:

No more than four characters per player in total.

No more than two of each of the following (i.e. 2 rifters + 2 companions = ok):

• Dragon Age companions or advisor characters
• Rifters
• Elves
• Mages

No more than one of each of the following (i.e. 1 warden + 1 Tevinter = ok):

• Characters who are from or substantially connected to Tevinter
• Grey Wardens
• Dalish elves (i.e. you can have two elves total, but only one can be Dalish)
• Apostates (i.e. you can have two mages total, but one has to've done most of their training in a Circle)

To be as explicitly clear as possible, these limits mean that you can have a maximum of two elves AND two mages (or even two elf-mages, if you must). It does not mean 'choose two from the following list'. If you have one rifter and one mage, you can still also have two advisor characters, and so on.

While we're loosening the gamewide app caps, we're still going to be keeping an eye on the general makeup of the native PC population. If we have twenty Dalish spirit healer Grey Wardens, it won't be fun for anyone, including the people playing Dalish spirit healers Grey Wardens. And as always, whatever kind of character you're applying for, please continue to think carefully about your character's place in the world, the opinions they would realistically hold, and--if those don't conform to the typical viewpoints for their station in life--how and why your character is different. This is especially important for players applying for characters that should be rare (e.g. Tevinter citizens, Dalish) or characters with some degree of IC power (e.g. nobles, high-ranking Templars). Debates between opposing points of view on major world issues and clashes between wildly different experiences of the world are something that make RPing about Thedas so much fun, and we'll be taking a much harder look at a Qunari from Par Vollen who loves all people and is open-minded about religion and magic than one who struggles realistically with their upbringing and beliefs.

With great power comes great responsibility, don't make us turn this car around, etc.

AC Requirements

We're also going to be streamlining and simplifying AC. Canon characters, including both Dragon Age companions and advisors and non-DA canon characters, will require one AC proof (five log tags, ten network tags, or an open post). Original characters who hold mod-appointed positions of power, such as those in project or division leadership roles, will also require one full AC proof. Original characters who do not have an IC position of power will only require a one-tag check-in.

That said, we may issue warnings and impose extra requirements on an individual basis if the spirit of AC is abused—posting open posts but not responding to the tags, consistently posting open posts on the last day of the AC period as your only proof, or taking a canon character or IC position of power but consistently only RPing with the same few other people, etc.

K2 Is A Goddess

Kate/K2 has been helping us with list mod stuff for SOME TIME NOW, and we forgot to ever formally announced it beyond putting her on the mod contact page, so everyone please give her 200,000 rounds of applause for thanklessly (so far) keeping things running smoothly.

IC UPDATES

New Leaders

We're pleased to welcome a new crop of IC leaders! We thank them for stepping up and are excited to let them get started. Effective immediately, the following appointments will be made and announced IC effective immediately:

Iskandar, head of the Forces division

Petrana, head of the Diplomacy division

Inessa, leader of the Rifts & the Veil project

Kit, leader of the Other Powers project

As a reminder, projects are always open for new members! We also have a number of project leader slots still available--anyone interested in signing their character up should submit an application on the Leadership page by the end of this month. The next round of appointments will be made in October.